“Boundless was his faith”: Frothingham, Gerrit Smith, p. 171.
Smith’s moral sensibility: Whitney R. Cross, The Burned-Over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800–1850 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965), pp. 3–13.
Smith had thought deeply about slavery: Alice H. Henderson, “The History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society” (Ph. D. thesis, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1963), pp. 34 ff.
“By such a concession”: Ibid., p. 36.
But he was not an abolitionist: Stauffer, Black Hearts of Men, pp. 93–94; Gerrit Smith, letter to Lewis Tappan, April 1, 1836, Gerrit Smith Collection, Bird Library, Syracuse University; Gerrit Smith, letter to Joseph Speed, September 7, 1837, Smith Collection, Syracuse University.
The atmosphere in Utica: May, Some Recollections of Our Antislavery Conflict, pp. 163–64; Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” pp. 51–57; James Caleb Jackson, unpublished reminiscences, copy in the possession of Milton C. Sernett, Department of African American Studies, Syracuse University, Syracuse, N. Y.
New York Democrats: Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” pp. 49, 127; Monroe Fordham, ed., The African-American Presence in New York State History (Albany: State University of New York, 1989), p. 29; James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community and Protest Among Northern Free Blacks, 1700–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 167–68.
The convention got under way: Proceedings of the New York Anti-Slavery Convention Held at Utica, October 21, and New York Anti-Slavery State Society Held at Peterboro, October 22, 1835 (Utica: Standard & Democrat Office, 1835), pp. 4–8; May, Some Recollections of Our Antislavery Conflict, pp. 168–69; Milton C. Sernett, North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom (Syracuse, N. Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2002), pp. 49–50; Frothingham, Gerrit Smith, p. 165; Jackson, unpublished reminiscences.
The delegates made their way: Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” p. 64; Jackson, unpublished reminiscences.
part of a coordinated crackdown: Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” p. 67; David Grimsted, American Mobbing 1828–1861: Toward Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 25–26; Dillon, Abolitionists, pp. 24–26; Oliver Johnson, letter to Rowland T. Robinson, March 27, 1835, Robinson Family Papers, Rokeby Museum, Ferrisburgh, Vt.
Meanwhile, abandoning his trip: Frothingham, Gerrit Smith, pp. 164–65; Sernett, North Star Country, p. 50; Stauffer, Black Hearts of Men, pp. 100–101.
the delegates agreed to call for: Proceedings, p. 16.
Smith himself rose to speak: Frothingham, Gerrit Smith, pp. 165–66; Proceedings, pp. 19–22.
had transformed Smith from an intellectual bystander: Frothingham, Gerrit Smith, pp. 166–68; Gerrit Smith, letter to Joseph Speed, September 7, 1837, Gerrit Smith Papers, Bird Library, Syracuse University, Syracuse, N. Y.
when the old Calvinist doctrine: Judith Wellman, “The Burned-Over District Revisited: Benevolent Reform and Abolitionism in Mexico, Paris, and Ithaca, New York, 1825–1842” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, 1974), pp. 441–42; Joseph C. Hathaway, preface to “Narrative of William Wells Brown, A Fugitive Slave,” in I Was Born a Slave: An Anthology of Classic Slave Narratives, vol. 1, Yuval Taylor, ed. (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1999), p. 682.
“This is the carrying out”: Friend of Man, September 6, 1837.
“The abolitionists are wrong”: Poughkeepsie Journal, March 1, 1837.
“My parents and one uncle”: Mary Ellen Graydon Sharpe, A Family Retrospect (Indianapolis: Hollenbeck Press, no date), pp. 49–51, 55–56.
a massive national effort: Nye, Fettered Freedom, pp. 51–55.
In the middle of the decade: William Lee Miller, Arguing About Slavery: The Great Battle in the United States Congress (New York: Knopf, 1996), pp. 207–10; Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” p. 129.
so many petitions: Friend of Man, August 8, 1838; Wellman, “Burned-Over District Revisited,” pp. 307, 315.
“Jesus Christ has”: Ira V. Brown, “An Anti-Slavery Agent: C. C. Burleigh in Pennsylvania, 1836–1837,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 105(1981): 70.
“Let the great cities alone”: Ibid., p. 74.
“Reformations commence”: Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” p. 77.
While the traveling agents: Brown, An Anti-Slavery Agent: C. C. Burleigh in Pennsylvania, 1836–1837, pp. 66, 77–78; Smedley, “History of the Underground Railroad in Chester,” pp. 30, 135, 194.
Oliver Johnson: Mayer, All on Fire, p. 128; Merrill, ed., Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, vol. 1, p. 85, note 1.
Johnson’s remarkable letters: Oliver Johnson, letter to Rowland T. Robinson, January 27, 1837; March 5, 1837; April 19, 1837; July 6, 1837, Robinson Family Papers, Rokeby Museum, Ferrisburgh, Vt.; Jane Williamson, curator, Rokeby Museum, e-mail to author, May 5, 2004.
Fugitives commonly would work: Joseph Beale, letter to Rowland T. Robinson, July 12, 1844; Charles Marriott, letter to Rowland T. Robinson, March 14, 1842; Rachel Gilpin Robinson, letter to Ann King, January 9, 1844; James Temple, letter to Rowland T. Robinson, May 11, 1851, Robinson Family Papers, Rokeby Museum, Ferrisburgh, VT; Jane Williamson, Rokeby Museum, interview with the author, August 22, 2002; Raymond Paul Zirblis, Friends of Freedom: The Vermont Underground Railroad Survey Report (Montpelier: State of Vermont Department of State Buildings and Division for Historic Preservation), 1996, pp. 26–28.
“I was so well-pleased”: Oliver Johnson, letter to Rowland T. Robinson, January 27, 1837.
“where he will put himself”: Oliver Johnson, letter to Rowland T. Robinson, April 3, 1837.
“Half the moral power”: Sernett, North Star Country, p. 111.
“New York is the Empire State”: Theodore Weld, letter to Rowland T. Robinson, June 20, 1836, Robinson Family Papers, Rokeby Museum, Ferrisburgh, Vt., letter.
traveling agents were deployed: Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” pp. 71–73, 159; John L. Myers, “The Beginning of Anti-Slavery Agencies in New York State, 1833–1836,” New York History, April 1962, pp. 175–77.
he debated the novelist: Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” p. 199; James Fenimore Cooper, The American Democrat (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969), pp. 220–23.
Cooper was far from alone: Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” p. 13; May, Some Recollections of Our Antislavery Conflict, p. 163.
to speak at Poughkeepsie: Amy Pearce Ver Nooy, “The Anti-Slavery Movement in Dutchess County, 1835–1850,” Dutchess County Historical Society Yearbook, vol. 28, 1943, p. 64.
Henry B. Stanton claimed: Dillon, Abolitionists, p. 76.
Major antiabolition riots: Grimsted, American Mobbing, p. 36; Nash, Forging Freedom, p. 277; Hagedorn, Beyond the River, pp. 114–15.
its first white martyr: Dillon, Abolitionists, pp. 93–95.
aftermath of Nat Turner’s rebellion: Nye, Fettered Freedom, pp. 22–25, 55–58, 122–24; Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” pp. 98–99, 174; Masur, 1831, p. 30.
refused to censure: David Ruggles, An Antidote: An Appeal to the Reason and Religion of American Christians, pamphlet (New York: David Ruggles, 1838), pp. 19–23.
“than is possessed by the INDIVIDUALS”: Wellman, “Burned-Over District Revisited,” p. 286.
Every community was advised: Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” pp. 20–22, 132; Wellman, “Burned-Over District Revisited,” pp. 286–88.
Children were not forgotten: Slave’s Friend 2, no. 8, 1836.
local antislavery groups typically: Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,”, pp. 79–80, 186.
one day in the autumn of 1837: Friend of Man, February 28, 1838; Wellman, “Burned-Over District Revisited,” p. 343.
Clark felt free to report: Ibid., p. 342.
From a despised fringe group: Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” pp. 100–23, 202, 206; John L. Myers, “The Major Effort of National Anti-Slavery Agents in New York State, 1836–1837,” New York History, April 1965, pp. 162–63; Brown, “An Anti-Slavery Agent,” p. 72.
“My Dear Sir”: Utica, N. Y., Union-Herald, December 1, 1838.
CHAPTER 9: A WHOLE-SOULED MAN
A period sketch: C. Peter Ripley et al., eds., The Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 3 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), p. 170.
Ruggles was born: Porter, David Ruggles, pp. 25–30.
owned a grocery store: Freedom’s Journal, New York, August 22, 1828.
the city had raced: Hodges, Root and Branch, pp. 279–80; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, pp. 478–80.
It was still a low city: John A. Kouwenhoven, The Columbia Historical Portrait of New York City (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), p. 147, 164–66, 171; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, p. 439; Thomas Janvier, In Old New York (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1894), pp. 69, 81; Kenneth Holcomb Dunshee, As You Pass By (New York: Hastings House, 1952), pp. 193, 201.
The great shaping force: Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, pp. 431, 435, 443, 436–37; Stampp, Peculiar Institution, p. 271.
New York’s prosperity: Cohn, Life and Times of King Cotton, pp. 83–86; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, p. 336.
Racism was virulent: Henderson, History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society, pp. 96, 127, 146; Horton and Horton, In Hope of Liberty, pp. 163–65, 171; Hodges, Root and Branch, pp. 227–28, 232–33.
“IMPORTANT TO THE SOUTH”: The First Annual Report of the New York Committee of Vigilance, for the Year 1837 Together with Important Facts Relative to Their Proceedings (New York: Piercy and Reed, 1837), p. 54.
Fugitives were at the mercy: Porter, David Ruggles, pp. 35–36; Ripley, The Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 3, p. 180, note 21; Lawrence B. Goodheart, “The Chronicles of Kidnaping in New York: Resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law, 1834–1835,” Afro-Americans in New York Life and History, no. 8 (January 1984): 7–15; First Annual Report of the New York Committee of Vigilance, pp. 50 ff.
black inhabitants lived packed: Hodges, Root and Branch, pp. 279–80; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, pp. 478–80; Tyler Anbinder, Five Points: The New York City Neighborhood that Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World’s Most Notorious Slum (New York: Free Press, 2001), p. 22; Herbert Asbury, The Gangs of New York (New York: Capricorn, 1970), pp. 11–15.
Mob violence was endemic: Hodges, Root and Branch, pp. 227–28; Anbinder, Five Points, pp. 8–12; Asbury, Gangs of New York, pp. 38–40; Grimsted, American Mobbing, pp. 9, 12, 36–38.
a mostly African American group: Ripley, The Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 3, p. 179, note 14.
“some centre of literary attraction”: David Ruggles, in Colored American, June 16, 1838.
envisioned racial separation: David Ruggles, The ‘Extinguisher’ Extinguished: An Address on Slavery, pamphlet (New York: David Ruggles, 1834), pp. 10–12, 16.
Under Ruggles’s leadership: Porter David Ruggles, pp. 31, 37–38; Ripley, The Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 3, p. 179, note 14; Goodheart, “Chronicles of Kidnaping in New York,” pp. 12–13.
“practical abolition”: Ripley, The Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 3, p. 172.
The Vigilance Committee consisted: First Annual Report of the New York Committee of Vigilance; Porter, David Ruggles, p. 34.
“We cannot recommend”: David Ruggles, in Colored American, December 9, 1837.
“The only ‘combination organized’”: Ruggles, An Antidote, pp. 20–22.
“Let parents, and guardians”: First Annual Report of the New York Committee of Vigilance, p. 51.
case of young Edward Watson: Colored American, September 16, 1837; June 23, 1838; July 21, 1838; July 28, 1838.
“a General Marion sort of man”: Benjamin Quarles, Black Abolitionists (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 151.
boldly pushed his way: Porter, David Ruggles, pp. 32–33; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, pp. 150–51.
“Procuring the escape”: Ruggles, An Antidote, pp, 20–22.
Ruggles reported in detail: David Ruggles, Mirror of Liberty, August 1838.
first year of operation: Porter, David Ruggles, pp. 32–33.
“sooty scoundrel”: Mirror of Liberty, August 1838.
An attempt to kidnap: Porter, David Ruggles, pp. 37–38.
a model for vigilance committees: Joseph A. Borome, “The Vigilant Committee of Philadelphia,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 92, no. 1 (January 1968): 323–25.
James Lindsey Smith: James L. Smith, Autobiography of James L. Smith (Norwich, Conn.: Thames Printing Co., 1976), pp. 36–55; Strother, Underground Railroad in Connecticut, pp. 52–59.
Other fugitives, probably: Mirror of Liberty, August 1838.
slower land route: Frank Hasbrouck, The History of Dutchess County (Poughkeepsie, N. Y.: S. A. Matthieu, 1909), p. 490; Vivienne Ratner, “The Underground Railroad in Westchester,” Westchester Historian 59, no. 2 (Spring 1983); Charles Marriot, letter to Rowland T. Robinson, November 23, 1838, Robinson Family Papers, Rokeby Museum, Ferrisburgh, Vt.
young man named Frederick Bailey: Frederick Douglass, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave,” in Douglass: Autobiographies (New York: Library of America, 1994), pp. 74–86; William S. McFeely, Frederick Douglass (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), p. 63.
Sometime in the summer: Douglass, “Life and Times,” pp. 645–46; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, pp. 70–71.
Soon after landing: Douglass, “Narrative of the Life,” pp. 90–91; Douglass, “Life and Times,” pp. 648–50; and Douglass, “My Bondage and My Freedom,” in Douglass: Autobiographies (New York: Library of America, 1994), pp. 350–53.
“The question completely”: Pennington, The Fugitive Blacksmith, pp. 138–41.
Bailey now selected: Douglass, “Narrative of the Life,” pp. 90–92.
to New Bedford: Douglass, “Life and Times,” 650–53; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, pp. 72–73; Grover, Fugitive’s Gibraltar, pp. 112, 144–45.
chronically poor health: Colored American, September 9, 1837; January 20, 1838.
“to retire from”: Colored American, November 10, 1838.
case of a fugitive named Tom Hughes: Child, Isaac T. Hopper, pp. 376–82.
Hopper, at sixty-seven: Ibid., pp. 316–18.
“I’ll do no such thing”: Ibid., pp. 312–14.
his loathing for slavery: Ibid., pp. 322–27.
his son John: Charles Marriot, letter to Rowland T. Robinson, February 3, 1837, Robinson Family Papers, Rokeby Museum, Ferrisburgh, Vt.; Colored American, May 6, 1837; Nye, Fettered Freedom, p. 143.
What now followed: Isaac Tatum Hopper, Exposition of the Proceedings of John P. Darg, Henry W. Merritt, and Others, in Relation to the Robbery of Darg, the Elopement of His Aleged Slave, and the Trial of Barney Corse, Who Was Unjustly Charged as an Accessory (New York: Isaac T. Hopper, 1840), pamphlet, pp. 3–42.
“it behooves us”: Colored American, December 9, 1837.
managed to irritate Lewis Tappan: Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, p. 180.
a debilitating libel suit: Porter, David Ruggles, pp. 39–42.
“Great in promises”: Colored American, February 23, 1839; July 27, 1839.
“I bleed in silence”: Colored American, January 26, 1839.
“Let not a faithful”: Porter, David Ruggles, p. 43.
compelled to plead: David Ruggles, in Mirror of Liberty, January 1839.
Destitute and almost blind: Porter, David Ruggles, p. 44.
“a whole-souled man”: Douglass, “My Bondage and My Freedom,” p. 353.
CHAPTER 10: ACROSS THE OHIO
a family of Scotch Presbyterians: Rankin, Life of Rev. John Rankin, pp. 1–5.
tortured by spiritual anxieties: Ibid., pp. 7–18, 42; Rankin, “History of the Free Presbyterian Church in the United States”; Andrew Ritchie, The Soldier, the Battle, and the Victory; Being a Brief Account of the Work of the Rev. John Rankin and the Anti-Slavery Cause, 1793–1886 (Cincinnati: Western Tract and Book Society, 1868), pp. 18–19.
Ripley was then: Rankin, Life of Rev. John Rankin, pp. 18–24; Rankin, “Autobiography of Adam Lowry Rankin”; John Rankin Jr., unpublished interviews with Wilbur H. Siebert, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio, and Frank Gregg, copy in Union Township Library, Ripley, Ohio; R. Carlyle Buley, Old Northwest, vol. 1, pp. 530–31; Tiffany Brockway, unpublished diary, copy in Union Township Library, Ripley, Ohio; Carl Westmoreland, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, interview with the author, Cincinnati, Ohio, March 1, 1999.
In his preaching, Rankin: Ritchie, Soldier, the Battle, and the Victory, pp. 53, 71–72, 111.
The Northwest had changed: Byron Williams, History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio (Milford, Ohio: Hobart Publishing Company, 1913), p. 391; Buley, Old Northwest, vol. 1, pp. 353, 528–29; Coffin, “Early Settlement of Friends in North Carolina,” p. 58.
color prejudice against blacks: Wagner, “Cincinnati and Southwestern Ohio,” p. 1; Kohler, “Cincinnati’s Black Peoples,” p. 12; Philanthropist, September 8, 1841; Thomas D. Hamm, The Antislavery Movement in Henry County, Indiana (New Castle, Ind.: Henry County Historical Society, 1987), p. 11.
“contending, declaiming, denouncing”: Coffin, Life and Travels of Addison Coffin, pp. 57–58.
a time of transformation: Ronald G. Walters, American Reformers 1815–1860 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1997), pp. 88–93; Mabee, Black Freedom, pp. 244–46; Dillon, Abolitionists, pp. 116–26; Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, pp. 185–200; Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” pp. 329–30.
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