settlers and well-wishers: Friend of Man, November 1, 1842; Voice of the Fugitive, May 21, 1851.
the British-American Institute opened: Pease and Pease, Black Utopia, pp. 64–67; Hill, Freedom Seekers, pp. 71–73; Lauriston, Romantic Chatham, p. 448; National Era, November 18, 1847.
a fugitive named John Brown: John Brown, “Slave Life in Georgia: A Narrative of the Life, Sufferings, and Escape of John Brown, A Fugitive Slave, Now in England,” in I Was Born a Slave: An Anthology of Classic Slave Narratives, vol. 2, Yuval Taylor, ed. (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1999), p. 381.
“Trusting in the God”: National Era, November 18, 1847.
CHAPTER 13: THE SALTWATER UNDERGROUND
Florida resembled: Pensacola Beach History: Antebellum Period (1802–1860), viewed online at http://www.pbrla.com/hxarchive_ante_territory, Pensacola Beach Residents & Leaseholders Association.
Walker was an abolitionist: Jonathan Walker, The Trial and Imprisonment of Jonathan Walker (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1974), pp. 22–23, 113–18.
Walker had grown up: Joe M. Richardson, in introduction to Walker, Ibid., pp. xiii, xxx, also pp. 107–10; Alvin F. Oickle, Jonathan Walker: The Man with the Branded Hand (Everett, Mass.: Lorelli Slater, 1998), pp. 2, 9.
Walker first appeared: Walker, The Trial and Imprisonment, pp. 8–9, xviii; Oickle, Jonathan Walker, pp. 32–33, 36, 40.
Walker was known to consort: Walker, The Trial and Imprisonment, pp. 63–64, 8–9.
the brig Creole: Stanley Harrold, The Abolitionists and the South 1831–1861 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995), p. 50; Dillon, Slavery Attacked, p. 203.
They would have to traverse: Walker, The Trial and Imprisonment, p. 96.
a commercial extension of the Northern states: Taylor, Transportation Revolution, pp. 106–8, 117, 122–26; Cecelski, Waterman’s Song, pp. 218–19.
Ashore, they mingled: Gary Collison, Shadrach Minkins: From Fugitive Slave to Citizen (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 47; Cecelski, Waterman’s Song, p. 136; Jeffrey W. Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 214, 194–97.
Escape by sea held: Merton L. Dillon, Slavery Attacked: Southern Slaves and Their Allies 1619–1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), pp. 185–86; First Annual Report of the New York Committee of Vigilance; John M. Taylor, William Henry Seward: Lincoln’s Right Hand (Washington, D. C.: Brassey’s, 1991), p. 47.
“No sooner, indeed”: Daniel Drayton, Personal Memoir of Daniel Drayton, Four Years and Four Months a Prisoner (for Charity’s Sake) in Washington Jail (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969), pp. 20–22.
Moses Roper: Roper, “Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper,” p. 515.
William Grimes: Grimes, “Life of William Grimes,” p. 220.
Charles Ball: Ball, “Narrative of the Life and Adventures,” pp. 481–82. 273 assistance was almost always indispensible: William Still, The Underground Railroad (Chicago: Johnson Publishing, 1970), pp. 162–63.
underground work usually hinged: Drayton, Personal Memoir, pp. 20–22; J. C. Furnas, Goodbye to Uncle Tom (New York: William Sloane Associates, 1956), pp. 216–17; Cecelski, Waterman’s Song, p. 126; McDougall, Fugitive Slaves, p. 41.
expected to be paid well: Still, Underground Railroad, pp. 162–63; Collison, Shadrach Minkins, pp. 49–50; Provincial Freeman, December 22, 1855.
Only around Norfolk: Cecelski, Waterman’s Song, pp. 121–24, 135; Collison, Shadrach Minkins, pp. 46–50; Smedley, “History of the Underground Railroad in Chester,” p. 355; William H. Robinson, From Log Cabin to Pulpit, or Fifteen Years in Slavery (Eau Claire, Wis.: James H. Tifft, 1913), pp. 29–35.
Henry Gorham, a fugitive: Cecelski, Waterman’s Song, p. 133.
Jacobs spent her entire life: Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, pp. 5 ff; John S. Jacobs, “A True Tale of Slavery,” Leisure Hour: A Family Journal of Instruction and Recreation (London), Stevens and Co., February 7, 1861.
“a sad epoch”: Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, pp. 27 ff; Jean Fagan Yellin, Harriet Jacobs: A Life (Cambridge, Mass.: Basic Civitas Books, 2004), pp. 16–22.
It is hard to understand: Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, p. 95; and 265, n. 2.
she chose the single expedient: Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, pp. 53 ff, 91; Yellin, Harriet Jacobs, pp. 26–28.
On a June night: Jacobs, “True Tale of Slavery.” 277 When Norcom discovered: Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, p. 97; Yellin, Harriet Jacobs, p. 45.
they arranged for her to hide: Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, pp. 100–3; and 275, n. 3.
Harriet’s brother John: Jacobs, “True Tale of Slavery.” 278 A more permanent hiding place: Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, pp. 110–13; and 276, n. 4.
a hiding place in the attic: Ibid., pp. 114–19; John S. Jacobs, “A True Tale of Slavery,” The Leisure Hour: A Family Journal of Instruction and Recreation (London), Stevens and Company, February 14, 1861.
Her isolation tested her faith: Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, pp. 121–23.
none of this would touch Harriet: Ibid., pp. 125, 134–35, 141, 280–81; Jacobs, “True Tale of Slavery,” February 14, 1861.
“Sir—I have left you”: John S. Jacobs, “A True Tale of Slavery,” The Leisure Hour: A Family Journal of Instruction and Recreation (London), Stevens and Company, February 21, 1861.
Stowing away was: Furnas, Goodbye to Uncle Tom, pp. 218–20; Bolster, Black Jacks, p. 212; Colored American, June 12, 1841.
Captain Gilbert Ricketson: Grover, Fugitive’s Gibraltar, p. 185.
Frederick Douglass reported: North Star, March 31, 1848.
It was harder than it had ever been: Bolster, Black Jacks, pp. 194, 200; Collison, Shadrach Minkins, p. 50; Cecelski, Waterman’s Song, p. 134.
Jacobs’s friend Peter: Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, pp. 148–59.
Jeremiah Durham, a minister: Ibid., pp. 159–62; Yellin, Harriet Jacobs, pp. 65–68.
Jacobs’s life in the North: Jean Fagan Yellin, Introduction to Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, pp. xvii ff.
on the night of June 19: Walker, The Trial and Imprisonment, pp. 10–14; and introduction, pp. xxviii–xxix; Oickle, Jonathan Walker, pp. 47–49.
In 1821 shipwrecked sailors: Nathan Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), pp. 99, 179.
Pensacola was in an uproar: Oickle, Jonathan Walker, p. 52.
The night fell away: Walker, The Trial and Imprisonment, pp. 13, 36–39; Oickle, Jonathan Walker, pp. 56–59.
in the calabozo: Walker, pp. 15–22, 72; and introduction, p. xxi; Oickle, Jonathan Walker, p. 70.
Walker’s first trial: Walker, pp. 33 ff.
The three slaves: Ibid, Introduction, p. lxxxix.
The sentence was carried out: Ibid., pp. 39–43, 64; Oickle, Jonathan Walker, p. 102.
The first notice: Walker, The Trial and Imprisonment, introduction, pp. xlvi–xlix, xxxiv–xxxvix; Oickle, Jonathan Walker, p. 77.
The notoriety of Walker’s punishment: Walker, The Trial and Imprisonment, pp. 86, 98–99, and introduction, pp. lvii, xlix, lix.
the reaction of the territorial government: Ibid., pp. 87–92.
Walker was hailed: Ibid., introduction, lxviii–lxxiii; “The Fair,” North Star, February 4, 1848; Jonathan Walker and John S. Jacobs, North Star, March 31, 1848.
CHAPTER 14: A DISEASE OF THE BODY POLITIC
William Chaplin and Daniel Drayton: Drayton, Personal Memoir, pp. 25–11; Stanley Harrold, Subversives: Antislavery Community in Washington, D. C., 1828–1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003), p. 128; North Star, August 10, 1848.
one long hard-luck story: Drayton, Personal Memoir, pp. 16–20.
He would be well paid: Ibid
., pp. 24–25, 28.
Much, if not most: Ibid., pp. 5–11; Harrold, Subversives, pp. 127–28; Stowe, Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, pp. 156–59; Grover, Fugitive’s Gibraltar, pp. 192–93; William Chaplin, letter to Gerrit Smith, March 25, 1848, Smith Papers, Bird Library, Syracuse University; North Star, December 8, 1848.
Back in Philadelphia: Drayton, Personal Memoir, pp. 24–27.
Soon after dark: Ibid., pp. 28–31, 39, 46; Harrold, Subversives, pp. 116–21; Hilary Russell, Final Research Report: The Operation of the Underground Railroad in Washington, D. C., c. 1800–1860 (Washington, DC: Historical Society of Washington and the National Park Service, July 2001); North Star, April 28, 1848, May 12, 1848, August 10, 1848.
Just after dawn: Drayton, Personal Memoir, pp. 39–40, 43; Harrold, Subversives, pp. 122–23.
Rows of one-story structures: Charles Dickens, American Notes for General Circulation (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), pp. 125–39; David Herbert Duncan, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), pp. 119–20.
A free African American: Thomas Smallwood, A Narrative of Thomas Smallwood (Coloured Man): Giving Account of His Birth—The Period He Was Held in Slavery—His Release—and Removal to Canada, etc. Together with an Account of the Underground Railroad (Toronto: James Stephens, 1851), p. 16.
Mrs. Ann Sprigg’s popular boardinghouse: Duncan, Lincoln, p. 135.
Some of the largest slave-trading establishments: Frederic Bancroft, Slave Trading in the Old South (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1959), pp. 47, 49, 52, 61; Peterson, Great Triumvirate, p. 455; Duncan, Lincoln, pp. 119–20; Russell, Final Research Report, pp. 12, 17.
the Quaker traveler Joseph Sturge: Joseph Sturge, A Visit to the United States in 1841 (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1969), pp. 74, 78.
a secret ring operated by Charles T. Torrey: J. C. Lovejoy, Memoir of Rev. Charles T. Torrey, Who Died in the Penitentiary of Maryland, Where He Was Confined for Showing Mercy to the Poor (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969), pp. 105–26; Narrative of Thomas Smallwood, pp. 16–21; Harrold, Subversives, pp. 82, 90; Ralph Volney Harlow, Gerrit Smith: Philanthropist and Reformer (New York: Russell & Russell, 1939), pp. 165, 275.
“We had to pay”: Narrative of Thomas Smallwood, pp. 31, 25–30, 34.
“Did you ever hear”: Lovejoy, Memoir of Rev. Charles T. Torrey, p. 127.
That June: Ibid., pp. 173–86; Harrold, Subversives, pp. 86–87.
prison proved an agony: Lovejoy, Memoir of Rev. Charles T. Torrey, pp. 127–28, 276; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, p. 164.
Both proslavery forces and abolitionists: Harrold, Subversives, p. 138; Harlow, Gerrit Smith, p. 290; William Chaplin, letter to Gerrit Smith, March 25, 1848, Smith Papers, Bird Library, Syracuse University.
Drayton’s trial began: Drayton, Personal Memoir, pp. 68–73; Stowe, Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, pp. 159–164; Harrold, Subversives, pp. 125–26, 138–39; North Star, August 10, 1848.
Key maintained that: Drayton, Personal Memoir, pp. 79–81; North Star, August 24, 1848.
Sayres was convicted: Drayton, Personal Memoir, pp. 94–103; Harrold, Subversives, pp. 140–41.
John C. Calhoun: Harrold, Subversives, p. 142.
Throughout the South, anxiety: Morison, Oxford History, vol. 2, pp. 265–66; Susan Hubbard, letter to Joseph and Mary, October 13, 1843, Quaker Collection, Guilford College, Greensboro, N. C.; Nye, Fettered Freedom, pp. 147–48.
a cache of abolitionist material: Philip Ashley Fanning, Mark Twain and Orion Clemens: Brothers, Partners, Strangers (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003), pp. 2–3; Shelley Fisher Fisjkin, Lighting Out for the Territory: Reflections on Mark Twain and American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 54.
Loyalty to the South increasingly: Cohn, Life and Times of King Cotton, p. 82; Miller, Wolf by the Ears, p. 249.
praised it, as Calhoun did: Richard N. Current, John C. Calhoun (New York: Washington Square Press, 1963), pp. 20, 23–24, 76–79, 82; Morison, Oxford History, p. 267.
“God has made the Negro”: J. H. Van Evrie, Negroes and Negro Slavery (New York: Van Evrie, Horton & Co., 1863), pp. 218–21.
Slaveholders pointed triumphantly: William S. Jenkins, Proslavery Thought in the Old South (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1962), pp. 201–6; John Patrick Daly, When Slavery Was Called Freedom: Evangelicalism, Proslavery, and the Causes of the Civil War (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002), p. 95.
scholars such as Louis Agassiz: Robert E. Bieder, Science Discovers the Indian, 1820–1880 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986), pp. 92–93.
S. A. Cartwright, a prominent: Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), pp. 70–71; Jenkins, Proslavery Thought in the Old South, p. 250.
Similarly, James D. B. DeBow: Burton, Rise and Fall of King Cotton, pp. 56–57.
Meanwhile, the plantation economy continued: Cohn, Life and Times of King Cotton, pp. 86–87, 52, 83, 111, 90–91; Bancroft, Slave Trading in the Old South, p. 383.
they credited the underground with a ubiquitousness: Sydnor, Slavery in Mississippi, pp. 88–89, 105, 112.
“The life of anxiety”: Coffin, Life and Travels of Addison Coffin, p. 48.
After weeks or months concealed: Ibid., pp. 15, 35; Weeks, Southern Quakers and Slavery, pp. 241, 244; Susan Hubbard, letter to Joseph and Mary, October 13, 1843, Quaker Collection, Guilford College, Greensboro, N. C.; Mendenhall Plantation Historic Site, High Point, N. C., author visits, June 2002.
a vividly detailed account: Coffin, “Early Settlement of Friends in North Carolina,” p. 127.
Addison’s brother Alfred: Ibid., p. 105; Coffin, Life and Travels of Addison Coffin, p. 14.
One of the most daring escapes: William and Ellen Craft, “Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; or, The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery,” in I Was Born a Slave: An Anthology of Classic Slave Narratives, vol. 2, Yuval Taylor, ed. (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1999), pp. 487 ff.
a Virginia slave named Henry Brown: Brown, Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, pp. 29 ff, 45 ff, 57–62; Still, Underground Railroad, pp. 67–73.
personal liberty laws enacted: McDougall, Fugitive Slaves, pp. 39–40, 65–66; Grover, Fugitive’s Gibraltar, p. 181.
“Everybody heard of their coming”: Jay P. Smith, “Many Michigan Cities on Underground Railroad in Days of Civil War,” Detroit News, April 14, 1918.
stationmaster in Wilmington, Thomas Garrett: Still, Underground Railroad, p. 658.
On January 24, 1848: J. S. Holliday, The World Rushed In: The California Gold Rush Experience (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981), pp. 300–1.
The crisis had been foreshadowed: Garry Wills, “Negro President”: Jefferson and the Slave Power (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), pp. 222–25.
The debate that began in February: Morison, Oxford History, vol. 2, pp. 330–35; Mayer, All on Fire, pp. 393–95.
Clay opened the debate: Peterson, The Great Triumvirate, pp. 455–58; Arthur M. Schlesinger, The Age of Jackson (New York: Little, Brown, 1945), pp. 82–83.
On March 4: Peterson, The Great Triumvirate, pp. 453, 461; Current, John C. Calhoun, p. 32.
Calhoun’s complaints were deeply felt: Garry Wills, “Negro President”: Jefferson and the Slave Power (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), pp. 5–12; Nye, Fettered Freedom, pp. 226–34; Cohn, Life and Times of King Cotton, pp. 97–100; Philanthropist, August 30, 1840.
broader demographic trends: Cohn, Life and Times of King Cotton, pp. 46, 49, 83, 88.
But Daniel Webster’s speech: Schlesinger, Age of Jackson, pp. 83–84; Daniel Webster, North Star, July 18, 1850.
The South loved: Peterson, The Great Triumvirate pp. 463–66; North Star, April 12, 1850; National Era, May 9, 1850.
The debate continued: Peterson, The Great Triumvirate, p. 471; Siebert, Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom, p. 341; Harrold, Subversives, p. 148.
Chaplin was busy that summer: Harrold, Subversives, p. 147.
charged
with larceny: Ibid., p. 157.
Gerrit Smith wrote: Harlow, Gerrit Smith, pp. 291–93.
abolitionists held: Sernett, North Star Country, pp. 129–32; Harrold, Subversives, pp. 158–59; Harlow, Gerrit Smith, p. 190.
A Tennessee newspaper: National Anti-Slavery Standard, September 26, 1850.
Rockville slaveholders: Harlow, Gerrit Smith, pp. 291–93; Harrold, Subversives, p. 161.
the new Fugitive Slave Act: McDougall, Fugitive Slaves, pp. 30, 112–14; Nye, Fettered Freedom, p. 201.
Webster, with visions: Peterson, The Great Triumvirate, p. 474.
Meetings of condemnation: Meetings at Canandaigua and Rochester, North Star, April 12, 1850.
“Wo to the poor”: Frederick Douglass, North Star, October 3, 1850.
CHAPTER 15: DO WE CALL THIS THE LAND OF THE FREE?
At about 2 P.M.: Collison, Shadrach Minkins, pp. 112–33; Joel Strangis, Lewis Hayden and the War Against Slavery (North Haven, Conn.: Linnet Books, 1999), pp. 74–79; Stanley W. Campbell, The Slave Catchers (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970), pp. 148–51; National Era, February 20, 1851, February 26, 1851, and February 27, 1851; Liberator, February 21, 1851, and February 28, 1851; Voice of the Fugitive, February 26, 1851; Leonard W. Levy, “The Sims Case: The Fugitive Slave Law in Boston in 1851,” Journal of Negro History 35 (1950): 39–74.
Minkins, meanwhile: Collison, Shadrach Minkins, pp. 151–58; Strangis, Lewis Hayden and the War Against Slavery, p. 86; Record Book of the Boston Vigilance Committee, copy in Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus.
“Do we call this”: Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life of Henry David Thoreau (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917), pp. 469, 480; Van Wyck Brooks, The Flowering of New England 1815–1865 (New York: Dutton, 1936), pp. 286–87, 434.
Before Thoreau: Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Civil Disobedience, Paul Lauter, ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), pp. 18, 24–25, 29, 36.
“We must trample”: Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, “Confrontation and Abolition in the 1850s,” Journal of American History 58 (1972): 923–37.
“This so-called Fugitive Slave Law”: Frederick Douglass’ Paper, December 4, 1851.
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