by Afua Cooper
So, before my second Christmas at the Gatewoods, I approached my master and asked if he was going to send me to work in a slaughterhouse. He was suspicious. “Why do you want to go away from your precious wife and daughter?”
“I hear they need hands at the general slaughterhouse in Cincinnati, and they pay better than in Jefferson City,” I gave him by way of reply.
My master did not need much convincing. The smell of my future wages won him over.
“Come back this evening and I will write you a pass.”
When I showed up later that evening, my master was in a sour mood. His breath stank of liquor. As he wrote the pass he said, “No monkey business from you, Henry. You not planning on running off, are you?”
“No, Massa. My family is here.”
“Just remember that, boy. Just remember that.”
Malinda and I had agreed that I would leave for Cincinnati the following evening. There was a Louisville ferry that stopped at Moore’s Landing, four miles from the Gatewood farm. I would catch that ferry and arrive in Cincinnati in the early hours of the morning. Until my time to leave, however, I stayed with my little family at the knoll where the slave people were playing music, dancing, singing and feasting. It was festive, but my heart could not celebrate. I could think only of what lay ahead.
“Promise me, Henry, that you will come back for us,” my wife said.
“Why do you say that, Malinda?” I asked, my blood racing.
My wife looked me in the eye and said, “Sometimes, people run away. They say they are coming back for their loved ones, but they never do.”
“You and Mary Frances are my reason for living. I will not leave one stone unturned until I free you and our child from this pain. Yes, Malinda, I will come back for you.”
I kissed her cheeks and eyelids. I smoothed Mary Frances’s curly hair, thinking of how much she looked like my mother. “You will hear from me in two weeks.”
“Just come back or send for me and Mary Frances.”
T
The following evening, I stood behind the cabin with my family. In my hand was the small bag of provisions my wife had prepared for me.
“Godspeed, Henry,” Malinda said, as she embraced me.
I gave Malinda half the money I had received from Shadrach, kissed her and the sleeping child in her arms, and eased myself into the purple twilight.
As I walked through the hilly country to the landing I was seized with conflicting feelings of fear, elation and sorrow. Then I thought of what my master would do when he found out I had run off. Newspaper advertisements would announce my flight. Slave catchers would be sent to find me. Malinda, even my mother, would be questioned. But I was determined to redeem myself and my family from the house of degradation, and I felt confident of success.
At the landing I found other folks — Black, White, slave, free — waiting for the ferry. Some of the slaves were traveling with their owners; others, like myself, had passes. Soon we heard the horn of the ferry. As I boarded, the captain did not ask to see my papers, as he required of the other Black and slave people. This surprised and puzzled me. Then the light dawned — the captain thought I was a White man. And a White man is a free man, under no one’s authority but his own. Under the circumstances, being taken for White was certainly a good thing; however, it made me realize how slaveholders had robbed me of so much of my African blood.
Though it was dark, I could still make out the silhouettes of the round hills of Kentucky as the ferry cruised up the river. On the south bank of the river lay slavery; on the north bank, in Indiana and Ohio, lay freedom. The cool river breeze blew on my face and I inhaled deeply. Freedom! So excited I was at the prospect that, although I had rented a hammock for a few cents and that was to be my bed for the night, I could not sleep. I thought of Malinda and Mary Frances, sound asleep. And so, with a thousand thoughts spinning in my head, I passed my first night in freedom.
T
The following morning the ferry landed at the Cincinnati docks. As I disembarked, I noticed the name of the ferry, Sea Witch, painted in bright gold on the side of the boat. I deliberately asked the captain for directions to the general abattoir because I knew when my master realized I had taken flight he would have the ferry captain questioned. The answer the captain would give would encourage my master to believe that I had gone to the slaughterhouse.
However, I went in the opposite direction. As I left the docks, I passed a group of broken-down houses exuding foul smells. I walked on until I came to a clearing Shadrach had described. Three Black boys were playing at marbles.
“Do you know a small, old colored gentleman who lives around these parts?” I asked the group.
One of the boys, about twelve years old, pockets bulging with marbles, replied, “Oh, you must mean Old Dundee. He lives not far from here. We’ll show you.”
My heart was pounding. What if the boys led me into a trap? But why would they? They didn’t know who I was.
“Not far from here” was a twenty-minute walk to a small wooden house at the end of a muddy street. All the people we passed in the yards were of the African race. This was Little Africa, just as Shadrach had described.
“That’s where he lives.” The boy pointed. And with that he and his friends sprinted away.
I swallowed hard as I walked up to the door and knocked. Almost immediately the door opened, and a man hardly taller than the marble-throwing boys looked up at me. He had piercing eyes and the whitest beard I ever saw. His first words startled me.
“You a runaway?”
I said nothing.
“Come on in. I can smell a runaway from way off,” he said, as he held the door wide.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Ain’t no need for formalities.”
I let out a loud sigh.
“You from Kentucky or Tennessee?”
“Kentucky.”
“We have to get you out of here as soon as possible.”
“I am supposed to be working at the slaughterhouse.”
“So that gives you about two weeks. In that time, we can get you to Sandusky. You hungry?”
“No, thank you.”
“My wife will fix you some food. Eat it anyways. You’ll need it on your journey.”
As if on cue, a woman as tiny as Old Dundee appeared with a tray. On it were a cup of steaming milk, corn cakes and roast beef.
I took the tray and murmured my thanks.
“Eat while I get the wagon,” said Old Dundee.
Though I was too anxious to be hungry, I ate the meal with relish. As soon as I put the last morsel in my mouth, Old Dundee yelled from outside, “Let’s get going!” I thanked Mrs. Dundee and joined my savior outside.
For a week I stayed hidden in the home of a Black Methodist preacher and his family in North Cincinnati, while arrangements were being made to get me to Sandusky, Ohio. The plan was for me to travel from there to Adrian, Michigan, and then to Detroit. I could either stay in Detroit or put the United States completely behind me and continue overland to Canada. Another alternative was to travel across the Detroit River into Windsor, Upper Canada. The day I was to leave, Old Dundee came to bid me farewell. With him were two runaways, a man and woman, with whom I would travel. He shook our hands and bade us Godspeed.
The night before my departure, I sat with the pastor and wrote a letter to Malinda.
My dear wife,
You are in my heart day and night. I think only of you and our daughter.
I kiss both of you a thousand times. I am safe and on my way to freedom.
Hold fast to hope. I intend to work throughout the winter, as my friends here advised me, and at the end of it will come back for you and our precious child. If I am unable to come myself, I will send another. I pray God to hold you in the palm of his hand. You are the reason for my existence. Know
that if things do not go as planned, and if we do not meet again on this earth, we shall meet in heaven. I close with all the love in my heart.
Your loving and dutiful husband,
Henry Bibb
As I jumped into the wagon, the pastor reassured me. “I will get the letter to your wife, Henry. You can count on me. I have been helping fugitives now for more than ten years.”
I nodded, and we shook hands. His wife and children waved as the wagon moved out of the yard. A Black man who transported dry goods between Cincinnati and Cleveland was our driver. He had carried human cargo north many times.
T
It was January 1838. The two weeks I was to work at the abattoir were over. My master would have expected my return three days ago. When I did not show up, he would cross to Cincinnati to look for me. And when he could not find me, he would take out ads in the newspapers and hire a slave catcher. He would question my wife, all my relations and everyone on his farm.
And no one would be able to tell him anything. I focused on the road ahead. The road to liberty.
Epilogue
Henry Bibb was successful in his escape; but, true to his word, he returned to rescue his family. Betrayed and caught five times, he was finally sold into Texas and never saw his wife and child again.
His final escape, in 1841, took him from Texas to Detroit. There, Bibb devoted himself to ending slavery and campaigning for Black civil rights. Michigan audiences clamored to hear a speaker who had had direct experience of slavery, and Bibb was a dramatic lecturer. Soon he was touring New England and the Midwest, narrating his personal experiences of slavery’s barbarism. Newspaper accounts note that he often moved his audience to tears.
Bibb also remained a practicing Christian throughout his life, and held that slaveholders deliberately kept slaves in ignorance by denying them religious instruction and keeping them illiterate. With that in mind, Bibb raised funds to buy Bibles to distribute to slave families in the south and to free Blacks in the north.
In 1848, the publication of his autobiography, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, made Bibb a household name. The book was an instant success and was published in the United States and Europe.
In September 1850, the American Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law, which gave owners the right to track down and recapture fugitive slaves living in the free states and elsewhere. Knowing that their safety was once again in jeopardy, thousands of ex-slaves fled to Canada, Mexico, the West Indies and even Africa. Most, including Bibb, came to Canada West, now Ontario, where there was a burgeoning refugee community: hundreds of fugitives were arriving at the Windsor border every day, and many needed help.
Bibb urged refugees to come “to the Queen’s country,” but also spoke out against the prejudice the Black people encountered in Canada. He urged Black communities to organize themselves, get an education, and purchase land as a way to fight racial prejudice.
Henry Bibb founded literary, antislavery and debating societies; he also established churches and schools in Ontario. He used the Sunday school movement to educate adults. However, perhaps his most lasting contribution to the Canadian Black freedom movement was the founding of The Voice of the Fugitive, Canada’s first Black newspaper. The first issue of the Voice rolled off the press on 1 January 1851. It was dedicated to antislavery, universal education and social reform.
Bibb would gather some of the information for his newspaper by meeting the boats crossing from Detroit to Canada at Windsor, and interviewing the disembarking fugitive slaves. One day he approached two young arrivals, only to discover that they were his brothers, John and George, whom he had last seen as children. Their other brother, Lewis, arrived later that day. All three went to live with their mother, whose rescue and arrival in Windsor Henry had arranged earlier.
Bibb died on 1 August 1854, after a long illness. He was declared a Person of National Historic Significance by the Government of Canada in 2005.
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