Bound for Canaan (69 page)
Authors: Fergus Bordewich
“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. 32â33; Quarles,
Black Abolitionists
, pp. 150â51.
“Procuring the escape”:
Ruggles,
An Antidote,
pp, 20â22.
Ruggles reported in detail:
David Ruggles,
Mirror of Liberty
, August 1838.
first year of operation:
Porter,
David Ruggles,
pp. 32â33.
“sooty scoundrel”: Mirror of Liberty
, August 1838.
An attempt to kidnap:
Porter,
David Ruggles,
pp. 37â38.
a model for vigilance committees:
Joseph A. Borome, “The Vigilant Committee of Philadelphia,”
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
92, no. 1 (January 1968): 323â25.
James Lindsey Smith:
James L. Smith,
Autobiography of James L. Smith
(Norwich, Conn.: Thames Printing Co., 1976), pp. 36â55; Strother,
Underground Railroad in Connecticut
, pp. 52â59.
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. 74â86; William S. McFeely,
Frederick Douglass
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), p. 63.
Sometime in the summer:
Douglass, “Life and Times,” pp. 645â46; McFeely,
Frederick Douglass
, pp. 70â71.
Soon after landing:
Douglass, “Narrative of the Life,” pp. 90â91; Douglass, “Life and Times,” pp. 648â50; and Douglass, “My Bondage and My Freedom,” in
Douglass: Autobiographies
(New York: Library of America, 1994), pp. 350â53.
“The question completely”:
Pennington,
The Fugitive Blacksmith,
pp. 138â41.
Bailey now selected:
Douglass, “Narrative of the Life,” pp. 90â92.
to New Bedford:
Douglass, “Life and Times,” 650â53; McFeely,
Frederick Douglass
, pp. 72â73; Grover,
Fugitive's Gibraltar
, pp. 112, 144â45.
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. 376â82.
Hopper, at sixty-seven:
Ibid., pp. 316â18.
“I'll do no such thing”:
Ibid., pp. 312â14.
his loathing for slavery:
Ibid., pp. 322â27.
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. 3â42.
“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. 39â42.
“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.
C
HAPTER
10: A
CROSS THE
O
HIO
a young seminarian:
Calvin Fairbank,
Rev. Calvin Fairbank during Slavery Times
(New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969), p. 46.
a family of Scotch Presbyterians:
Rankin,
Life of Rev. John Rankin
, pp. 1â5.
tortured by spiritual anxieties:
Ibid., pp. 7â18, 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, 1793â1886
(Cincinnati: Western Tract and Book Society, 1868), pp. 18â19.
Ripley was then:
Rankin,
Life of Rev.
John Rankin, pp. 18â24; 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. 530â31; 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, 71â72, 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, 528â29; 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. 57â58.
a time of transformation:
Ronald G. Walters,
American Reformers 1815â1860
(New York: Hill & Wang, 1997), pp. 88â93; Mabee,
Black Freedom
, pp. 244â46; Dillon,
Abolitionists
, pp. 116â26; Wyatt-Brown,
Lewis Tappan
, pp. 185â200; Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” pp. 329â30.
“THE OVERTHROW OF THIS NATION”:
Wyatt-Brown,
Lewis Tappan
, p. 187.
singing at the top of their lungs:
Ibid., p. 198.
the political landscape offered:
Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” pp. 316â17; Dillon,
Abolitionists
, pp. 141â45; Mabee,
Black Freedom
, pp. 246â47; Sernett,
North Star Country
, pp. 112â15.
one Samuel Ogden:
Kohler, “Cincinnati's Black Peoples,” p. 25.
a staunch Whig:
Rankin, “Autobiography of Adam Lowry Rankin,” p. 91.
Rankin believed that the only peaceful way:
Rankin,
Life of Rev. John Rankin
, p. 50.
“If there be human enactments”: Friend of Man
, October 9, 1839.
“Our aim was safety”:
Interview with Isaac Beck,
Georgetown
(Ohio)
News Democrat
, May 2, 1901; and letter to Wilbur H. Siebert, December 26, 1892, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus.
blacks both slave and free lent assistance:
J. Blaine Hudson,
Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad in the Kentucky Borderland
(Jefferson, N. C.: McFarland, 2002), pp. 21â30; Keith P. Griffler,
Front Line of Freedom: African Americans and the Forging of the Underground Railroad in the Ohio Valley
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004), pp. 34â35, 42â52; Wilbur H. Siebert,
The Mysteries of Ohio's Underground Railroad
(Columbus, Ohio: Long's College Book Co., 1951), pp. 101â3, 171.
a Kentucky patroller:
Hagedorn,
Beyond the River
, p. 38.
George DeBaptiste:
Interview with George DeBaptiste, “Underground Railroad,”
Detroit Post
, May 16, 1870.
antislavery Presbyterian ministers:
Isaac Beck, interview with Wilbur H. Siebert, December 26, 1892, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; Hudson,
Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad
, pp. 123â25.
politicized white abolitionists:
Larry Gene Willey, “The Reverend John Rankin: Early Ohio Anti-Slavery Leader” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Iowa, 1976), p. 173; Rankin,
Life of Rev. John Rankin
, pp. 42â46.
“the cause is going on delightfully”: Friend of Man
, October 6, 1836.
“a man of good intellect”:
Isaac Beck, interview with Wilbur H. Siebert, December 26, 1892, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; Hudson,
Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad
, pp. 123â25.
the Gist settlement:
Hagedorn,
Beyond the River,
pp. 12â13.
“We feel no prejudice”:
Samuel S. Cox,
Eight Years in Congress from 1857â1865: Memoirs and Speeches
(New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1865), p. 248.
the recapture of a fugitive couple:
David K. Katzman,
Before the Ghetto: Black Detroit in the Nineteenth Century
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973), pp. 8â10.
the story of a slave named Ike:
Isaac Beck, interview with Wilbur H. Siebert, December 26, 1892, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; Hudson,
Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad
, pp. 123â25.
In many of the river communities:
Thornbrough,
Negro in Indiana
, p. 44; Griffler,
Front Line of Freedom,
pp. 42â52; John M. Ashley, interview with Wilbur H. Siebert, July 1894, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, OH; Jesse P. Elliott, letter to Wilbur H. Siebert, December 10, 1895, Siebert Collection; J. J. Minor, letter to Wilbur H. Siebert, September 1894, Siebert Collection.
One of the most effective networks:
Interview with George DeBaptiste, “Underground Railroad,”
Detroit Post
, May 16, 1870; interview with George DeBaptiste,
Detroit Tribune
, February 23, 1875; Chapman Harris: An Apostle of Freedom,
Indiana Journal
, January 31, 1880; Drusilla Cravens, pp. 2â39; Coon, “Southeastern Indiana's Underground Railroad Routes and Operations,” pp. 185â89; “African-Americans in and Around Jefferson County, Ind.,” typescript compilation of articles and transcribed notes (Madison, Ind.: Jefferson County Historical Society, n. d.); Diane Perrine Coon, “Great Escapes: The Underground Railroad,”
Northern Kentucky Heritage
9, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 2002): 2â13; Diane Perrine Coon, interview with the author, Madison, IN, October 17, 2002; Jae Breitweiser, interview with the author, Lancaster, IN, October 17, 2002; Hudson,
Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad
, pp. 116â19; Phil Cole,
Historic Madison
Madison, IN: Three Star Investments, 1995).
“My curiosity, then”:
Cravens, “African-Americans in and Around Jefferson County,” p. 9.
it stiffened resistance:
Ibid., pp. 19, 24â29; Diane Perrine Coon, interview with the author, Madison, Ind., October 17, 2002; Jae Breitweiser, interview with the author, Lancaster, Ind., October 17, 2002.