Bound for Canaan (98 page)

Read Bound for Canaan Online

Authors: Fergus Bordewich

BOOK: Bound for Canaan
2.5Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

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.

C
HAPTER
15: D
O
W
E
C
ALL
T
HIS THE
L
AND OF THE
F
REE?

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.

Other books

The Mystery of the Black Raven by Gertrude Chandler Warner
Artistic Licence by Katie Fforde
The Kiss by Lazu, Sotia
Beware Beware by Steph Cha
The Doomsday Infection by Lamport, Martin
The Devil's Triangle by Mark Robson
Buried Dreams by Brendan DuBois