North by Night

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Copyright © 1998 by Katherine Ayres

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eISBN: 978-0-307-83397-6

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v3.1

For the piano man

And to honor the brave souls who rode the Railroad and those who helped them ride

D
EAR
R
EADER
,

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in another time? If you could travel months and years into the past or the future, would you do it? I’ve often thought about particular moments in history. And while I haven’t yet discovered a time machine to carry me back, I can enter into the lives and times of others by writing novels that take place in the past. Sometimes I get so involved in the characters’ predicaments, I’m startled to see members of my own family returning home, wearing modern clothing and carrying pizza boxes.

For this novel I asked myself a question: If I had lived in the time of slavery, would I have accepted it or fought against it? I spent weeks and weeks reading about the 1850s—about politics, Ohio, how much things cost, and how people traveled and lived and ate and worked. To help me write Lucinda’s letters and those of the young men who admire her, I read real letters of young courting couples.

Then I studied slavery—Northern and Southern viewpoints, original slave narratives, abolitionists’ writings. I found a book with yellowing pages, written in 1856, about fugitive slaves who escaped to Canada. I read newspaper reward notices for runaway slaves. I saw the tombstone of a slave child brought to Oberlin, Ohio, who died there at age four. As I studied slavery and the Underground Railroad I began to understand when, exactly, this story should take place.

In the fall of 1850 Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act. This law required that runaway slaves be returned to their owners, even if they were captured on free Northern soil. Slave owners came north seeking runaways, or they hired catchers to track the fugitives down for them. After 1850 slaves had to make their way to Canada to find true freedom. In addition, the law required severe penalties for those who helped slaves to run—a fine of $1,000 and jail if convicted. In those days, an entire family farm—all the land, animals, and buildings—was worth about $1,000. One rescue put a whole family in danger.

If you want to write interesting books, you must put your characters in risky situations. To write about a girl working the Underground Railroad, I had to pick a time when the hazards were great. I set the book in the winter of 1851, just after the Fugitive Slave Act was passed, and then, to increase the risks even more, I included several runaways in the rescue.

I chose to set the book in Ohio partly because I was born there and it’s familiar. But more important, Ohio in the 1850s seethed with conflict about slavery. Settlements of free blacks, Quakers, and fervent Presbyterians led the abolition movement and worked on the Underground Railroad. Again and again, they clashed with Southern sympathizers—neighbors who believed slaveholding was up to the individual, not the government.

I chose Ohio for geographical reasons, too. In 1850 Ohio provided the shortest passage from slave states to Canada, about 250 miles from the Ohio River to the Great Lakes. Slaves from Kentucky or Virginia (including what is now West Virginia) could travel over moderate terrain in Ohio, instead of across the rugged Allegheny Mountains in Pennsylvania. And travel they did—estimates range as high as thirty thousand passengers on Ohio’s Underground Railroad routes.

Finally, as I did my research, I wanted to get not just the facts but the mood and social history right. I didn’t want my contemporary thoughts to color the story and make it less believable.

Here’s what I discovered: 1850 was a time of tremendous change. Industrial production and technological invention increased as subsistence farming diminished. People traveled more and on better roads, canals, and railroads. Families who had lived and worked on the same farm for generations suddenly found their sons and daughters moving to cities to take jobs in factories. Even those who didn’t leave home caught the spirit of independence that blew across the land.

Therefore, it makes historical sense that Lucinda and her brother Will have an itch to travel, to go adventuring. The notion of a different life was suddenly possible, particularly on the frontier, where people valued feisty independence and where rigid traditions of proper behavior were relaxed.

As I read about the early women’s rights movement, Miss Aurelia’s character took shape. Women who believed in the abolition of slavery soon began to question sexual inequality. A husband owned and controlled all of his wife’s property, and women could not vote or participate in political life. Women who expressed strong opinions and argued for the rights of others soon learned to use those skills in their own behalf.

These are the times and the places in which my fictional heroine Lucinda Spencer grew up. Her era was lively, changing, charged with political and social discontent. Imagine living then. Now step into my time machine.…

K
ATHERINE
A
YRES
Pittsburgh, 1997

T
HOU SHALT NOT DELIVER UNTO HIS MASTER THE SERVANT WHICH IS ESCAPED FROM HIS MASTER UNTO THEE
.

D
EUTERONOMY
23:15