Bound for Canaan (101 page)

Among those who attended:
Jane Rhodes,
Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), pp. 10–15, 20–22, 32 ff, 110; Smedley, “History of the Underground Railroad in Chester,” pp. 33, 337.

Initially, the two got along:
Winks,
Blacks in Canada
, pp. 205–8; Silverman, “‘We Shall Be Heard,'” pp. 54–69; Jason H. Silverman, “Mary Ann Shadd and the Search for Equality,” in
Black Leaders of the Nineteenth Century
, eds. Leon Litwack and August Meier (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988); Jeffrey,
Great Silent
Army of Abolitionism
, pp. 191–92; Cooper, “‘Doing Battle in Freedom's Cause,'” pp. 264–68, 282; Rhodes,
Mary Ann Shadd Cary
, pp. 71 ff.

By 1852 Shadd's relationship:
Mary Ann Shadd, letter to George Whipple, December 28, 1852, in Ripley,
Black Abolitionist Papers
, vol. 2, pp. 245–51; Rhodes,
Mary Ann Shadd Cary
, p. 66.

Although Bibb's manifold talents:
Rhodes,
Mary Ann Shadd Cary
, p. 73; Cooper, “‘Doing Battle in Freedom's Cause,'” pp. 251–64, 275;
Provincial Freeman
, March 24, 1853, and March 27, 1853, in Ripley,
Black Abolitionist Papers
, vol. 2, pp. 265–67, 285–87.

Caught amid the collateral damage:
Winks,
Blacks in Canada
, pp. 195–203;
Voice of the Fugitive
, May 21, 1851; Rhodes,
Mary Ann Shadd Cary
, pp. 105–7.

A sawmill long championed:
Henson,
Uncle Tom's Story of His Life
, pp. 137, 164–65, 173–74.

Another problem was more subtle:
Ibid., pp. 165–69; Winks,
Blacks in Canada
, p. 201; Pease and Pease,
Black Utopia
, pp. 75–81.

Perhaps Dawn's fatal weakness:
Henson,
Uncle Tom's Story
, pp. 142, 147, 173–77;
North Star
, January 12, 1849;
Voice of the Fugitive
, January 1, 1854; Joshua Leavitt, letter to John Scoble, March 9, 1843, in Anti-Slavery Papers, Dennis Gannon Collection, Welland Museum, St. Catharine's, Ontario.

For Henry Bibb, the controversy:
William Lloyd Garrison, letter to Helen E. Garrison, October 17, 1853, in
The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison
, vol. 4:
From Disunionism to the Brink of War 1850–1860
, Louis Ruchames, ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 272–75; Cooper, “‘Doing Battle in Freedom's Cause,'” p. 286; Rhodes,
Mary Ann Shadd Cary
, pp. 74, 81–82.

In 1855, the touring abolitionist:
Drew,
Refugee
, pp. 225 ff.

Shadd too was damaged:
Rhodes,
Mary Ann Shadd Cary
, pp. 102–8; Silverman, “‘We Shall Be Heard!'”

She even mocked Frederick Douglass:
Yee,
Black Women Abolitionists
, p. 127.

The origins of the Elgin Settlement:
Victor Ullman,
Look to the North Star: A Life of William King
(Toronto: Umbrella Press, 1969), pp. 19, 39–62; Bryan Prince, historian and curator of the Buxton National Historic Site and Museum, North Buxton, Ontario, interview with the author, June 7, 2003.

King, in contrast to Henson:
Pease and Pease,
Black Utopia
, pp. 85–95; Winks,
Blacks in Canada
, pp. 210–11; Farrell, “History of the Negro Community in Chatham, Ontario,” p. 118; Ullman,
Look to the North Star
, p. 100; Walton, “Blacks in Buxton and Chatham,” pp. 90–92.

the first of many fugitives:
William King, unpublished autobiography, manuscript copy in Raleigh Township Centennial Museum, North Buxton, Ontario; Parker, “Freedman's Story,” March 1866, p. 291; Ullman,
Look to the North Star
, p. 108; Walton, “Blacks in Buxton and Chatham,” p. 94.

“When we grew tired”:
Ullman,
Look to the North Star
, p. 106.

King led rather than governed:
King, unpublished autobiography; Ullman,
Look to the North Star
, pp. 141–42; Pease and Pease,
Black Utopia
, pp. 96–99.

Opposition coalesced around: Black Utopia
, pp. 105–6; King, unpublished autobiography; Lauriston,
Romantic Chatham
, pp. 493–94; Ullman,
Look to the North Star
, p. 85; Cooper, “‘Doing Battle in Freedom's Cause,'” p. 308; Silverman,
Unwelcome Guests
, p. 64.

But King had a subtler strategy:
King, unpublished autobiography; Ullman,
Look to the North Star
, pp. 119–23; Pease and Pease,
Black Utopia
, pp. 100–4; Winks,
Blacks in Canada
, pp. 210–11; Silverman,
Unwelcome Guests
, p. 69.

Isaac Riley's oldest son:
Ullman,
Look to the North Star
, pp. 224–26.

White fears also ebbed:
King, unpublished autobiography; Pease and Pease,
Black Utopia
, pp. 85–95: Farrell, “History of the Negro Community in Chatham, Ontario,” p. 118; Walton, “Blacks in Buxton and Chatham,” pp. 94, 100, 109; Ullman,
Look to the North Star
, pp. 151–53; Silverman,
Unwelcome Guests
, p. 69.

Elgin's crowning moment:
King, unpublished autobiography; Pease and Pease,
Black Utopia
, pp. 96–99; Ullman,
Look to the North Star
, pp. 90, 151–53.

But there was no second act to Edwin Larwill: Provincial Freeman
, May 6, 1854; Walton, “Blacks in Buxton and Chatham,” p. 109.

Gerrit Smith was also dreaming:
Harlow,
Gerrit Smith
, pp. 241–58; Frothingham,
Gerrit Smith
, pp. 99–111; Sernett,
North Star Country
, pp. 198–202; Stauffer,
Black Hearts of Men
, pp. 155–56;
Liberator
, March 20, 1846;
North Star
, January 7, 1848, February 18, 1848, February 25, 1848, and December 15, 1848;
Press-Republican
, June 27, 2002.

“
The tide of benefaction”:
Frothingham,
Gerrit Smith
, p. 98.

One of them, William G. Allen:
Sernett,
North Star Country
, p. 68.

Nothing was dearer to Smith's heart:
Ibid., pp. 169–70; Frothingham,
Gerrit Smith
, pp. 115, 120.

The mansion at Peterboro:
Frothingham,
Gerrit Smith
, pp. 140–42; Stanton,
Eighty Years and More
, pp. 51 ff; Ward and Burns,
Not for Ourselves Alone
, pp. 11–18;
North Star
, July 7, 1848.

a rail-thin man with a shock of graying hair:
Benjamin Quarles,
Allies for Freedom
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 23; Otto Scott,
The Secret Six: John Brown and the Abolitionist Movement
(Murphys, Calif.: Uncommon Books, 1979), p. 19; Samuel Ringgold Ward,
Autobiography of a Fugitivie Negro
(Chicago: Johnson Publishing, 1970), p. 42; Caleb Calkins, handwritten deposition, John Brown folder, Gerrit Smith Collection, Bird Library, Syracuse University; Frothingham,
Gerrit Smith
, p. 235.

The stranger's abolitionist credentials:
Oates,
To Purge This Land with Blood
, pp. 8–17, 24.

Brown had taken a personal vow:
Ibid., pp. 41–42; Quarles,
Allies for Freedom,
pp. 18–19; Caccamo,
Hudson, Ohio and the Underground Railroad;
pamphlet,
John Brown Address by Frederick Douglass,
speech delivered at the fourteenth anniversary of Storer College in Harpers Ferry, W. Va., 1881, in
John Brown Pamphlets,
Vol. 5, Boyd B. Stutler Collection, West Virginia State Archives, Charleston, W. Va.
398 “I've seen him come in:
Merrill D. Peterson,
John Brown: The Legend Revisited
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002), p. 56.

He had never hesitated:
Oates,
To Purge This Land with Blood
, pp. 53, 63;
North Star
, February 11, 1848.

Only a handful of black families: North Star
, March 24, 1848, and March 30, 1849; Stauffer,
Black Hearts of Men
, p. 157; Sernett,
North Star Country
, pp. 201–2; Brendan Mills, National Park Service site manager, interview with the author, John Brown home, North Elba, N. Y., August 11, 2002.

Smith liked Brown's piety:
Stauffer,
Black Hearts of Men
, pp. 149, 169–70; Oates,
To Purge This Land with Blood
, p. 67; Peterson,
John Brown
, p. 51; John Brown, letter to Gerrit Smith, June 20, 1849, John Brown folder, Gerrit Smith Collection, Bird Library, Syracuse University.

Visitors occasionally stumbled:
Scott,
Secret Six
, p. 19; Quarles,
Allies for Freedom
, p. 24.

The problems that Loguen had identified:
Stauffer,
Black Hearts of Men
, p. 157;
Frederick Douglass' Paper
, April 15, 1853;
John Brown Address by Frederick Douglass.

C
HAPTER
18: T
HE
L
AST
T
RAIN

One of the saddest incidents:
The story of Margaret Garner is based on Coffin,
Reminiscences of Levi Coffin
, pp. 558–65; Steven Weisenberger,
Modern Medea: A Family Story of Slavery and Child-Murder from the Old South
(New York: Hill & Wang, 1998), pp. 49, 54–65, 71–75; Julius Yanuck, “The Garner Fugitive Slave Case,”
Mississippi Valley Historical Review
40 (1953): 47–66;
Ripley
(Ohio) Bee, February 9, 1856, February 23, 1856, and March 8, 1856; Carl Westmoreland, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, interview with the author, March 1, 1999.

Coffin had moved:
Coffin,
Reminiscences
, pp. 265–74.

By the time the Civil War:
Ibid., p. 671.

But Margaret Garner's terrible odyssey:
Coffin,
Reminiscences
, p. 567;
Cincinnati Gazette
, March 11, 1856; Weisenberger,
Modern Medea
, pp. 220–25.

The surviving Garners:
Weisenberger,
Modern Medea
, pp. 277–78.

Now personal liberty laws:
McDougall,
Fugitive Slaves
, p. 67; Campbell,
Slave Catchers
, pp. 171–79, 184–85;
Provincial Freeman
, March 24, 1855.

Benoni S. Fuller, for example:
Morlock,
Was It Yesterday?
, p, 125.

In January 1854, another act of Congress:
Morison,
Oxford History
, vol. 2, 1972, pp. 354–60; Louis L. Gould,
Grand Old Party: A History of the Republicans
(New York: Random House, 2003), pp. 11–12; Ross Drake, “The Law That Ripped America in Two,”
Smithsonian Magazine
, May 2004, pp. 61–66; Oates,
To Purge This Land with Blood
, pp. 80, 85–86.

“[T]his Nebraska business”: Frederick Douglass' Paper
, March 7, 1854.

Free State settlers begged:
Gerrit Smith, speech to the Kansas Meeting, Albany, N. Y., April 6, 1854, Gerrit Smith Collection, Bird Library, Syracuse University; Oates,
To Purge This Land with Blood
, pp. 80, 83;
National Era
, July 10, 1856.

Among the thousands:
John Brown Jr., diary, January 1 to March 11, 1856, copy in possession of the WISH Centre, Chatham, Ontario; Martha J. Parker,
Angels of italic>Freedom
(private printing, Lawrence, Kans., 1999), p. 123; Gunja Sengupta,
For God and Mammon: Evangelicals and Entrepreneurs, Masters and Slaves in Territorial Kansas, 1854–1860
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), p. 65; Samuel F. Tappan, letter to Thomas Wentwoth Higginson, January 24, 1858, in
Freedom's Crucible: The Underground Railroad in Lawrence and Douglas County, Kansas, 1854–1865: A Reader
, Richard B. Sheridan, ed. (Lawrence: Division of Continuing Education, University of Kansas, 2000), p. 50; Steve Collins, historian, Kansas City Community College, interview with the author, Quindaro, KS, August 13, 2001.

“[W]hile the interest”:
Stan Cohen,
John Brown: “The Thundering Voice of Jehovah”
(Missoula, Mont.: Pictorial Histories Publishing Co., 1999), p. 21.

Their father, John Brown, had promised:
Oates,
To Purge This Land with Blood
, pp. 74–75.