Bound for Canaan (75 page)

“we were all on a level”:
Grover,
Fugitive's Gibraltar
, p. 181.

One of the countless women:
Lucretia Mott, “Slavery and the Woman Question: Lucretia Mott's Diary of her Visit to Great Britain to Attend the World's Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840,” Frederick B. Tolles, ed., Supplement no. 23 to the
Journal of the Friends' Historical Society,
Friends' Historical Association, Haverford, PA, 1952, p. 29; Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences 1815–1897
(New York: Schocken Books, 1971), pp. 59, 79–83; Christopher Densmore, curator, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College, remarks made at the dedication of the McClintock House national historical site, Waterloo, NY, May 29, 2004.

After the Stantons moved to Seneca Falls:
Stanton,
Eighty Years and More,
pp. 143–50; Nancy A. Hewitt,
Women's Activism and Social Change: Rochester, New York 1822–1872
(Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984), pp. 130–32; Ward and Burns,
Not for Ourselves Alone
, pp. 39–41, 58–59; Shirley J. Yee,
Black Women Abolitionists: A Study in Activism, 1828–1860
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992), pp. 140–41; Nell Irvin Painter, “Difference, Slavery, and Memory: Sojourner Truth in Feminist Abolitionism,” in
The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women's Political Culture in Antebellum America
, Jean Fagan Yellin and John C. Van Horne, eds. (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 140–47; Larson,
Bound for the Promised Land
, pp. 107–9.

Women had always done:
Yee,
Black Women Abolitionists
, pp. 20–21, 29; Jeffrey,
Great Silent Army of Abolitionism
, pp. 179–84.

White women as well as black women:
Ward and Burns,
Not for Ourselves Alone
, pp. 48–49; Elizabeth Buffum Chace and Lucy Buffum Lovell,
Two Quaker Sisters
(New York: Liveright Publishing, 1937), pp. xxv, 110, 128, 134; Diary of Phebe Earle Gibbons, entry for July 17, 1856, Gibbons Family File, Lancaster Historical Society, Lancaster, Pa.; Yee,
Black Women Abolitionists
, pp. 36, 117; Hewitt,
Women's Activism and Social Change
, p. 150.

Ironically, no one did more:
Furnas,
Goodbye to Uncle Tom
, pp. 5–9, 17, 30–31, 45.

Stowe based her eponymous composite hero partly:
Stowe,
Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin
, pp. 19, 26–27; Winks,
Blacks in Canada
, pp. 185–91.

Stowe learned the story directly:
John Rankin Jr., unpublished interviews with Wilbur H. Siebert, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, and Frank Gregg, copy in Union Township Library, Ripley, Ohio.

In Stowe's rendering, Eliza:
Harriet Beecher Stowe,
Uncle Tom's Cabin or, Life Among the Lowly
(New York: Signet, 1998), pp. 67–68; Siebert,
Mysteries of Ohio's Underground Railroad
, p. 47; Coon, “Southeastern Indiana's Underground Railroad Routes and Operations,” p. 185.

Virtually every literate American:
Furnas,
Goodbye to Uncle Tom
, pp. 11ff; Stowe,
Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin
, pp. 21–23.

Following her dramatic escape across the ice:
Stowe,
Uncle Tom's Cabin
, pp. 147–55, 203–21, 414–19.

Harriet Tubman was unimpressed:
Bradford,
Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman
, p. 22.

C
HAPTER
17: L
ABORATORIES OF
F
REEDOM

On Christmas Eve, 1854:
The escape story of Tubman's brothers is based on Sarah Bradford,
Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman
, pp. 57–72; John Creighton, historian, interview with the author, Cambridge, Md., February 12, 2004; Larson,
Bound for the Promised Land
, pp. 93–94, 105, 110–17; Humez,
Harriet Tubman
, pp. 23, 351; Still,
Underground Railroad
, pp. 305, 307.

They were welcomed by Tubman's friend: St. Catharines Journal,
April 22, 1852; Humez,
Harriet Tubman
, p. 25; Sernett,
North Star Country
, p. 180; Pease and Pease,
Bound with Them in Chains
, pp. 133–39; Frederick Douglass,
Life and Times,
p. 710; Winks,
Blacks in Canada
, p. 197;
Voice of the Fugitive
, May 21, 1851;
North Star
, November 10, 1848.

sometime journalist Benjamin Drew:
Drew,
Refugee
, pp. 57–60.

Some refugees complained:
Silverman,
Unwelcome Guests
, pp. 73, 128–30, 152.

It was not unusual: Frederick Douglass' Paper
, October 2, 1851; Hunter,
To Set the Captives Free
, pp. 126–27; May,
Some Recollections of Our Antislavery Conflict
, pp. 378–79.

In the burgeoning town of Chatham:
Farrell, “History of the Negro Community in Chatham, Ontario,” pp. 65, 138; Jonathan W. Walton, “Blacks in Buxton and Chatham, Ontario, 1830–1890: Did the 49th Parallel Make a Difference?” (Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University, 1979), pp, 62–67; Lauriston,
Romantic Chatham
, p. 458;
Provincial Freeman
, September 9, 1854;
Syracuse Daily Standard
, May 26, 1856.

Estimates of the total number: Liberator
, September 27, 1848;
North Star
, November 10, 1848;
Provincial Freeman
, March 25, 1854, and March 26, 1854; Coffin,
Reminiscences of Levi Coffin
pp. 252–53; Silverman,
Unwelcome Guests
, p. 43; Pease and Pease,
Bound with Them in Chains
, p. 138; Wayne, “Black Population of Canada West,” pp. 465–85.

the journalist Henry Bibb:
Henry Bibb, “Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave,” in
I Was Born a Slave: An Anthology of Classic Slave Narratives
, vol. 2, Yuval Taylor, ed. (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1999), pp. 13–92.

Unique within the underground: Detroit Tribune
, February 23, 1875, and January 11, 1886; interview with George DeBaptiste, “Underground Railroad,”
Detroit Post
, May 16, 1870, and February 23, 1875; Lumpkin, “General Plan Was Freedom”; Afua Ave Pamela Cooper, “‘Doing Battle in Freedom's Cause': Henry Bibb, Abolitionism, Race Uplift, and Black Manhood, 1842–1854” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Toronto, 2000), pp. 153–59.

Bibb underwent another profound experience:
Cooper, “Doing Battle in Freedom's Cause,” pp. 47 ff; Bibb, “Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb,” pp. 86–87.

The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act: Voice of the Fugitive
, January 1, 1851, January 29, 1851, February 17, 1851, March 12, 1851, March 26, 1851, May 21, 1851, October 8, 1851, and April 8, 1852; Cooper, “‘Doing Battle in Freedom's Cause,'” pp. 204, 302, 315, 349, 378.

“What is the future of the black race”:
Henry Bibb, “An Address to the Colored Inhabitants of North America,” in
The Black Abolitionist Papers
, vol. 2:
Canada, 1830–1865
, C. Peter Ripley, ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), pp. 170–75.

For Bibb, part of the solution: Voice of the Fugitive
, March 26, 1851, and December 16, 1852; Jason H. Silverman, “‘We Shall Be Heard!': The Development of the Fugitive Slave Press in Canada,
Canadian Historical Review
65, no. 1 (March 1984), pp. 54–69; Cooper, “‘Doing Battle in Freedom's Cause,'” pp. 225–27, 241–47.

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.