Bound for Canaan (77 page)

Abolitionists were understandably outraged:
Caleb Calkins, handwritten deposition, John Brown folder, Gerrit Smith Collection, Bird Library, Syracuse University; Smith, Speech to the Kansas Meeting, Gerrit Smith Collection, Bird Library, Syracuse University.

Meanwhile, a grandiose plan was fermenting:
James Redpath,
Public Life of Capt. John Brown
(Boston: Thayer and Eldridge, 1860), pp. 229–30; Oates,
To Purge This Land with Blood
, pp. 243–46; interview with J. Monroe Jones of Chatham, Ontario,
Cleveland Herald
, date unknown, copy in possession of WISH Centre, Chatham; Sheridan,
Freedom's Crucible,
p. 77.

In January 1858:
Douglass, “Life and Times,” p. 756; Cohen,
John Brown
, pp. 159–62.

From Rochester, Brown moved:
Gerrit Smith, letter to John Thomas, August 27, 1859, and John Brown, letter to George L. Searns, via Caleb Calkins, April 4, 1858, both letters Gerrit Smith Collection, Bird Library, Syracuse University.

After Boston, Brown moved:
Oates,
To Purge This Land with Blood
, pp. 240–42; Larson,
Bound for the Promised Land
, pp. 158–60.

On May 8, at a secret convention:
John H. Kagi, Journal of the Provisional Constitutional Convention, May 8, 1858, held at Chatham, Ontario, copy in the possession of the WISH Centre, Chatham; Quarles,
Allies for Freedom
, pp. 45–51; Redpath,
Public Life of Capt. John Brown
, p. 231; Oates,
To Purge This Land with Blood
, p. 248;
National Era
, December 15, 1859.

Brown wanted to invade:
Sheridan, editor's commentary,
Freedom's Crucible
, pp. 132–33; Richard J. Hinton and George B. Gill, “John Brown and the Rescue of Missouri Slaves,” in Sheridan,
Freedom's Crucible
, pp. 77–87; Quarles,
Allies for Freedom
, pp. 53–60; Parker,
Angels of Freedom
, p. 71;
Plaindealer
, of Garnett, Kans., June 13, 1879, John Brown File, Watkins Museum, Lawrence, Kans.;
National Era
,
December 15, 1859; Jason Hanway, “Early Reminiscences,”
Ossawatomie
(Kans.)
Times
, February 3, 1881, and February 10, 1881.

Around ten-thirty on the dank night:
The story of John Brown's raid draws on Douglass, “Life and Times,” pp. 758–60; 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.; Thomas Drew,
The John Brown Invasion,
pamphlet, in
John Brown Pamphlets,
vol. 1, Boyd B. Stutler Collection, West Virginia State Archives, Charleston, W. Va.; Nevins,
Ordeal of the Union
, vol. 2, pp. 75–84; Oates,
To Purge This Land with Blood
, pp. 290–302; Quarles,
Allies for Freedom,
pp. 92–102; Osborne P. Anderson,
A Narrative of Events at Harper's Ferry
(Boston: Osborne P. Anderson, 1861), pp. 36–51; Redpath,
Public Life of Capt. John Brown
, p. 226; Cohen,
John Brown
, pp. 36–60;
National Era
, October 20, 1859, October 27, 1859, November 3, 1859, November 10, 1859;
New York Herald
, October 17, 1859.

After the attack:
Anderson,
Narrative of Events at Harper's Ferry
, pp. 36–51; Quarles,
Allies for Freedom,
pp. 92–98, 114; Caleb Calkins, handwritten deposition, John Brown folder, Gerrit Smith Collection, Bird Library, Syracuse University, Syracuse, N. Y.; Still, Still's Underground Railroad Records, William Still, Philadelphia, 1886, Introduction.

Harriet Tubman was in New York:
Larson,
Bound for the Promised Land
, pp. 158, 174.

On October 25, Brown:
John Brown, letter to Luther Humphrey, November 19, 1859, copy in possession of the WISH Centre, Chatham, Ontario;
National Era
, October 27, 1859, December 8, 1859;
New York Tribune
, November 10, 1859; Nevins,
Ordeal of the Union
, vol. 2, p. 97; Chace and Chace,
Two Quaker Sisters
, pp. 175 ff; Quarles,
Allies for Freedom
, pp. 109, 124.

The Oberlin graduate went silently: National Era
, December 22, 1859.

“We shall be a thousand times”:
Reprinted in
National Era
, December 22, 1859.

“Some eighteen hundred years ago”:
Henry David Thoreau, “A Plea for Captain John Brown,” in
Slavery Attacked: The Abolitionist Crusade,
John L. Thomas, ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965), pp. 163–68.

Paranoid rumors of more:
Quarles,
Allies for Freedom
, p. 107;
National Era
, January 12, 1860.

Buchanan, ever an apologist for slavery:
James Buchanan, Fourth Annual Message, December 19, 1859, viewed on-line at http://www.pcntv.com/bu_msg59.

The work of the underground:
Quarles,
Allies for Freedom
, p. 105; Sernett,
North Star Country
, pp. 191–92; Campbell,
Slave Catchers
, p. 188.
428 One of the last was Arnold Gragston:
Arnold Gragston, quoted
Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation
, Ira Berlin, Marc Favreau, and Steven F. Miller, eds. (New York: New Press, 1998), pp. 64–70.

In his inaugural address:
Nevins,
Prologue to Civil War
(New York: Collier Books, 1992), pp. 457–59.

The borderlands began hemorrhaging: Detroit Daily News
, April 9, 1861; Horace Ford, interview with Wilbur H. Siebert, undated, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus.

as early as May, General Benjamin Butler:
Paul Skeels Peirce,
The Freedman's Bureau: A Chapter in the History of Reconstruction
(New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1971), pp. 1–7.

Without quite meaning to do so:
Campbell,
Slave Catchers
, pp. 189–90, 193.

“The war ended the usefulness”: Detroit Tribune
, January 11, 1886.

As the lines of the Underground Railroad:
Rankin,
Life of Rev. John Rankin
, p. 49; Larson,
Bound for the Promised Land
, p. 212; Henson,
Uncle Tom's Story of His Life
, pp. 281–82; Strangis,
Lewis Hayden and the War Against Slavery
, p. 126;
Philadelphia Inquirer
, October 11, 1987; Calkins, deposition; Coffin,
Reminiscences of Levi Coffin
, pp. 620–23.

poor Calvin Fairbank:
Fairbank,
Rev. Calvin Fairbank during Slavery Times
, pp. 149–50.

There was, of course:
Coffin,
Reminiscences
, p. 712.

On the same day:
Woodford,
This Is Detroit
, p. 66.

E
PILOGUE

On March 10, 1913:
Larson,
Bound for the Promised Land
, p. 288.

Thomas Garrett, who:
McGowan,
Station Master on the Underground Railroad
, pp. 81–82.

Jermain Loguen was next:
Hunter,
To Set the Captives Free
, pp. 227–28.

Gerrit Smith continued:
Harlow,
Gerrit Smith
, pp. 485, 490.

George DeBaptiste opened: Detroit Tribune
, February 23, 1875.

Levi Coffin continued:
Coffin,
Reminiscences of Levi Coffin
, pp. 711–12, appendix xii–xv; Sandra Jackson, director of the Levi Coffin House historic site, interview with the author, October 15, 2002.

The hardy Yankee seaman:
Jonathan Walker,
The Trial and Imprisonment of Jonathan Walker
(Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1974), pp. 1xxviii–1xxx;
North Star
, February 16, 1849.

Josiah Henson remained:
Lauriston,
Romantic Chatham
, pp. 383, 449, 452.

Reverend John Rankin's last months:
Hagedorn,
Beyond the River
, pp. 275–76.

In 1873 Lewis Hayden:
Strangis,
Lewis Hayden and the War Against Slavery
, pp. 128, 131, 136.

George DeBaptiste's coleader:
“Freedom's Railway: Reminiscences of the Brave Old Days of the Famous Underground Line,”
Detroit Tribune
, January 11, 1886; “Suicide by Hanging,” unidentified Detroit newspaper, April 29, 1890, E & M Scrapbook, Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library, Detroit, Mich.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary:
Rhodes,
Mary Ann Shadd Cary
, p. 222; Silverman, “Mary Ann Shadd and the Search for Equality.”

Frederick Douglass lived:
McFeely,
Frederick Douglass
, pp. 289ff, 307, 381.

William Still's coal business: Philadelphia Inquirer
, October 11, 1987; Matthew Pinsker, historian, interview with the author, Dickinson College, February 3, 2003.

Its most important achievement:
Fred Landon, “The Negro Migration to Canada after the Passing of the Fugitive Slave Act,”
Journal of Negro History
5 (January 1920), pp. 22–36; Larry Gara,
The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996), pp. 36–38.

It is similarly difficult:
Siebert,
Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom
, pp. 403–39.

“truckling, and compromising”:
W. E. B. DuBois, quoted by David W. Blight, “‘If You Don't Tell It Like It Was, It Can Never Be as It Ought to Be,” keynote talk at Yale conference on “Yale and Slavery,” September 26, 2002.

Indeed, as a lawyer:
Randy Alcorn, “February 8, 1991: Lovejoy Surgicenter v. Portland, Oregon ProLifers,” closing arguments in trial of rescuers, viewed online at www.epm.org/abcloarg.

“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. 1–5.

tortured by spiritual anxieties:
Ibid., pp. 7–18, 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, 1793–1886
(Cincinnati: Western Tract and Book Society, 1868), pp. 18–19.

Ripley was then:
Rankin,
Life of Rev.
John Rankin, pp. 18–24; 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. 530–31; 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, 71–72, 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, 528–29; 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.