Bound for Canaan (83 page)

Tubman expected her passengers:
Harkless Bowley, letter to Earl Conrad, August 8, 1939, Earl Conrad/Harriet Tubman Collection, Schomburg Center, New York; Mrs. William Tatlock, interview with Earl Conrad, Earl Conrad/Harriet Tubman Collection; Still,
Underground Railroad
, pp. 305–6; Sanborn, “Harriet Tubman”; Larson,
Bound for the Promised Land
, pp. 100–3.

One of these men was Thomas Garrett:
James McGowan,
Station Master on the Underground Railroad: The Life and Letters of Thomas Garrett
(Moylan, Pa.: Whimsie Press, 1977), pp. 2, 27, 41, 49, 60–64, 70–74, 111, 121, 129–30; Still,
Underground Railroad
, pp. 649, 655, 741–45, 775; Sanborn, “Harriet Tubman,” pp. 54–55; Smedley, “History of the Underground Railroad in Chester,” pp. 243–44, 249, 256, 270; William C. Kashatus,
Just Over the Line
, pp. 19–20, 51–54;
National Era
, July 13, 1848; Stowe,
Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin
, pp. 54–55.

“Her like it is probable”:
Still,
Underground Railroad
, pp. 305–6.

Still was born free:
Linn Washington Jr., “The Chronicle of an American First Family,”
Philadelphia Inquirer
, October 11, 1987.

He coordinated escapes:
Stanley Harrold, “Subversives: Antislavery Community in Washington, D. C., 1828–1865,” Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 2003, pp. 162, 212, 214–217; Still,
Underground Railroad
, pp. 161–63, 260–61, 583–89; Siebert,
Underground Railroad
, pp. 81–82; Collison,
Shadrach Minkins
, pp. 46–48.

freed slave from Alabama named Peter Friedman:
Kate E. R. Pickard,
The Kidnapped and the Ransomed, Being the Personal Recollections of Peter Still and His Wife ‘Vina,' after Forty Years of Slavery
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1970), pp. 245–69; Still,
Underground Railroad
, pp. 18–19; Washington, “Chronicle of an American First Family”; “Slaves Liberated—A Family United,”
Provincial Freeman
, January 27, 1854.

a crusty underground veteran named Seth Concklin:
Pickard,
Kidnapped and the Ransomed
, pp. 377–99; Still,
Underground Railroad
, pp. 1–5.

he offered to personally bring Peter Friedman's family:
Pickard,
Kidnapped and the Ransomed
, pp. 279–82.

Initially, Concklin hoped:
Thornbrough,
Negro in Indiana
, pp. 62–63; Stanley W. Campbell,
Slave Catchers
, pp. 148, 157, 169, 199; Slaughter,
Bloody Dawn
, pp. 59–60; James E. Morlock,
Was It Yesterday?
(Evansville, Ind: University of Evansville Press, 1980), p. 124; Coon, “Reconstructing the Underground Railroad Crossings.”

Frustrated but undaunted:
Pickard,
Kidnapped and the Ransomed
, pp. 284–85; Still,
Underground Railroad
, pp. 5–7, 13–14.

a secure underground line:
Gil R. Stormont,
History of Gibson County, Indiana
(Indianapolis: B. F. Bowen & Co., 1914), pp. 224–26.

At the end of January:
Pickard,
Kidnapped and the Ransomed
, pp. 286–89; Still,
Underground Railroad
, pp. 7–8; Stormont,
History of Gibson County
, pp. 226–28; Donald Davidson,
The Tennessee
, vol. 1:
The Old River: Frontier to Secession
(Nashville, Tenn.: J. S. Sanders, 1991), pp. 284–85, 299–301.

Thus far, they had been traveling:
Pickard,
Kidnapped and the Ransomed
, pp. 290–98.

the whites found all this less than convincing:
Ibid., pp. 298–300, 404–5; Still,
Underground Railroad
, pp. 9–12; Stormont,
History of Gibson County
, pp. 228–30;
Joseph P. Elliott,
A History of Evansville and Vandenburgh County, Indiana
(Evansville, Ind.: Keler Printing Co., 1897), p. 380.

Sometime during the downriver trip:
Stormont,
History of Gibson County
, pp. 230–31; Still,
Underground Railroad
, pp. 9 ff;
Evansville Daily Journal
, April 15, 1851.

“There was none of that pretended philanthropy”:
“Capture of Fugitive Slaves,”
Vincennes Gazette
, April 3, 1851.

In a curious way, Concklin's death:
Washington, “Chronicle of an American First Family.”

another brave man was lost to the underground:
Fairbank,
Rev. Calvin Fairbank during Slavery Times
, pp. 55–57, 85 ff, 98–103; Runyon,
Delia Webster
, pp. 122–23, 150–54;
Voice of the Fugitive
, December 3, 1851, and April 22, 1852.

There was, of course, another difference:
Julie Roy Jeffrey,
The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the Anti-Slavery Movement
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), pp. 7, 88–95; Dorothy Sterling,
Ahead of Her Time: Abby Kelley and the Politics of Antislavery
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), pp. 2, 281; Keith Melder, “Abby Kelley and the Process of Liberation,” 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. 242–44; Kathryn Kish Sklar,
Women's Rights Emerges within the Antislavery Movement, 1830–1870: A Brief History with Documents
(Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000), pp. 118ff.

“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.