Bound for Canaan (88 page)

By 1840, about:
Taylor,
The Transportation Revolution
, pp. 79, 346; Buley,
Old Northwest
, vol. 1, pp. 510, 513.

advised “to look around”:
Coffin,
Reminiscences
, p. 175.

“Let the ministers and churches”:
Sernett,
North Star Country
, p. 54.

“I have never approved”:
Douglass, “Narrative of the Life,” p. 85.

Coffin made his first trip:
Coffin,
Reminiscences
, pp. 247–53.

C
HAPTER
12: O
UR
W
ATCHWORD
I
S ONWARD

The next morning:
Henson,
Uncle Tom's Story of His Life
, pp. 129–30.

Henson began meeting:
Ibid., pp. 140, 171.

The colonial authorities:
Levi Coffin,
Reminiscences of Levi Coffin
(Cincinnati: Western Tract Society, 1879), pp. 252–53; John McLeod, historian at Fort Malden National Historic Park, Amherstburg, Ontario, interview with the author, June 8, 2003; Doris Gaspar, “Fort Malden Historical Study” (unpublished report, Fort Malden National Historic Park, 2000), pp. 16–19, 45;
Colored American
, February 27, 1841.

Henson thrived at Colchester:
Henson,
Uncle Tom's Story
, pp. 165–67.

a grander dream was taking shape:
Ibid., pp. 140–43, 167.

Alexander Hemsley, once a slave:
Statement of Alexander Hemsley, in Benjamin Drew,
The Refugee: A Northside View of Slavery
(Reading, Pa.: Addison-Wesley, 1969), p. 25.

Nowhere in the Northern:
William H. Pease and Jane H. Pease,
Black Utopia: Negro Communal Experiments in America
(Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1963), pp. 7, 10–11; Jason H. Silverman,
Unwelcome Guests: Canada West's Response to American Fugitive Slaves
(Millwood, N. Y.: Associated Faculty Press, 1985), p. 53; Winks,
Blacks in Canada
, pp. 154–55; Drew,
Refugee
, pp. 242–43.

“Tell the Republicans”:
Hill,
Freedom-Seekers
, p. 67.

“Is not Upper Canada”: Colored American
, June 22, 1839.

The law was color-blind:
Hill,
Freedom Seekers
, pp. 50–51, 98, 109; Donald George Simpson,
Negroes in Ontario from Early Times to 1870
(London, Ontario: University of Western Ontario, 1971), p. 396.

In the 1820s:
Siebert,
Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom
, pp. 192, 299–300; Winks,
Blacks in Canada
, pp. 149, 170–73; Silverman,
Unwelcome Guests
, pp. 37–40; Michael Power and Nancy Butler,
Slavery and Freedom in Niagara
(Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario: Niagara Historical Society, 2000), p. 52.

They were staunch supporters:
John Kevin Farrell, “The History of the Negro Community in Chatham, Ontario” (thesis, University of Ottawa, 1955), pp. 35–36, 40–41, 60–63; John McLeod, interview with the author, June 8, 2003; Winks,
Blacks in Canada
, pp. 151–52; Hill,
Freedom Seekers
, pp. 118–21; John A. Collins,
Monthly Offering
, Anti-Slavery Office, 1840 (otherwise undated), pp. 51–55.

For years afterward:
Victor Lauriston,
Romantic Chatham
(Chatham, Ontario: Shepherd Printing Co., 1952), pp. 163–66.

While living as a farmer:
Henson,
Uncle Tom's Story,
pp. 145–63.

A certain free black man:
Frank H. Severance,
Old Trails on the Niagara Frontier
(Buffalo, 1899), p. 243.

“a bright and determined fellow”:
M. C. Buswell, letter to Wilbur H. Siebert, January 6, 1896, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio.

One day in June 1841:
Eliza's return is recounted in John Rankin Jr., in his interviews with both Wilbur H. Siebert and Frank Gregg, in the Rankin Papers, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio; Hagedorn,
Beyond the River
, pp. 213–14.

“We have no means”: Free Labor Advocate and Anti-Slavery Standard
, Newport, Ind., March 8, 1841.

Unknown numbers also crossed:
Severance,
Old Trails on the Niagara Frontier
, p. 231; George C. Bragdon, letter to Wilbur H. Siebert, August 15, 1896, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio; Hildegard Graf, “The Underground Railroad in Erie County,”
Niagara Frontier
(Autumn, 1954), pp. 69–71; Rush R. Sloane, “The Underground Railroad of the Firelands” (address delivered to the Firelands Historical Society, Milan, Ohio, February 22, 1888), Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio.

a steamboat captain named Chapman:
Pettit,
Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad
, pp. 42–43.

relied on trusted captains and crews:
Coffin,
Reminiscences
, p. 264;
Buffalo Daily Republic
, August 19, 1854; Christopher Densmore, curator of the Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College, email to the author, June 7, 2004; G. T. Stewart, “The Ohio Fugitive Slave Law,”
Firelands Pioneer
, July, 1888; Professor Hull, letter to Wilbur H. Siebert, April 2, 1907, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; Horace Ford, interview with Wilbur H. Siebert (undated), Siebert Collection; John McLeod, interview with the author, June 8, 2003; Severance,
Old Trails on the Niagara Frontier
, p. 246.

the lake crossing:
Taylor,
Transportation Revolution
, p. 62; Louis C. Hunter,
Steamboats on the Western Rivers: An Economic and Technical History
(New York: Dover, 1977), pp. 390–91, 400, 271, 278–82; Kathy Warnes, “Across the Lakes to
Liberty: The Liquid Underground Railroad,”
Inland Seas: Quarterly Journal of the Great Lakes Historical Society
56, no. 4 (Winter 2000): 284–93.

the busiest was Detroit:
Anna B. Jameson,
Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada
(Toronto: Thorn Press, 1943), pp. 138–42; Brian Leigh Dunnigan,
Frontier Metropolis
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001); David Lee Poremba,
Detroit: A Motor City History
(Detroit: Arcadia, 2001), pp. 65–67; Arthur M. Woodford,
This Is Detroit 1701–2001
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001), pp. 55–65.

black abolitionist William Lambert:
Katherine DuPre Lumpkin, “‘The General Plan Was Freedom': A Negro Secret Order on the Underground Railroad,”
Phylon: The Atlanta University Review of Race and Culture
(Spring 1967): 65–67.

nothing if not cosmopolitan:
Jameson,
Winter Studies and Summer Rambles
, pp. 143–45; Power and Butler,
Slavery and Freedom in Niagara
, p. 49; Collins,
Monthly Offering
, pp. 51–55.

Jarm Logue's experience was typical:
Loguen,
Rev. J. W. Loguen
, pp. 338–42.

there may have been as many as: Colored American
, February 6, 1841; Henson,
Uncle Tom's Story
, p. 171; Coffin,
Reminiscences
, p. 251; Winks,
Blacks in Canada
, pp. 144–45; Farrell, “History of the Negro Community in Chatham, Ontario,” pp. 34, 52–53; Simpson,
Negroes in Ontario
, p. 306; Silverman,
Unwelcome Guests
, pp. 22–23.

Some refugees, like Logue:
Loguen,
Rev. J. W. Loguen
, pp. 338–42.

In Amherstburg:
Fred Landon, “Amherstburg, Terminus of the Underground Railroad,”
Journal of Negro History
10, no. 1 (January 1925): 1–3; Coffin,
Reminiscences
, p. 251; Farrell, “History of the Negro Community in Chatham, Ontario,” p. 53; Winks,
Blacks in Canada
, p. 146; John McLeod, interview with the author, June 8, 2003.

Even Jarm Logue:
Loguen,
Rev. J. W. Loguen
, pp. 341–42.

Isaac J. Rice:
Coffin,
Reminiscences
, p. 249; Winks,
Blacks in Canada
, pp. 145 ff; Simpson,
Negroes in Ontario
, p. 314;
Liberator
, August 23, 1842.

Wilson was also a veteran:
Sernett,
North Star Country
, p. 158; William H. Pease and Jane H. Pease,
Bound with Them in Chains: A Biographical History of the Antislavery Movement
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972), pp. 137–39; Collins,
Monthly Offering
, pp. 51–55; Winks,
Blacks in Canada
, p. 179;
Colored American
, June 1, 1839, May 23, 1840.

Henson understood this:
Henson,
Uncle Tom's Story
, pp. 133–37.

Hiram Wilson would play:
Ibid., pp. 171–72; Pease and Pease,
Black Utopia
, pp. 66–67; Winks,
Blacks in Canada
, pp. 179–80.

naming their new home Wilberforce:
Pease and Pease,
Black Utopia
, pp. 47–57; Winks,
Blacks in Canada
, pp. 156–60; Hill,
Freedom Seekers
, pp. 67–71;
Colored American
, February 16, 1839.

Dawn's beginnings:
Henson,
Uncle Tom's Story
, pp. 168–70; Judith Wellman and Milton Sernett,
Uncovering the Freedom Trail in Syracuse and Onondaga County
(Syracuse: Preservation Association of Central New York, 2002), pp. 10–11;
Voice of the Fugitive
, May 21, 1851; Lauriston,
Romantic Chatham
, pp. 379–81.

settlers and well-wishers: Friend of Man
, November 1, 1842;
Voice of the Fugitive
, May 21, 1851.

the British-American Institute opened:
Pease and Pease,
Black Utopia
, pp. 64–67; Hill,
Freedom Seekers
, pp. 71–73; Lauriston,
Romantic Chatham
, p. 448;
National Era
, November 18, 1847.

a fugitive named John Brown:
John Brown, “Slave Life in Georgia: A Narrative of the Life, Sufferings, and Escape of John Brown, A Fugitive Slave, Now in England,” in
I Was Born a Slave: An Anthology of Classic Slave Narratives
, vol. 2, Yuval Taylor, ed. (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1999), p. 381.

“Trusting in the God”: National Era
, November 18, 1847.

C
HAPTER
13: T
HE
S
ALTWATER
U
NDERGROUND

Florida resembled:
Pensacola Beach History: Antebellum Period (1802–1860), viewed online at http://www.pbrla.com/hxarchive_ante_territory, Pensacola Beach Residents & Leaseholders Association.

Walker was an abolitionist:
Jonathan Walker,
The Trial and Imprisonment of Jonathan Walker
(Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1974), pp. 22–23, 113–18.

Walker had grown up:
Joe M. Richardson, in introduction to Walker, Ibid., pp. xiii, xxx, also pp. 107–10; Alvin F. Oickle,
Jonathan Walker: The Man with the Branded Hand
(Everett, Mass.: Lorelli Slater, 1998), pp. 2, 9.

Walker first appeared:
Walker,
The Trial and Imprisonment,
pp. 8–9, xviii; Oickle,
Jonathan Walker
, pp. 32–33, 36, 40.

Walker was known to consort:
Walker,
The Trial and Imprisonment
, pp. 63–64, 8–9.

the brig
Creole: Stanley Harrold,
The Abolitionists and the South 1831–1861
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995), p. 50; Dillon,
Slavery Attacked
, p. 203.

They would have to traverse:
Walker,
The Trial and Imprisonment
, p. 96.

a commercial extension of the Northern states:
Taylor,
Transportation Revolution
, pp. 106–8, 117, 122–26; Cecelski,
Waterman's Song
, pp. 218–19.

Ashore, they mingled:
Gary Collison,
Shadrach Minkins: From Fugitive Slave to Citizen
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 47; Cecelski,
Waterman's Song
, p. 136; Jeffrey W. Bolster,
Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 214, 194–97.

Escape by sea held:
Merton L. Dillon,
Slavery Attacked: Southern Slaves and Their Allies 1619–1865
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), pp. 185–86;
First Annual Report of the New York Committee of Vigilance
; John M. Taylor,
William Henry Seward: Lincoln's Right Hand
(Washington, D. C.: Brassey's, 1991), p. 47.