Bound for Canaan (90 page)

scholars such as Louis Agassiz:
Robert E. Bieder,
Science Discovers the Indian, 1820–1880
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986), pp. 92–93.

S. A. Cartwright, a prominent:
Stephen Jay Gould,
The Mismeasure of Man
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), pp. 70–71; Jenkins,
Proslavery Thought in the Old South
, p. 250.

Similarly, James D. B. DeBow:
Burton,
Rise and Fall of King Cotton
, pp. 56–57.

Meanwhile, the plantation economy continued:
Cohn,
Life and Times of King Cotton
, pp. 86–87, 52, 83, 111, 90–91; Bancroft,
Slave Trading in the Old South
, p. 383.

they credited the underground with a ubiquitousness:
Sydnor,
Slavery in Mississippi
, pp. 88–89, 105, 112.

“The life of anxiety”:
Coffin,
Life and Travels of Addison Coffin
, p. 48.

After weeks or months concealed:
Ibid., pp. 15, 35; Weeks,
Southern Quakers and Slavery
, pp. 241, 244; Susan Hubbard, letter to Joseph and Mary, October 13, 1843, Quaker Collection, Guilford College, Greensboro, N. C.; Mendenhall Plantation Historic Site, High Point, N. C., author visits, June 2002.

a vividly detailed account:
Coffin, “Early Settlement of Friends in North Carolina,” p. 127.

Addison's brother Alfred:
Ibid., p. 105; Coffin,
Life and Travels of Addison Coffin
, p. 14.

One of the most daring escapes:
William and Ellen Craft, “Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; or, The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery,” in
I Was Born a Slave: An Anthology of Classic Slave Narratives
, vol. 2, Yuval Taylor, ed. (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1999), pp. 487 ff.

a Virginia slave named Henry Brown:
Brown,
Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown
, pp. 29 ff, 45 ff, 57–62; Still,
Underground Railroad
, pp. 67–73.

personal liberty laws enacted:
McDougall,
Fugitive Slaves
, pp. 39–40, 65–66; Grover,
Fugitive's Gibraltar
, p. 181.

“Everybody heard of their coming”:
Jay P. Smith, “Many Michigan Cities on Underground Railroad in Days of Civil War,”
Detroit News
, April 14, 1918.

stationmaster in Wilmington, Thomas Garrett:
Still,
Underground Railroad
, p. 658.

On January 24, 1848:
J. S. Holliday,
The World Rushed In: The California Gold Rush Experience
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981), pp. 300–1.

The crisis had been foreshadowed:
Garry Wills,
“Negro President”: Jefferson and the Slave Power
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), pp. 222–25.

The debate that began in February:
Morison,
Oxford History
, vol. 2, pp. 330–35; Mayer,
All on Fire
, pp. 393–95.

Clay opened the debate:
Peterson,
The Great Triumvirate
, pp. 455–58; Arthur M. Schlesinger,
The Age of Jackson
(New York: Little, Brown, 1945), pp. 82–83.

On March 4:
Peterson,
The Great Triumvirate
, pp. 453, 461; Current,
John C. Calhoun
, p. 32.

Calhoun's complaints were deeply felt:
Garry Wills,
“Negro President”: Jefferson and the Slave Power
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), pp. 5–12; Nye,
Fettered Freedom
, pp. 226–34; Cohn,
Life and Times of King Cotton
, pp. 97–100;
Philanthropist
, August 30, 1840.

broader demographic trends:
Cohn,
Life and Times of King Cotton
, pp. 46, 49, 83, 88.

But Daniel Webster's speech:
Schlesinger,
Age of Jackson
, pp. 83–84; Daniel Webster,
North Star
, July 18, 1850.

The South loved:
Peterson,
The Great Triumvirate
pp. 463–66;
North Star
, April 12, 1850;
National Era
, May 9, 1850.

The debate continued:
Peterson,
The Great Triumvirate
, p. 471; Siebert,
Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom
, p. 341; Harrold,
Subversives
, p. 148.

Chaplin was busy that summer:
Harrold,
Subversives
, p. 147.

charged with larceny:
Ibid., p. 157.

Gerrit Smith wrote:
Harlow,
Gerrit Smith
, pp. 291–93.

abolitionists held:
Sernett,
North Star Country
, pp. 129–32; Harrold,
Subversives
, pp. 158–59; Harlow,
Gerrit Smith
, p. 190.

A Tennessee newspaper: National Anti-Slavery Standard
, September 26, 1850.

Rockville slaveholders:
Harlow,
Gerrit Smith
, pp. 291–93; Harrold,
Subversives
, p. 161.

the new Fugitive Slave Act:
McDougall,
Fugitive Slaves
, pp. 30, 112–14; Nye,
Fettered Freedom
, p. 201.

Webster, with visions:
Peterson,
The Great Triumvirate
, p. 474.

Meetings of condemnation:
Meetings at Canandaigua and Rochester,
North Star
, April 12, 1850.

“Wo to the poor”:
Frederick Douglass,
North Star
, October 3, 1850.

C
HAPTER
15: D
O
W
E
C
ALL
T
HIS THE
L
AND OF THE
F
REE?

At about 2
P.M
.:
Collison,
Shadrach Minkins
, pp. 112–33; Joel Strangis,
Lewis Hayden and the War Against Slavery
(North Haven, Conn.: Linnet Books, 1999), pp. 74–79; Stanley W. Campbell,
The Slave Catchers
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970), pp. 148–51;
National Era
, February 20, 1851, February 26, 1851, and February 27, 1851;
Liberator
, February 21, 1851, and February 28, 1851;
Voice of the Fugitive
, February 26, 1851; Leonard W. Levy, “The Sims Case: The Fugitive Slave Law in Boston in 1851,”
Journal of Negro History
35 (1950): 39–74.

Minkins, meanwhile:
Collison,
Shadrach Minkins
, pp. 151–58; Strangis,
Lewis Hayden and the War Against Slavery
, p. 86; Record Book of the Boston Vigilance Committee, copy in Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus.

“Do we call this”:
Franklin B. Sanborn,
The Life of Henry David Thoreau
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917), pp. 469, 480; Van Wyck Brooks,
The Flowering of New England 1815–1865
(New York: Dutton, 1936), pp. 286–87, 434.

Before Thoreau:
Henry David Thoreau,
Walden and Civil Disobedience
, Paul Lauter, ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), pp. 18, 24–25, 29, 36.

“We must trample”:
Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, “Confrontation and Abolition in the 1850s,”
Journal of American History
58 (1972): 923–37.

“This so-called Fugitive Slave Law”: Frederick Douglass' Paper
, December 4, 1851.

That sad honor went:
Siebert,
Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom
, p. 269.

There were captures:
Ibid., pp. 317–18; Collison,
Shadrach Minkins
, p. 107;
Voice of the Fugitive
, February 26, 1851; George F. Nagle, “Central Pennsylvania Fugitive Slave Cases,”
Bugle (Journal of the Camp Curtin Historical Society and Civil War Round Table
) 12, no. 1 (January 2002), pp. 6–16.

Daniel Webster, promised:
May,
Some Recollections on Our Anti-Slavery Conflict
, pp. 373–74; Hunter,
To Set the Captives Free
, p. 120;
Frederick Douglass' Paper
, December 16, 1851.

Fugitive slaves who had lived:
Douglass, “My Bondage and My Freedom,” p. 279; Siebert,
Underground Railroad
, pp. 194, 248–50; Campbell,
Slave Catchers
, pp. 7, 62–63;
Voice of the Fugitive,
January 1, 1851; Levy, “Sims Case.”

Columbia, Pennsylvania, one of the largest:
Leroy Hopkins, “Black Eldorado on the Susquehannah: The Emergence of Black Columbia, 1726–1861,”
Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society
, 89, no. 4 (1985), pp. 110–32; Leroy Hopkins, “Bethel African Methodist Church in Lancaster: Prolegomenon to A Social History,”
Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society
90, no. 4 (1986), pp. 205–31;
Columbia
(Pa.)
Spy
, January 15, 1851, March 8, 1851, and April 26, 1851;
Frederick Douglass' Paper
, November 13, 1851.
324 Reverend Jermain Loguen of Syracuse:
Loguen,
Rev. J. W. Loguen
, pp. 343–48, 351–52, 391–95; Hunter,
To Set the Captives Free
, pp. 19–21.

Edward Gorsuch was:
Thomas P. Slaughter,
Bloody Dawn: The Christiana Riot and Racial Violence in the Antebellum North
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 4–6, 11, 14, 17–19, 44; Smedley, “History of the Underground Railroad in Chester,” p. 120; Charles D. Spotts, “The Pilgrim's Pathway: The Underground Railroad in Lancaster Country,”
Community History Annual
5, Lancaster (1966);
Lancaster Intelligencer and Journal
, September 16, 1851.

Gorsuch did not imagine:
The story of the Christiana riot is based on William Parker, “The Freedman's Story,”
Atlantic Monthly
, February 1866, pp. 152–66, and March 1866, pp. 276–88; Smedley, “History of the Underground Railroad in Chester,” pp. 108–30; Slaughter,
Bloody Dawn
, pp. 51–74;
Lancaster Intelligencer and Journal
, September 16, 1851, and September 23, 1851;
Voice of the Fugitive
, September 24, 1851; Spotts, “Pilgrim's Pathway”; Nagle, “Central Pennsylvania Fugitive Slave Cases”; Mark C. Ebersole, “Abolition Divides the Meeting House: Quakers and Slavery in Early Lancaster County,”
Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society
102, no. 1 (Spring 2000), pp. 3–23; Leroy Hopkins, interview with the author, Millersville State College, Millersville, Pa., March 13, 2003.

abolitionist congressman, Thaddeus Stevens:
Hans L. Trefousse,
Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian
(Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2001), pp. 14, 73, 25; Fergus M. Bordewich, “Digging into a Historic Rivalry,”
Smithsonian Magazine
, February 2004, pp. 96–107.

William Parker had no illusions:
Parker, “Freedman's Story,” March 1866, pp. 288–90; Smedley, “History of the Underground Railroad in Chester,” pp. 223–24, 247–53, 260–68; Douglass, “Life and Times,” pp. 724–26.

If Parker's resistance:
Smedley, “History of the Underground Railroad in Chester,” pp. 126–27; Slaughter,
Bloody Dawn
, pp. 72–74, 86–93; Nagle, “Central Pennsylvania Fugitive Slave Cases.”

Nevertheless, William Henry:
The story of the Jerry rescue is based on Loguen,
Rev. J. W. Loguen,
pp. 398–429; May,
Some Recollections of Our Antislavery Conflict
, pp. 363, 373–78; Earl Sperry,
The Jerry Rescue
(Syracuse: Onondaga Historical Society, 1924), pp. 41–51; Pettit,
Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad
, pp. 32–33; Hunter,
To Set the Captives Free
, pp. 114–15, 122–26; Sernett,
North Star Country
, pp. 136–41;
Voice of the Fugitive
, October 8, 1851;
Frederick Douglass' Paper
, October 16, 1851, November 13, 1851, February 4, 1853, February 11, 1853, and February 18, 1853.

Twenty-six men:
Loguen,
Rev. J. W. Loguen
, pp. 427–29, 434–43; May,
Some Recollections of Our Antislavery Conflict
, pp. 379–83; Hunter,
To Set the Captives Free
, pp. 129, 138; Sernett,
North Star Country
, p. 143.

The government fared:
Collison,
Shadrach Minkins
, pp. 147–48, 192–95; Slaughter,
Bloody Dawn
, pp. ix, 86–93, 132–37; Smedley, “History of the Underground Railroad in Chester,” pp. 126–27, 129–30; Paul Finkelman, “The Treason Trial of Castner Hanway,” in
American Political Trials
, Michael Belknap, ed. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994), pp. 79–100.