Authors: Fergus Bordewich
William Chaplin and Daniel Drayton:
Drayton,
Personal Memoir
, pp. 25â11; Stanley Harrold,
Subversives: Antislavery Community in Washington, D. C., 1828â1865
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003), p. 128;
North Star
, August 10, 1848.
one long hard-luck story:
Drayton,
Personal Memoir
, pp. 16â20.
He would be well paid:
Ibid., pp. 24â25, 28.
Much, if not most:
Ibid., pp. 5â11; Harrold,
Subversives
, pp. 127â28; Stowe,
Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin
, pp. 156â59; Grover,
Fugitive's Gibraltar
, pp. 192â93; William Chaplin, letter to Gerrit Smith, March 25, 1848, Smith Papers, Bird Library, Syracuse University;
North Star
, December 8, 1848.
Back in Philadelphia:
Drayton,
Personal Memoir
, pp. 24â27.
Soon after dark:
Ibid., pp. 28â31, 39, 46; Harrold,
Subversives,
pp. 116â21; Hilary Russell,
Final Research Report: The Operation of the Underground Railroad in Washington, D. C., c. 1800â1860
(Washington, DC: Historical Society of Washington and the National Park Service, July 2001);
North Star
, April 28, 1848, May 12, 1848, August 10, 1848.
Just after dawn:
Drayton,
Personal Memoir
, pp. 39â40, 43; Harrold,
Subversives
, pp. 122â23.
Rows of one-story structures:
Charles Dickens,
American Notes for General Circulation
(New York: Harper & Row, 1965), pp. 125â39; David Herbert Duncan,
Lincoln
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), pp. 119â20.
A free African American:
Thomas Smallwood,
A Narrative of Thomas Smallwood (Coloured Man
):
Giving Account of His BirthâThe Period He Was Held in SlaveryâHis Releaseâand Removal to Canada, etc. Together with an Account of the Underground Railroad
(Toronto: James Stephens, 1851), p. 16.
Mrs. Ann Sprigg's popular boardinghouse:
Duncan,
Lincoln
, p. 135.
Some of the largest slave-trading establishments:
Frederic Bancroft,
Slave Trading in the Old South
(New York: Frederick Ungar, 1959), pp. 47, 49, 52, 61; Peterson,
Great Triumvirate
, p. 455; Duncan,
Lincoln
, pp. 119â20; Russell,
Final Research Report
, pp. 12, 17.
the Quaker traveler Joseph Sturge:
Joseph Sturge,
A Visit to the United States in 1841
(New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1969), pp. 74, 78.
a secret ring operated by Charles T. Torrey:
J. C. Lovejoy,
Memoir of Rev. Charles T. Torrey, Who Died in the Penitentiary of Maryland, Where He Was Confined for Showing Mercy to the Poor
(New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969), pp. 105â26;
Narrative of Thomas Smallwood
, pp. 16â21; Harrold,
Subversives
, pp. 82, 90; Ralph Volney Harlow,
Gerrit Smith: Philanthropist and Reformer
(New York: Russell & Russell, 1939), pp. 165, 275.
“We had to pay”: Narrative of Thomas Smallwood
, pp. 31, 25â30, 34.
“Did you ever hear”:
Lovejoy,
Memoir of Rev. Charles T. Torrey
, p. 127.
That June:
Ibid., pp. 173â86; Harrold,
Subversives
, pp. 86â87.
prison proved an agony:
Lovejoy,
Memoir of Rev. Charles T. Torrey,
pp. 127â28, 276; Quarles,
Black Abolitionists
, p. 164.
Both proslavery forces and abolitionists:
Harrold,
Subversives
, p. 138; Harlow,
Gerrit Smith
, p. 290; William Chaplin, letter to Gerrit Smith, March 25, 1848, Smith Papers, Bird Library, Syracuse University.
Drayton's trial began:
Drayton,
Personal Memoir
, pp. 68â73; Stowe,
Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin,
pp. 159â164; Harrold,
Subversives
, pp. 125â26, 138â39;
North Star
, August 10, 1848.
Key maintained that:
Drayton,
Personal Memoir
, pp. 79â81;
North Star
, August 24, 1848.
Sayres was convicted:
Drayton,
Personal Memoir
, pp. 94â103; Harrold,
Subversives
, pp. 140â41.
John C. Calhoun:
Harrold,
Subversives
, p. 142.
Throughout the South, anxiety:
Morison,
Oxford History
, vol. 2, pp. 265â66; Susan Hubbard, letter to Joseph and Mary, October 13, 1843, Quaker Collection, Guilford College, Greensboro, N. C.; Nye,
Fettered Freedom
, pp. 147â48.
a cache of abolitionist material:
Philip Ashley Fanning,
Mark Twain and Orion Clemens: Brothers, Partners, Strangers
(Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003), pp. 2â3; Shelley Fisher Fisjkin,
Lighting Out for the Territory: Reflections on Mark Twain and American Culture
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 54.
Loyalty to the South increasingly:
Cohn,
Life and Times of King Cotton
, p. 82; Miller,
Wolf by the Ears
, p. 249.
praised it, as Calhoun did:
Richard N. Current,
John C. Calhoun
(New York: Washington Square Press, 1963), pp. 20, 23â24, 76â79, 82; Morison,
Oxford History
, p. 267.
“God has made the Negro”:
J. H. Van Evrie,
Negroes and Negro Slavery
(New York: Van Evrie, Horton & Co., 1863), pp. 218â21.
Slaveholders pointed triumphantly:
William S. Jenkins,
Proslavery Thought in the Old South
(Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1962), pp. 201â6; John Patrick Daly,
When Slavery Was Called Freedom: Evangelicalism, Proslavery, and the Causes of the Civil War
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002), p. 95.
scholars such as Louis Agassiz:
Robert E. Bieder,
Science Discovers the Indian, 1820â1880
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986), pp. 92â93.
S. A. Cartwright, a prominent:
Stephen Jay Gould,
The Mismeasure of Man
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), pp. 70â71; Jenkins,
Proslavery Thought in the Old South
, p. 250.
Similarly, James D. B. DeBow:
Burton,
Rise and Fall of King Cotton
, pp. 56â57.
Meanwhile, the plantation economy continued:
Cohn,
Life and Times of King Cotton
, pp. 86â87, 52, 83, 111, 90â91; Bancroft,
Slave Trading in the Old South
, p. 383.
they credited the underground with a ubiquitousness:
Sydnor,
Slavery in Mississippi
, pp. 88â89, 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, 57â62; Still,
Underground Railroad
, pp. 67â73.
personal liberty laws enacted:
McDougall,
Fugitive Slaves
, pp. 39â40, 65â66; 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. 300â1.
The crisis had been foreshadowed:
Garry Wills,
“Negro President”: Jefferson and the Slave Power
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), pp. 222â25.
The debate that began in February:
Morison,
Oxford History
, vol. 2, pp. 330â35; Mayer,
All on Fire
, pp. 393â95.
Clay opened the debate:
Peterson,
The Great Triumvirate
, pp. 455â58; Arthur M. Schlesinger,
The Age of Jackson
(New York: Little, Brown, 1945), pp. 82â83.
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. 5â12; Nye,
Fettered Freedom
, pp. 226â34; Cohn,
Life and Times of King Cotton
, pp. 97â100;
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. 83â84; Daniel Webster,
North Star
, July 18, 1850.
The South loved:
Peterson,
The Great Triumvirate
pp. 463â66;
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. 291â93.
abolitionists held:
Sernett,
North Star Country
, pp. 129â32; Harrold,
Subversives
, pp. 158â59; Harlow,
Gerrit Smith
, p. 190.
A Tennessee newspaper: National Anti-Slavery Standard
, September 26, 1850.
Rockville slaveholders:
Harlow,
Gerrit Smith
, pp. 291â93; Harrold,
Subversives
, p. 161.
the new Fugitive Slave Act:
McDougall,
Fugitive Slaves
, pp. 30, 112â14; 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. 112â33; Joel Strangis,
Lewis Hayden and the War Against Slavery
(North Haven, Conn.: Linnet Books, 1999), pp. 74â79; Stanley W. Campbell,
The Slave Catchers
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970), pp. 148â51;
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): 39â74.
Minkins, meanwhile:
Collison,
Shadrach Minkins
, pp. 151â58; 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.