Bound for Canaan (68 page)

New York Democrats:
Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” pp. 49, 127; Monroe Fordham, ed.,
The African-American Presence in New York State History
(Albany: State University of New York, 1989), p. 29; James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton,
In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community and Protest Among Northern Free Blacks, 1700–1860
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 167–68.

The convention got under way: Proceedings of the New York Anti-Slavery Convention Held at Utica, October 21, and New York Anti-Slavery State Society Held at Peterboro, October 22, 1835
(Utica: Standard & Democrat Office, 1835), pp. 4–8; May,
Some Recollections of Our Antislavery Conflict,
pp. 168–69; Milton C. Sernett,
North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom
(Syracuse, N. Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2002), pp. 49–50; Frothingham,
Gerrit Smith
, p. 165; Jackson, unpublished reminiscences.

The delegates made their way:
Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” p. 64; Jackson, unpublished reminiscences.

part of a coordinated crackdown:
Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” p. 67; David Grimsted,
American Mobbing 1828–1861: Toward Civil War
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 25–26; Dillon,
Abolitionists
, pp. 24–26; Oliver Johnson, letter to Rowland T. Robinson, March 27, 1835, Robinson Family Papers, Rokeby Museum, Ferrisburgh, Vt.

Meanwhile, abandoning his trip:
Frothingham,
Gerrit Smith
, pp. 164–65; Sernett,
North Star Country
, p. 50; Stauffer,
Black Hearts of Men
, pp. 100–101.

the delegates agreed to call for: Proceedings,
p. 16.

Smith himself rose to speak:
Frothingham,
Gerrit Smith
, pp. 165–66;
Proceedings
, pp. 19–22.

had transformed Smith from an intellectual bystander:
Frothingham,
Gerrit Smith
, pp. 166–68; Gerrit Smith, letter to Joseph Speed, September 7, 1837, Gerrit Smith Papers, Bird Library, Syracuse University, Syracuse, N. Y.

when the old Calvinist doctrine:
Judith Wellman, “The Burned-Over District Revisited: Benevolent Reform and Abolitionism in Mexico, Paris, and Ithaca, New York, 1825–1842” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, 1974), pp. 441–42; Joseph C. Hathaway, preface to “Narrative of William Wells Brown, A Fugitive Slave,” in
I Was Born a Slave: An Anthology of Classic Slave Narratives
, vol. 1, Yuval Taylor, ed. (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1999), p. 682.

“This is the carrying out”: Friend of Man
, September 6, 1837.

“The abolitionists are wrong”: Poughkeepsie Journal
, March 1, 1837.

“My parents and one uncle”:
Mary Ellen Graydon Sharpe,
A Family Retrospect
(Indianapolis: Hollenbeck Press, no date), pp. 49–51, 55–56.

a massive national effort:
Nye,
Fettered Freedom
, pp. 51–55.

In the middle of the decade:
William Lee Miller,
Arguing About Slavery: The Great Battle in the United States Congress
(New York: Knopf, 1996), pp. 207–10; Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” p. 129.

so many petitions: Friend of Man
, August 8, 1838; Wellman, “Burned-Over District Revisited,” pp. 307, 315.

“Jesus Christ has”:
Ira V. Brown, “An Anti-Slavery Agent: C. C. Burleigh in Pennsylvania, 1836–1837,”
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
105(1981): 70.

“Let the great cities
alone”: Ibid., p. 74.

“Reformations commence”:
Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” p. 77.

While the traveling agents:
Brown,
An Anti-Slavery Agent: C. C. Burleigh in Pennsylvania, 1836–1837,
pp. 66, 77–78; Smedley, “History of the Underground Railroad in Chester,” pp. 30, 135, 194.

Oliver Johnson:
Mayer,
All on Fire
, p. 128; Merrill, ed.,
Letters of William Lloyd Garrison
, vol. 1, p. 85, note 1.

Johnson's remarkable letters:
Oliver Johnson, letter to Rowland T. Robinson, January 27, 1837; March 5, 1837; April 19, 1837; July 6, 1837, Robinson Family Papers, Rokeby Museum, Ferrisburgh, Vt.; Jane Williamson, curator, Rokeby Museum, e-mail to author, May 5, 2004.

Fugitives commonly would work:
Joseph Beale, letter to Rowland T. Robinson, July 12, 1844; Charles Marriott, letter to Rowland T. Robinson, March 14, 1842; Rachel Gilpin Robinson, letter to Ann King, January 9, 1844; James Temple, letter to Rowland T. Robinson, May 11, 1851, Robinson Family Papers, Rokeby Museum, Ferrisburgh, VT; Jane Williamson, Rokeby Museum, interview with the author, August 22, 2002; Raymond Paul Zirblis,
Friends of Freedom: The Vermont Underground Railroad Survey Report
(Montpelier: State of Vermont Department of State Buildings and Division for Historic Preservation), 1996, pp. 26–28.

“I was so well-pleased”:
Oliver Johnson, letter to Rowland T. Robinson, January 27, 1837.

“where he will put himself”:
Oliver Johnson, letter to Rowland T. Robinson, April 3, 1837.

“Half the moral power”:
Sernett,
North Star Country
, p. 111.

“New York is the
Empire State”: Theodore Weld, letter to Rowland T. Robinson, June 20, 1836, Robinson Family Papers, Rokeby Museum, Ferrisburgh, Vt., letter.

traveling agents were deployed:
Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” pp. 71–73, 159; John L. Myers, “The Beginning of Anti-Slavery Agencies in New York State, 1833–1836,”
New York History
, April 1962, pp. 175–77.

he debated the novelist:
Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” p. 199; James Fenimore Cooper,
The American Democrat
(Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969), pp. 220–23.

Cooper was far from alone:
Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” p. 13; May,
Some Recollections of Our Antislavery Conflict,
p. 163.

to speak at Poughkeepsie:
Amy Pearce Ver Nooy, “The Anti-Slavery Movement in Dutchess County, 1835–1850,”
Dutchess County Historical Society Yearbook
, vol. 28, 1943, p. 64.

Henry B. Stanton claimed:
Dillon,
Abolitionists
, p. 76.

Major antiabolition riots:
Grimsted,
American Mobbing
, p. 36; Nash,
Forging Freedom
, p. 277; Hagedorn,
Beyond the River
, pp. 114–15.

its first white martyr:
Dillon,
Abolitionists
, pp. 93–95.

aftermath of Nat Turner's rebellion:
Nye,
Fettered Freedom
, pp. 22–25, 55–58, 122–24; Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” pp. 98–99, 174; Masur,
1831
, p. 30.

refused to censure:
David Ruggles,
An Antidote: An Appeal to the Reason and Religion of American Christians,
pamphlet (New York: David Ruggles, 1838), pp. 19–23.

“than is possessed by the INDIVIDUALS”:
Wellman, “Burned-Over District Revisited,” p. 286.

Every community was advised:
Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” pp. 20–22, 132; Wellman, “Burned-Over District Revisited,” pp. 286–88.

Children were not forgotten: Slave's Friend
2, no. 8, 1836.

local antislavery groups typically:
Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,”, pp. 79–80, 186.

one day in the autumn of 1837: Friend of Man
, February 28, 1838; Wellman, “Burned-Over District Revisited,” p. 343.

Clark felt free to report:
Ibid., p. 342.

From a despised fringe group:
Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” pp. 100–23, 202, 206; John L. Myers, “The Major Effort of National Anti-Slavery Agents in New York State, 1836–1837,”
New York History
, April 1965, pp. 162–63; Brown, “An Anti-Slavery Agent,” p. 72.

“My Dear Sir”:
Utica, N. Y.,
Union-Herald
, December 1, 1838.

C
HAPTER
9: A W
HOLE
-S
OULED
M
AN

A period sketch:
C. Peter Ripley et al., eds.,
The Black Abolitionist Papers
, vol. 3 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), p. 170.

Ruggles was born:
Porter,
David Ruggles,
pp. 25–30.

owned a grocery store: Freedom's Journal
, New York, August 22, 1828.

the city had raced:
Hodges,
Root and Branch
, pp. 279–80; Burrows and Wallace,
Gotham,
pp. 478–80.

It was still a low city:
John A. Kouwenhoven,
The Columbia Historical Portrait of New York City
(New York: Harper & Row, 1972), p. 147, 164–66, 171; Burrows and Wallace,
Gotham
, p. 439; Thomas Janvier,
In Old New York
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1894), pp. 69, 81; Kenneth Holcomb Dunshee,
As You Pass By
(New York: Hastings House, 1952), pp. 193, 201.

The great shaping force:
Burrows and Wallace,
Gotham
, pp. 431, 435, 443, 436–37; Stampp,
Peculiar Institution
, p. 271.

New York's prosperity:
Cohn,
Life and Times of King Cotton
, pp. 83–86; Burrows and Wallace,
Gotham
, p. 336.

Racism was virulent:
Henderson,
History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,
pp. 96, 127, 146; Horton and Horton,
In Hope of Liberty
, pp. 163–65, 171; Hodges,
Root and Branch
, pp. 227–28, 232–33.

“IMPORTANT TO THE SOUTH”: The First Annual Report of the New York Committee of Vigilance, for the Year 1837 Together with Important Facts Relative to Their Proceedings
(New York: Piercy and Reed, 1837), p. 54.

Fugitives were at the mercy:
Porter,
David Ruggles
, pp. 35–36; Ripley,
The Black Abolitionist Papers
, vol. 3, p. 180, note 21; Lawrence B. Goodheart, “The Chronicles of Kidnaping in New York: Resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law, 1834–1835,”
Afro-Americans in New York Life and History
, no. 8 (January 1984): 7–15;
First Annual Report of the New York Committee of Vigilance
, pp. 50 ff.

black inhabitants lived packed:
Hodges,
Root and Branch
, pp. 279–80; Burrows and Wallace,
Gotham
, pp. 478–80; Tyler Anbinder,
Five Points: The New York City Neighborhood that Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum
(New York: Free Press, 2001), p. 22; Herbert Asbury,
The Gangs of New York
(New York: Capricorn, 1970), pp. 11–15.

Mob violence was endemic:
Hodges,
Root and Branch
, pp. 227–28; Anbinder,
Five Points
, pp. 8–12; Asbury,
Gangs of New York
, pp. 38–40; Grimsted,
American Mobbing
, pp. 9, 12, 36–38.

a mostly African American group:
Ripley,
The Black Abolitionist Papers
, vol. 3, p. 179, note 14.

“some centre of literary attraction”:
David Ruggles, in
Colored American
, June 16, 1838.

envisioned racial separation:
David Ruggles,
The ‘Extinguisher' Extinguished: An Address on Slavery
, pamphlet (New York: David Ruggles, 1834), pp. 10–12, 16.

Under Ruggles's leadership:
Porter
David Ruggles,
pp. 31, 37–38; Ripley,
The Black Abolitionist Papers
, vol. 3, p. 179, note 14; Goodheart, “Chronicles of Kidnaping in New York,” pp. 12–13.

“practical
abolition
”: Ripley,
The Black Abolitionist Papers
, vol. 3, p. 172.

The Vigilance Committee consisted: First Annual Report of the New York Committee of Vigilance;
Porter,
David Ruggles
, p. 34.

“We cannot recommend”:
David Ruggles, in
Colored American
, December 9, 1837.

“The only ‘combination organized'”:
Ruggles,
An Antidote,
pp. 20–22.