Bound for Canaan (81 page)

C
HAPTER
14: A D
ISEASE OF THE
B
ODY
P
OLITIC

William Chaplin and Daniel Drayton:
Drayton,
Personal Memoir
, pp. 25–11; Stanley Harrold,
Subversives: Antislavery Community in Washington, D. C., 1828–1865
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003), p. 128;
North Star
, August 10, 1848.

one long hard-luck story:
Drayton,
Personal Memoir
, pp. 16–20.

He would be well paid:
Ibid., pp. 24–25, 28.

Much, if not most:
Ibid., pp. 5–11; Harrold,
Subversives
, pp. 127–28; Stowe,
Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin
, pp. 156–59; Grover,
Fugitive's Gibraltar
, pp. 192–93; 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. 24–27.

Soon after dark:
Ibid., pp. 28–31, 39, 46; Harrold,
Subversives,
pp. 116–21; Hilary Russell,
Final Research Report: The Operation of the Underground Railroad in Washington, D. C., c. 1800–1860
(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. 39–40, 43; Harrold,
Subversives
, pp. 122–23.

Rows of one-story structures:
Charles Dickens,
American Notes for General Circulation
(New York: Harper & Row, 1965), pp. 125–39; David Herbert Duncan,
Lincoln
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), pp. 119–20.

A free African American:
Thomas Smallwood,
A Narrative of Thomas Smallwood (Coloured Man
):
Giving Account of His Birth—The Period He Was Held in Slavery—His Release—and 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. 119–20; 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. 105–26;
Narrative of Thomas Smallwood
, pp. 16–21; 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, 25–30, 34.

“Did you ever hear”:
Lovejoy,
Memoir of Rev. Charles T. Torrey
, p. 127.

That June:
Ibid., pp. 173–86; Harrold,
Subversives
, pp. 86–87.

prison proved an agony:
Lovejoy,
Memoir of Rev. Charles T. Torrey,
pp. 127–28, 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. 68–73; Stowe,
Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin,
pp. 159–164; Harrold,
Subversives
, pp. 125–26, 138–39;
North Star
, August 10, 1848.

Key maintained that:
Drayton,
Personal Memoir
, pp. 79–81;
North Star
, August 24, 1848.

Sayres was convicted:
Drayton,
Personal Memoir
, pp. 94–103; Harrold,
Subversives
, pp. 140–41.

John C. Calhoun:
Harrold,
Subversives
, p. 142.

Throughout the South, anxiety:
Morison,
Oxford History
, vol. 2, pp. 265–66; Susan Hubbard, letter to Joseph and Mary, October 13, 1843, Quaker Collection, Guilford College, Greensboro, N. C.; Nye,
Fettered Freedom
, pp. 147–48.

a cache of abolitionist material:
Philip Ashley Fanning,
Mark Twain and Orion Clemens: Brothers, Partners, Strangers
(Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003), pp. 2–3; 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, 23–24, 76–79, 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. 218–21.

Slaveholders pointed triumphantly:
William S. Jenkins,
Proslavery Thought in the Old South
(Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1962), pp. 201–6; 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, 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.