Chapter Sixteen
Free Blacks: According to the census, in 1850, there were 841 persons held as slaves in Hickman County, Kentucky, and only 18 free Black persons, so it is reasonable to assume that Toby had never seen a free black person and would assume that the boys fishing were slaves (Notable).
Railroad going south: The “Reverse Underground Railroad” is not well-known, but recent research is revealing a pattern of organized kidnapping and sales of free Blacks and stolen slaves in The South. One example is the southern Illinois “Old Slave House” surviving in Junction, Illinois. It is a few miles from salt mines where John Hart Crenshaw was allowed to employ slave labor in the otherwise free state of Illinois. Court documents and letters show that Crenshaw was repeatedly indicted for selling free persons into slavery. The house is now owned by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, and designated by the National Park Service as part of the UGRR National Network to Freedom.
The 2013 film, Twelve Years a Slave, is based on Solomon Northrup’s 1853 published memoir of his experience as a kidnapped free man sold into slavery in Louisiana.
Chapter Seventeen
Runaway Ads: The original United States Constitution provided that escaping slaves were to be returned to their masters, even across state lines. Article IV, Section 2 says, “No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.” Before 1850, most northern communities routinely ignored this mandate and refused to surrender fugitives, but slave holders offered generous rewards for the capture and return of their “property,” and slave catchers routinely monitored river crossings and searched even private property where they suspected slaves might be hiding. Fugitives really could not trust anyone outside the organized UGRR.
Chapter Eighteen
Tricking the slave catchers: The idea for Toby to distract the slavers by tricking them into following first him, and then the innocent milk maid, comes from an unpublished memory I read in the UGRR collection at the Knox County, Indiana Regional History and Genealogy Center Library. Whenever slave catchers came into town, one man would take off running through the corn fields as if he were trying to escape. The slave catchers would chase after him, giving real fugitives time to hide or slip away.
The Knox County collection exists because, in 1998, President Bill Clinton signed the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Act, authorizing the National Park Service to preserve vanishing UGRR sites, stories, and educational materials. Indiana responded by conducting county-by-county research, collecting and preserving a treasure trove of stories, maps, and memoirs now located in county libraries statewide. The National Park Service now recognizes, preserves, and interprets many UGRR sites.
Among other things, the Act proclaims, “The Underground Railroad bridged the divides of race, religion, sectional differences, and nationality; spanned State lines and international borders; and joined the American ideals of liberty and freedom expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to the extraordinary actions of ordinary men and women working in common purpose to free a people” (HR 1635).
Chapter Nineteen
North Star: Slaves knew that freedom lay in the North, and that the North Star was a possible guide to them. In Josiah Henson’s words: “North Star–blessed be God for setting it in the heavens! Like the Star of Bethlehem, it announced where my salvation lay” (103).
Chapter Twenty
I would feed a dog: I have taken Hannah Shaw’s rationale for feeding Toby directly from Josiah Henson’s 1849 autobiography. After the man of a house refused to sell food to Henson’s fugitive family, “his wife, hearing our conversation, said to her husband, ‘How can you treat any human being so? If a dog was hungry I would give him something to eat.’ She then added, ‘We have children, and who knows but they may some day need the help of a friend’”(Henson, 111).
Hannah’s later use of the Bible, rather than the “Declaration of Independence,” to explain her rescue and protection of Toby again demonstrates that religious discourse motivated political and social action in the past as it does in America today. Herbert’s refusal to help Hannah seems to be motivated by his self-interest and fear of punishment or social opprobrium rather than by any personal defense of slavery.
Toby’s illness: The open sores on Toby’s feet have been wet and dirty for five days, long enough for bacteria to spread throughout his bloodstream, causing low blood pressure and potentially fatal organ failure. Once Hannah cleans them and treats them with the best remedies known in 1850, he hovers near death for another week before his immune system is able to control the infection and he begins to recover.
Chapter Twenty-one to Twenty-five Notes
https://www.ellensorenson.com/chapter-twenty-one-twenty-five-notes/