Bound for Canaan (86 page)

“The war ended the usefulness”: Detroit Tribune
, January 11, 1886.

As the lines of the Underground Railroad:
Rankin,
Life of Rev. John Rankin
, p. 49; Larson,
Bound for the Promised Land
, p. 212; Henson,
Uncle Tom's Story of His Life
, pp. 281–82; Strangis,
Lewis Hayden and the War Against Slavery
, p. 126;
Philadelphia Inquirer
, October 11, 1987; Calkins, deposition; Coffin,
Reminiscences of Levi Coffin
, pp. 620–23.

poor Calvin Fairbank:
Fairbank,
Rev. Calvin Fairbank during Slavery Times
, pp. 149–50.

There was, of course:
Coffin,
Reminiscences
, p. 712.

On the same day:
Woodford,
This Is Detroit
, p. 66.

E
PILOGUE

On March 10, 1913:
Larson,
Bound for the Promised Land
, p. 288.

Thomas Garrett, who:
McGowan,
Station Master on the Underground Railroad
, pp. 81–82.

Jermain Loguen was next:
Hunter,
To Set the Captives Free
, pp. 227–28.

Gerrit Smith continued:
Harlow,
Gerrit Smith
, pp. 485, 490.

George DeBaptiste opened: Detroit Tribune
, February 23, 1875.

Levi Coffin continued:
Coffin,
Reminiscences of Levi Coffin
, pp. 711–12, appendix xii–xv; Sandra Jackson, director of the Levi Coffin House historic site, interview with the author, October 15, 2002.

The hardy Yankee seaman:
Jonathan Walker,
The Trial and Imprisonment of Jonathan Walker
(Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1974), pp. 1xxviii–1xxx;
North Star
, February 16, 1849.

Josiah Henson remained:
Lauriston,
Romantic Chatham
, pp. 383, 449, 452.

Reverend John Rankin's last months:
Hagedorn,
Beyond the River
, pp. 275–76.

In 1873 Lewis Hayden:
Strangis,
Lewis Hayden and the War Against Slavery
, pp. 128, 131, 136.

George DeBaptiste's coleader:
“Freedom's Railway: Reminiscences of the Brave Old Days of the Famous Underground Line,”
Detroit Tribune
, January 11, 1886; “Suicide by Hanging,” unidentified Detroit newspaper, April 29, 1890, E & M Scrapbook, Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library, Detroit, Mich.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary:
Rhodes,
Mary Ann Shadd Cary
, p. 222; Silverman, “Mary Ann Shadd and the Search for Equality.”

Frederick Douglass lived:
McFeely,
Frederick Douglass
, pp. 289ff, 307, 381.

William Still's coal business: Philadelphia Inquirer
, October 11, 1987; Matthew Pinsker, historian, interview with the author, Dickinson College, February 3, 2003.

Its most important achievement:
Fred Landon, “The Negro Migration to Canada after the Passing of the Fugitive Slave Act,”
Journal of Negro History
5 (January 1920), pp. 22–36; Larry Gara,
The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996), pp. 36–38.

It is similarly difficult:
Siebert,
Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom
, pp. 403–39.

“truckling, and compromising”:
W. E. B. DuBois, quoted by David W. Blight, “‘If You Don't Tell It Like It Was, It Can Never Be as It Ought to Be,” keynote talk at Yale conference on “Yale and Slavery,” September 26, 2002.

Indeed, as a lawyer:
Randy Alcorn, “February 8, 1991: Lovejoy Surgicenter v. Portland, Oregon ProLifers,” closing arguments in trial of rescuers, viewed online at www.epm.org/abcloarg.

“Great in promises”: Colored American
, February 23, 1839; July 27, 1839.

“I bleed in silence”: Colored American
, January 26, 1839.

“Let not a faithful”:
Porter,
David Ruggles
, p. 43.

compelled to plead:
David Ruggles, in
Mirror of Liberty
, January 1839.

Destitute and almost blind:
Porter,
David Ruggles
, p. 44.

“a whole-souled man”:
Douglass, “My Bondage and My Freedom,” p. 353.

C
HAPTER
10: A
CROSS THE
O
HIO

a young seminarian:
Calvin Fairbank,
Rev. Calvin Fairbank during Slavery Times
(New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969), p. 46.

a family of Scotch Presbyterians:
Rankin,
Life of Rev. John Rankin
, pp. 1–5.

tortured by spiritual anxieties:
Ibid., pp. 7–18, 42; Rankin, “History of the Free Presbyterian Church in the United States”; Andrew Ritchie,
The Soldier, the Battle, and the Victory; Being a Brief Account of the Work of the Rev. John Rankin and the Anti-Slavery Cause, 1793–1886
(Cincinnati: Western Tract and Book Society, 1868), pp. 18–19.

Ripley was then:
Rankin,
Life of Rev.
John Rankin, pp. 18–24; Rankin, “Autobiography of Adam Lowry Rankin”; John Rankin Jr., unpublished interviews with Wilbur H. Siebert, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio, and Frank Gregg, copy in Union Township Library, Ripley, Ohio; R. Carlyle Buley,
Old Northwest
, vol. 1, pp. 530–31; Tiffany Brockway, unpublished diary, copy in Union Township Library, Ripley, Ohio; Carl Westmoreland, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, interview with the author, Cincinnati, Ohio, March 1, 1999.

In his preaching, Rankin:
Ritchie,
Soldier, the Battle, and the Victory
, pp. 53, 71–72, 111.

The Northwest had changed:
Byron Williams,
History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio
(Milford, Ohio: Hobart Publishing Company, 1913), p. 391; Buley,
Old Northwest
, vol. 1, pp. 353, 528–29; Coffin, “Early Settlement of Friends in North Carolina,” p. 58.

color prejudice against blacks:
Wagner, “Cincinnati and Southwestern Ohio,” p. 1; Kohler, “Cincinnati's Black Peoples,” p. 12;
Philanthropist
, September 8, 1841; Thomas D. Hamm,
The Antislavery Movement in Henry County, Indiana
(New Castle, Ind.: Henry County Historical Society, 1987), p. 11.

“contending, declaiming, denouncing”:
Coffin,
Life and Travels of Addison Coffin
, pp. 57–58.

a time of transformation:
Ronald G. Walters,
American Reformers 1815–1860
(New York: Hill & Wang, 1997), pp. 88–93; Mabee,
Black Freedom
, pp. 244–46; Dillon,
Abolitionists
, pp. 116–26; Wyatt-Brown,
Lewis Tappan
, pp. 185–200; Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” pp. 329–30.

“THE OVERTHROW OF THIS NATION”:
Wyatt-Brown,
Lewis Tappan
, p. 187.

singing at the top of their lungs:
Ibid., p. 198.

the political landscape offered:
Henderson, “History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society,” pp. 316–17; Dillon,
Abolitionists
, pp. 141–45; Mabee,
Black Freedom
, pp. 246–47; Sernett,
North Star Country
, pp. 112–15.

one Samuel Ogden:
Kohler, “Cincinnati's Black Peoples,” p. 25.

a staunch Whig:
Rankin, “Autobiography of Adam Lowry Rankin,” p. 91.

Rankin believed that the only peaceful way:
Rankin,
Life of Rev. John Rankin
, p. 50.

“If there be human enactments”: Friend of Man
, October 9, 1839.

“Our aim was safety”:
Interview with Isaac Beck,
Georgetown
(Ohio)
News Democrat
, May 2, 1901; and letter to Wilbur H. Siebert, December 26, 1892, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus.

blacks both slave and free lent assistance:
J. Blaine Hudson,
Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad in the Kentucky Borderland
(Jefferson, N. C.: McFarland, 2002), pp. 21–30; Keith P. Griffler,
Front Line of Freedom: African Americans and the Forging of the Underground Railroad in the Ohio Valley
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004), pp. 34–35, 42–52; Wilbur H. Siebert,
The Mysteries of Ohio's Underground Railroad
(Columbus, Ohio: Long's College Book Co., 1951), pp. 101–3, 171.

a Kentucky patroller:
Hagedorn,
Beyond the River
, p. 38.

George DeBaptiste:
Interview with George DeBaptiste, “Underground Railroad,”
Detroit Post
, May 16, 1870.

antislavery Presbyterian ministers:
Isaac Beck, interview with Wilbur H. Siebert, December 26, 1892, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; Hudson,
Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad
, pp. 123–25.

politicized white abolitionists:
Larry Gene Willey, “The Reverend John Rankin: Early Ohio Anti-Slavery Leader” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Iowa, 1976), p. 173; Rankin,
Life of Rev. John Rankin
, pp. 42–46.

“the cause is going on delightfully”: Friend of Man
, October 6, 1836.

“a man of good intellect”:
Isaac Beck, interview with Wilbur H. Siebert, December 26, 1892, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; Hudson,
Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad
, pp. 123–25.

the Gist settlement:
Hagedorn,
Beyond the River,
pp. 12–13.

“We feel no prejudice”:
Samuel S. Cox,
Eight Years in Congress from 1857–1865: Memoirs and Speeches
(New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1865), p. 248.

the recapture of a fugitive couple:
David K. Katzman,
Before the Ghetto: Black Detroit in the Nineteenth Century
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973), pp. 8–10.

the story of a slave named Ike:
Isaac Beck, interview with Wilbur H. Siebert, December 26, 1892, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; Hudson,
Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad
, pp. 123–25.

In many of the river communities:
Thornbrough,
Negro in Indiana
, p. 44; Griffler,
Front Line of Freedom,
pp. 42–52; John M. Ashley, interview with Wilbur H. Siebert, July 1894, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, OH; Jesse P. Elliott, letter to Wilbur H. Siebert, December 10, 1895, Siebert Collection; J. J. Minor, letter to Wilbur H. Siebert, September 1894, Siebert Collection.

One of the most effective networks:
Interview with George DeBaptiste, “Underground Railroad,”
Detroit Post
, May 16, 1870; interview with George DeBaptiste,
Detroit Tribune
, February 23, 1875; Chapman Harris: An Apostle of Freedom,
Indiana Journal
, January 31, 1880; Drusilla Cravens, pp. 2–39; Coon, “Southeastern Indiana's Underground Railroad Routes and Operations,” pp. 185–89; “African-Americans in and Around Jefferson County, Ind.,” typescript compilation of articles and transcribed notes (Madison, Ind.: Jefferson County Historical Society, n. d.); Diane Perrine Coon, “Great Escapes: The Underground Railroad,”
Northern Kentucky Heritage
9, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 2002): 2–13; Diane Perrine Coon, interview with the author, Madison, IN, October 17, 2002; Jae Breitweiser, interview with the author, Lancaster, IN, October 17, 2002; Hudson,
Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad
, pp. 116–19; Phil Cole,
Historic Madison
Madison, IN: Three Star Investments, 1995).

“My curiosity, then”:
Cravens, “African-Americans in and Around Jefferson County,” p. 9.

it stiffened resistance:
Ibid., pp. 19, 24–29; Diane Perrine Coon, interview with the author, Madison, Ind., October 17, 2002; Jae Breitweiser, interview with the author, Lancaster, Ind., October 17, 2002.

like Thomas McCague:
Richard Calvin Rankin, interview with Wilbur H. Siebert, April 8, 1892, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; Hagedom,
Beyond the River
, pp. 201–2.

Rankin focused his efforts:
Willey, “Reverend John Rankin,” p. 236.

At least one of the Rankin boys:
Richard Calvin Rankin, interview with Wilbur H. Siebert, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; Byron Williams,
History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio
, (Milford, Ohio: Hobart Publishing Company, 1913), pp. 399–401; “Emancipationists,”
Ripley
(Ohio)
Bee and Times
, April 2, 1884; Hagedom,
Beyond the River
, pp. 81–83.