“Jim Crow” on passenger trains

Harry Chase 2012

Isaac Stearns (1790-1873), who lived in the southeastern Massachusetts village of East Mansfield, was a rare universal man. Besides being a farmer, he was editor and publisher of the Providence [R.I.] Free Press, a builder, a math teacher and a justice of the peace. He collected fossils and was an amateur astronomer and meteorologist. He sold silk from his own silkworms and kept . He taught himself Latin and Hebrew so he could read ancient scriptures and classics. When elected State Representative from the Mansfield district he read civil engineering books and pushed construction of the Hoosac railroad tunnel through the Berkshires. Most important for this story, Isaac Stearns was an active abolitionist and the corresponding secretary of the Mansfield Anti-Slavery Society. [1] In January 1842, when he temporarily lived and worked (in a textile mill) in the town of Norton, on the New Bedford railroad just south of Mansfield, Stearns made an excursion that sheds light on a little known New railroad practice of that day. He wrote in his diary on the 29th of the month:

P.M. Went to on the evening train of cars from Norton to attend the Meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Expenses as follows: Fare in cars to Boston .37-1/2 cents Lodging on night of 26th .25 " Other incidental expenses .37-1/2 " Cars to East Foxboro, homewards on morning of 29th .50 (in Jim Crow) [2]

Jim Crow? In supposedly enlightened Massachusetts, the cradle of freedom and liberty? Oh, yes! The truth is shocking. As late as 1843, Massachusetts blacks were prohibited from marrying whites, had to occupy the “Negro pew” in churches, and even in 1850 weren’t permitted to attend the same schools as white children. [3] These racial restrictions also applied to transportation. Prior to the railroads, free blacks traveling in Massachusetts were segregated from whites in stagecoaches [4] and on steamships. When trains began running, several Bay State railways, including the Eastern Railroad operating north from Boston, the New Bedford and Taunton, the Boston and Providence and the Boston and Lowell, made it a practice to herd black passengers into a separate car. This car at first had no particular name. A letter written in 1838 to The Massachusetts Spy, an abolitionist newspaper printed in Worcester, called it the "dirt car." [5] But in 1841, the Boston and Providence Rail Road connecting the capitals of Massachusetts and Rhode Island gained the dubious distinction of becoming the first railroad in the United States to use the term "Jim Crow" for cars employed in this form of rolling segregation. [6] The expression "Jim Crow" entered the American language in 1838 from the song and dance routine of Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice (1808-1860), a white English immigrant who performed a blackface take-off on a character he called “Jim Crow.” His act, entertaining and humorous to whites, ridiculous and demeaning to blacks, was known as "Jump Jim Crow." [7] Even when the Boston and Providence Rail Road was in the planning stage it was intended that special “steamboat trains” from Boston would connect at Providence with boats of the New York and Boston Transportation Company running between the Rhode Island capital and by way of Long Island Sound. This combined rail-water service began as soon as the railroad opened for business in July 1835. [8] Shortly afterward, Thomas B. Wales of Boston, president and chairman of the board of directors of the Boston and Providence, [9] referring to free black would-be passengers, commented that “an appreciable number of the despised race demanded transportation. Scenes of riot and violence took place, and in the then existing state of opinion, it seemed to me that the difficulty could best be met by assigning a special car to our colored citizens.” [10] As a result, separate accommodations for blacks were introduced on that railroad. By 1838, incidents of blacks being forcibly removed from Boston and Providence trains for refusing to sit in segregated cars were frequently reported in Massachusetts newspapers. It wasn’t long before white abolitionists encouraged boycotts, though none were effective, and free blacks began seeking help before the Massachusetts state legislature, known as the Great and General Court. The Court at first seemed favorable to providing legal relief, and a joint legislative committee recommended a bill that would put a halt to racial separation. But opposition quickly reared its head. One senator claimed that “such legislation would not stop at forcing the mixture of Negroes and whites in railroad cars, but would subsequently be applied to hotels, religious societies, and through all ramifications of society.” The General Court, uneasy about such an extension of the original bill, did not pass the act. [11] The irony is that since 1839 in the slave states of the South, most free blacks, though they could ride in baggage cars for half fare, chose to pay full fare and take seats in regular passenger coaches, whereas on many railroads in the North, free blacks were not allowed to ride in the same cars with whites. [12] Alabama (to name a typical Deep South state) did not enact so-called "separate but equal" (in reality, unequal) laws for railroad passengers until 1 January 1891. [13] That keen observer of pre-railroad America, Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), who came from France to spend a year in the United States in 1831 and 1832, saw the reason behind this curious anomaly even before it happened. Because of legally enforceable barriers in the slave states, southern whites did not worry about blacks becoming their social and economic equals. But northern whites, having more to fear from free blacks being their equals, kept them separate. [14] A remark attributed to French revolutionist Maximilien Robespierre sheds further light on the northern point of view: "Men would rather submit to masters themselves than see the number of their equals multiply." [15] Most early Massachusetts railroads, following the practice already established by the steamboat companies, operated first and second class passenger service. Jim Crow railroad accommodations probably equated to second class travel. [16] But when we take another look at the railroad fares paid by Isaac Stearns, we see a couple of odd inconsistencies. Why did the cost of Stearns's Jim Crow ticket for the 21 miles from Boston to East Foxborough so greatly exceed that for the 28 miles from Norton to Boston? My guess is that Stearns paid the fare of a fellow passenger – one of the free black attendees at the Anti-Slavery convention – whose name he chose not to divulge. And since Stearns was working in Norton probably six days a week, as was then the custom, why, after leaving Boston at seven in the morning of Saturday the 29th, did he elect to detrain at East Foxborough station instead of riding the remaining seven miles to his day's work in Norton? It appears likely that not only was he accompanied by a free black whose fare he paid, but that he escorted the mystery traveler to the safety of his another's house in East Mansfield – from East Foxborough it was only two miles along country roads to Stearns's home. But who might Stearns's companion have been? (c.1818-1895), who then lived in New Bedford, from August to September 1841 in company with noted white abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879) and Wendell Phillips (1811-1884) toured southeastern New England, speaking before anti-slavery gatherings. Isaac Stearns records in his diary that on the evening of 17 October 1841, he met Douglass and heard him lecture in the Reverend Mr. Holden's church in Norton. [17] Frederick Douglass was one of the most remarkable men in 19th century America. Born into slavery in Maryland, he escaped at age 20, made his way disguised as a sailor to New York, where he married a free black woman, and thence to New Bedford. Unlike most slaves, he’d learned to read, and from studying the Bible and the classics could speak like an orator. He became an active abolitionist and a journalist, was received by President Lincoln in the White House and was appointed United States consul general and minister to Haiti. [18] His first winter in the Whaling City he worked as a paid servant for Colonel John Henry Clifford, “the most aristocratic gentleman in Bristol county.” [19] In August 1841 Douglass went with Garrison to an anti-slavery convention in Nantucket, and for the first time spoke extempore before a sizable audience. While there, John A. Collins, general agent for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, persuaded him to become a paid lecturer with the group. For the next three months Douglass, in company with Collins, spoke throughout eastern Massachusetts. Although influential men like Wendell Phillips traveled with him, [20] Douglass had repeated clashes with Jim Crow on trains, and in one case when he was banished to the railroad car reserved for blacks, Phillips went with him. (Obviously, if seats in regular cars were forbidden to blacks, the reverse did not apply – apparently neither the railroad companies nor anyone else cared if a white man rode in the “dirt car.") Douglass had to be cautious in his movements because in Maryland he was still regarded as a runaway slave, and although the iniquitous 1850 Fugitive Slave Act had yet to be passed by the U.S. Congress, he was liable to be kidnapped by hired bounty hunters and returned to his former master. He generally, therefore, traveled in the company of whites who could protect and defend him. Unsubstantiated local tradition has it that he spent at least one night in East Mansfield, in Captain Charles Day’s home, a confirmed “station” on the house-to- house, town-to-town smuggling operation known metaphorically as the by which escaped slaves were forwarded to freedom in Canada. Day’s house still stands on Cherry Street, facing East Mansfield common. [21] Isaac Stearns lived about a mile away, on what now is Stearns Avenue. Is it too far-fetched to speculate that Stearns, on the morning of 29 January 1842, chose to ride in the "dirty and uncomfortable Negro car," in which he seemingly paid twice the regular fare, and to get off at East Foxborough rather than returning to his temporary abode and his job in Norton, because his companion was Frederick Douglass? Douglass wrote in 1855 that the "custom of providing separate cars for the accommodation of colored travelers was established on nearly all the railroads of New England, a dozen years ago," which coincides roughly with the time of Stearns's experience in January 1842, Charles Dickens's visit (to be briefly described) in that same year, and the 1839 comment of European railroad authority Franz Anton Ritter von Gerstner that in the North blacks were not allowed to ride in the same cars with whites. This probably means, however, only that already existing segregated seating began to be more strictly enforced around that time. The practice did not last for very long afterward. [22] In the first year or so that the Massachusetts railroads operated, little public notice was given to this custom nor was it stringently enforced. One attempt to “rebuke” the Eastern Railroad for its treatment of free black passengers was made in March 1841, and was laughed out of the state House of Representatives. A bill happened to be before the House authorizing the Eastern Railroad to mend its wharves on the Boston waterfront. Taking advantage of this situation, Representative Bradburn of Nantucket rebuked the proprietors of the railroad for making “an odious and unjust distinction in their treatment of passengers, on account of mere differences of complexion.” His complaint was greeted by general laughter from the assembly. Representative Rogers of Salem, a town served by the Eastern, replied that Bradburn was mistaken, that the railroad treated colored people as well as others and provided them with good accommodations. But Bradburn told of an “educated, talented, and gentlemanly” minister of the church who took a seat in an Eastern Railroad car and “was seized by a ruffianly ‘conductor,’ and thrust out of the car, as though he were a dog, merely because his skin was somewhat dark” – no darker, Bradburn added, than the complexions of some of the members of the House. But the representatives ridiculed his “squeamishness” and nothing was accomplished. [23] Less than four months later came the widely publicized Ruggles case. David Ruggles (1810-1849) [24] was an educated free black and a radical abolitionist who was secretary of the New York Vigilance Committee, a group organized to protect blacks who had fled slavery in the South. Although the authorities watched him constantly, he hid escaping slaves and had helped more than 500 of them flee to freedom by means of the Underground Railroad. In 1838 he was visited in his New York City boardinghouse by Frederick Douglass, just escaped from bondage under his original name of Fred Bailey. Douglass was out of work, almost out of money and in deadly fear of being snatched by the slave-catchers who prowled the city. Ruggles advised him to go to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he would be safer and could find work in his trade (recently learned as a slave workman in Baltimore) of shipyard caulker. While Douglass was in New York, Ruggles also served as one of two witnesses at Douglass’s marriage to Anna Murray, a free black woman. [25] On a Tuesday, 6 July 1841, Ruggles, a fine looking man, though he suffered all his life from poor health and eventually went blind, boarded one of the regular cars of a New Bedford and Taunton Rail Road train at New Bedford station with the intent of making an uneventful 55-mile trip to Boston by way of Taunton and Mansfield. When ordered by the conductor to take himself to the Jim Crow car, he refused, was dragged from the coach by the conductor and several other train employees, his clothing being torn in the scuffle, and was thrown unceremoniously out onto the depot platform. In a case made to for the American Civil Liberties Union had it existed then, Ruggles promptly brought charges of assault and battery against the trainmen. Before the case could be heard in court, on 12 July a mass protest meeting attended by prominent New Bedford citizens was held in that city, at which Ruggles presented his version of the incident, followed by several other speakers. The meeting adjourned without any resolution being taken, but the next day reconvened to listen to the report of a committee appointed to investigate the matter. Having heard the report, the attendees resolved "that as citizens of a free and enlightened community, and descendants of those Revolutionary worthies who poured out their heart's blood in the cause of our civil liberty, we do remonstrate in the most solemn manner against those inhuman proceedings as took place at the railroad depot, in this town on the 6th of the present month, in expelling David Ruggles of New York, from the car, for the unworthy cause of his having a color which the God of Nature was pleased to give him." [26] The trial was heard on 19 and 20 July before Judge Henry A. Crapo [27] in New Bedford court. The railroad corporation based its case on a regulation issued 1 January 1841 by company agent William Allen Crocker of Taunton, which read: "Passengers who go in the cars of the Taunton and New Bedford branch railroad, will take such seats as may be assigned them by the conductor." Whether the company had segregation of blacks in mind when they issued this rule is not clear, but it seems probable (the wording is similar to instructions given to southern railroad conductors in the 1890s), because ordinarily, since the seats were not reserved and one was as good as another, passengers took whatever available places they chose. The railroad's lawyer claimed the conductor had pointed out this regulation to Ruggles when he asked him to transfer to the Jim Crow car but that Ruggles refused to move. Judge Crapo found that there were two pertinent matters: The right of the corporation to issue the regulation, and whether undue force had been used to put it into effect. On the first point, he held that the railroad was the private property of the company, which therefore had the right to issue any regulation ensuring the welfare and comfort [sic!] of its passengers provided it was not contrary to existing state law, which it was not. On the second question, he ruled that undue force had not been proven, and dismissed the case, finding the defendants not guilty. [28] Crapo's decision set the abolitionists on fire. William Lloyd Garrison, editor of the Liberator, which was printed in Boston, ran a letter from Ruggles dated 24 July stating his version of the trial, under Garrison's heading, "Lynching in New Bedford, Judge Henry Crapo and Lynch Law."

It was hardly to be supposed that his honor could give an equitable decision in this case – himself being a stockholder in said company, and therefore rendered lawfully incapable of occupying the bench of justice under such circumstances. In relation to Judge Crapo's court, I must confess, he rendered it the greatest farce I ever witnessed. In giving his opinion, he declared his ignorance of the law in the case, and, of course, adhered to the authority of Judge Lynch.

Garrison commented, "The conduct of Justice Crapo, in giving his legal sanction to the dastardly assault and battery upon the person of Mr. Ruggles at the New Bedford depot by the conductors of the railroad train, is in our view, unspeakably atrocious." [29] The Ruggles verdict also rekindled a fire under the anti-Jim Crow movement, which reached its most vigorous at the beginning of 1842, about the time Isaac Stearns traveled in a segregated Boston and Providence car. A bill to abolish separate seating was reintroduced in the Massachusetts General Court but went down to defeat in the Senate. [30] In late September 1841 the Secretary of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, “a light-colored black woman,” was dragged from a railroad car with her baby in her arms. The infant was injured and so was her husband when he tried to defend her. [31] Frederick Douglass, in his autobiography, tells of his own encounters with Jim Crow in Massachusetts, one of which differed from Ruggles's experience in that at least it had a more pleasant ending. This incident occurred on a Boston to New Bedford train, "and the leading party to it [wrote Douglass, speaking of his former employer Colonel Clifford] has since been governor of the state of Massachusetts." [32] Douglass braced for trouble as he boarded the Boston and Providence Rail Road train in Boston’s Pleasant Street station for the trip via Mansfield to his New Bedford home. He’d noticed that this train, unlike most Bay State trains, had no “Jim Crow” car to which blacks like himself were banished. But he knew if he set foot in a car full of white riders, the trainmen, lacking their usual Jim Crow option, might throw him bodily out on the platform, as had been done to Ruggles. He probably waited until the train began to pull out before swinging aboard. Looking down the aisle of the car he saw that every seat was filled but one. That one was next to a white man who had piled a few parcels beside him. Not wanting to stand for the more than two-hour trip to New Bedford, Douglass approached the man and gently asked him to please move the packages so he could sit down. The indignant response came as no surprise. “Why this particular seat?” Douglass politely replied, “I assure you, sir, this is the seat for me.” The man grabbed his bundles and fled down the aisle to plead his case to the conductor. “Oh! Stop, stop! And let me get out!” Probably the conductor said something like, “Sorry, sir, we’re on a schedule. We can’t stop.” Nor could he go so far as to throw Douglass off the moving train. Maybe anxious to avoid further trouble, this unusually civil conductor even let the young black man stay seated, while the offended white passenger, clutching his parcels, stood unhappily at the far end of the car. But it chanced that one of the passengers in the car was Colonel John Henry Clifford. As the train halted at the Mansfield junction so a Taunton Branch engine could be attached, he belatedly discovered Douglass, recognized him, left his seat and came back to greet him like an old friend. This little reunion brought about a sea change among the other white passengers. Seeing that the black rider was known to Colonel Clifford, they flocked to greet him. Prominent among the greeters was the parcel carrier, who fell all over himself apologizing for his boorish behavior. Douglass graciously accepted the apology, though afterward he said it was the lamest he ever heard. [33] Douglass wrote: "Regarding this custom as fostering the spirit of caste, I made it a rule to seat myself in the cars for the accommodation of passengers generally. Thus seated, I was sure to be called upon to betake myself to the 'Jim Crow car.' Refusing to obey, I was often dragged out of my seat, beaten, and severely bruised, by conductors and brakemen." [34] This racist behavior could assume ridiculous proportions, as when Eastern Railroad superintendent Stephen A. Chase closed the station at Lynn, nine miles north of Boston, and ordered passenger trains to run through without making their scheduled stop because he knew Douglass wanted to get on board there. Douglass, intending to go from Lynn to Newburyport on an Eastern Railroad train on the evening of 28 September 1841, had boarded “one of the best railroad carriages on the road,” in which the seats were “luxuriant and beautiful.” As he expected, the conductor soon ordered him out. When Douglass asked why, the conductor, after a few evasive responses, replied, “Because you’re black.” Douglass refused to move, though his appeals to white passengers in the car, including his own traveling companion, fell on ears that did not want to hear and mouths that did not want to speak in his defense. The conductor summoned a dozen brakemen and locomotive firemen and told Douglass that if he refused to move they would drag him out of the seat. Physically, Douglass was no pushover and in his autobiography claims to have been capable of handling any man one on one. But knowing this gang of enforcers would be too much and foreseeing what was to come, he intertwined his arms and long legs among the seats in such a way that when the roughnecks dragged him out by head, neck and shoulders the seats were torn out along with him, causing damage that cost the railroad company an estimated twenty-five or thirty dollars to repair. [35] After this was when Superintendent Chase closed for several days. [36] Yet at the same time that this “ridiculous farce” was going on, the Eastern Railroad permitted slaves, if accompanied by their master, to ride in regular non-segregated passenger cars. [37]. On that day Douglass’s companion (who chose, out of timidity, pacifistic tendencies or cowardice not to stand up for his black friend) [38] was the white anti-slavery champion and civil rights activist James Needham Buffum of Lynn. Buffum (1807-1887) was a wealthy Boston businessman and a Massachusetts politician. Both Chase and Buffum were Quakers who used the peculiarities of speech characteristic of the “Friends.” The following conversation took place between the two regarding the Jim Crow cars attached to Eastern Railroad trains. Buffum said, “Stephen, I don’t think thee does right to utilize a Jim Crow car on thy train.” Chase replied, “Well, James, I’ll tell thee, when thee abolishes the colored pews in the meeting house, then I’ll abolish the Jim Crow car.” [39] Charles Dickens (1812-1870), who visited the United States in 1842, also had the (to him) novel experience of seeing a Jim Crow car on a Boston and Lowell Railroad train. "There is a gentleman's car and a ladies' car: the main distinction between which is, that in the first everybody smokes; and in the second, nobody does. As a black man never travels with a white man, there is also a negro car; which is a great, blundering, clumsy chest . . . " [40] The Rev. James Thomas (1804-1891) [41] was involved in an incident that occurred, apparently, at New Bedford and on the New Bedford and Taunton Rail Road, but at a later date than Ruggles’s encounter. Thomas and a companion found that the local ticket agent would sell the two blacks only half-fare tickets that were not good on cars occupied by white passengers. So they talked a compassionate white man into buying two full fare or first class tickets, and as quietly as possible took seats in an inconspicuous corner of one of the regular coaches. The brakeman assigned to the car didn’t notice the black men until the train was about to depart, and then told them, “You’ve made a mistake.” Thomas displayed their tickets. But the brakeman said, “You can’t ride here. I want you to get out.” Thomas replied, “I’ve bought and paid for these tickets and we have the same right here as other people.” Wanting some backup, the brakeman called in the ticket agent, who explained, “Our rules forbid you to occupy seats in this car. We want no trouble, so you’d better leave peaceably.” Thomas replied, “We want none and shall make none, but we intend to stay where we are.” So once again, in came the enforcers – baggage men, more brakemen and hack drivers. The Rev. Thomas and his friend, anticipating by several years Henry David Thoreau’s 1849 essay on passive resistance, “Civil Disobedience,” locked their arms around three seats but otherwise resisted passively as the gang of men dragged them, along with the seats, out of the car and onto the depot platform. Thomas, who knew his rights, immediately obtained a warrant from New Bedford Judge Henry Crapo and had the railroaders arrested. The hearing took place the same day, and next morning Judge Crapo, who in signing the arrest warrant seems to have mellowed only slightly, handed down his lengthy written opinion, ruling that custom was law and by custom colored persons were not permitted to ride in the company of whites. The railway corporation, he said, had the right to make their own regulations on the matter, thus Thomas and his friend had no cause of action and the railroad men were freed. Thomas paid the court costs, but gave notice of his intent to appeal the decision to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, presided over by Justice Lemuel Shaw. In Boston, when the case was heard, the court decided, interestingly, that “the word ‘color,’ as applied to persons, was unknown to the laws of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, and that the youngest colored child had the same rights as the richest white citizen.” Crapo’s decision was reversed, as it ought to have been in the Ruggles instance, and Thomas was awarded $300 in damages. This significant case did much to help bring an end to the custom of requiring blacks to ride in Jim Crow cars. [42]. The refusals by Douglass, Ruggles, Thomas and other free blacks to go to the car assigned to their race and then being physically removed from their seats brought the anti-Jim Crow movement to an intense level. [43] Following several more incidents where black riders were prevented from entering “white” railway cars, the nation’s first serious attempt at forcing a state legislature to enact a civil rights law got under way in Boston. In 1842 the abolitionist Charles Lenox Remond (1810-1873), a man of striking appearance, became the first black to address the Great and General Court on the matter. [44] He protested eloquently before the Massachusetts legislature his segregation in a “special railway car for negroes.” Stressing his right to equality, and the inherent inferiority when deprived of it, he pointed out that “the wrongs inflicted and injuries received on railroads by persons of color . . . do not end with the termination of the route, but in effect, tend to discourage, disparage, and depress this class of citizens.” [45] Associates of William Lloyd Garrison also agitated before the legislature. These initial attempts failed to produce an anti-Jim Crow statute. But a gradual shift in public opinion lent weight to the plaintiffs’ side of the case, and the Massachusetts railroad companies, seeing which way the wind blew, finally consented to discontinue segregated cars and serve every passenger equally. [46] The Great and General Court's belated opposition to the odious practice resulted in a bill that was enacted into law in 1843. This law decreed that no railroad corporation in the commonwealth of Massachusetts should make distinctions in accommodations based on a passenger’s descent, sect or color, and further stipulated that any “officer or servant” of a railroad who assaulted a rider in an attempt to remove him from his seat for reasons of ancestry, sect or color would be jailed for not less than six days or fined not less than ten dollars, and that the corporation would be liable to the full amount of any damages incurred by the assaulted passenger. Despite this law, violations now and then occurred, but by and large the railroads of Massachusetts ceased their practice of Jim Crow. [47] In 1855 Frederick Douglass could write, as he looked back, "After many battles with the railroad conductors, and being roughly handled in not a few instances, proscription was at last abandoned; and the 'Jim Crow car' – set up for the degradation of colored people – is nowhere found in New England. This result was not brought about without the intervention of the people, and the threatened enactment of a law compelling railroad companies to respect the rights of travelers. Hon. Charles Francis Adams performed signal service in the Massachusetts legislature, in bringing about this reformation; and to him the colored citizens of that state are deeply indebted." [48] Racial bigotry persisted with the traveling public even after the General Court abolished Jim Crow accommodations. Douglass wrote of an incident that occurred on the Western Railroad. While riding a train from Boston to Albany, a distance of 200 miles, he sat in a large car so filled with passengers that the seat next to him was the only vacant place. At every station stop, new passengers boarded, passed by the empty seat “with a disdainful glance” and went to another car. But one of the passengers in the coach, Massachusetts Governor George N. Briggs, [49] with whom Douglass was not acquainted, left his own seat and asked Douglass if he might sit by his side. After a “pleasant and instructive” conversation, Governor Briggs left the train at his home city of Pittsfield, 151 miles and nearly eight hours from Boston. In somewhat of a repeat of what had happened on the Boston to New Bedford train, a dozen applicants then vied for the seat, which the governor’s presence, even without changing Douglass’s complexion, had made (as Frederick Douglass put it) “respectable instead of despicable.” [50]

Notes

1 Stearns papers, v. 2, diary, p. 560. 2. Stearns papers, v. 2, diary, p. 561. 3 Ruchames 1956: 61. Frederick Douglass, however, wrote that “in New Bedford [Mass.], the black man’s children . . . went to school side by side with the white children . . . .” (Douglass 1955/1987: 211.) New Bedford had a large number of Quakers who in general were racially color blind. 4 Thomas 1886: 15. On stagecoaches blacks were required to ride outside, either beside the driver or on top of the coach, exposed to the weather. 5 Liberator v. 8, 14 Dec. 1838: 197, in Ruchames 1956. 6 Bell 1998; Wilz 2001: 42; Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, undated 7 Ruchames 1956; Anon. 2008. 8 Chase 2006a: 51-52, 180. 9 Wales was also the first president of the Taunton Branch Railroad between Mansfield and Taunton (1836) and president and treasurer of the Western Railroad (1841), later Boston and Albany. He was a respected member of the First Church in Boston, founded in 1630. (Ellis, Arthur B., 1881.) 10 Litwack 1961: 106-107. 11 Litwack 1961: 103-104, 108; Hine and Harrold 2002: 153, 316. 12 Gerstner 1842-3/1997: 694. 13 American Racial History 2012. Alabama railroads were required to attach two or more “colored” cars to every passenger train or to divide the regular cars into “white” and “colored” sections by means of a partition. A passenger who tried to ride in the “wrong” car would be fined $100. Conductors could be fined up to $100 for permitting that offense and the railroad company up to $500. 14 Tocqueville 1969 ed.: 343. 15 Korngold 194: 118. 16 If there was sufficient travel by blacks to warrant separate cars, then tickets might have been printed for that travel; but a study of printers' invoices for Boston and Providence Rail Road revealed no evidence of it. (A.M. Levitt, written comm. 1999. Levitt was a printer and an authority on 19th century ticketing practices ) Thus the greater probability that second class tickets were sold for Jim Crow. 17 Stearns papers: v. 2, diary, p. 560. 18 Chase 2006b. 19 Douglass 1855/1987: 247. 20 Douglass 1855/1987: 219-222. 21 Vizedom 1987; Foster 1999. 22 Douglass 1855/1987: 244. 23 Garrison 1841. 24 I had supposed that the present Ruggles railroad commuter station, which opened 4 May 1987 at the intersection of Ruggles and Tremont streets, 2.2 miles from Boston South Station on the former Boston and Providence Railroad, was so called in honor of David Ruggles. But it was named for George Ruggles, who built Ruggles Street. 25 Humphreville 1968: 64-68. 26 Liberator v. 11, 24 July 1841: 118, in Ruchames 1956. 27 The Crapo family derived its name from Pierre “,” a French youth cast ashore from a shipwreck off Cape Cod about 1680. Unable to speak English or understandably tell his true name (which is unknown) to his Yankee rescuers, who referred to Frenchmen as "frogs," he became known as "Peter Crapaud." One might wish Judge Crapo had been swayed by the memory of his humble but fortunate ancestor when ruling on the case of the unfortunate Mr. Ruggles. The name is pronounced “Cray-poe." 28 New Bedford Mercury 22 July 1841; Liberator 11, 6 Aug. 1841: 165; in Ruchames 1956. 29 Liberator v. 11, 6 Aug. 1841, in Ruchames 1956. 30 Ruchames 1956. 31 Hodges undated. 32 John Henry Clifford (1809-1876) graduated from Brown University in 1827, studied law, then settled in New Bedford where he built up a substantial practice. He was elected to the Mass. legislature in 1835. From 1849 to 1853 he served as state attorney general, and was elected Whig governor of Massachusetts for 1853-54. From 1854 to 1858 he again was state attorney general. In 1862 he became president of the state senate. Clifford retired from the law in 1867, and from 1873 to 1875 served as president of the Boston & Providence R. R. He received an LL. D. from Brown in 1849 and from Amherst and Harvard in 1853. For several years he was president of the Harvard board of overseers (Appleton Encyc. 2001). 33 Douglass 1855/1987: 246-7. 34 Douglass 1855/1987: 244. 35 Douglass 1855/1987: 244; Mann 1841. Chase was probably, I regret to admit, a distant relative of mine, although his name does not appear in the Chase family genealogy. 36 Chase was very religious, and in 1846, when living in Salem, Mass., he requested his friend Joseph John Gurney of Earlham near Norwich, England, to furnish him with a statement of his Christian faith, which Gurney did.(Anon. 1847.) I’m unsure whether Chase favored slavery. Douglass (1855/1987: 158) makes the interesting comment, “For all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst.” 37 Douglass 1855/1987: 244. 38 Mann 1841. 39 Bradlee 1922. 40 Dickens 1842/1985: 61. Dickens found slavery so distasteful that on his U.S. tour he refused to travel south of Washington, D.C. Douglass observed (1855/1987: 223-239), on a 21- month stay in Great Britain and Ireland from 1845 to 1847, that racial distinctions on the railways and in social life there were nonexistent. 41 Thomas was a minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, an author and former teacher, who was born into slavery in (of all places) Canajoharie, N.Y., but escaped at age 17. 42 Thomas 1886: 15. Thomas had met Frederick Douglass in New Bedford, hence my supposition that this affair took place on the New Bedford and Taunton Rail Road. 43 Meier and Rudwick 1976: 308-309. 44 Anon. undated(a). 45 Adler, Van Buren and Ducas1969: v. 3, 146-150. 46 Anon., undated(b). 47 Chase 2006a: 294; original source unknown. 48 Douglass 1955/1987: 244-245. Adams (1807-1886), the son of Pres. John Quincy Adams and grandson of Pres. John Adams, served in both branches of the Mass. General Court 1840- 1845 and later the U.S. congress. Pres. Lincoln appointed him Minister to England, where he served 1861-1868, during the American Civil War. His son Charles Francis Adams, Jr., (1835- 1915) became Massachusetts Railroad Commissioner. 49 Briggs (1796-1861), a “reborn” Baptist, served in the U.S. House of Representatives 1831- 1843 and was Massachusetts governor 1844-1851. 50 Douglass 1855/1987: 246.

Special thanks

Richard A. Fleischer, Alan M. Levitt, Leslie A. Pasch.

Sources cited

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Bell, Kurt, 1998, untitled: Milepost, Journal of the Friends of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, Sept. 1998. Bradlee, Francis B.C., 1922, Eastern Railroad: a historical account of early railroading in eastern New England: The Essex Institute. Chase, Harry, 2006a, Mixed train to Providence, a history of the Boston and Providence Rail Road [etc.]: unpub., Harry B. Chase Jr. papers, Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Center, Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs, Ct. ------, 2006b, “Jim Crow”– in liberal Massachusetts?: Mansfield News, Mansfield, Mass., 3 Nov. 2006. Dickens, Charles, 1842, American notes, a journey: repub. 1985 by Fromm International Publishing Corp., New York. Douglass, Frederick, 1855, My bondage and my freedom: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, New York and Auburn, N.Y.; repub. 1987, University of Illinois Press, Chicago and Urbana, Ill. Ellis, Arthur B., 1881, History of the First Church in Boston. Foster, Rick, 1999, Abolition debate split Mansfield: Attleboro-North Attleboro Sun Chronicle, Attleboro-North Attleboro, Mass., 18 Jan. 1999. Garrison, William Lloyd, 1841, Rebuke of the Eastern Railroad Company, for their treatment of colored passengers: Liberator 19 Mar, 1841. Gerstner, Franz Anton Ritter von, 1842-1843, Die innern communicationen der vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerica: Vienna, L. Forster's artistische Anstalt, 2 v; ed. by Frederick C. Gamst, translated from the Austrian by David J. Diephouse, and John C. Decker, 1997, Early American railroads: repub. Stanford University Press, Palo Alto, Cal., 1 v. Hine, Darlene Clark, and Stanley Harrold, 2002, The African-American odyssey: 2nd ed., Pearson Education Inc., Saddle River N.J. Hodges, Graham R.G., undated, David Ruggles: a radical black abolitionist [etc.] Humphreville, Frances T., 1969, For all people, the story of Frederick Douglass: Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston. Korngold, Ralph, 1944, Citizen Toussaint: Little, Brown and Co., Boston. Liberator: Boston, v. 8, 14 Dec. 1838; v. 11, 9 Mar. 1841 24 July 1841; 6 Aug. 1841; 6 Nov. 1841. Litwack, Leon F., 1961, North of slavery: the in the United States: Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago. Mann, Daniel, 1841, To the public: editorial in Liberator, v. 11, 6 Nov. 1841 Massachusetts Spy: Worcester, Mass., 1838. Meier, August, and Elliott Rudwick, 1976, Along the color line: exploration in the black experience: Univ. of Illinois Press, Urbana. New Bedford Mercury, 22 July 1841: New Bedford, Mass. Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, undated, Tears, trains and triumphs. Ruchames, Louis, 1956, Jim Crow railroads in Massachusetts: American Quarterly v. 8, spring 1956, p. 61-75, Johns Hopkins Univ.Press. Ruchames was professor of history at Univ. of Massachusetts, Boston. He wrote extensively on the subject of slavery, abolition and Jim Crow. Stearns papers, The Stearns family correspondence: letters, diaries, journals, records, etc., of the Stearns family, 1714-1920: unpub., 5 v., comp and ed. by Stuart H. Buck c1980, Mansfield Public Library, Mansfield, Mass.

Thomas, James, 1886, The life of Rev. Thomas James, by himself: Post Express Printing Co., Rochester, N.Y. Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1969, ed. by J.P. Mayer, translated from the French by George Lawrence, Democracy in America: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Co., Garden City, N.Y. Vizedom, Monika, 1987, E. Mansfield house on slave railway: Mansfield News, Mansfield, Mass., 14 May 1987. Wilz, John Edward, 2001, When Jim Crow rode the rails: Trains, Kalmbach Publishing Co., Waukesha, Wis., Feb. 2001: 40-47.

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