DOCSLIB.ORG

Vigilance in Pennsylvania: Underground Railroad Activities in the Keystone State, 1837-1861

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

PRESENTED AT THE PHMC ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON BLACK HISTORY HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA APRIL 27, 2000 VIGILANCE IN PENNSYLVANIA: UNDERGROUND RAILROAD ACTIVITIES IN THE KEYSTONE STATE, 1837-1861 By Matthew Pinsker Copyright 2000 PHMC TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction p. 2 Acknowledgements p. 8 Section One: Historical Context p. 9 Section Two: Participants and Operations p. 54 Section Three: Research and Preservation p. 96 Appendix A: Nationally Recognized Sites Appendix B: State Recognized Sites Appendix C: Traditionally Associated Sites Appendix D: Selected Routes General Bibliography UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IN PA CONTEXT STUDY INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION If you've never heard of William Still, then you're missing one of the great stories in Pennsylvania history. The youngest of eighteen children, Still was a son of former slaves who started working as a clerk in the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society during the 1840s and became the principal organizer of the state's Underground Railroad network during the years before the Civil War. Still's passion for aiding fugitives really blossomed after he had the extraordinary experience of being reunited with his own brother who had arrived in the Anti-Slavery offices as one of many former slaves looking for assistance, unaware at first that the clerk he was addressing was actually his youngest brother. Energized by this dramatic and tearful reunion, Still soon took command of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee, a semi-public organization which acted as a kind of clearinghouse for runaway slaves who arrived in Pennsylvania looking for help relocating either within one of the Northern free states or Canada. Along with other members of the committee, Still interviewed the runaways and kept an invaluable journal documenting their frequently terrifying escapes and experiences in bondage. He also corresponded with various participants in the underground network who regularly assisted those runaways and carefully warned him whenever "boxes" or "packages" were due to arrive in Philadelphia. There were many unsung heroes like William Still during the years when slavery existed in this country, people whose moral outrage and personal bravery compelled them to risk their lives and careers to help the unfortunate victims of a wicked system. But Page 3 of 143 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IN PA CONTEXT STUDY INTRODUCTION what separated him from nearly any other figure from this period was that Still meticulously preserved the evidence of their struggles, hiding the Vigilance Committee records in a cemetery during the Civil War, and finally publishing them to wide acclaim in 1872. Yet people today often remark that the Underground Railroad was secret and therefore no documents exist to verify its existence, at least by traditional means. This is just not quite true. For Pennsylvania alone, using Vigilance Committee records, newspaper advertisements and press accounts of runaways, court cases involving the recovery of fugitives and other selected diaries and letters, it is possible to document nearly 2,000 escapes between 1830-1861 --using only contemporary evidence. This impressive data set doesn't even include the numerous oral traditions and local folklore that suggest thousands more legitimate escape stories from across the Commonwealth. That is one of the most important conclusions contained within the following study. It turns out that Pennsylvania It turns out that Pennsylvania offers offers the best documentation of the the best documentation of the Underground Railroad anywhere in Underground Railroad anywhere in the nation. the nation. For those who are familiar with the state's African-American history, this judgment will come as no great surprise. Pennsylvania's free black population was one of the nation's largest, richest, and most socially active in the years before the Civil War. Self-made free black strivers like William Still were not only common in cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, but also in small towns such as Columbia, Mercersburg, and Norristown. Page 4 of 143 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IN PA CONTEXT STUDY INTRODUCTION Their churches, newspapers, fraternal organizations, political societies and extended family networks provided the principal institutional support that clothed, fed, and relocated most escaping slaves. Popular accounts often depict fugitives hiding in secret passageways under the homes of white abolitionists, but anyone who stops to consider the issue will understand immediately why it made much more sense for most runaways to stay within black neighborhoods. This is not meant to deny that some whites helped fugitives. They did. Especially within this state, a small network of abolitionist Quakers (called Hicksites) provided invaluable aid, both monetary and physical. However, the bulk of the work and money for Underground Railroad activities came from free blacks like Vigilance Committee chairman Still. The state government's interest in documenting such activities comes during a period of renewed public interest in the topic. Thousands of newspaper features, magazine articles and documentaries have appeared in the last several years, discussing topics connected to the Underground Railroad and runaway slaves. In 1998, after nearly a decade of study, Congress passed the National Underground Network to Freedom Act, which authorizes $500,000 annually to protect the legacy of the Underground Railroad. With that goal in mind, plans are currently underway to construct the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, an estimated $80 million heritage museum project. Major heritage tourism efforts, such as those in Lancaster County, are becoming commonplace in regions that once harbored fugitives. Yet amidst this explosion of public attention, there has been relatively few signs of academic engagement. After generations of scholarship and folklore that celebrated a legendary network of heroic white abolitionists, there has been a growing realization in historical circles that most fugitives escaped on their own and relied mainly on the Page 5 of 143 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IN PA CONTEXT STUDY INTRODUCTION kindness of black strangers to achieve their freedom. At least among academic historians, this striking revisionism, coupled with a lingering impression that there is relatively no contemporary evidence, has created an unusual degree of wariness about reaching any further conclusions. "Among historians," one scholar has suggested recently, "the underground railroad has become a dead issue."1 As if to confirm that judgment, the most ambitious study of runaway slaves yet undertaken, published in 1999, contains only two index entries for the Underground Railroad. The authors of that widely acclaimed monograph, John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, are candid about the reasons for this decision. “Although historians continue to disagree about various aspects of the Underground Railroad,” they write, “few deny that even today it is shrouded in myth and legend.”2 For residents of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, this judgment offers a particular challenge, since arguably no state was more vital to the fugitive aid networks that existed across the antebellum North. Local studies invariably exaggerate the role of their own region, but the case for Pennsylvania is strong and rests upon such fundamental matters as geography and demographics. The state was not only the largest positioned along the Mason-Dixon line (which historically demarcates North from South) but also it was the closest to the slave states which contained the highest percentage of urban and literate slaves, or in other words, the ones likeliest to flee. Nonetheless, it was the state's own antebellum demographics which explains why Pennsylvania, an otherwise conservative place on issues concerning slavery and race, became such an unlikely haven for fugitives. While many people are familiar with the region's unique Quaker heritage 1 Stanley Harrold, "Freeing the Weems Family: A New Look at the Underground Railroad," Civil War History 42 (December 1996), 290. Page 6 of 143 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IN PA CONTEXT STUDY INTRODUCTION and that sect's historic (but sometimes overstated) association with abolitionism, there is less awareness regarding the state's extraordinarily rich black heritage. In many ways, the story of the Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania chronicles the struggles of those free black residents as much as the dramatic escapes of the fugitives. This study offers a set of starting points and strategies for scholars, teachers and preservationists who want to use the evidence from Pennsylvania sources in order to achieve a better understanding of how the Underground Railroad operated in antebellum America. From the outset, it should be acknowledged that this study is largely based upon discoveries and insights from generations of other scholars in Pennsylvania history and relies especially on some excellent recent work in the state's antebellum social and political culture. Although many readers will be surprised by the information contained in these pages, the truth is that most Pennsylvania historians have been aware of these developments for quite some time. Nonetheless, there is a clear need --even among those professional scholars-- for a monograph that synthesizes all of the disparate elements that have been unearthed over the last several years. To begin this process, the study has been divided into three sections. The first section offers a thematic overview of the Underground Railroad,
Recommended publications

  • African American Literature in Transition, 1850–1865

    Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-42748-7 — African American Literature in Transition Edited by Teresa Zackodnik Frontmatter More Information AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE IN TRANSITION, – The period of – consists of violent struggle and crisis as the United States underwent the prodigious transition from slaveholding to ostensibly “free” nation. This volume reframes mid-century African American literature and challenges our current understand- ings of both African American and American literature. It presents a fluid tradition that includes history, science, politics, economics, space and movement, the visual, and the sonic. Black writing was highly conscious of transnational and international politics, textual circulation, and revolutionary imaginaries. Chapters explore how Black literature was being produced and circulated; how and why it marked its relation to other literary and expressive traditions; what geopolitical imaginaries it facilitated through representation; and what technologies, including print, enabled African Americans to pursue such a complex and ongoing aesthetic and political project. is a Professor in the English and Film Studies Department at the University of Alberta, where she teaches critical race theory, African American literature and theory, and historical Black feminisms. Her books include The Mulatta and the Politics of Race (); Press, Platform, Pulpit: Black Feminisms in the Era of Reform (); the six-volume edition African American Feminisms – in the Routledge History of Feminisms series (); and “We Must be Up and Doing”: A Reader in Early African American Feminisms (). She is a member of the UK-based international research network Black Female Intellectuals in the Historical and Contemporary Context, and is completing a book on early Black feminist use of media and its forms.
  • Historical Origins of the One-Drop Racial Rule in the United States

    Historical Origins of the One-Drop Racial Rule in the United States

    Historical Origins of the One-Drop Racial Rule in the United States Winthrop D. Jordan1 Edited by Paul Spickard2 Editor’s Note Winthrop Jordan was one of the most honored US historians of the second half of the twentieth century. His subjects were race, gender, sex, slavery, and religion, and he wrote almost exclusively about the early centuries of American history. One of his first published articles, “American Chiaroscuro: The Status and Definition of Mulattoes in the British Colonies” (1962), may be considered an intellectual forerunner of multiracial studies, as it described the high degree of social and sexual mixing that occurred in the early centuries between Africans and Europeans in what later became the United States, and hinted at the subtle racial positionings of mixed people in those years.3 Jordan’s first book, White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812, was published in 1968 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement era. The product of years of painstaking archival research, attentive to the nuances of the thousands of documents that are its sources, and written in sparkling prose, White over Black showed as no previous book had done the subtle psycho-social origins of the American racial caste system.4 It won the National Book Award, the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize, the Bancroft Prize, the Parkman Prize, and other honors. It has never been out of print since, and it remains a staple of the graduate school curriculum for American historians and scholars of ethnic studies. In 2005, the eminent public intellectual Gerald Early, at the request of the African American magazine American Legacy, listed what he believed to be the ten most influential books on African American history.
  • Nominees and Bios

    Nominees and Bios

    Nominees for the Virginia Emancipation Memorial Pre‐Emancipation Period 1. Emanuel Driggus, fl. 1645–1685 Northampton Co. Enslaved man who secured his freedom and that of his family members Derived from DVB entry: http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Driggus_Emanuel Emanuel Driggus (fl. 1645–1685), an enslaved man who secured freedom for himself and several members of his family exemplified the possibilities and the limitations that free blacks encountered in seventeenth‐century Virginia. His name appears in the records of Northampton County between 1645 and 1685. He might have been the Emanuel mentioned in 1640 as a runaway. The date and place of his birth are not known, nor are the date and circumstances of his arrival in Virginia. His name, possibly a corruption of a Portuguese surname occasionally spelled Rodriggus or Roddriggues, suggests that he was either from Africa (perhaps Angola) or from one of the Caribbean islands served by Portuguese slave traders. His first name was also sometimes spelled Manuell. Driggus's Iberian name and the aptitude that he displayed maneuvering within the Virginia legal system suggest that he grew up in the ebb and flow of people, goods, and cultures around the Atlantic littoral and that he learned to navigate to his own advantage. 2. James Lafayette, ca. 1748–1830 New Kent County Revolutionary War spy emancipated by the House of Delegates Derived from DVB/ EV entry: http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Lafayette_James_ca_1748‐1830 James Lafayette was a spy during the American Revolution (1775–1783). Born a slave about 1748, he was a body servant for his owner, William Armistead, of New Kent County, in the spring of 1781.
  • Chapter I: the Supremacy of Equal Rights

    Chapter I: the Supremacy of Equal Rights

    DIVISION OF THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 91125 CHAPTER I: THE SUPREMACY OF EQUAL RIGHTS J. Morgan Kousser SOCIAL SCIENCE WORKING PAPER 620 March 1987 ABSTRACT The black and white abolitionist agitation of the school integ ration issue in Massachusetts from 1840 to 1855 gave us the fi rst school integ ration case filed in Ame rica, the fi rst state sup reme cou rt decision re po rted on the issue, and the fi rst state-wide law banning ra cial disc rimination in admission to educational institutions. Wh o favo red and who opposed school integ ration, and what arguments did each side make? We re the types of arguments that they offe re d diffe rent in diffe re nt fo ru ms? We re they diffe rent from 20th centu ry arguments? Wh y did the movement triumph, and why did it take so long to do so? Wh at light does the st ruggle th row on views on ra ce re lations held by membe rs of the antebellum black and white communities, on the cha racte r of the abolitionist movement, and on the development of legal doct rines about ra cial equality? Pe rhaps mo re gene rally, how should histo ri ans go about assessing the weight of diffe rent re asons that policymake rs adduced fo r thei r actions, and how flawed is a legal histo ry that confines itself to st rictly legal mate ri als? How can social scientific theo ry and statistical techniques be profitably applied to politico-legal histo ry? Pa rt of a la rge r project on the histo ry of cou rt cases and state and local provisions on ra cial disc rimination in schools, this pape r int roduces many of the main themes, issues, and methods to be employed in the re st of the book.
  • National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation Form

    National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation Form

    NPSForm10-900-b OMB No. 1024-0018 (Revised March 1992) . ^ ;- j> United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation Form This form is used for documenting multiple property groups relating to one or several historic contexts. See instructions in How to Complete the Multiple Property Documentation Form (National Register Bulletin 16B). Complete each item by entering the requested information. For additional space, use continuation sheets (Form 10-900-a). Use a typewriter, word processor, or computer, to complete all items. _X_New Submission _ Amended Submission A. Name of Multiple Property Listing__________________________________ The Underground Railroad in Massachusetts 1783-1865______________________________ B. Associated Historic Contexts (Name each associated historic context, identifying theme, geographical area, and chronological period for each.) C. Form Prepared by_________________________________________ name/title Kathrvn Grover and Neil Larson. Preservation Consultants, with Betsy Friedberg and Michael Steinitz. MHC. Paul Weinbaum and Tara Morrison. NFS organization Massachusetts Historical Commission________ date July 2005 street & number 220 Morhssey Boulevard________ telephone 617-727-8470_____________ city or town Boston____ state MA______ zip code 02125___________________________ D. Certification As the designated authority under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, I hereby certify that this documentation form meets the National
  • The Library of Robert Morris, Civil Rights Lawyer & Activist

    The Library of Robert Morris, Civil Rights Lawyer & Activist

    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Digital Commons @ Boston College Law School Boston College Law School Digital Commons @ Boston College Law School Boston College Law School Faculty Papers 6-21-2018 The Library of Robert Morris, Civil Rights Lawyer & Activist Laurel Davis Boston College Law School, [email protected] Mary Sarah Bilder Boston College Law School, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/lsfp Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Legal Biography Commons, Legal History Commons, Legal Profession Commons, Political History Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Laurel Davis and Mary Sarah Bilder. "The Library of Robert Morris, Civil Rights Lawyer & Activist." (2018). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Boston College Law School. It has been accepted for inclusion in Boston College Law School Faculty Papers by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Boston College Law School. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Library of Robert Morris, Antebellum Civil Rights Lawyer & Activist∗ Laurel Davis** and Mary Sarah Bilder*** Contact information: Boston College Law Library Attn: Laurel Davis 885 Centre St. Newton, MA 02459 Abstract (50 words or less): This article analyzes the Robert Morris library, the only known extant, antebellum African American-owned library. The seventy-five titles, including two unique pamphlet compilations, reveal Morris’s intellectual commitment to full citizenship, equality, and participation for people of color. The library also demonstrates the importance of book and pamphlet publication as means of community building among antebellum civil rights activists.
  • 1 the Eugene D. Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese Library

    1 the Eugene D. Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese Library

    The Eugene D. Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese Library Bibliography: with Annotations on marginalia, and condition. Compiled by Christian Goodwillie, 2017. Coastal Affair. Chapel Hill, NC: Institute for Southern Studies, 1982. Common Knowledge. Duke Univ. Press. Holdings: vol. 14, no. 1 (Winter 2008). Contains: "Elizabeth Fox-Genovese: First and Lasting Impressions" by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. Confederate Veteran Magazine. Harrisburg, PA: National Historical Society. Holdings: vol. 1, 1893 only. Continuity: A Journal of History. (1980-2003). Holdings: Number Nine, Fall, 1984, "Recovering Southern History." DeBow's Review and Industrial Resources, Statistics, etc. (1853-1864). Holdings: Volume 26 (1859), 28 (1860). Both volumes: Front flyleaf: Notes OK Both volumes badly water damaged, replace. Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists. Nashville: Broadman Press, 1958. Volumes 1 through 4: Front flyleaf: Notes OK Volume 2 Text block: scattered markings. Entrepasados: Revista De Historia. (1991-2012). 1 Holdings: number 8. Includes:"Entrevista a Eugene Genovese." Explorations in Economic History. (1969). Holdings: Vol. 4, no. 5 (October 1975). Contains three articles on slavery: Richard Sutch, "The Treatment Received by American Slaves: A Critical Review of the Evidence Presented in Time on the Cross"; Gavin Wright, "Slavery and the Cotton Boom"; and Richard K. Vedder, "The Slave Exploitation (Expropriation) Rate." Text block: scattered markings. Explorations in Economic History. Academic Press. Holdings: vol. 13, no. 1 (January 1976). Five Black Lives; the Autobiographies of Venture Smith, James Mars, William Grimes, the Rev. G.W. Offley, [and] James L. Smith. Documents of Black Connecticut; Variation: Documents of Black Connecticut. 1st ed. ed. Middletown: Conn., Wesleyan University Press, 1971. Badly water damaged, replace.
  • The Long American Revolution: Black Abolitionists and Their

    The Long American Revolution: Black Abolitionists and Their

    Gordon S. Barker. Fugitive Slaves and the Unfinished American Revolution: Eight Cases, 1848-1856. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2013. 232 pp. $45.00, paper, ISBN 978-0-7864-6987-1. Reviewed by Emily Margolis Published on H-Law (January, 2014) Commissioned by Craig Scott U.S. historians tend to mark the end of the their Revolution was the war against slavery and American Revolution as George Bancroft did, in their quest was to create a “more perfect union.” the early 1780s when military action with the Therefore, he claims their Revolution ended--at British ceased (upon either the surrender of Corn‐ the very earliest date--with the ratification of the wallis at Yorktown in 1781 or the Treaty of Paris Thirteenth Amendment. in 1783). As Gordon Barker rightly points out, in Using black and white abolitionist lectures, the 1980s, American and Atlantic social historians correspondence, annual reports, newspapers, di‐ began to produce a new body of scholarship that aries, and memoirs, as well as Northern and challenged this periodization as they found ordi‐ Southern newspapers, fugitive slave trials, and nary men, women, and African Americans em‐ lawyers’ papers, Barker employs a sociopolitical ploying the principles of the Declaration of Inde‐ approach to illustrate African Americans’ contin‐ pendence in their battle to gain freedom from dif‐ ued battle against the tyranny of slavery. To show ferent types of tyranny long after the end of the their continued Revolution, he centers his book eighteenth century. In fact, some argue that the on the late 1840s and 1850s and chronicles eight battle, for these groups, continues today.
  • Guide to a Microfilm Edition of the Alexander Ramsey Papers and Records

    Guide to a Microfilm Edition of the Alexander Ramsey Papers and Records

    -~-----', Guide to a Microfilm Edition of The Alexander Ramsey Papers and Records Helen McCann White Minnesota Historical Society . St. Paul . 1974 -------~-~~~~----~! Copyright. 1974 @by the Minnesota Historical Society Library of Congress Catalog Number:74-10395 International Standard Book Number:O-87351-091-7 This pamphlet and the microfilm edition of the Alexander Ramsey Papers and Records which it describes were made possible by a grant of funds from the National Historical Publications Commission to the Minnesota Historical Society. Introduction THE PAPERS AND OFFICIAL RECORDS of Alexander Ramsey are the sixth collection to be microfilmed by the Minnesota Historical Society under a grant of funds from the National Historical Publications Commission. They document the career of a man who may be charac­ terized as a 19th-century urban pioneer par excellence. Ramsey arrived in May, 1849, at the raw settlement of St. Paul in Minne­ sota Territory to assume his duties as its first territorial gov­ ernor. The 33-year-old Pennsylvanian took to the frontier his family, his education, and his political experience and built a good life there. Before he went to Minnesota, Ramsey had attended college for a time, taught school, studied law, and practiced his profession off and on for ten years. His political skills had been acquired in the Pennsylvania legislature and in the U.S. Congress, where he developed a subtlety and sophistication in politics that he used to lead the development of his adopted city and state. Ram­ sey1s papers and records reveal him as a down-to-earth, no-non­ sense man, serving with dignity throughout his career in the U.S.
  • Less Than 100 Miles North of the Mason-Dixon Line, Pittsburgh's

    Less Than 100 Miles North of the Mason-Dixon Line, Pittsburgh's

    By Fidel M. Campet ess than 100 miles north of the Mason-Dixon line, Pittsburgh’s location at the head of the LOhio River and its proximity to Southern border states placed it in a strategic position for a burgeoning black freedom movement. While this movement was constrained and facilitated by larger developments, black activists in the region established organizations, formed strategies to challenge the slave system, and built a community in the process. In part, these efforts were influenced by black elite leaders and their sympathetic white allies. Writing in 1833, community leader Lewis Woodson argued that “our forefathers were brought up in abject bondage…and were deprived of every means of moral improvement. In this condition, they were liberated.”1 However, their efforts also relied on everyday black men who participated in the movement in myriad ways and who are rarely mentioned in the historical record.2 Though they left few written materials, black workers built on a legacy of community development and struggle in Pittsburgh to maintain their citizenship rights in the 1830s when hostile forces sought to disfranchise them.3 An analysis of what records are left enhances the understanding of the Northern black freedom movement by expanding the number of actors, from community leaders to everyday people, who sought to preserve the voting rights of black men during the early 19th century.4 34 WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY | WINTER 2012-13 From the late 18th century to the early decades and built community institutions. From the rebounded to 2,006 by 1870. While the 1850s of the 19th century, a number of forces shaped colonial period into the Revolutionary years, marked a period of decline both numerically the development of Pittsburgh.
  • Black Abolitionists Used the Terms “African,” “Colored,” Commanding Officer Benjamin F

    Black Abolitionists Used the Terms “African,” “Colored,” Commanding Officer Benjamin F

    $2 SUGGESTED DONATION The initiative of black presented to the provincial legislature by enslaved WHAT’S IN A NAME? Black people transformed a war men across greater Boston. Finally, in the early 1780s, Elizabeth “Mumbet” Freeman (Image 1) to restore the Union into of Sheffield and Quock Walker of Framingham Throughout American history, people Abolitionists a movement for liberty prevailed in court. Although a handful of people of African descent have demanded and citizenship for all. of color in the Bay State still remained in bondage, the right to define their racial identity (1700s–1800s) slavery was on its way to extinction. Massachusetts through terms that reflect their In May 1861, three enslaved black men sought reported no slaves in the first census in 1790. proud and complex history. African refuge at Union-controlled Fort Monroe, Virginia. Americans across greater Boston Rather than return the fugitives to the enemy, Throughout the early Republic, black abolitionists used the terms “African,” “colored,” Commanding Officer Benjamin F. Butler claimed pushed the limits of white antislavery activists and “negro” to define themselves the men as “contrabands of war” and put them to who advocated the colonization of people of color. before emancipation, while African work as scouts and laborers. Soon hundreds of In 1816, a group of whites organized the American Americans in the early 1900s used black men, women, and children were streaming Colonization Society (ACS) for the purpose of into the Union stronghold. Congress authorized emancipating slaves and resettling freedmen and the terms “black,” “colored,” “negro,” the confiscation of Confederate property, freedwomen in a white-run colony in West Africa.
  • Afua Cooper, "Ever True to the Cause of Freedom – Henry Bibb

    Afua Cooper, "Ever True to the Cause of Freedom – Henry Bibb

    Ever True to the Cause of Freedom Henry Bibb: Abolitionist and Black Freedom’s Champion, 1814-1854 Afua Cooper Black abolitionists in North America, through their activism, had a two-fold objective: end American slavery and eradicate racial prejudice, and in so doing promote race uplift and Black progress. To achieve their aims, they engaged in a host of pursuits that included lecturing, fund-raising, newspaper publishing, writing slave narratives, engaging in Underground Railroad activities, and convincing the uninitiated to do their part for the antislavery movement. A host of Black abolitionists, many of whom had substantial organizational experience in the United States, moved to Canada in the three decades stretching from 1830 to 1860. Among these were such activists as Henry Bibb, Mary Bibb, Martin Delany, Theodore Holly, Josiah Henson, Mary Ann Shadd, Samuel Ringgold Ward, J.C. Brown and Amelia Freeman. Some like Henry Bibb were escaped fugitive slaves, others like J.C. Brown had bought themselves out of slavery. Some like Amelia Freeman and Theodore Holly were free-born Blacks. None has had a more tragic past however than Henry Bibb. Yet he would come to be one of the 19th century’s foremost abolitionists. At the peak of his career, Bibb migrated to Canada and made what was perhaps his greatest contribution to the antislavery movement: the establishment of the Black press in Canada. This discussion will explore Bibb’s many contributions to the Black freedom movement but will provide a special focus on his work as a newspaper founder and publisher. Henry Bibb was born in slavery in Kentucky around 1814.1 Like so many other African American slaves, Bibb’s parentage was biracial.