Flee north, p.34
Flee North, page 34
part of an effort “to make us miserable here”: Bettye J. Gardner, “Opposition to Emigration, a Selected Letter of William Watkins (The Colored Baltimorean),” The Journal of Negro History, Summer 1982, pp. 155–58.
An 1839 notice in The Baltimore Clipper: The Baltimore Clipper, Nov. 12, 1839.
In 1840, the brig Porpoise sailed: The Baltimore Sun, Apr. 14, 1840.
Jacob R. Gibbs worked as a housepainter and whitewasher: See Matchett’s Baltimore Directory for 1833 and 1842 under “Gibbs, Jacob.”
he sent three letters to acquaintances: The Baltimore Sun, Aug. 20, 1840.
Gibbs had taken the trouble to apply: On the significance of the travel permits, see Jones, Birthright Citizens, p. 61.
Gibbs was back in Baltimore by December 1840: Baltimore, Maryland, U.S., Passenger Lists, 1820–1964, Oct.–Dec. 1840, p. 583, via Ancestry.com.
“A vicious circle developed as slaveholders sold slaves south”: Stanley Harrold, Border War: Fighting over Slavery Before the Civil War, 2010, p. 10.
“The fear of being sold South had more influence”: Benjamin Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery, 1856, p. 29.
For George Ross, who fled Hagerstown in western Maryland: John W. Blassingame, ed., Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies, 1977, p. 405.
6. Safe from the Fangs of Robert Gilmor
“The birth of her first child”: Tocsin of Liberty, Dec. 22, 1842.
At sixty-eight, Robert Gilmor Jr. was one of Baltimore’s wealthiest: Some sources confuse two different Robert Gilmors of greater Baltimore, an uncle and his nephew, both at times called Robert Gilmor II or Jr. The enslaver of Elizabeth Castle was Robert Gilmor II (1774–1848), a merchant and wine importer who lived on Water Street near the harbor. He was a son of the original Robert Gilmor, 1748–1822, a Scottish immigrant who founded the family firm. With another son of the founder, William, he took over the business, which was then called Robert Gilmor & Sons. The confusion comes because William’s son was another Robert (1808–75), the nephew of the enslaver of Elizabeth Castle. He lived north of Baltimore and was noted locally for building a gothic castle that he named Glen Ellen in honor of his wife.
he was worth an estimated $600,000: Janine M. Yorimoto, “‘To Draw Pleasure and Instruction’: Robert Gilmor Jr. and Collecting the Early Republic,” master’s thesis, William & Mary, 2013, p. 16, available through the college website. The thesis has extensive information on Gilmor’s collections.
He caused a sensation: Baltimore American and Commercial Daily Advertiser, Jan. 10, 1840.
“a merchant whose books are without a blot”: Baltimore American and Commercial Daily Advertiser, May 20, 1843.
“This of course renders negroes valuable”: Robert Gilmor, Journal of Southern Travel, 1806–7, https://digital.library.sc.edu/collections/robert-gilmor-travel-account-1806-1807/.
Robert Gilmor’s mansion on Water Street: Matchett’s Baltimore Directory, 1831, entry for “Gilmor, Robert.”
Jacob Gibbs, the housepainter: See Smallwood, Narrative, references to “Friend G.,” pp. 28, 30, 31, 40, 41. Gibbs later moved to New York City, where he was known for assisting people fleeing slavery.
Torrey had traveled to Albany in April 1842: C. S. Brown, Memoir of Rev. Abel Brown by His Companion, 1849, p. 151. This memoir, compiled by Abel Brown’s widow, Catharine S. Brown, after his death, is the main source for the details of Brown’s life that follow. A very useful edition of the memoir, with notes and index, was published in 2006 by one of the most prolific chroniclers of the underground railroad in New York, Tom Calarco.
“Please also inform Robert Gilmore, of Baltimore”: Tocsin of Liberty, June 15, 1842. The name was regularly misspelled Gilmore, with a final e.
The story of the Douglass brothers: This account of the Douglass brothers’ escape from slavery comes from Seth Gates’s Dec. 5, 1848, letter to Joshua Giddings, at the Ohio History Connection archive in Columbus, Ohio; Thomas Smallwood’s “Sam Weller” letter in Tocsin of Liberty, Dec. 1, 1842, and “Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Albany Vigilance Committee,” Abel Brown, secretary, Tocsin of Liberty, Dec. 22, 1842.
“He went to Smallwood of the Navy Yard”: Seth M. Gates to Joshua R. Giddings, Dec. 5, 1848, collection of the Ohio History Connection, Columbus, Ohio. The quotations in the following two paragraphs are from the same letter.
The “boarders at Mrs. Sprigg’s”: Tocsin of Liberty, Dec. 1, 1842.
the city’s 10 p.m. curfew for African Americans: This curfew was imposed in 1831. See “An Act Relating to Free Negroes and Slaves,” Laws of Maryland Online, vol. 141, p. 1068, Maryland State Archives, available at https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000141/html/am141--1068.html.
“we had two places of deposit”: Smallwood, Narrative, p. 20.
Smallwood and Gibbs had recruited a woman named Turner: Smallwood, Narrative, p. 41.
“our passengers generally travelled in two nights”: Smallwood, Narrative, p. 20.
he was born in Massachusetts three years before Torrey: Again, the details of Abel Brown’s life are from Brown, Memoir of Rev. Abel Brown.
“living, burning eloquence”: Albany Weekly Patriot, March 16, 1843.
“I would be greatly annoyed when with great danger”: Smallwood, Narrative, pp. 43–44.
“taking an undue amount of money from them”: Smallwood, Narrative, p. 20.
Elizabeth Castle, the seamstress, made it safely to Canada: See Abel Brown’s letter dated Nov. 20, 1842, in Tocsin of Liberty, Dec. 15, 1842, and the report on Castle and her companions in Tocsin of Liberty, Dec. 22, 1842.
Smallwood later claimed that between March and November: Tocsin of Liberty, Dec. 8, 1842. Writing with his usual pen name of Sam Weller, in a dispatch dated November 19, Smallwood said that “since March last” Washington had lost enslaved people worth $75,000 at $500 apiece, or 150.
Abel Brown had stated in a public talk: Tocsin of Liberty, Aug. 17, 1842.
Hope Slatter shipped some 208 people south: This total comes from adding the number of enslaved people listed on each of the official manifests Slatter filed for the four shiploads he sent south in 1842. See “Slave Ship Manifests filed at New Orleans, 1807–1860,” preserved by the National Archives and also available via Ancestry.com.
By October, he had settled in Albany: E. Fuller Torrey, Charles Torrey’s biographer, concludes that Charles Torrey moved from Washington to Albany in October (Martyrdom, p. 104). But he had actually left Washington in August, when he led a large number of people as far as Troy, New York, as recounted in this book’s prologue, and he almost certainly did not return south afterward. Torrey’s note to Smallwood said that he was leaving Troy for Lynn, Massachusetts, an abolitionist hotbed where young Frederick Douglass had recently moved. And he almost certainly would have continued on from Lynn to Medway, Massachusetts, about fifty miles away, where his wife and children were living with her parents. On September 12, he was in Hudson, New York, where he filed a piece on a Supreme Court case for Tocsin of Liberty’s September 21 issue. So it seems that Torrey never returned to Washington before starting work in Albany, where he was first listed as editor in the Oct. 19, 1842, issue of Tocsin of Liberty.
7. The Laughingstock Letters
“It was your cruelty to him that made him disappear”: Tocsin of Liberty, Aug. 10, 1842.
the first time anyone had used the term “underground railroad” in print: Two oft-repeated claims for the origin of the term “underground railroad” place it in 1831 or 1839. In 1831, the story goes, a Kentucky slaveholder, baffled by the flight of a man he enslaved (sometimes named as Tice Davids), exclaimed that he must have escaped by a “railroad under the ground” or a “road under the ground.” But the claim seems to date to William M. Mitchell’s 1860 book, The Underground Railroad, published nearly three decades later, and appears to be folklore, with details varying in every retelling. In 1839, according to a competing story, an article in a Washington, D.C., newspaper described an enslaved man captured trying to flee who, under torture, confessed that people were escaping by an underground railroad stretching all the way to Boston. But the story seems to come from Eber Pettit’s 1879 book, Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad, where Pettit recounts the supposed forty-year-old article “as close as I can from memory.” So it appears to be a reconstruction of a newspaper account recalled from decades earlier, and newspaper databases include no article from 1839 resembling Pettit’s account. I searched for “underground railroad” (and variants such as “under ground rail road”) in two large newspaper archives including hundreds of nineteenth-century American publications, Newspapers.com and GenealogyBank.com. In the GenealogyBank.com collection, the phrase first appeared in The Evening Post of New York City on Sept. 23, 1842: the article in question was a reprint of a Tocsin of Liberty article published on Sept. 21, 1842. In Newspapers.com, the first use of the phrase was in a reprint of the same Tocsin article in a Vermont newspaper, Vermont Telegraph, Oct. 5, 1842. In GenealogyBank.com, the phrase without spaces, “underground railroad,” appears 51,870 times; the first nine uses are all reprints from the Tocsin of Liberty and Albany Weekly Patriot. In Newspapers.com, the phrase appears 237,666 times; the first two uses, and the only two before 1844, are clips from the Tocsin. All evidence suggests that the metaphor originated in the Chesapeake region in 1842, perhaps in a frustrated outburst from John Zell, as Smallwood wrote. Smallwood clearly introduced the phrase to readers and popularized its use, and it came into widespread use in newspapers over the next year or so as shorthand for escapes from slavery, especially organized escapes with the help of sympathizers. I am grateful to historian Richard Bell of the University of Maryland for sharing his research on the early uses of “underground railroad.”
Smallwood credited John Zell: “That name was given to it by constable ZELL of Baltimore,” Smallwood (writing as “Sam Weller”) wrote in the Nov. 3, 1842, issue of the Tocsin of Liberty.
an Alexandria newspaper that year advertised a twenty-five-cent pamphlet: The Alexandria Gazette, June 6, 1842.
“I hope he won’t take any offense at my bluntness!”: Tocsin of Liberty, Aug. 24, 1842.
“to apply at the office of the underground railroad”: Tocsin of Liberty, Nov. 3, 1842.
“Here am I, Samuel Weller, jun., still in the city”: Tocsin of Liberty, Nov. 3, 1842.
“Sam invented and constructed the ‘underground railroad’”: Tocsin of Liberty, Oct. 12, 1842.
Joshua Giddings, the Ohio congressman: Letter from Joshua Giddings to his son, Joseph Addison Giddings, dated Aug. 13, 1842; original at the Ohio History Connection archives in Columbus, Ohio.
how the “walking property walked off”: Tocsin of Liberty, Aug. 24, 1842.
“The poor manstealers and their watchdogs”: Tocsin of Liberty, Nov. 3, 1842.
soon became a publishing phenomenon: Nina Martyris, “The Sam Weller Bump,” The Paris Review, Apr. 14, 2015, https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/04/14/the-sam-weller-bump/.
“You never heard how I learned Latin, did you?”: Albany Weekly Patriot, Apr. 27, 1843.
President John Tyler (a slaveholder, like twelve of the first eighteen presidents): The slaveholding dozen were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Andrew Johnson, and Ulysses S. Grant. See Evan Andrews, “How Many U.S. Presidents Owned Enslaved People?,” History.com, July 19, 2017, https://www.history.com/news/how-many-u-s-presidents-owned-slaves.
“the fifteen hundred or two thousand people present”: The Georgetown Advocate, March 26, 1842.
Tocsin of Liberty, which would merge: Torrey, whose job as the top editor did not change, explained in the first issue of the Albany Weekly Patriot, dated January 19, 1843, that the name change was prompted by the Tocsin’s merger with another paper, The American Citizen, and a desire not to have to choose between Tocsin and Citizen in naming the combined paper.
would no long carry ads for “quack medicines”: Albany Weekly Patriot, Jan. 26, 1843.
“Your Editor and Printers can’t work without prompt payment”: Albany Weekly Patriot, Feb. 9, 1843.
An abject apology under the heading “Sam Weller”: Tocsin of Liberty, Aug. 17, 1842.
“you soft headed man-thief”: Tocsin of Liberty, July 27, 1842.
he had noted that an enslaved boy named Henry Clay: Tocsin of Liberty, Aug. 10, 1842.
“Don’t fail to read what SAM says”: Tocsin of Liberty, Dec. 15, 1842. The phrase “a liberty paper” refers to a newspaper that supports the Liberty Party.
“‘Sir,’ said an old man, to one of the publishers”: Tocsin of Liberty, Dec. 15, 1842.
Peter Matthews, a twenty-seven-year-old man: The escape of Peter Matthews (and Sophy Jackson) is discussed by Smallwood in two Sam Weller letters, published Sept. 7 and Nov. 3, 1842.
When Martha Lee fled Zaccheus Collins Lee: Tocsin of Liberty, Aug. 24, 1842.
“Besides, a shrewd slave has wit enough at any time”: Tocsin of Liberty, Nov. 3, 1842.
“The great blockheads cannot yet account”: Tocsin of Liberty, Aug. 24, 1842.
When “John, who calls himself John More”: Albany Weekly Patriot, Apr. 27, 1843.
“There’s a peck of trouble among the Patriarchs”: Tocsin of Liberty, Nov. 3, 1842.
“I have now five males and one female”: Tocsin of Liberty, Nov. 3, 1842.
“Mr. James Maher, the public gardener”: Tocsin of Liberty, Nov. 3, 1842. Smallwood later referred to Maher, though not by name, in his 1851 memoir: “One of his slaves I had the pleasure to deprive him of and she is now in this city,” a reference to Toronto (Smallwood, Narrative, p. 47).
The Georgetown Advocate, took “Sam Weller” to task: Albany Weekly Patriot, May 18, 1843.
“Lawrence Paine begs leave to say to Esq. Fendall”: Tocsin of Liberty, Dec. 1, 1842.
“How many times I’ve heard him boast”: Tocsin of Liberty, Nov. 3, 1842.
“Recently, Dr. Wm. H. Gunnell received a copy”: Tocsin of Liberty, Dec. 15, 1842.
When a butcher named Philip Otterback: Tocsin of Liberty, Nov. 3, 1842.
When the ten-year-old boy named Henry Clay: Tocsin of Liberty, Aug. 10, 1842.
Smallwood would write that the sexual exploitation: Smallwood, Narrative, pp. 58–59.
he printed a report of a talk by Lewis Clark: Tocsin of Liberty, Nov. 3, 1842.
“I have never approved of the very public manner”: Douglass, Narrative, p. 101.
“Those letters were a great annoyance”: Smallwood, Narrative, pp. 60–61.
“Samivel Weller wishes to say to the Friend of Man”: Tocsin of Liberty, July 27, 1842.
threatening Charles Torrey with “beating”: Tocsin of Liberty, Sept. 7, 1842.
In Albany, a letter arrived from Baltimore: Albany Weekly Patriot, June 22, 1843.
Smallwood wrote, the aggrieved slaveholders: Smallwood, Narrative, p. 24.
offered a bounty for three of the people: Albany Weekly Patriot, April 27, 1843.
8. That Vile Wretch Slatter
A February 1842 report for the Tocsin of Liberty: Tocsin of Liberty, Feb. 23, 1842.
Torrey called Slatter “the great slave trader of Baltimore”: Tocsin of Liberty, Nov. 3, 1842.
telling a friend that Slatter resembled Judas Iscariot: Bangor Daily Whig & Courier, Aug. 22, 1855.
“His pride is that he always requires and gives ‘good titles’”: Tocsin of Liberty, Nov. 3, 1842.
Bowditch, roundly attacked “this vile wretch Slatter”: The Liberator, Feb. 24, 1843.
“The great Negro thief, Hope H. Slatter”: Albany Weekly Patriot, Apr. 27, 1843.
“Such occurrences are by no means unusual here”: Torrey letter to J. W. Alden, Nov. 21, 1844, reprinted in Lovejoy, Memoir, p. 166.
“TO THE FEELING AND HUMANE COMMUNITY”: Ad in The Sun, Nov. 12, 1842.
Richard Bradford’s choir: Ad in The Sun, Feb. 22, 1843.
Slatter used a horse-drawn omnibus: National Anti-Slavery Standard, Jan. 28, 1847.
In 1937, Baltimore utility workers digging: The Baltimore Evening Sun, Sept. 18, 1937.
Rezin Williams, interviewed in Baltimore: Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936 to 1938, vol. 8, Maryland, pp. 9–10 (also marked pp. 76–77 in the volume), available via the Library of Congress.
the Runaway Docket of the Baltimore City Jail: Baltimore City and County Jail (Runaway Docket), 1836–1850, Maryland State Archives.
A Philadelphia abolitionist visiting in 1843: S.D.H., “Visit to a Slave Prison,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, Nov. 16, 1843.
An unsympathetic northerner who toured Slatter’s jail: Green-Mountain Freeman, June 28, 1844.
he won a bet on the 1840 Pennsylvania governor’s race: The Sun, Mar. 2, 1840.
When the mangled body of a man Slatter enslaved: The Baltimore Clipper, Sept. 8, 1840.
Slatter got a little public notice when he bought the Repository: The Sun, Nov. 13, 1841.
Slatter’s “establishment,” in The Sun’s polite locution: The Sun, June 4, 1842.
he advertised for “a genteel female of middle age”: Baltimore American and Commercial Daily Advertiser, Nov. 24, 1842.
In the spring of 1844, a front wheel of his carriage: The Sun, May 11, 1844.
he was spotted assaulting a Black woman: The Baltimore Clipper, Oct. 27, 1840.
Charles Stafford was enslaved in Delaware: The Baltimore Clipper, July 11, 1840.
a young woman named Charlotte Jane Strother was sold to Slatter: The Strother case (sometimes spelled Strowther) got extensive coverage, notably in two articles in The Baltimore Saturday Visiter, Apr. 13 and 20, 1844. See also The Sun, Oct. 28, 1843, and Mar. 16, 1844; Christian Reflector, Nov. 15, 1843; and National Anti-Slavery Standard, Nov. 16, 1843.
She was described in one story as “an exceedingly bright mulatto”: Christian Reflector, Nov. 15, 1843.
