Serenity… an expedition

The problem with reading about historical events that you may or may not have had a previous interest in is – is the more you read, the more you realize how much you don’t know. And need or want to learn.

Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America by Fergus M. Bordewich

Already I have been leafing through the extensive bibliography in this book, Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America, by Fergus M. Bordewich, in order to see what’s going to be somewhere next on my list.  A never ending learning process (thank goodness).

Anyway, this isn’t a review, it’s more part of the research I am doing in preparation for writing my own book.  I don’t have the knowledge to review it, really, anyway.  I mean, I can say that the writing is engaging and holds my interest – although I am having a little trouble following some of the events and timelines, as he dovetails a lot – and that it is informative and all that. And it is. However, as it’s the first book I’ve read on this subject (amazing, huh?), I am not in a position to compare the information to anything beyond the Black History Month celebrations of Harriet Tubman. Whose life and contributions, it turns out, is only part of a vast, rich story, peopled with heroes and villians big and small, Black and white, that spanned almost a century (not, in the beginning, called the “underground railroad”, of course, as railroads themselves hadn’t been invented at the time). This in no way subtracts from her accomplishments, by the way, just brings others who have been forgotten to the fore a bit.

Also, I haven’t finished the book, another reason this isn’t a review. More of a page in a notebook where I plan to, in this and subsequent posts, jot my (mostly disconnected) thoughts down about different sections and events that I want to keep handy. As I can’t mark up the book itself (it belongs to the library and they don’t take kindly to that type of stuff), where I can I’ll just link to the place or at least the chapter or page in the Google books version. Which is limited preview, so there are parts where that won’t work, but still.

One thing impressed upon me while reading this book is the fact that almost nowhere in the US was safe for black people, free or slave. At any time, in almost any place, they could be snatched up and either returned back to wherever they had escaped from, or be stolen from their lives as free persons and sold into slavery. In fact, in some cases it was safer to travel as a slave with papers than as a free person, because while kidnapping, assault, rape,  and forcible captivity of a free Black person (even small children) was perfectly fine – to do the same to one claimed by another was theft – and greatly frowned upon.

For instance, New York, in the 1800′s, depended on the South for it’s prosperity as the city was part of what was called the Cotton Triangle. Not only did the trade in cotton and other goods to and from the South, moving through the NY ports, make some New Yorkers rich, the city was also host to second homes for many wealthy Southerners. New York law allowed them to maintain their households, slaves included (even though slavery itself was illegal in NY) for up to nine months, but no one bothered them if they stayed longer.

At the same time, NY state’s constitution “unfairly applied property qualifications to disqualify all but a handful of black voters. African Americans were almost completely excluded from colleges and public schools, and segregated in theaters, eating places, and accomodations.”

For all that getting to “the North” was the goal of many escapees, in some areas life was not very much better. New York was one of them. The city itself was virulently racist and the authorities were friendly to slavery – professional slave hunters, city constables, local lawyers and more comprised an informal ring that the abolitionists dubbed the “New York Kidnapping Club”.

One of the most poignant passages for me is this:

“It was not an uncommon sight for recaptured slaves to be seen being marched down Broadway in chains to a waiting steamer bound for the South. Seven-year-old Henry Scott, for instance, was physically snatched from his classroom by a city policeman and a Virginia planter who claimed him as his slave.”

I’ve been to NYC and if I ever get back there I’ll never look at Broadway the same way again.

Also, I can’t help but apply the imagery to events in the present day, with the ICE raids of past years and the rounding up of Latinos as “illegal immigrants”, the tearing apart of families, the incarceration of children and more atrocities besides. It’s not, of course, exactly the same but it requires, I believe, the same sort of um… beliefs and attitudes regarding the humanity (or lack of it) of another person.

I need to get to other parts of the book and other notes, but it will have to wait for another day.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 27th, 2009 at 9:30 am and is filed under bone of my bone, bound for canann, index card, research, telling our stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.