Anthem for Doomed Youth

Wilfred Owen wrote this poem for the soldiers of World War I. It serves just as well for the fallen of the Civil War.

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?


Only the monstrous anger of the guns,

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle


Can patter out their hasty orisons.


No mockeries now for them, no prayers nor bells,


Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells


And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?


Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes


Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.


The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;


Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,


And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Because He is a Man

The below essay was written in 1858. The writer believed that slavery should be abolished but that Negroes were inferior and, therefore, should serve and obey the White race. I wonder how many Americans still believe this, even subliminally? And does it become a self-fulfilling prophesy?

"A slave is not property, because he is a man. A man cannot be the subject of property, though his labor may. He is not a thing. Even in the lowest forms of humanity, he has intellect, passions, sentiments, conscience, which establish his brotherhood with all men, which establish the theoretic equality of man as man, and separate him from the lower animals and material things. To man, to the race of men, the earth was given as an inheritance. Whatever he can make, or modify, or add value to is property.

"But man was not given to man to possess. He is not a product of industry, but himself a producer. It is a proposition so plain, it is difficult to make plainer by argument. Its truth is self-evident. No man can imagine himself to be property. Every instinct and impulse of his nature revolt at the idea. But the idea of subjection to a superior nature, of obedience and service in return for protection and care, of looking up to another for guidance and direction, is natural; it arises at once from inequality of intellectual force, and pervades, in a greater or less degree, all the relations of life.

"[Although the Negro is inferior] what degree of inferiority confers the right to own a man? The Indians are an inferior race. Are they property? The Irish are inferior to the Anglo-Saxon. Is he property? What would be thought of any State that should declare him a chattel? Is the Negro the only race who can be the subject of property? With his capacity for improvement, his courage, his warm feelings, is he so low in the scale of being that he cannot be recognized as a man, but must be regarded as one of the lower animals?"

 

Uncle Tom's Cabin - Part I

   

For the next several blogs I will quote portions of a 24-page review (yes, 24 pages!) of Uncle Tom's Cabin: The Possible Amelioration of Slavery which was published in The North American Review in 1853. Besides its length and sharply critical review of the book, it is an amazing political diatribe about slavery and “abolition parties”, some of it considerate of beliefs and opinions we hold today, some of it completely unacceptable in light of the emancipation of slaves, the Civil War, and all that has happened since. It’s fascinating to read what a man of the times had to say about Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the sensibilities of his day. Today’s blog is the opening of the review and the author’s comments on the Eva and Tom characters.

The enthusiastic reception of Mrs. Stowe’s novel is the result of various causes. One is the merit of the book itself. It is, unquestionably, a work of genius. It has defects of conception and style, exhibits a want of artistic skill, is often tame and inadequate in description, and is tinctured with methodistic cant; but, with all its blemishes, thought, imagination, feeling, high moral and religious sentiment, and dramatic power shine in every page. It has the capital excellence of exciting the interest of the reader; this never stops or falters from the beginning to the end. The characters are drawn with spirit and truth.

[The author then describes what he thinks of each of the main characters ending with Eva and Tom.] Eva and Tom are dreams; the one is a saint, the other an angel. But dreams are founded on realities, and we are all such stuff as dreams are made of. These characters are both exaggerated; but to color and idealize is the privilege of romance, provided the picture does not overstep the modesty of nature or contradict nature. There are no Evas or Uncle Toms, but there are some who possess, in a lower degree, their respective virtues.

North American African-American Communities in the 19th Century

Surviving original home at Elgin Settlement

There were many African-American communities in the United States, a particularly successful one in Michigan. The richest man in town built a mansion on the lake. But the most famous North American black enclave in the 19^th century was the nine-thousand-acre Elgin Settlement in Kent County, Ontario, Canada, not far from Detroit. 

In the 1800's Kent County became known as a place of refuge for fugitive slaves who escaped from the South, but it enticed both free blacks and slaves to settle along the Thames River. The land was rich in natural resources and far enough away from the border that it was relatively safe from slave hunters.

The people of the Elgin Settlement swore off liquor, soaked up Greek and Latin, planted flower gardens, and made their own tools. The settlers raised corn, wheat, tobacco, hemp, maple sugar, cows, sheep and hogs and had black walnut orchards. They put up picket fences and built homes with at least four rooms set 30 feet back from the road. They had a school, a sawmill, brickyard, rope factory, and gristmill. There were grocery stores, churches, a meat market and a tiny candy store. 

Anti-slavery lectures and other meetings took place in the grocery stores, which were the “humping, pulsing, laughing, story-sharing, neighbor-helping” heart of the town. After dark, people sat on the porch and told stories about the old times in the South and the family members they’d lost. The Elgin Settlement was quoted as being called “the coloured man's Paris”.

Rev. William King of Louisiana is credited with establishing the Kent County community that included the Elgin Settlement. He had moved from Ireland to Louisiana as a young man and married into a family that owned slaves. King did not believe in slavery, but he could not free his slaves in Louisiana, so he traveled to Canada and bought a large tract of land on which to start a settlement. Despite government objections, he pursued his goal to create a Utopian community where blacks and whites would be treated equally.

Although the black settlers in Elgin knew they might be captured and returned to slavery, when the Civil War started, many black men from the Settlement went to fight.  Several of the black officers who fought in the war were from the Settlement. After the war some of the black settlers returned to the U.S to find lost family and to help with reconstruction. But many stayed in Canada and continued to contribute to the area’s wealth.

Woman Soldier and Spy

Emma Edmonds disguised herself as a man at the outbreak of the Civil War and enlisted in the Union army under the name Frank Thompson. While stationed in Virginia at the beginning of the Peninsular campaign, Edmonds volunteered for a mission inside Rebel lines at Yorktown.

Edmonds decided to infiltrate Rebel lines disguised as a black man. She bought clothing from a fugitive slave, obtained a wig "of real negro wool", and colored her head, hands, and arms with silver nitrate. She slipped past Rebel pickets at night and the next morning joined slaves who were returning to Yorktown after taking breakfast to the pickets. At Yorktown Edmonds and the slaves were put to work with picks and shovels on fortifications. After a day of hard labor, Edmonds recorded that her hands were "blistered from my wrists to the finger ends."

That evening, Edmonds talked one of the slaves into exchanging duties with her. For the next two days she carried buckets of water around the camp, a job that enabled her to gather intelligence about the fortification and its armament.

The evening of her third day inside Rebel lines, Edmonds was sent with her group of slaves to carry supper to the picket lines, where she was surprised to find that some of the pickets were black men. Edmonds reported that as she was talking to one of the black pickets, an officer came up, gave her a gun, and ordered her to take the place of a picket who had recently been shot. Taking advantage of her position, she slipped away during the night and returned to the Yankee lines with the captured weapon and information about Confederate fortifications.

"Irregulars" in the Civil War

The below two paragraphs are from my novel, The Silence of Sorrowful Hours. They explain a little bit about how "irregulars" operated during the Civil War.

Captain Henderson heard about the arms and dynamite near Carpentersville through an intricate system of communication. Irregulars kept track of troop and supply movements by intercepting telegraph transmissions and interviewing sutlers who moved easily among the armies of the North and South. Sympathizers in the Border States passed along conversations overheard in the fields, at campfires, in general stores, and at church. Irregulars spread information about troop movements, supply shipments, and firepower by opening or closing window shades or hanging wash on the line on one day and not another.

The Confederate Army used slaves to serve them in their camps and those slaves had no interest in helping the Southern cause. Slaves who worked in government buildings and the homes of politicians and Confederate officers sometimes had access to maps and secret documents. Slaves served refreshments during military planning sessions. With the valuable information they provided, the Union Army avoided disasters and created havoc.

My next blog post will be about an actual young woman who posed as a man to join the Union infantry. On one of her spying missions for the Army, she used silver nitrate to darken her skin and infiltrated a Confederate camp posing as a slave in order to glean information about their troop movement plans.

Slaves on a Cotton Farm

From Africa to Georgia

This post is an excerpt from The Silence of Sorrowful Hours.

Ethan’s grandmother Sukey was brought to Amer­ica from West Africa in 1781. She had a black earth complexion and round features, and the auctioneer de­scribed her as “good-looking enough” and an “ordinary size”. When she arrived in Savannah, she was thirty pounds lighter than when she left her home. Sukey never regained the weight, and she never recovered from the grief and rage she breathed in when she was sold from the auction block along with kegs of brandy, bales of cotton, and furniture. 

Master James Cartwell, the owner of a cotton plantation thirty miles west of the port, had his foreman take her from the market along with twelve other Africans. As they rode away, she felt sadder than the day her mother died, her proud mother, stronger than most men and better looking than any woman. The farther the wagon took them, the more she suspected she would never see the ocean again. The smell of salt water had been in her nostrils all her life.

Sukey didn’t mind the plantation except for the sum­mer heat with no ocean breeze to give relief. Once she got used to it, she didn’t mind picking cotton; it wasn’t the worst way a person could spend her time. At first it tore up her hands, but after a month, they were as tough as a puma’s paw. She wasn’t chained like some or branded like a slave who’d been brought from South Carolina, and some of the folks she worked with spoke a dialect close to hers.

Although she could have had an easier life as a house slave – she had the comport­ment and intelligence for it – she didn’t want to speak English, she didn’t want to become a Christian, and she didn’t want to work close to White people. She preferred life with people like herself. Even in the inclement seasons, Sukey would rather be outdoors under the camphor tree than in a cabin or barn. People would leave her alone when she sat under that tree; its seeds were poisonous and most people had a bad reaction to it. 

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest

The Silence of Sorrowful Hours is in the mix for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. It's a complicated submission process, and there are several levels it must "pass" to get to the final stage of judging. I'm praying I'll make it all the way. I'll let you know, of course!
Preparing all the parts of the submission was daunting. Waiting until the contest opened - literally watching the computer screen as it counted down to one minute past midnight Eastern time - was hair-raising. I wanted a shot of bourbon and I can't stand the taste of it!
It was important to be among the first to submit because it's an international contest for English-language novels and they only accept the first 5,000 entries.
I won't know if "Silence" has made it to the second stage until February 24th. Glad I have a stack of valium on hand. :-)
Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award

Women Abolitionists

The above engraving, “Am I not a Woman and a Sister?”, appeared in an 1837 tract by George Bourne. It highlighted the connections between the anti-slavery and women’s rights movements and became ubiquitous in leaflets, posters, and pamphlets.

As white and black women became more active in the abolitionist movement in the 1830s, they took key roles as lecturers, petitioners, and meeting organizers. They knew illustrative representations were more likely to draw support for their cause, so, in appealing for interracial sisterhood, they used a variety of images portraying the female activist theme in newspapers and broadsides, as well as on handicraft goods sold at fund-raising fairs.

The abolitionist and women's rights advocate Isabella Baumfree was born around the turn of the nineteenth century. Enslaved until she was an adult, she was freed in 1827 by the New York Gradual Abolition Act. She worked as a domestic for eighteen years. Then, in 1843, she came to understand that God was calling her to travel around the nation – sojourn – and preach the truth of his word. She became Sojourner Truth. Her calling cards read:

Ye wives and ye mothers, your influence extend--
Ye sisters, ye daughters, the helpless defend--
The strong ties are severed for one crime alone,
Possessing a colour less fair than your own.

  

An abolitionist as well as a suffragist, Susan B. Anthony referred to Harriet Tubman as a "most wonderful woman". Tubman escaped slavery and helped to establish the Underground Railroad.

A biographer of Tubman wrote, “Harriet was now left alone, . . . She turned her face toward the north, and fixing her eyes on the guiding star, and committing her way unto the Lord, she started again upon her long, lonely journey. She believed that there were one of two things she had a right to, liberty or death.”

After making her own escape, Harriet Tubman returned to the South nineteen times to bring over three hundred fugitives to safety, including her own aged parents.

Next blog will continue the subject of 'Women and Abolition".

Slave vs. Enslaved

From the beginnings of slavery in British North America in 1619, when a Dutch ship brought 20 enslaved Africans to the Virginia colony at Jamestown, nearly 240 years passed until the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution officially ended slavery in 1865.

Although some Quakers held slaves, no religious group was more outspoken against slavery from the 1600’s until slavery's end. Quakers were among the earliest to protest the African slave trade, the perpetual bondage of its captives, and the practice of separating enslaved family members by sale to different masters.

Anthony Benezet (Antoine Bénézet), 1713 - 1784, a Quaker of French Huguenot descent, emigrated with his family to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1731, four years after he had joined the Religious Society of Friends. In Philadelphia, Benezet urged that the British ban on slavery should be extended to the colonies (and later to the independent states) in North America. Using the Biblical maxim, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," Benezet worked to convince his Quaker brethren that owning slaves was not consistent with Christian doctrine.

In 1742 Benezet began teaching at the Friends' English School of Philadelphia. During this time, he came to realize that the emancipation of slaves was not enough, but that education to prepare them to lead independent, productive lives was required. In 1850, he added to his schedule night classes for slaves. While continuing his classes for slaves, in 1754, Benezet set up his own school, the first public girls' school on the American continent. Then, in 1770, he founded the Negro School at Philadelphia.

Benezet founded the first anti-slavery society, the “Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage.” Reflecting on the name of Benezet’s society, it’s interesting to note that many 21^st century African Americans no longer refer to their ancestors as slaves, but as people who were enslaved. To me, a slave is not an individual human, but chattel; it is a state of being as perceived by the slave owner. An enslaved person is a free individual who has been forced into a position where he is alleged to be chattel, a position he does not accept as his being. Before Abolition, the great majority of Africans in America were not slaves, but were enslaved.

Support for Abolition in Churches

Although the Church of England was united in its denunciation of slavery, the American Anglican (Episcopal) Church showed affability toward slavery interests consistent with its support of existing social and economic conditions. When the British Parliament resisted abolition, the Church of England pressured the government, and slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire in 1833. The French government followed suit in 1848. The American Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t signed until September 22, 1862, one-and-a-half years after the start of the Civil War.

In the American South the religious defense of slavery was vigorous and widespread.  What is not generally known is that slavery had many supporters in the North, too. Some Northern religious writers defended slavery, but support for abolition inevitably made it onto the agendas of meetings of most official church bodies. However, antislavery resolutions passed in church assemblies tended to be symbolic and lukewarm.

The strongest religious support for the abolition of slavery was in the Congregational, Methodist, Presbyterian and Quaker churches along with some Baptists – less so in Unitarian, Episcopalian, or Catholic churches. Quakers were the strongest in their support for abolition, but they were torn between their objection to slavery and their pacificism. While they didn't produce firebrand preachers speaking out against slavery, they were active in the Underground Railroad.

In the case of the Baptists and Methodists, the Northern and Southern churches were in opposition about the legitimacy of slavery. In 1844, the Methodist Church passed a resolution requesting Bishop James O. Andrew of Georgia to step down while he remained a slave owner. When he would not, the church split between Northern and Southern conferences. At the 1845 General Conference of the Baptist Church, Northern members opposed the appointment of missionaries who held slaves, which resulted in the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention. 

"We are ready and would go." - Part 4

The Black troops at Port Royal showed they could handle themselves in raids and skirmishes, but some still questioned if they could handle themselves in heavy combat.

In May and June 1863, Black and White Union regiments fought for the first time in major battles at Port Hudson and Milliken's Bend on the Mississippi River. Gen. Benjamin Butler's First Regiment Native Louisiana Guards were led by Black officers, including one 16-year-old lieutenant who was killed in action. Some of the White officers were surprised at how fiercely the Black troops fought. But Black soldiers were fighting for more than restoring the Union; they were fighting to liberate their people.

On July 18, 1863, Black soldiers soon got to prove their fighting ability even more dramatically. That was the day the 54th Massachusetts Infantry led the assault on Fort Wagner, a Confederate stronghold guarding the entrance to Charleston Harbor. (The battle was recreated in the movie “Glory” starring Denzel Washington.) The 54th Infantry Division was commanded by a 25-year-old White officer, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, and was made up of runaway slaves and free Northern Black men including two of Frederick Douglass's sons.

Despite heavy artillery and rifle fire, the men made a furious charge on the Fort and engaged its Confederate defenders in brutal hand-to-hand combat. Unfortunately, the 54th was repelled by the Confederates and suffered 40% casualties. Col. Shaw was killed during the charge and was buried with his men. Reported widely in Northern newspapers, the story of the heroic actions of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry at Fort Wagner helped to change public opinion about Blacks serving in the Union Army.

"We are ready and would go." - Part 3

Before the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, escaped slaves were called “contrabands”.  (Dictionary definition: 1. illegal imports and exports; 2. illegal trade; 3. supplies forbidden to warring sides) In November 1861, when the Union Army occupied the islands off the coast of South Carolina, establishing Port Royal as its base of operations, many of these “contrabands” joined the Army as laborers, cooks, teamsters and servants.

In March 1862, Major General David Hunter took command of Port Royal. Hunter had fewer than 20,000 regular troops to defend this Union foothold in the South. He immediately began to recruit contrabands into a separate Black combat unit. Lincoln, however, continued to stand by his decision not to allow Black volunteers to serve as combat soldiers, so Hunter was not authorized to pay his Black troops. The regiment was disbanded.

Surprisingly, only a few months later Lincoln's new Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, authorized the military governor at Port Royal to recruit contrabands to form a combat unit. Because Hunter had tried to experiment with Black troops without the authority of the government, he was not given command over the new unit. The governor, Brigadier General Rufus Saxton, was ordered to "arm, uniform, equip, and receive into the service of the United States such number of volunteers of African descent as you may deem expedient."

Gen. Saxton began to recruit and train a new regiment of Black South Carolina volunteers – the first Black military unit in the Union Army officially approved by the War Department. In November 1862, Gen. Saxton sent some of his Black soldiers with White officers to raid Confederate positions, destroy war supplies, and liberate slaves. Much to the surprise of some of their White officers, the first test of Black troops in combat were extraordinarily successful.

"We are ready and would go." - Part 2

During the early part of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln opposed accepting blacks into the Union Army. He believed it would push Border States to join the Confederacy. However, in the second year of the war, Congress passed a law permitting Black men to enlist at a pay rate of $10 per month ($3 less than the pay of a White private). But Congress left it up to the President to determine the duties of Black volunteers. Lincoln decided that Black volunteers would not be trained as combat soldiers, only used as laborers. 

By the end of 1862, it was clear that the war was not going to end quickly, and there was a significant drop in the number of White volunteers. At the same time, Lincoln realized that once the war ended and the Union was restored, slavery could not continue. On January 1, 1863 he announced the Emancipation Proclamation and a change in war policy.

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation liberated the slaves but also announced that Free Black volunteers would now be trained as combat soldiers. A Black regiment of escaped slaves serving on Union-occupied islands off the coast of South Carolina celebrated by spontaneously singing, "My Country 'tis of Thee.” The field commander of these troops, Colonel Thomas W. Higginson, later wrote, "Just think of it!—the first day they had ever had a country."

In the spring of 1863, the War Department organized the Bureau of Colored Troops. The bureau began a massive Army recruitment program aimed at free Blacks in the North and emancipated slaves in Union-held Southern territory. 

Coming next: Famous battles fought by regiments of Black soldiers.

"We are ready and would go." - Part 1

After the the Federal Government declared war on the Confederate states, Black men in the North wanted to join the Army in the fight to end slavery. Frederick Douglass spoke for them when he said, "We are ready and would go."

Most White Americans saw Black adults as childlike, lacking mental capacity and discipline. They believed slavery had made Black men dependent and irresponsible. These assumed that a Black man could never fight like a White soldier.  

Surprisingly, the Confederate government of Louisiana had formed a militia consisting of free Black men led by Black officers. But when Union Army Major General Benjamin Butler took New Orleans in the spring of 1862, this Confederate Black militia went to Butler and volunteered to join his forces. Butler transformed them into the First Regiment Native Louisiana Guards led by Black captains and lieutenants. Later he formed two more Black regiments commanded by White officers. These three regiments became the first units of Black troops in the Union Army. 

During the Civil War nearly 180,000 free Black men and escaped slaves volunteered to serve in the Union Army. Black soldiers, including more than a dozen Congressional Medal of Honor winners, fought in 449 battles. More than one-third of them died during the war.

A slave's escape from a Kentucky logging camp

Master Levi had been a good man as White men went, as guards on a work crew went, as men carrying weapons and the authority to use them went. Gideon couldn’t look him in the eyes. He felt he was betraying his friends, but there was nothing he could do for them. He hit Levi on the side of the head with the sharp rock he had slipped into his jacket pocket that morning.

Without a sound Levi fell to the side. Blood gushed from a jagged cut at his temple. Gideon squatted down and leaned over to see if he was still breathing. He hadn’t wanted to kill him, just knock him out. Crouching, he looked around. No one.

Master Levi had come with him into the deep brush after Gideon had doubled over complaining of cramps and loose bowels. It was his long-planned scheme as his best chance to escape. The next part was to run. Now he had to go, and go fast, before others noticed. He checked the sun again, just beginning to set in the west, low in the winter sky. He ran northeast through the deep woods, across the frozen earth and clumps of melting snow. He had a thin ragged jacket for warmth and old, ill-fitting boots on his feet. His shoulder ached where he had a perpetual pain from taking up the axe again only one day after he had dislocated it. He knew they’d be after him soon. He was afraid, but he was going.

After running a good distance, Gideon saw an immense rock jutting sideways out of the ground; he decided to hide under it until nightfall. He had a fear of wild animals – boar, fox, snakes, bears – but he knew he had to keep his courage in this crowded and fierce landscape. For a few moments he had a panicked desire for the cabin deep in the forest where he and the other men slept. He heard footsteps. Was it a man or an animal? He jumped up to run and slipped on a patch of frosty dead leaves. He bumped his head against the rock and had to choke back a cry of pain. About twenty feet away an elegant buck walked by, stepping carefully over the uneven ground. Gideon sat down and exhaled the breath he’d been holding.

Dusk was falling fast so he decided to move on. He got up and looked around, listening. All he could see were the trunks of trees, low limbs, and undergrowth with haphazard boulders among them. The only sound was a light rustling of pine needles in the tops of the evergreens. He jogged onward and downward; he knew the north side of the mountain sloped down to the river. He would have to wait until complete darkness to fix his course by the stars. He found a thicket, probably a deer’s shelter, and crawled inside. He’d wait another hour or so.

The forest at night was deathly quiet. It distressed him to be alone in the dark – and the silence. All his life he had lived in cabins shared with other boys and men, had heard the sound of work going on, axes against timber, long saws pulled back and forth across thick trunks, the rumblings and complaints of oxen and mules, soft singing voices in the evening, snoring and snorting sounds at night. He hugged himself against the cold, put his hands under his armpits, wiggled his frozen toes in the worn leather boots.

After a while, the moon rose, a small white sphere far off in the heavens. Gideon crept out of his cover and looked up between the dark, spiky spires. Moving among the age-old evergreens, the stars above were sharp points of light, the air cold and clean and scented by the forest. Where there was an opening in the treetops, he found the North Star and followed it.

Gideon walked on, shivering in the cold, afraid of everything: of men following him, of animals disturbed in their sleep, of going in the wrong direction, of his entire future. Tears sprouted in his eyes and he shook his head and coughed. A family of raccoons strutted from behind copsewood; he stopped in his tracks, holding his breath, listening. If anyone was hunting him in this black night, he didn’t think they were anywhere nearby – the little critters were confident, at home, not scurrying away from an intrusion. Getting his bearings again, he moved on. The forest was thinning and he could feel a cold wind coming through. He thought he smelled the river.

He walked from one standard to the next, following deer trails, or maybe old Shawnee hunting routes, moving steadily down hill. His feet were freezing and sore. He was sure he had blisters but didn’t want to check; it would be worse to inspect them and then try to put his boots on again. There was nothing he could do about any of it, not his aching shoulder, his frigid hands, or his throbbing feet. At least his legs were holding out.

Now it was more stumps than trees, more grass and shrub. The slope was still steep but in the distance he saw the moon reflected on black water. The river. The River Jordan. And on the other side, the soft glimmer of a few lights in the town. A Negro man lived there. He would take Gideon in. From then on, Gideon didn’t know what would happen, but he had heard tales. At least he wouldn’t be chopping down wooden beasts the rest of his life with no choice of where he laid his head or how much he got to eat.

He stood behind a giant oak near the riverbank. That was Ohio across the water. There should be a boat tied up at a small dock nearby. Keeping within the camouflage of his forest home, he walked up and down until he saw a rickety wood platform sticking out over the water. He looked around, then walked to the water’s edge and quickly dropped down the bank next to the dock. He saw the boat tied up loosely, drifting in the current. Gideon couldn’t swim. He waded into the water and shinnied up the piling to the top of the dock. Wrapping his arms around the post, he took hold of the rope that held the boat, pulling it closer in. He tied the rope around his waist and jumped back into the water where he believed he could still touch the bottom. He pulled the boat toward him and threw himself over the top. The oars were locked in place, the blades waiting in the hull.

Gideon had never rowed a boat, but he’d seen it done. He knew he should face the square end and row in the opposite direction. He floundered for a while, not keeping rhythm with his strokes, slapping the water with one oar, then the other. He must have been pulling harder on his left – his strong shoulder; he was rowing in a wide circle. Good Lord, help me.

God heard his prayer. After a few more inefficient strokes, Gideon got the oars moving together and the boat pointing in the right direction. The dock on the opposite side accommodated a raft big enough for horses and passengers with a roofed seating area in the middle of it. Gideon had been told to make sure he tied up the rowboat after he came across; it was meant to be used by other escaping slaves in the coming weeks or months.

He ducked as he let the small boat glide into the dark space under the dock. It was almost dawn. Keeping still, he listened for the sound of men starting work. He wrapped the line around a pole, jumped into the water and stayed pressed against the riverbank until he could claw his way through the mud to the top. He flipped his body onto the muddy grass, but stayed flat. He was soaked and shivering; his legs were trembling. He rubbed his hands together and blew on them. Heavy clouds covered the sky, moving swiftly across the face of the waning moon. Gideon was thankful for a few more minutes of darkness.

From his prone position, he saw a man walking on the wide road that led from the town to the dock. He wasn’t carrying a gun. Probably worked on the ferry. Gideon thought, Should I get up and be seen for what I am, a filthy, wet, tired and terrified Negro escaped from across the river? Should I wait until the man gets here and tells me to stand up, identify myself, state my business? Or should I crawl like a dog and ask for mercy? He was frozen to the spot.

19th Century farming on a slave-holder farm in Maryland from "The Silence of Sorrowful Hours"

In contrast to the master’s house, the slave quarters were like a small village made up of several one-room cabins, a smoke house, a smithing barn, and a stable for five mules and two workhorses. The slaves, farm hands, and farm manager rose at 3:00 a.m. to feed, water, and harness the horses, milk the cows, and feed the pigs and poultry. Then they hauled wood for the stoves. Breakfast was at seven – beefsteak or pork, eggs, fried potatoes, fruit pie, hominy cakes, fritters, and coffee.

Planting and harvesting went on from April to October. The spring started with plowing, rolling, pull­ing up stumps, and burning refuse. They prepared the fields for sowing and spread manure over the plantings. Besides field work there were fence posts and rails to be fitted, gates to be maintained, stalls to be mucked, grain to be threshed, and apples to be dried or mashed to cider.

In July, hay and wheat were harvested using a mowing machine and reaper or cutting it down with scythes. The cut grains were raked together and taken to the barn where the wheat was shucked and sorted.  Bar­ley and rye were mowed by hand. September and October were the months to bring in the potatoes, corn, and beans. Oats were threshed and corn was husked. Then the fields were plowed up and the next season’s wheat crop was planted. 

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19th Century Farming in Pennsylvania from "The Silence of Sorrowful Hours"

The region where the Hoffmann farm stood was full of streams and ponds, protruding boulders, and rolling hills. Old Indian trails laced the valley. Many had been abandoned for decades and were overgrown and forgotten, but others had been widened into roads as settlers moved west. Not far away, there were iron ore, copper, and coal mines whose workers came from Ireland, Wales and England as well as Central and Eastern Europe and who brought Catholicism to the mostly Quaker and Lutheran communities.

Uncle Jonathan raised soybeans, hay, wheat, rye, and oats; he had pear, apple, and peach orchards. An ox, two Belgian draft horses, four quarter horses, and a mule did the work and got them where they needed to go. Three dairy cows, a dozen chickens, geese, ducks and pigs provided milk, cheese, eggs, and meat. Seasonal laborers were hired in the spring and fall and day workers when they were needed.

The farm’s stone and wood house was a hundred years old. The original part of the house was three stories; a summer kitchen and pantry had been added on some fifty years later. The big room at the rear of the house had a long wooden table that could seat ten people and was used for all their meals. The back porch was a recent addition; a part of it was partitioned off for the bath and laundry rooms. There was a well in the yard and an underground space by the barn where they stored ice.