slavecatchers

Margaret Fleeing to Freedom With Help From Watch, Her Mastiff, and Epictetus on True Freedom
Civil War Memories

Margaret Ward Fleeing to Freedom With Help From Watch, Her Mastiff, and Epictetus on True Freedom

07/26/2024 Bruce Strom 0

Margaret was willing to make the best of her situation, she was willing to serve her master’s family as she served Jesus, she compassionately cared for her master’s family, as long as they respected her human dignity. Once they crossed the line, without hesitation, she immediately fled for freedom with her infant, guided and protected only by God and the North Star.
Epictetus discusses how the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus that “slavery is no more bad than good, and freedom no more good than bad,” he proclaims proudly: “If I were a slave and one of these men was my master, I would torment him, even if it earned me a thrashing a day.” […]

Arnold Gragston: Slave Conductor on the Underground Railroad Assists Runaway Slaves
Civil War Memories

Arnold Gragston: Slave Conductor on the Underground Railroad Assists Runaway Slaves

07/13/2024 Bruce Strom 2

Gragston remembers: “Mr Tabb was a pretty good man. He used to beat us, sure; but not nearly so much as others did, some of his own kin people, even. But he was kinda funny sometimes; he used to have a special slave who didn’t have nothing to do but teach the rest of us—we had about ten on the plantation, and a lot on the other plantations near us—how to read and write and figger. Mr Tabb liked us to know how to figger. But sometimes when he would send for us and we would be a long time coming, he would ask us where we had been. If we told him we had been learning to read, he would near beat the daylights out of us—after getting somebody to teach us; I think he did some of that so that the other owners wouldn’t say he was spoiling his slaves.” […]

Fleeing Female Slave Impersonates Planter, Husband Posing As Trusty Servant: William & Ellen Craft
Civil War Memories

Fleeing Female Slave Impersonates Planter, Husband Posing As Trusty Servant: William & Ellen Craft

05/08/2024 Bruce Strom 1

In the 1850s, “William and Ellen Craft were slaves in the State of Georgia.” Their “desire to be free was very strong.” It was rare for slaves that deep in the Confederacy to successfully flee, but it “occurred to William and Ellen, that she might act the part of master and her husband the part of servant.”
“Ellen was fair enough to pass for white,” but how to transform her into a young planter? She needed to “dress elegantly in a fashionable suit of male attire, and have her hair cut in the style usually worn by young planters.” But she was beardless. So, they muffled up the face of the young planter as if he were “suffering badly with a toothache.” […]

Margaret Garner, Slave Mother Who Killed Her Child to Avoid Slavery, Inspiration for Beloved
Civil War Memories

Margaret Garner, Slave Mother Who Killed Her Child to Avoid Slavery, Inspiration for Beloved

04/24/2024 Bruce Strom 2

Our author Levi Coffin remembers, “Perhaps no case” regarding “fugitive slaves attracted more attention and aroused deeper interest and sympathy than the case of Margaret Garner, the slave mother, who killed her child rather than see it taken back to slavery.” This is a troubling story. I do not wish […]

Underground Railroad: Henry Box Brown, Who Escaped From Slavery Via Mail Express
Civil War Memories

Underground Railroad: Henry Box Brown, Who Escaped From Slavery Via Mail Express

04/19/2024 Bruce Strom 2

How did Henry Box Brown escape from slavery? Simple, in 1849 he “had himself boxed up and forwarded to Philadelphia direct by express.” The box was “made to fit him most comfortably,” it was “two feet eight inches deep, two feet wide, and three feet long.” With him were “one bladder of water and a few small biscuits,” with but one hole for breathing.
After he “entered his box, it was safely nailed up and hooped with five hickory hoops and was addressed” by a friend to William Johnson in Philadelphia marked, “This side up with care.” The box was transported right side up, but for many miles it was transported upside down, which “had him on his head for miles.” This box went from steamboat to wagon to railroad, the delivery time was a little more than a day. […]

Harriet Tubman, Conductor of Underground Railroad, Leading Many Slaves to Freedom
Civil War Memories

Harriet Tubman, Conductor of Underground Railroad, Leading Many Slaves to Freedom

03/01/2024 Bruce Strom 1

After spiriting so many slaves to freedom, a massive bounty of $40,000 was placed on Harriet Tubman’s head, which is equivalent to many hundreds of thousands in today’s money, enough to buy hundreds of slaves. If she had been caught, she likely would have been lashed with a hundred lashes bleeding out, she likely would have died from the punishment. She was bold, she would go to the market pretending to be an old woman, once she brushed past one of her former masters!
Before the Civil War, she made nineteen trips to Maryland to rescue more enslaved relatives, and slaves on other plantations. In this account she remembers she rescued three hundred souls from slavery, other accounts say less than a hundred. […]

Eliza Harris and Her Infant Escapes Slavery Over the Ice
Civil War Memories

Underground Railroad: Eliza and Her Infant Escape Slavery Over the Ice Before the Civil War

02/21/2024 Bruce Strom 2

The slave catchers were searching for her. “In the evening, she discovered pursuers nearing the house, and with desperate courage, she determined to cross the river, or perish in the attempt. Clasping her child in her arms, she darted out the back door and ran toward the river, followed by her pursuers, who had just dismounted from their horses when they caught sight of her.”
“No fear or thought of personal danger entered Eliza’s mind, for she felt that she had rather be drowned than to be captured and separated from her child. Clasping her babe to her bosom with her left arm, she sprang on to the first cake of ice, then from that to another and another. Sometimes the cake she was on would sink beneath her weight, then she would slide her child onto the next cake, pull herself on with her hands, and so continue her hazardous journey. She became wet to the waist with ice water and her hands were numbed with cold, but as she made her way from one cake to ice to another, she felt that surely the Lord was preserving and upholding her, and that nothing could harm her.” […]

Underground Railroad: Harriet Jacobs, the Slave Girl Who Escapes Slavery Before the Civil War
Civil War Memories

Underground Railroad: Harriet Jacobs, the Slave Girl Who Escapes Slavery Before the Civil War

01/03/2024 Bruce Strom 3

In her 1861 autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs recounts her experiences, spreading the awful truth about slavery. “I can testify,” she writes, “from my own experiences and observations, that slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks. It makes the white fathers cruel and sensual; the sons violent and licentious; it contaminates the daughters, and makes the wives wretched. And as for the colored race, it needs an abler pen than mine to describe the extremity of their sufferings, the depth of their degradation.” […]