Transcript

1.15.26 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye and to
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day I will be reading the Smithsonian magazine dated January
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February twenty twenty six. As a reminder, Radio I as
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a reading service intended for people who are blind or
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have other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material.
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Please join me now for Samuel Greene freed himself and
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others from slavery. Then he was imprisoned over owning a
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book by Victor Luckerson. The knock on Samuel Green's door
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must have felt inevitable. It was April eighteen fifty seven,
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and in the past decade hundreds of black Marylanders had
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slipped off the farms and plantations where they were enslaved. Now,
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local white leaders were beginning to suspect that Green knew
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more about their runaways than he let on. Green was
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a free black man who lived in a cottage in
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Dorchester County, on the eastern shore of the Chessna Peak Bay,
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where he farmed a modest plot and preached the word
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of God. Opening his door that April evening, Green came
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face to face with the law. You are suspected of
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holding correspondence with the north A County sheriff told him,
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and I shall search your house. The sheriff and his
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posse soon found what they were looking for, a letter
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from Green's son, Sam Junior, a map of Canada railroad
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schedules for northbound trains, and a copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin,
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Harriet beecher Stowe's blockbuster anti slavery novel, published five years earlier.
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None of the items proved that Green had helped usher
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any one to freedom, but the book turned out to
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be sufficiently incriminating. Green was placed under arrest. Then he
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was charged under an obscure Maryland law with possessing an
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abolition pamphlet that could create discontent amongst the people of
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color of this state. As he said in a jail
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cell awaiting his trial, state prosecutors began to craft an
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ominous argument, a person caught reading the wrong kind of
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book deserved to be locked away. It was no accident
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that Green's unprecedented case unfolded in Maryland, where Slavery's position
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at the center of American life was at its most tenuous.
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Maryland had the largest free black population of any state
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in the nation. It was also the state from which
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the greatest number of people fled slavery. Frederick Douglas and
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Harriet Tubman, who may have been a distant relative of Greens,
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among them. Trapped between the slavery powered economy of the
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South and the industrial North, black people in Maryland had
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long negotiated freedom, however they could. During the Revolutionary War,
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enslaved Marylanders escaped to British ships anchored in the Chesapeake
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Bay after Virginia's colonial governor, Lord Dunmore offered immanse the
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patient to enslaved people who defected to the British Army.
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After the war, some of Dorchester County's white leaders proposed
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abolishing slavery in the state, following the lead of neighbouring Pennsylvania.
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The effort failed, but individual enslavers freed more than sixteen
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hundred enslaved people in the county before eighteen twenty. Most
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of the manumissions stemmed from the strong strain of Methodism
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in Maryland and the abolitionist teachings of John Wesley, the
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founder of the Methodist Church. With some restrictions. The earliest
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of these formerly enslaved people entered a Maryland society, where
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they could vote, own property, and testify in court. Green
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was born in Bondage around eighteen o two in East Newmarket,
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a village in northeast Dorchester County. He worked as a
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farm labourer and may have been hired out to work
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on other farms, an arrangement that sometimes gave enslaved people
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the chance to keep a portion of the fee they earned.
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Before Green's enslaver, Henry Nicholls, died in eighteen thirty two,
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Nicholls decreed and his will that Green be freed five
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years after his death. Green refused to wait. By working
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long hours, he raised enough money to purchase his liberty
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from nicholls beneficiaries within a year. In eighteen forty two,
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he purchased the freedom of his wife, Kitty for one
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hundred dollars, though their two children, Sam Junior and Sarah
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remained enslaved. Green and Kitty joined Maryland's growing number of
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free black people, who totaled more than forty percent of
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the black population by eighteen forty. Many worked as laborers,
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others as blacksmith's, butchers, carpenters, and in other skilled trades.
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Nearly twenty five hundred free black Marylanders were property owners.
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Green himself mild mannered, literate, and devoutly religious, spent much
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of his time spreading the Gospel. He was a licensed exhorter,
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a role in the Methodist Church that allowed him to
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preach to black people, both free and enslaved. He also
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served as a founding trustee for a church in East Newmarket,
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the Colored People's Methodist Episcopal Church. Black and White Marylanders
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acknowledged his contributions to the community, calling him intelligent and
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exceedingly useful. In contemporaneous accounts. He was able to build
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skills and build relationships beyond Henry Nicholls's plantation, says Kate
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Clifford Larsen, the author of the Harriet Tubman biography Bound
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for the Promised Land, and an expert on the underground Railroad,
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he had networks of people and that helped him navigate
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the world. But even as Green eked out a life
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for himself and his wife, he witnessed a growing racial
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back as Maryland steadily turned against its earlier notions of
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black liberty. Voting rights had been completely stripped from black
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men in eighteen ten, following the loss of the right
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to testify in court. The pace of manumissions had slowed
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as the Methodist Church dropped calls for abolition in order
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to appease wealthy white and slavers who broke off from
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the larger church to form a Southern faction that endorsed slavery.
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Many enslavers began selling black Marylanders to the plantations of
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the Deep South as demand for field labor grew with
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the rise of the cotton crop. Others became fervent supporters
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of the so called Colonization Movement, a decade's long effort
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to ship black Americans to Africa. Discrimination in Maryland increased
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in the eighteen thirties after Nat Turner's failed rebellion in Virginia,
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Maryland lawmakers launched sweeping efforts to limit the mobility of
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both free and the enslaved. Free black people from other
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states were banned from entering Maryland, and religious gatherings were
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outlawed unless they were overseen by white clergymen. Another law
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decreed that black sailors could no longer operate large boats.
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In eighteen fifty one, a new Maryland State Constitution enshrined
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protections to life, liberty, and property for white men, and
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ominously granted the legislature the power of regulation and disposition
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of the free colored population, as they may deem necessary.
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Hardly a session of the legislature passes that some law
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is not enacted, restricting free black people in their rights
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and privileges. A legislative committee noted in a report from
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the era marylands and positions mirrored the nations. The Fugitive
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Slave Act, passed in eighteen fifty, required that runaways in
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free states be returned to their enslavers, often by federally
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sanctioned slave catchers. Horror stories spread of runaways or even
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free black people kidnapped as far north as Philadelphia or
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Boston and shipped south. Slaveholders mean to cling to their
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slaves as long as they can, and to the bitter end,
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remarked Frederick Douglas, who, like Green, had been born and
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enslaved on Maryland's eastern shore. They show no sign of
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a wish to quit their iron grasp upon the sable
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throats of their victims. Green observed these developments with alarm.
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Though he had climbed out of slavery, he saw that
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even he and his free neighbors in Dorchester County were
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not truly free. He would later recall an incident where
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a white Marylander told him that he'd quote rather go
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to hell and be damned than go to heaven with
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a and then we have the inward. Green began doing
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what he could to up end the evil of slavery,
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as he later put it, attending conferences like the Convention
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of Free Colored People in Baltimore, where black leaders debated
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the best course of action in a darkening social climate.
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But with two fully grown children who were still enslaved,
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he came to feel that it wasn't enough to talk.
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By eighteen fifty four, Greene's son, Samuel Green Junior, could
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no longer stand a life and bondage. He and his
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sister Sarah, by then in their mid twenties, had been
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sold several years earlier to James Muse, a Dorchester County physician,
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Sam Junior called the worst man in Maryland on account
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of his vicious whippings and abuse. One day late that summer,
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Sam Junior visited his father. I must fly for freedom,
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he told him. Sam Junior had already been mulling an
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escape for months, since he he had met a local
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runaway who had managed to flee and then shockingly returned
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to help free others. Newspaper ads demanding the runaway's capture
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called her Minty, but the Greens and the rest of
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America would eventually know her as Harriet Tubman. Tubman hailed
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from the Dorchester County community of Bucktown, about nine miles
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southwest of sand Green's home. Her escape in September eighteen
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forty nine was not unusual. In the eighteen fifty census,
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Maryland recorded two hundred seventy nine runaways, more than anywhere
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else in the Union. Over the next decade, nearly one
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hundred more would flee from Georchester County alone. These runaways
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faced brutal repercussions if captured. Some received twenty lashes from
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their captors and more beatings when they were returned to
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their enslavers. Others were branded with an R for runaway
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on their cheek. Packs of Maryland bloodhounds were often contracted
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to catch escapees throughout the state. Most of those who
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made it out never returned to the Eastern Shore. Tubman
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came back again and again on at least thirteen returned
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trips to Maryland. She guided some seventy people to freedom
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and aided dozens more with advice about optimal escape routes.
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Often conveyed in coded messages via songs. She became the
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most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad. I never ran
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my train off the track, and I never lost a passenger,
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she said later. Tubman often worked to free members of
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her extended family throughout Dorchester County. She tended to bring
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them through a rural area called Poplar Neck along the
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Choptank River in neighboring Caroline County, where her parents, also
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agents of the Underground Railroad lived. From there, she would
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guide her runaway companion by foot or wagon over the
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Delaware border to Dover, then to Wilmington, and eventually into
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Philadelphia and beyond. Sometimes she traveled north by boat to
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Baltimore and through the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. The journeys
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typically ended in the city of Saint Catharines in Ontario,
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where hundreds of liberated people eventually settled. In the spring
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of eighteen fifty four, while she was back in Dorchester
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to rescue her brothers, Tubman gave Sam Junior instructions on
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the best route to Philadelphia. Sam Junior then worked up
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the courage to tell his father. Soon afterward, he fled
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from Canada. He rode home to his father urging more
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enslaved people to follow. Tell p Jackson to come on,
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Bailey to come on, Sam Junior wrote, come more. It's
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not clear when the elder Green became involved with the
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underground railroad. He may have I've already been working as
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an agent on the secretive network before his son fled,
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or his son's plight under a violent and slaver may
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have motivated him to do more to combat slavery. Whatever
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the case, he became a key partner in Tubman's many rescues.
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He shared a surname with Tubman's mother and may have
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been a distant relative. According to Larsen, the Tubman scholar,
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Green's home, just west of East Newmarket, became a refuge
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where runaways could hide from police and vigilantes hunting for them,
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and thanks to his relationship to the Methodist Church, he
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had connections to friendly black and white residents along the
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Eastern Shore. Green was important enough to her missions that
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Tubman mentioned him by name when late in her life
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she recalled her most common underground railroad routes in an
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interview with the historian Wilbur Siebert. People liked Tubman heroes
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that we celebrate. They never do anything all on their own.
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Larson says she could not have done what she did
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without the help of other people. The escape of Sam
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Junior's friend Joe Bailey was among the most dramatic. Tubman
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helped orchestrate, and green played a key role. Bailey, an
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enslaved lumber foreman tasked with chopping timber along the Choptank River,
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was regularly whipped by his enslaver, a business magnet named
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William Hewlett. Bailey and his brother Bill enlisted Tubman's help
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to run away. The route north from Dorchester County usually
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took three or four days, but it took Tubman and
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the Bailey brothers more than two weeks. Due to long
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periods of hiding from slave catchers. Joe Bailey had an
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exorbitant fifteen hundred dollar bounty on his head. Greene opened
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his home to Tubman and the Baileys as their pursuers
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scoured the region. Once in Wilmington, the group enlisted the
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help of some local black brick layers, who hid them
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in a secret compartment of their wagon while they rode
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past patrolling police. The group eventually made it to safety
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in Canada, but the growing number of escapees incensed the
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Eastern Shores and slavery class, with suspicion turning on the
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region's free black population. Black schools without white supervision were banned,
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and police searches of black people's homes became common. Whispers
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about Green's involvement in the underground railroad grew louder after
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every escape. There is no doubt of the fact that
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Greene was instrumental, and had been for a long time,
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in the escape of slaves from this county. The Eastern Gazette,
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a pro slavery paper, and nearby Talbot County utteritorialized after
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his arrest. After Sam Junior escaped, his sister Sarah was
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sold to enslaver on the Missouri Frontier as an apparent punishment,
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separating her from her husband and two small children. No
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records indicate that the Greens ever spoke to Sarah again.
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Desperate for the remaining family members to reunite, Sam Junior
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wrote a letter imploring his father to let us all
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live together here in Canada. In the winter of eighteen
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fifty six to eighteen fifty seven, Green secretly traveled to
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Ontario to see his son and assess whether the family
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could earn a living in the Far North. When he returned,
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he told Kitty to prepare to leave Dorchester County for good,
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but Green had not been as discreet as he imagined.
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The Eastern Gazette later reported that local enslavers found out
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about his trip to Canada when shortly after he returned,
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a group of local enslaved people known as the Dover
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Eighth made a dramatic escape, gaining nation attention in embarrassing
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the communities in slavers. They took action. Having identified Green
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as a suspect. They now focused on conjuring the necessary
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evidence and latched on to Uncle Tom's cabin as the
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proof they needed. The red brick Dorchester County court House
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was the opulent centerpiece of the county seat of Cambridge,
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but for Black Marylanders the building was another symbol of terror.
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Frequent human auctions were conducted outside, with merchants of flesh
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placing bids on enslaved men, women and children from a
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hotel Veranda across the street. Inside the court house, in
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the spring of eighteen fifty seven, prosecutors began to build
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their case against Green. They seized on an eighteen forty
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one act applied only once before that outlawed the possession
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of inflammatory material that could create discontent or foment insurrection
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among the black population. The law only impacted free black people,
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another sign of how much Maryland lawmakers feared their growing
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presence in the state. White people were free to read
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and write abolitionist material, though they could be punished for
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failing to inform police if they knew free black Marylanders
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who were violating the law. At first, state attorneys focused
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on the map and the railroad schedules that police had
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found in Green's home, but Green's defense argued that documents
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with such a broad use could not be narrowly defined
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as abolitionists or otherwise used to sow discontent among Dorchester
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County's enslaved population. The judge agreed, and Green was found
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not guilty on this indictment. The prosecutor's next turn to
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his copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin. In the five years
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since its publication, the novel had gripped northern readers with
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its unflinching account of slavery's brutalities and its humanizing portrayals
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of its enslaved characters. Two million copies had been sold
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by the time of Greene's trial, in the South, However,
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in slavers, pro slavery, newspapers and other civic leaders railed
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against the text, arguing that it was radicalizing black people
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and indoctrinating white children. In Athens, Georgia, copies of the
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book were burned. In Mobile, Alabama, vigilantes reportedly forced a
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bookseller to flee town after he featured the novel in
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his shop. But only Maryland was attempting to throw someone
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in jail for owning it. Green had been given his
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copy by a blacksmith only a few months earlier, according
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to a newspaper account, while he was headed to a
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local mill. Before that chance encounter, he wasn't even aware
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of the book, and at the time of the ere
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as he hadn't yet finished reading it. But prosecutors insisted
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that the trial was about more than objects seized from
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Green's home. The novel, they argued, threatened the very foundation
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of their society. If the legitimacy of slavery began to crumble,
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the union would go with it. Slavery must be protected,
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or it must be abolished, the Assistant Council argued for
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the state. The gambit worked the same judge who had
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earlier ruled in Green's favor. Now ruled that Uncle Tom's Cabin,
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a work of fiction, met the criteria of an abolitionist
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pamphlet described in the eighteen forty one Law. Green born
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into enslavement, then freed at thirty, was now sentenced to
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ten years in prison. He was immediately transferred to Baltimore's
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Maryland State Penitentiary. The news of the verdict made waves
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across the country. In South Carolina, at Charleston, Courierer columnists
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argued that the facts were so unreasonable that Northern abolitionists
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must have made them up to demonize the planter class.
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Too impossible and absurd to be anything but false, he wrote.
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Other Southerners welcomed Greene's imprisonment, with the Eastern Gazette calling
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it a righteous verdict. Northern writers used Greene's arrest to
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illustrate how poisonous slavery had become, corrupting basic rights to
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free expression. All the annals of the Spanish or Roman
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inquisitions could not show a more degrading fact, fumed an
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editorial in the New Bedford Mercury in Massachusetts, The Liberator,
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the abolitionist's paper founded by William Lloyd, Garrison castigated the
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Maryland lawmakers who had passed a statute capable of being
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abused for so cruel and tyrannical a purpose. In Kansas,
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the Lawrence Republican wrote that Greene's conviction was a burning
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disgrace upon the civilization, upon the age, and especially upon
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the character and name of our nation. But not even
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widespread outrage would get Green out of prison. Green hoped
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for a pardon from a pair of successive Maryland governors,
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Thomas Watkins Legon and Thomas Holiday Hicks, the second of
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whom was a Dorchester County native whom Green later claimed
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to know personally. Two dozen local farmers, merchants, and teachers
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in the East New Market area quickly signed a petition
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seeking clemency for Green. A group of Maryland ministers did
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the same, while one hundred and fourteen Methodist clergymen from
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as far away as New York rallied to Green's cause
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with their own petition. But Ligon and Hicks, under pressure
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from local enslavers, both refused to help Green. If Green's
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imprisonment was meant to deter runaways and the networks that
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aided them, it didn't work. In October eighteen fifty seven,
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six months after Green's arrest, a group of twenty eight
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runaways escaped Dorchester County. At one time. Escapees continued into
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eighteen fifty eight. Tubman kept returning until eighteen sixty, seeking
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to rescue her sister Rachel and other relatives. By then,
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the country was careening toward war. At the start of
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eighteen sixty one, after seven southern states voted to secede
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from the Union, Maryland was torn over what to do.
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Many people in Maryland were Confederate sympathizers, but the state
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was deeply divided over entering the war Because of Maryland's
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strategic position bordering the capital. President Abraham Lincoln took steps
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to ensure federal control. After state legislators voted against secession
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in April. Baltimore was placed under martial law law anyway,
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and the federal government largely controlled state governance throughout the
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Civil War. Green remained imprisoned as war broke out, but
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in eighteen sixty two his fortunes finally reversed. A Union
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loyalist named Augustus Bradford was elected governor of Maryland. One
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of his confidants was Francis Thompson King, a well connected
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Baltimore Quaker who had taken an interest in Green's plight.
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King visited Green in prison and advised Bradford on Green's
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case multiple times. The many petitions demanding Green's release from
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Methodist leaders and East New Market locals were also still
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on the books. At the collective urging of Methodist and
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Quaker ministers, Bradford pardoned Green as one of his first
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official actions as governor. On April twenty first, eighteen sixty two.
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Green finally walked free for the second and last time.
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Three months later, Green stood before an expectant crowd outside Boston.
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I have been truly gratified in hearing what has been
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said in regard to the evil of slavery, he declared,
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and the terrible consequences thereof which now convulsed the nation.
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America was changing fast. In a few months. Lincoln's Emancipation
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Proclamation would nominally free the nation's slaves, but not in
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border states that remained in the Union, such as Maryland.
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Green would have understood better than most how what was
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legal and what was just could often be at odds,
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even in the case of his own pardon. One of
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the stipulations was that he leave the state of Maryland
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within sixty days. He was sixty years old now but
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younger in spirit. The Liberator described him as good looking, intelligent,
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and amiable, though he still hoped to join his son
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in Canada. He had little money, so he traveled the
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Northeast on a makeshift lecture tour, handing out a collection
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plate after each speech to help fund a new life.
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In Philadelphia, he sat down with William Still, a devoted
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chronicler of the enslaved people who traveled the underground railroad
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in New York. He gave a speech that was mentioned
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by The New York Times that summer. He also got
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to meet a pivotal figure in his life, Harriet Beecher Stowe.
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He visited the novelist in her home and told her
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of his travails since stumbling upon her book. All This
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was his portion of the cross Stowe wrote in the
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abolitionist newspaper The Independent in eighteen sixty two, and he
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took it meekly without comment. Green asked her for a
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new copy at Uncle Tom's cabin so he could finally
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finish it. She was happy to oblige. Green and Kitty
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eventually made it to Canada, where they likely waited out
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the Civil War, but Canada was not home. By the
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end of the decade, the couple was back in Dorchester County.
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Life was hardly idyllic because Maryland had not been a
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Confederate state. It wasn't placed under the Reconstruction era mandates
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that allowed black politics to flourish, albeit briefly, in the
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South after the Civil War. But the chains had been broken.
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The prosecutor who put Green in jail had once declared
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that slavery must be protected or abolished. Finally, the pendulum
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of justice swung in Green's favor. Three years before he
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died in eighteen seventy seven, a Baltimore newspaper noted the
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irony he has grown to be a respected citizen in
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the very county where once he was persecuted. This concludes
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readings from the Smithsonian Magazine for to day. Your reader
27:57
has been Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening, and have
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a great day.