Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad/Chapter VI
CHAPTER VI.
I have given in detail facts and incidents as evidence of Jo Norton’s industry, thrift and honesty. He was a serious, devoted Christian, yet his wit and mirthfulness were often exhibited in keen repartee, and sarcastic answers to persons who sought opportunity to embarrass him while speaking. There were, even then, men of copperhead proclivities, some of whom would occasionally interrupt him, but I never knew one to try it the second time. He was once asked if he worked hard when he was a slave? “No!” he replied, “I didn’t work hard when I could help it.”
“Did you have enough to eat?”
“Yes, such as it was.”
“Did you have decent clothes?”
“Yes, midlin’.”
“Well,” said the fellow, “you were better off than most people are here, and you were a fool to run away.”
“Well, now,” said Jo, “the place that I left is there yet, I suppose, guess nobody’s ever got into it, and if my friend here wants it, he can have it by asking for it, though perhaps he had better get his Member of Congress to recommend him.”
Another fellow asked, “Is the speaker in favor of amalgamation?”
“’Gamation? what’s that?”
“It means blacks and whites marrying together.”
“Oh, that’s it! as for such things, they depend mostly upon people’s taste. For my part, I have a colored woman for my wife,—that’s my choice—and if my friend here wants a black wife, and if she is pleased with him, I am sure I shan’t get mad about it.”
Soon after he commenced collecting funds to redeem his family from bondage, he was invited to go to a school-house in Villenova. He went alone, on foot; when near the place, he saw two boys chopping, and heard one of them say, “There’s the nigger.” Jo stopped and said, “I ain’t a nigger! I allus pays my honest debts; my master was a nigger! See here!” said Jo, “when you chop, you be a chopper, isn’t that so?” “Yes.” “Well, when a man nigs, I call him a nigger. Now, my old master, he nigged me out of all I ever earned in my life. Of course, he is a nigger!” and Jo sang the chorus of one of Geo. W. Clark’s Liberty songs:
“They worked me all de day,
Wident one cent of pay;
So I took my flight
In de middle oh de night,
When de moon am gone away.”
“Now, boys, come over to the school-house this evening, and I’ll sing the rest of it.” That evening Jo had a full house and a good donation.
Jo removed to Syracuse, bought a lot, built a good house, was doing a thriving business and accumulating property when the “fugitive slave law” was passed, and the business of catching and returning fugitives from bondage became very active, under the auspices of our second “accidental chief magistrate,” who signed the bill, and then enforced it with all the influence and patronage he could command. I have now before me his proclamation, calling on the army and navy to rally to the aid of the blood-hounds in running down a poor man in Boston, by the name of “Shadrach.”
Shadrach had escaped from the “fiery furnace” of slavery. The U.S. Marshal seized him, and was binding him hand and foot for the purpose of “pitching him in” again, but the cords that bound him, somehow came apart, and Shadrach walked away, and this time there was not even the smell of the aforesaid fire on his garments. This put new energy into Mil—rd, he sent a special message to Congress, then in session, urging them to pass more stringent laws, so that he could compel his “subjects” to fall down and worship the image that he had set up. Shadrach was re-captured, taken in a man-of-war to Richmond, and sold at auction, his purchaser giving bail that he should be sent south of Virginia. In 1864 I saw a notice in the papers that he had returned to Boston. The fire of slavery had not consumed him? but the fire on Fort Sumter had severed the cords that bound him.
The story of “the Shadrach case in Boston” made the city of Syracuse a hot-bed of abolitionism. The people met in convention, denounced the law and the men who enacted it, and resolved that no slave should be carried out of Syracuse. The slaveholders, encouraged by the course pursued by the President and the leading members of Congress of all parties, became more and more insolent, and cracked their slave whips in plantation style. One of them threatened on the floor of Congress, that whenever another anti-slavery convention should be held in Syracuse a fugitive should be arrested and sent back to slavery from that city. The Empire State held a Convention at Syracuse soon after, and an attempt was made to execute that threat, but Syracuse stood firm to her resolutions, and the attempt failed; but the “Jerry rescue” shook the State from center to circumference. Jo was in that melee.