Panis at Fort Michilimackinac--The Forgotten Native American Slaves

Interpretive Assistant LeeAnn Ewer at Colonial Michilimackinac

Colonial Michilimackinac is operating during the Pandemic and is offering new programs this year. I love to visit this colonial-era fort when I am up North researching my books. On one of my visits, I looked through a record of the people baptized by the French priest. There were places where the person was referred to as a "Panis" which I learned was a captured Native American slave from a different tribe. And I was, I admit it, shocked to read of the baptism of babies born to Panis (enslaved) women and the father's name being listed (their owner). We don't think too much about the enslaved Native Americans when we think of slavery in our county.

This year, there is a specific program about the Panis in colonial Northern America, from the early days before European arrivals, to the French, English and finally Americans. We were able to hear LeeAnn Ewer, Interpretive Assistant for the Mackinac State Parks, give a presentation July 1, 2020, at Fort Michilimackinac. We've been privileged to hear her before, and she does an outstanding job. (She has an amazing Pinterest page, too, with Boards of all kinds of colonial-era goodies.)

Some touchpoint about the Panis:

• They were called Panis based on the Pawnees captives taken in as slaves but later referred to any Native American captive who was from "away" from the area to where they were taken.
• They are often the forgotten Indian slaves because there are few records of them.
• Church records of baptisms have been helpful in learning a little of their stories.
• The way in which they were introduced into households changed over time.
• Modern people don't know much about the history of the enslavement of captured Native American slaves but it was widespread and led to later legislation.

Ms. Ewer recommended the book Bonds of Alliance by Brett Rushforth, which has won multiple awards, as a great resource for more information on Native American slave trade. 

Fort Michilimackinac

If you're planning a trip up North, be sure to plan to visit Fort Michilimackinac and all of the parks in the Mackinac State Historic Parks. If you're fortunate, you'll get to hear Ms. Ewer's wonderful presentation. You can also check the schedule ahead of time to see what topics are covered that day.

Another Colonial Abolitionist

Earlier this year, I wrote of John Laurens and his efforts to speak out against slavery. Tamera Kraft wrote about abolition in early America, and then Roseanna White shared how Georgia was first seen as opportunity to show charity to London's poor. While researching on the roots of slavery in our country for my new release, The Rebel Bride (a Civil War story, part of Daughters of the Mayflower), I discovered murmurs that the South, despite stereotypes to the contrary, was actually at one time opposed to slavery, while it was New England merchants and ship owners who saw the trade as most lucrative. (I think my personal writing brand should be, "Exploring the Contradictions of History" ...)

Statue of Oglethorpe in Augusta, Georgia

Further digging revealed that James Edward Oglethorpe, founder and trustee of the colony of Georgia, not only envisioned using the land and its resources to extend help to the less fortunate in England, while encouraging industry and trade (a somewhat brilliant idea, even if it failed in execution), but was stridently antislavery in the process. It's remarkable that together with the other Georgia Trustees he managed, at least at first, to ban slavery in the colony--and to promote fair trade with the native peoples.

Shortly after his departure for England, however, in 1744, the other trustees caved to demands to legalize slavery. Oglethorpe remained outspoken against slavery for the rest of his life, and also argued on behalf of the colonies during the American Revolution.

~*~*~*~

For more reading:

• James Edward Oglethorpe at the Oglethorpe University site
• James Oglethorpe at Wikipedia
• Slavery in Colonial Georgia
• Why Georgia Was Founded as an Antislavery Territory

Colonial Abolitionist John Laurens

A miniature of Laurens by Charles Wilson Peale

The popularity of the musical Hamilton has brought some refreshing familiarity with the colonial era and some of its more obscure inhabitants to general society in the past couple of years. One such figure is John Laurens, son of Henry Laurens, South Carolina planter and first president of the Continental Congress. (Also later a prisoner in the Tower of London.)

Like many planters’ sons, John went overseas for his education. While there, he married Martha Manning, the daughter of one of his father’s business associates—but by his own admission, out of “pity,” to save her reputation and the legitimacy of their child, which Martha was already expecting. Because of the outbreak of the American Revolution, he left Martha in England shortly thereafter and threw himself into the war effort, where he distinguished himself as brave to the point of recklessness, won the approval of George Washington, and found immediate friendships with Alexander Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette.

The Laurens family cemetery, Berkeley County, SC

It was in 1779, however, when the British had just launched the Southern Campaign, that John Laurens’s character as a political and social maverick truly came to the fore. He argued with his father that after the fall of Savannah, Georgia, Charles Towne could be most effectively defended if the Continental Army would only enlist blacks. Henry Laurens had claimed to be in favor of abolition, despite making much of his fortune from slave trading and growing rice, and even went so far as to agree to give John forty of his enslaved men to form the core of a black regiment, with the promise of freedom at the end of the war if they served faithfully—a move that would have caused John to effectively forfeit his own inheritance. The idea was met with much resistance from other South Carolina planters and political leaders. Henry Laurens, feeling the pinch of that opposition from his own peers, and doubtless feeling caught between what he saw as reality vs. idealism, responded to his son with what basically amounted to, This will never be agreed to; sit down and stop rocking the boat, because you don’t understand the reality of our times and culture. John tried three different times to bring the measure before the South Carolina legislature, only to have it refused every time—and in May 1780, Charleston did indeed fall and remained under British rule until December 1782.

Blue hyacinth marking the grave of John Laurens

In August, during the last year of British occupation, John Laurens met an early death, the result of his famed recklessness in battle. He was buried on the banks of the Cooper River, beside family at Mepkin Plantation, now known as Mepkin Abbey. Though John’s vision died with him, many feel that such forward-thinking suggestions, and his insistence that enslaved Africans were indeed persons of worth and potential equal to any of European descent, set the stage for later abolitionist movements. His attempt to see blacks armed in the defense of our country, and later freed, definitely foreshadowed the debates of the Civil War era. Many have argued that Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was merely a strategical military move and not in the best interest of enslaved Negroes in general, but by the end of the Civil War, even the Confederates had reluctantly agreed to offer freedom to enslaved black men in exchange for military service—but too late to save the Confederacy. The parallels, however, are fascinating.

Slavery in Colonial America: the Impact on Native Tribes

Fugitive slave treaty from 1480 BC

In my last post, I discussed the very difficult topic of slavery, an institution one cannot avoid in any study of our country’s history—indeed, of serious study of nearly any civilization. Though modern, reductionist history would blame the evils of chattel slavery (i.e., treating human beings as moveable property) solely on European colonization, beginning with Christopher Columbus, the institution existed as a fixture in Sumerian, Babylonian, and Egyptian cultures, as well as early South American and African societies.

So how does the practice of slavery touch the native peoples of North America, beyond the obvious influence of Columbus?

First, slavery was definitely practiced between native tribes, but not so much as an official institution as we understand from, say, the Civil War era. This excellent summary by author Christina Snyder explains it better than I could:

The history of American slavery began long before the first Africans arrived at Jamestown in 1619. Evidence from archaeology and oral tradition indicates that for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years prior, Native Americans had developed their own forms of bondage. This fact should not be surprising, for most societies throughout history have practiced slavery. In her cross-cultural and historical research on comparative captivity, Catherine Cameron found that bondspeople composed 10 percent to 70 percent of the population of most societies, lending credence to Seymour Drescher’s assertion that “freedom, not slavery, was the peculiar institution.” If slavery is ubiquitous, however, it is also highly variable. Indigenous American slavery, rooted in warfare and diplomacy, was flexible, often offering its victims escape through adoption or intermarriage, and it was divorced from racial ideology, deeming all foreigners—men, women, and children, of whatever color or nation—potential slaves. Thus, Europeans did not introduce slavery to North America. Rather, colonialism brought distinct and evolving notions of bondage into contact with one another. At times, these slaveries clashed, but they also reinforced and influenced one another. Colonists, who had a voracious demand for labor and export commodities, exploited indigenous networks of captive exchange, producing a massive global commerce in Indian slaves. This began with the second voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1495 and extended in some parts of the Americas through the twentieth century. During this period, between 2 and 4 million Indians were enslaved. Elsewhere in the Americas, Indigenous people adapted Euro-American forms of bondage. In the Southeast, an elite class of Indians began to hold African Americans in transgenerational slavery and, by 1800, developed plantations that rivaled those of their white neighbors. The story of Native Americans and slavery is complicated: millions were victims, some were masters, and the nature of slavery changed over time and varied from one place to another. A significant and long overlooked aspect of American history, Indian slavery shaped colonialism, exacerbated Native population losses, figured prominently in warfare and politics, and influenced Native and colonial ideas about race and identity. [Indian Slavery, emphasis mine.]

Early in my study of the colonial era, I received the impression that the practice of enslaving Native Americans died out as the African slave trade gained momentum, but there is increasing evidence to the contrary.  One author’s study reveals that the slave trade among the Indians of the West was alive and well during the settlement and annexation of California. He also reveals how the Mormons found the same upon their arrival in Utah, and how attempts to “rescue” the victims of slavery only fed racial prejudice within Mormonism.

Cherokee delegation to Washington in 1866

A particularly startling aspect of the dynamics of slavery on native peoples surfaced in connection with the Cherokee and Seminoles, both of which were removed to Oklahoma Territory over the Trail of Tears. Apparently it was well known and accepted that many wealthy, landholding Cherokee owned black slaves, and took them along during the removal (see the quote above). Some Seminoles re-enslaved blacks who escaped to Florida, although it’s reported that their interpretation of slavery was more “fair” than that practiced to the north.

Time fails me to go deeply into any of these aspects, and I want to make it clear that as a historian and storyteller, I’m merely making observations, not offering a defense or pointing fingers in any way. In our own times, however, we must understand as much of the entire picture as possible. It is, after all, our mission here at Colonial Quills to educate about little-known aspects of our chosen span of history.

For more reading:
The Untold History of American Native Slavery (interesting site, with a ton of supporting and related articles)
America's Other Original Sin
... and just for fun, FACT CHECK: 9 Facts About Slavery

The Problem of Slavery

"Overboard," courtesy of the Bristol Radical History Group

Slavery. Just the word makes us cringe. Moderns very nearly lose their minds in the simplest of discussions over the subject, because of recent resurgence of racial tensions in our country. But for any student of colonial history—really, of any history at all—it’s absolutely unavoidable.

The first thing that comes to mind in relation to slavery is, of course, the American Civil War. I’m currently neck-deep in writing a story set right in the middle of the Civil War—which is still somewhat of a shock to me, since colonial America is still my favorite—but this means I’m having to grapple with the issue of slavery as never before. In considering how it relates to the colonial era, and all the problems we moderns tend to have even in merely discussing it, I’ve made some interesting observations about this terrible fixture of history.

To begin with, like many other aspects of history, slavery isn’t always taught in schools with the best of accuracy. Some are even under the impression that slavery actually originated with the European “invasion” of America. Well, not so. Slavery—the practice of forcibly taking and keeping human beings for profit, subjugation, or sacrifice—has been around nearly as long as humans themselves. The exact nature of slavery, or the purposes behind it, might have varied, but the practice most definitely did not start here in our country, or even with Europeans. Almost every major civilization practiced slavery of some kind of another, from the Romans to the Greeks and all the way back to the Egyptians and beyond, and then forward to our time, perpetrated as human trafficking or an act of war by extremist groups such as ISIS or Boko Haram.

Another problem of discussing such awful realities is a moral one, because we never want to appear that we’re condoning or justifying slavery in any form, but as historians we are obligated to acknowledge it as a very real cultural and societal force.

It was a strongly defining force in American history, for sure, as it was for many other nations. The case could be made that chattel slavery, the term simply used to refer to treating people as property, was first introduced to the Americas by Europeans, but slavery in various forms was certainly not a new thing to the native populations.

Christian slaves in Algiers, 1706

Slavery did, however, mean different things to different peoples. We tend to think of it in terms of permanence, with no way of escape or recourse in case of wrong, as was mostly the case of the American colonies (and later, specifically the South). But as I mentioned in previous posts, native customs of taking captives fell mostly into one of two categories: one, for vengeance, where many of these were killed as sacrifices, or two, in bereavement, where captives were adopted in place of deceased family members. It’s well documented, however, that both blacks and natives did practice chattel slavery, and at least one article discusses how many wealthy Cherokee took their black slaves along on the Trail of Tears. I uncovered so much on the various aspects of slavery during the colonial era that I’d like to take the next couple months to explore both its impact on native tribes, and abolitionist attitudes specific to the Revolutionary War. So—please stay tuned!

Sins of the Fathers -- Slavery's Roots in Virginia by Carrie Fancett Pagels

I began the following post several years ago, but didn't post it. I recently completed a novella, "Love's Escape" which will be published in November, 2017, by Barbour in The Captive Brides collection. This novella includes two escaped slaves who are one-eighth African descent, being brought out of bondage via my hero, the son of a funeral home owner and his friend.

Recently, Pegg Thomas post about Abolitionism in colonial times. I pulled the following post out of draft mode to share! And I've modified it and added to my original post.

As I've mentioned in a previous post several year ago, with Julian Charity, Historian at Shirley Plantation, the indentured servants were the first main workforce in Virginia and it was only later that slavery began its pernicious roots. I live right here in the heart of of where the enslavement of Africans began. Lest you think only the British were transporting slaves, one of the first cargoes to Virginia was from a captured Spanish shipload and diverted to Virginia.

Also, as documented at Colonial Michilimackinac in the St. Anne parish, the French enslaved both Indians and Africans, and many of these children were baptized, leaving a record of such barbarisms as recordings that child of slave girl and her owner was baptized on such and such a date. I'll admit I'm ignorant of what the French did with offspring of such unions, but I'm assuming they continued to be enslaved in the far north. However, I do know what happened in Virginia after 1662. The white landowners enacted laws that stated that the children born to those enslaved remained enslaved and the property of the owner.

Therein, during colonial times, began the not only the horrible practice of enslaving future generations but from then forward any children born between master and slave were continued to be enslaved (unless freed, of course--but there were various restrictions there, too.) So that by the time of the 1860s, abolitionists utilized the modern-day technology of photographs to share picture of enslaved white children, in the south, offspring of multi-generational owner-slave "unions" -- and while it shouldn't have taken that to have awakened consciousness of the evil of slavery, at least sympathies were finally stirred to the point of taking action.

But I digress. Early on, in the mid 1600s, records indicate there were only several hundred blacks present among over ten thousand colonials. Just a fraction. Can you imagine, if you were, say, one of these very small minority blacks, a freeman, and now you see shiploads of slaves being brought into Jamestown and Yorktown? I know what I'd be thinking--how long till they try to enslave me?

Near where I live, across the York River, is an area referred to as Guinea. Locally, they've said this was because the watermen who settled there were often paid in Guineas. But the reason for the name of the British guinea coin is from Africa, specifically Guinea. The first guinea coins weren't minted until 1663.

In the 1660's, the Royal Africa company began business and soon thereafter brought thousands of slaves to Virginia.

Rosewell and a dependency

The owners of the once-magnificent Rosewell Plantation (see above), in Gloucester, were some of the main importers of human lives. The ruins of a majestic brick three-story home (with twenty-one fireplaces!) still stand in Gloucester. It is an interesting place to visit.

In my July 2016 release, Saving the Marquise's Granddaughter (White Rose/Pelican), my characters go into indentured servitude. But it is a much kinder and gentler situation than most folks endured. Simply perusing the newspapers from that time frame (mid-1700s) reveals all kinds of misuse of indentured servants.

And lest you think I am pointing the finger, I have deep Virginia roots myself, back to the 1600s in the very area where I live, but wasn't raised.

In the November release, we have brides from all kinds of backgrounds but who are "captive" by something.

Question: Do you have an ancestor who was enslaved or indentured? Do you possibly not know but suspect it?

Abolitionism in Colonial America

by Tamera Lynn Kraft

Most people think abolitionism didn't really come to be until the early 1800, but abolitionist views in America started almost as early as slavery in America.

The first Africans that came to America, according to some historians, were sold to Jamestown colonists in 1619 as indentured servants although some say there were already Africans there. The twenty men had been stolen from a Portuguese slave ship and were allowed land and freedom when there period of service was done, but by the 1630s, some colonists were keeping African servants for life. John Punch, in 1640, was the first documented indentured for life servant. In 1662, the law recognized slavery and instituted statutes that any children born would follow the status of their mother making it so children could be born slaves.

The first dispute against this practice was that Christians could not own their brothers in Christ. If a slave was baptized in the faith, he had to be freed. In 1667, the General Assembly outlawed freedom by baptism. By 1705, an array of slave codes were enacted, and half of the labor force in Virginia. In the 1620s, the Dutch West India Company introduced slavery to New England, and be 1700, slavery was established as an institution there as well.

Even though slavery was being established in the colonies, there was a movement growing to end the practice. Throughout the 17th century, many evangelicals and Quakers came out against slavery.  As early as 1688, four Quakers in Germantown signed a protest against the practice of slavery and made their case that the practice was not Christian and against Biblical precepts. In the 1730s and 1740s, during the Great Awakening, preachers decried owning slaves as sin.

During the American Revolution, Moravian and Quaker preachers convinced over a thousand slave owners to free their slaves. The newly formed states debated whether to allow slavery to continue. It was finally decided to outlaw the slave trade within twenty years and allow each state to decide for itself. The economy in the South was also encouraging freedom for slaves. Planters were shifting from labor-intensive tobacco to mixed-crop cultivation and needed fewer workers.

After the American Revolution, northern states gradually outlawed slavery. In 1808, the United States criminalized the slave trade and outlawed any new slaves being brought to America. If it hadn't been for Eli Whitney's cotton gin patent in 1794, slavery may have only been a footnote in history. The cotton gin overnight made the practice of slavery profitable. We'll never know if the invention had been delayed twenty years, if that would have ended slavery. Either way, it didn't end abolitionism. The abolitionist movement that started in Colonial times would continue to grow until a war forced the end of slavery in the United States.

Tamera Lynn Kraft has always loved adventures and writes Christian historical fiction set in America because there are so many adventures in American history. She has received 2^nd place in the NOCW contest, 3^rd place TARA writer’s contest, and was a finalist in the Frasier Writing Contest. Her novellas Resurrection of Hope and A Christmas Promise are available on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble.

Guest Post - Julian Charity of Shirley Plantation on Slavery in Colonial Times

Our guest post today is by Julian Charity, Historian for Shirley Plantation in Charles City, Virginia.  Julian also has a new book release that we will be giving away to one lucky visitor this week.  We will be reviewing his book, about war at Shirley Plantation from the American Revolution, soon.

Slavery at Shirley Plantation 

by Julian Charity

Plantations in the New World supplied the English empire with an abundance of tobacco.  Cultivation of tobacco was labor intensive and cost prohibitive unless it is produced in large quantities. In order to keep the cost down and the production quantity up, indentured servants and slaves provided an economical labor force.  With indentured servants and slaves, the plantations became the economic backbone of the English empire.

The first record of servants at Shirley Plantation dates to 1616 when John Rolfe documented that Captain Isaac Madison commanded 25 men in planting and curing tobacco. These men were all white and indentured servants, also called indentures. Indentured servants were the original labor force at Shirley as well as in the rest of the English colonies. Indentured servants were people of various races who were contractually obligated to become laborers for a specified period of time in exchange for debt repayment, food, lodging, transportation to the colonies, and the teaching of a trade. Indentured servants were brought from Africa, the Caribbean islands, Scotland, Ireland, and England. In some of the British colonies of New England, servitude took the form of apprenticeships, in which an individual was a servant in exchange for learning a craft. In Virginia and throughout the southern colonies, where the economy was primarily agricultural, most indentured servants were field hands who tended tobacco fields. Though indentured servitude sounded appealing, the lives of these men and women were very difficult. They faced harsh punishments for petty crimes and transgressions against their masters. Penalties included whipping, hanging, shooting, and even burning the indenture alive. Masters could extend servants contracts and they had little recourse, legal or otherwise.

Africans first arrived in Virginia in 1619. The majority of these Africans likely became indentured servants though records from this era were unclear regarding their fates. The first documented African slave in Virginia came in 1640. John Punch, an African indentured servant, ran away from his master and a Virginia court ordered that Punch’s punishment be a lifetime of service to his master. In 1622, records for Shirley Plantation first mention an African or islander when documents indicated that eleven men including “One Negar,” had died since April.

Until Virginians committed to slave labor, indentured servants comprised the majority of the workforce.  Edward Hill I, the first Hill Carter family member to live at Shirley, probably took part in the indentured servant system. He imported 43 people in 1661. These people were likely indentures because the indentured servant system was more cost-effective and practical than the African slave system.

In The Making of New World Slavery:  From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800, Robin Blackburn argued that indentured servants were a better investment until the end of the 1600s for several reasons. The high mortality rate of new arrivals to the New World was a contributing factor. An indentured contract may have only called for three or four years of service, but if the person only lived three or four years, then investing in more servants and fewer slaves was more cost efficient. White indentures were more popular because their masters knew their language and their work habits. Credit for purchasing servants was more easily received when buying white indentured labor (Blackburn 241-242). By the end of the seventeenth century, these issues became irrelevant and slaves began replacing indentures.

Bacon’s Rebellion in 1675 was a major contributing factor to the demise of the indentured servant system. Former and current indentured servants supported Nathaniel Bacon in his uprising. Colonial elite no longer favored the indentured servants after their collaboration with Bacon. Still in need of inexpensive labor, the importation of slaves to the colonies increased.

Read the entire article by clicking here.

GIVEAWAY:  Leave a comment below for a chance to win a copy of Julian's book.

In Ye Olden Days: The Underground Railroad

By Lori Benton

Harriet Tubman. John Brown. Frederick Douglas. Sojourner Truth. These are names readily associated with the Underground Railroad, a network of secret routes and safe houses used by nineteenth century slaves in the southern United States, and those who aided them, to escape to the northern states or Canada, and freedom.

While researching the first novel I wrote set in the late 18th century, a story dealing largely with issues of slavery, I began to wonder just when the Underground Railroad had its genesis. Who was that man or woman who first harbored an escaped slave from a neighboring plantation, or gave him food, or warned him of a house nearby where the dogs (or the people) were mean, or told him of a safer path to take? Who was the first farmer or tradesman to step out of their safety and comfort to actually accompany or "conduct" a slave northward in her flight? The Underground Railroad didn't spring into being one day in the early 19th century, fully realized and operational. There had to be a person, sometime, somewhere who, lacking support from neighbor or like-minded friend, decided to help an escaping slave along his daunting road to freedom.

Since a huge element of the success of such endeavors is secrecy, there can be no knowing exactly who they were. No doubt many an early abolitionist carried his or her secrets to the grave.

Levi Coffin 1798-1877

When author Laura Frantz posted on her blog sometime back about her historical heroes, I pondered the question for myself and realized pretty quickly that these unknown 18th century folk who laid the first tracks for the future Underground Railroad were some of mine.

One who stands in place for them all, for me, is a man named Levi Coffin. He was a Quaker, a North Carolinian with Nantucket roots. He and his cousin, Vestal Coffin, became "the founders of the earliest known scheme to transport fugitives across hundreds of miles of unfriendly territory to safety in the free states."*  The year was 1819.

That's the earliest known scheme. But what about the woman, years prior, who opened her farmhouse door to a tentative knocking one evening after sunset, looked into the frightened eyes of a runaway and felt compelled to give her supper, or a place to sleep in the cow shed, or directions to a friend's home just across the county line to the north? My storyteller's mind wouldn't let go of the likelihood that someone else, somewhere, years before the Coffins, had gotten the idea in their head that it was a good thing, the right thing, to help escaping slaves to freedom, in defiance of law and social pressure. Then I found what might have been the impetus for the taking of such risky action.

The year 1789 saw the publishing of the first influential slave narrative, by Olaudah Equiano--as portrayed by Youssou N'Dour in the film Amazing Grace (at left is N'Dour as Equiano in a scene on the streets of London at what may well be the very first book signing... ever). Equiano, having become a Methodist due to the influence of the evangelical teachings of George Whitefield, bought his freedom from his master after many years of slavery. His unflinching portrayal of the horrors of slavery as practiced in the southern United States drew many on both sides of the Atlantic into the cause of abolition.

In the spring of 2004, armed with a copy of Equiano's narrative and a lot of burning questions, I set out on my own long journey back into the late 18th century, when the then 14 United States were still wobbling on foal's legs. Four years later I'd given myself a crash course in the era, and written a historical novel. Working titled Kindred, the story is set in 1793, a few years after Equiano's narrative was published, and some twenty-five years before Levi and Vestal Coffin founded their slave-freeing scheme. Between my knowledge of Equiano's narrative and my surmises on the grassroots beginnings of the Underground Railroad were born one of Kindred's secondary characters, Thomas Ross, a free black man in Boston who has never known slavery, who is shaken by the things he's read in Equiano's book, shaken out of complacency and onto a path that will forever change his and many others destiny.

For more information about Levi Coffin and the early years of the Underground Railroad, visit my fellow Colonial Quills contributor, author Carla Gade's geneaology blog. Small world that it is, turns out Levi Coffin is mentioned in Carla's family tree. Also check out the wonderful book by Fergus M. Bordewich, Bound for Canaan.

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