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Summary
Summary
The freedom of Thornton and Lucie Blackburn became a cause celebre in the mid 1830s, sparking a race riot in Detroit & a diplomatic incident with Canada. Runaway slaves, Thornton & Lucie eventually settled in Toronto & worked tirelessly with other abolitionists against the slavery they had left behind in the Southern States."
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In 1985, archeologists in downtown Toronto discovered what would become the most highly publicized dig in Canadian history: the remains of a house belonging to former slaves Thornton and Lucie Blackburn, who, as it turns out, were key figures in the Underground Railroad. Fleeing Louisville, Ky., in 1831, shortly before Lucie was to be sold down the river, the Blackburns used forged documents to cross the Ohio River and eventually make their way to Detroit. They built a life in the "nominally Free Territory of Michigan," until Thornton was recognized and arrested, along with Lucie. Before they could be convicted and returned to slavery, though, the first racial uprising in Detroit-a crowd of friends and abolitionists who marched on the jail-gave them the opportunity to escape. Fleeing to Toronto, Thornton's case established the promise of the Underground Railroad: Canada's refusal to turn the former slaves over to Michigan's governor established Canada as a haven for escaped slaves (so long as they weren't wanted for capital crimes). Frost spent years researching this story, as attested to by 100-plus pages of notes. Unfortunately, the voices and personalities of the Blackburns themselves remain sketchy; Frost fills in numerous chinks in their story, using first-hand accounts from others in similar situations, but it still feels like the Thorntons have, once again, evaded capture. (Feb.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Review
An excellent and absorbing "American and Canadian story" of an inaugural passage aboard the Underground Railroad. Canadian archaeologist Frost has spent months and traveled thousands of miles along back roads to trace the lives of runaway slaves, a search that she affectingly describes in the early pages of her book, helped along by the descendants of slaves and slaveholders alike, guarded by a "chivalrous hitchhiker" as she combed through a forgotten graveyard beside a freeway off ramp, threatened by devotees of the Old South. The fruits of that hard work are evident in this book, which reconstructs the lives and circumstances of a light-skinned young man named Thornton Blackburn and his wife, Lucie, who, the day before Independence Day 1833, presented forged documents allowing them passage from slaveholding Kentucky into free Indiana and steamed away on a paddle-wheeler from Louisville, never to return. They eventually made their way to Toronto, where the ambitious and intelligent couple became middle-class householders, he a cab driver, she a moneylender. Theirs was a daring escape, to be sure, but Frost puts it in a larger context of resistance in many ways; by her account, slave resistance to the point of insurrection and guerrilla warfare was common, so much so that "wise slaveholders turned a blind eye to minor infractions" in order to quiet discontent. Having wrested some freedom of movement, slaves in cities along the Ohio River came into contact with free blacks, some of whom formed part of the network of abolitionists who served the underground movement to help runaway slaves reach freedom. Frost is adamant, however, that the heroes here are Thornton and Lucie, whose deed was forgotten but who "changed the very world in which they lived." A most worthy addition to the literature surrounding American slavery, complementing Mary Kay Ricks's Escape on the Pearl and Mat Johnson's The Great Negro Plot, both to be published in February 2007. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
In downtown Toronto in 1985, archaeologists uncovered remains of a house that had belonged to Thornton and Lucie Blackburn, fugitive slaves who settled in Canada in 1833 and later became successful business owners. Smardz Frost was part of the archaeology team and went on to undertake 20 years of research on the fascinating couple. In this richly detailed book, she recounts the perilous journey of the couple from Louisville, Kentucky, to prevent threat to their marriage by the imminent sale of Lucie. They were pursued to Michigan, where they were captured. Protest by Detroit's black community halted the return of the Blackburns to Kentucky and set off the riots of 1833. The couple was spirited across the river to Canada, but Michigan's governor demanded their extradition, setting in motion a legal and diplomatic battle between the U.S and Canada over the issue of fugitive slaves and firmly establishing Canada as the end point of the Underground Railroad. Smardz Frost's fascination with her subject and love of detailed historical documentation are evident in this engrossing look at a couple who defied slavery with their escape and their assistance to other fugitive slaves. --Vanessa Bush Copyright 2007 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
THORNTON BLACKBURN is hardly a household name, but he was an important figure in the history of American slavery. In "I've Got a Home in Glory Land," the historian and archaeologist Karolyn Smardz Frost rescues him from obscurity and shows how he helped make Canada a safe haven for fugitive slaves. Born into slavery in Kentucky in about 1812, Blackburn escaped with his wife to Detroit in 1831. They lived there for two years before they were captured and jailed, to be sent back in chains to their Southern owners. Dramatically, they were rescued by friends and spirited across the Detroit River to Canada. But they still weren't out of the reach of their American owners. Canada had abolished slavery but didn't have a firm policy on fugitive slaves. Imprisoned again, the Blackburns faced the bleak prospect of a forced return to the United States. In a landmark trial, however, a Canadian court ruled that they had committed no capital crime and could not be extradited to America. Canada was thereafter regarded as a protective home by fugitive blacks who wanted to live without fear of being recaptured and sent south. Like most ex-slaves, the Blackburns were illiterate - they signed their names with an X - and left no autobiographical record. They would probably have remained unknown were it not for Frost's heroic research. In 1985, she led an archaeological dig beneath a Toronto schoolyard that uncovered the remains of the Blackburns' home - some broken household items, horseshoe nails, a dog collar, bricks heaped in a pit. The find was significant enough to attract worldwide attention and establish the place as a historic site on the Canadian Underground Railroad. Frost then spent two decades piecing together the Blackburns' tale from scattered sources like court records, census reports and artifacts almost two centuries old. She visited many of the places the Blackburns lived or passed through. The result of her unflagging detective work is this absorbing book. After describing the archaeological dig and its aftermath, Frost recreates a crucial day in the lives of the Blackburns: July 3, 1831, when they escaped Kentucky disguised as free blacks. The beauty of the escape was its simplicity. Using false papers indicating that they were free persons of color, the Blackburns ferried from Louisville across the Ohio River to the free state of Indiana and caught a steamboat that carried them 132 miles north to Cincinnati. From there they traveled by stage-coach to Detroit. The events leading up to and following this flight from slavery form the bulk of Frost's book. A domestic slave, Thornton Blackburn had a succession of owners before coming under the control of a family in Louisville. There he met his future wife, Ruthie, a beautiful, light-skinned mulatto woman owned by a local merchant, George Backus. Although Thornton and Ruthie were married by a black minister, they lived apart, since marriages between slaves were not legal. The death of Backus and his family resulted in an estate sale in which Ruthie was bought by a prominent merchant, Virgil McKnight. A slave family whom the Blackburns received in Toronto. Did McKnight plan to sell Ruthie "down the river" - to New Orleans, perhaps - where, like many attractive female slaves, she would be forced into prostitution? Frost raises this and other unsavory possibilities as reasons for the Blackburns' decision to attempt their daring escape. She also makes clear that flight was no sure ticket to safety, recreating the constant tension under which the Blackburns lived, subject as they were to discovery and arrest as fugitive slaves. Frost shows too the inspiring solidarity among antislavery forces that led to the Blackburns' freedom. Especially moving is her account of their escape from jail. Ruthie walked out of her cell by exchanging clothes with a friend who stayed behind in her place. The next day Thornton was rescued by a mob of supporters outside the jail, who overwhelmed his guards and took him to the boat that carried him to Canada. The event became known as the Blackburn riots of 1833, the first racial uprising in Detroit history. The Canadian part of the Blackburns' story has a drama of its own. Their imprisonment and exoneration, followed by the landmark court decision that prevented their extradition to the United States, opened the way to future black émigrés, for whom Canada was now truly "Glory Land." Thornton and his wife settled in Toronto, where they lived respectably and became active in the antislavery cause. Frost relies on a fair amount of guesswork to reconstruct the Blackburns' lives. Words and phrases like "probably," "must have been" and "it would seem that" pop up often. But "I've Got a Home in Glory Land" is as authentically historical as it could be, given the scanty evidence Frost is working with. The book can be enjoyed as a historical biography plausibly embellished for readability. Around 35,000 escapees from slavery settled in Canada before the Civil War. As Karolyn Frost persuasively shows, many of them owed their newfound security to Ruthie and Thornton Blackburn, a pioneering couple most of them had never heard of. David S. Reynolds, distinguished professor of English at Baruch College, is the author, most recently, of "John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights."
Choice Review
In 1831, Thornton and Lucie Blackburn escaped from slavery in Louisville, KY. Posing as free people of color, they traveled by steamboat and stagecoach to Detroit. Recognized and recaptured there in 1833, they were rescued from reenslavement when black townspeople mobbed the local sheriff and took them to Canada. Canadian officials refused to extradite the Blackburns as accused criminals, setting a precedent that attracted thousands of escapees over the next 25 years. The Blackburns settled in Toronto, where they lived prosperously into the 1880s, using some of their wealth to aid other ex-slaves who found refuge in Canada. Archaeologist Frost (Ontario Historical Society) led a dig that uncovered the Blackburns' house. She retells this remarkable story with a judicious blend of facts about the Blackburns, complemented with a rich background of information about black life in slavery and freedom in the 19th century. What emerges is a richly imagined biography of the Blackburns, buttressed by well-informed, carefully delineated speculation about the inevitable gaps in knowledge about the couple. Along the way, the author offers insights on the growth of an African Canadian population and concomitant developments in race relations. Summing Up: Recommended. Public and undergraduate libraries. T. S. Whitman Mount St. Mary's University
Library Journal Review
Tens of thousands of blacks in antebellum America defied the law and the power of slavery by stealing themselves away from bondage. Among their loosely linked paths of hope lay what has come to be called the Underground Railroad. Spontaneous as well as structured, the underground sheltered those fleeing slavery, though the means varied and escape was seldom easy. Freelance writer and Washington, DC, tour operator Ricks narrates the story of a dash by sea from the U.S. capital in 1848. In perhaps the largest mass escape in U.S. slave history, 77 blacks sailed the 54-ton schooner Pearl from the Potomac into the Chesapeake. Heading north, they made it about 100 miles before an Atlantic storm stalled them and allowed captors to seize and return them to Washington, where their capture was hailed by heckling mobs. The plight of fugitive slaves galvanized and split communities, including Detroit, MI, codenamed Midnight in the underground. Its black residents in particular served as conductors, directing fugitives to safe houses and across the Detroit River to Canada and welcoming settlements such as that of Dawn, as Tobin (Hidden in Plain Sight) and poet Jones richly detail. Their time line nicely situates developments in slave resistance and provides broad historical context for sketches of historical figures and in-depth portraits of black communities in Canada that became home to fugitives who succeeded in making their way "north of slavery," as escaped slave Frederick Douglass once famously dubbed the northern U.S. neighbor. Furthering the Canadian connection and extending her internationally recognized work in public archaeology and history, Frost unearths fascinating aspects of the underground's international dimensions. Following escaped slaves Lucie and Thornton Blackburn from Louisville, KY, to Detroit and then to safety in Canada in 1833, Frost details U.S. blacks' determined resistance and the diplomatic problems cross-border fugitives created in U.S.-Canada relations. Beyond that, she develops blacks' entrepreneurial contributions to Canada, for the Thorntons became prominent in the Toronto livery business. Rich details of determination, hope, and life run through these three books, bringing to life personalities and places in the too often hidden or ignored history in the fight for basic human rights in antebellum America. Nicely complementary, these works each deserve a place in collections on black, local, or antebellum U.S. history, and Canadian collections should also have Frost's as well as Tobin's and Jones's works for their local history.-Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.