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Shadrach Minkins: From Fugitive Slave to Citizen
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About Shadrach Minkins: From Fugitive Slave To Citizen
Product Description On February 15, 1851, Shadrach Minkins was serving breakfast at a coffeehouse in Boston when history caught up with him. The first runaway to be arrested in New England under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, this illiterate Black man from Virginia found himself the catalyst of one of the most dramatic episodes of rebellion and legal wrangling before the Civil War. In a remarkable effort of historical sleuthing, Gary Collison has recovered the true story of Shadrach Minkins’ life and times and perilous flight. His book restores an extraordinary chapter to our collective history and at the same time offers a rare and engrossing picture of the life of an ordinary Black man in nineteenth-century North America.As Minkins’ journey from slavery to freedom unfolds, we see what day-to-day life was like for a slave in Norfolk, Virginia, for a fugitive in Boston, and for a free Black man in Montreal. Collison recreates the drama of Minkins’s arrest and his subsequent rescue by a band of Black Bostonians, who spirited the fugitive to freedom in Canada. He shows us Boston’s Black community, moved to panic and action by the Fugitive Slave Law, and the previously unknown community established in Montreal by Minkins and other refugee Blacks from the United States. And behind the scenes, orchestrating events from the disastrous Compromise of 1850 through the arrest of Minkins and the trial of his rescuers, is Daniel Webster, who through the exigencies of his dimming political career, took the role of villain.Webster is just one of the familiar figures in this tale of an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances. Others, such as Frederick Douglass, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Harriet Jacobs, and Harriet Beecher Stowe (who made use of Minkins’s Montreal community in Uncle Tom’s Cabin), also appear throughout the narrative. Minkins’ intriguing story stands as a fascinating commentary on the nation’s troubled times―on urban slavery and Boston abolitionism, on the Underground Railroad, and on one of the federal government’s last desperate attempts to hold the Union together. Review “Through obsessive sleuthing, the author…has brilliantly brought Minkins back to life. Collison began with little more than the records of the case and contemporary newspaper accounts. He mastered the literature of slavery and the histories of the three cities in which Minkins lived… [A] full-blown biography of an ordinary African American man or woman is a rarity. Only an exceptional author would dare take on such a daunting task, and Shadrach Minkins has been well served by his biographer.” ― Stuart Seely Sprague , Washington Post “Shadrach Minkins was the first runaway slave to be arrested under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Gary Collison traces the life of this rather ordinary individual―who was rescued from the courthouse by a band of Boston black men shortly after his arrest and then disappeared―from this early years as a slave in Virginia to his career as a free man in Montreal. Part history, part detective story, this outstanding portrait of black life in 19th-century America is now available in paperback form; it would be a bargain at any price.” ― Dallas Morning News “[Collison’s book] is a story told wonderfully well…[and] a triumph of research and persistence.” ― Abdulrazak Gurnah , Times Literary Supplement “Gary Collison must have spent a lot of time digging into the historical records to reconstruct the life of Shadrach Minkins, an obscure figure but an important one in the tormented middle years of the American 19th century… [It] is a careful, workmanlike piece of historical rescue, one that brings to light the facts of a fascinating American life. Mr. Collison’s…book does not read like the usual academic tome. He concentrates not on theory or interpretation but on the remarkable story he has to tell. Along the way, he draws an illuminating portrait of black life in three cities… He describes the activities of fugitives and wou
