{"id":3690,"date":"2023-07-05T11:35:28","date_gmt":"2023-07-05T11:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/stampedes\/?p=3690"},"modified":"2023-08-05T19:12:10","modified_gmt":"2023-08-05T19:12:10","slug":"william-h-townsend-lincoln-and-the-bluegrass-1955","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/stampedes\/william-h-townsend-lincoln-and-the-bluegrass-1955\/","title":{"rendered":"William H. Townsend \u2013 Lincoln and the Bluegrass (1955)"},"content":{"rendered":"

William Townsend uses Abraham Lincoln\u2019s diaries and letters along with newspaper articles to help showcase the development of Lincoln\u2019s views slavery. Specifically, Townsend captures Lincoln’s response to key moments like the running away of slaves in Kentucky.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Townsend’s book is a treasure trove of primary sources. However, the term \u201cslave stampede\u201d is absent from the book. In its place, Townsend includes about three instances of group escapes.\u00a0<\/span>Townsend details the punishment of preacher Calvin Fairbank and teacher Delia Ann Webster for assisting three freedom seekers in 1844. The successful escape resulted in the arrest of Fairbank who was tortured and placed in solitary confinement while Webster was placed in a \u201cdebtors room.\u201d Israel, the black driver who transported them was whipped fifty times. [1] airbank pleaded guilty in 1845 and was sentenced to fifteen years of imprisonment. In 1849, however, Governor John Crittenden pardoned him. However he was caught again in 1851 “stealing slaves” in Louisville and sentenced to another 15 years.\u00a0 He eventually was released in 1864.\u00a0[2]<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Although Townsend does not use the term stampede, he does cover mass escapes which contemporaries labeled ‘stampedes,’ such as the 1848 Lexington Stampede. O<\/span>n August 5th, 1848 in Fayette County, Kentucky, an estimated seventy-five slaves attempted to escape from their masters. The slaves were armed and led by a white operative named Patrick Doyle. According to William M. Pratt, a pastor at the First Baptist Church in Lexington, \u201cthere has been a great disturbance in the country on account of some 60 or 70 negroes running off in a gang & hundreds have been in pursuit, nearly all taken.\u201d The men in pursuit met at the Fayette courthouse to discuss ways of \u201cdetection and punishment of abolitionists and others in enticing slaves from their owners.\u201d [3] The Fairbank case had left a staunch residual opposition to runaway slaves and those aiding them. According to the Observer<\/em>, abolitionists under \u201cthe false pretext of philanthropy, and with unexampled audacity\u201d were \u201cperpetrating their foul practice in our midst.\u201d The solution according to the paper was to make \u201ca more severe example . . . of these wretches.\u201d The paper called on local residents to \u201cbe on alert to detect and bring them to punishment.\u201d Most of the freedom seekers were caught a couple of days later. The freedom seekers who survived the confrontation were either killed or \u201csent down the river.\u201d [4]<\/span><\/p>\n

Shortly before the Emancipation Proclamation, Judge George Robertson met with a union officer to bring back his runaway slave who was being harbored by the army. The officer refused. Furious, Judge Roberson sent a letter to President Lincoln, whom he knew, and when he didn\u2019t receive the answer he wanted, he sued the officer in a Kentucky court for\u00a0 \u201charboring a slave and aiding” in the escape of a fugitive.\u00a0 [5] Townsend suggests that the Union officer (Utley) may have harbored many fugitive slaves. According to Townsend, this dispute encapsulated a wider problem in Kentucky which was the conflict between the state\u2019s pro-slavery constitution and the Union’s evolving antislavery wartime policies.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[1] Joe William Trotter Jr., <\/span>River Jordan: African American Urban Life in the Ohio Valley.<\/span><\/i> (1st ed. The University Press of Kentucky, 2015), xiv<\/span><\/p>\n

[2]\u00a0 Trotter, <\/span>River Jordan: African American Urban Life in the Ohio Valley. <\/span><\/i>26<\/span><\/p>\n

[3] Trotter, 37<\/span><\/p>\n

[4] Trotter, 45<\/span><\/p>\n

[5] Trotter, 45<\/span><\/p>\n

[6] Trotter, 46<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

William Townsend uses Abraham Lincoln\u2019s diaries and letters along with newspaper articles to help showcase the development of Lincoln\u2019s views slavery. Specifically, Townsend captures Lincoln’s response to key moments like the running away of slaves in Kentucky.\u00a0 \u00a0Townsend’s book is a treasure trove of primary sources. However, the term \u201cslave stampede\u201d is absent from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21280],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","hentry","category-scholarship","post_format-post-format-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/stampedes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/stampedes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/stampedes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/stampedes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/stampedes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3690"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/stampedes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3841,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/stampedes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3690\/revisions\/3841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/stampedes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/stampedes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/stampedes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}