Flee North by Scott Shane
Overview: Tells the story of abolitionist Thomas Smallwood who bought his freedom, then led hundreds of enslaved people to new lives in the North.
Take-aways: Use this lesser-known abolitionist to help students understand the role of satirical newspaper columns in documenting mass escapes and mocking slaveholders.
ARC courtesy of Celadon Books, an imprint of Macmillan ( )

to-read, historical-figures, historical-places-events, historical-research, historical-setting, history-and-culture, slavery, rescue, resilience, entitled-attitude, american-history

Before there was an Underground Railroad there was Thomas Smallwood.
Before Harriet Tubman there was Thomas Smallwood.
With incredible research and meticulous documentation the story of this man who was born into slavery but given his manumission and worked hard in many ways to free others and expose the men who were less than human. A book not to be missed.
I requested and received an uncorrected digital galley from Celadon Books via NetGalley. Thank you! ( )

How did we come to forget the man who originated the Underground Railroad? How was his name erased from history?

A decade before Harriet Tubman was secreting slaves North, freedman Thomas Smallwood, with the help of a Northern abolitionist white man, Charles Torrey, not only led hundreds of slaves to Canada, he wrote satiric newspaper articles naming the escapees and their masters!

Flee North is an engrossing read documenting Smallwood and Torrey’s brazen and remarkable crusade. They pit themselves against Baltimore’s most prominent slave traders.

In 1808, the United States ended the African slave trade, but not slavery. As economic conditions changed, some plantations found they had more slaves than they could use, but had to house and feed. Meanwhile, the Deep South’s cotton plantations were desperate for free labor. The lucrative slave market within the U.S. began. If a plantation wife wanted a trip abroad, just sell a few extra slaves to finance it! The slave trade also created an impetus to ‘breed’ more slaves. It tore apart families. And being sold South to work the cotton plantations was a veritable death sentence.

Smallwood wrote articles under the name of “Samivel Weller, Jr”, inspired by the character in Charles Dickens’ novel The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. The letters named the people who were delivered to safety and their previous owners. Smallwood was a shoemaker and self-educated, and yet authored this “running madcap chronicle” for almost two years. The letters are included in the book, and are very entertaining in style.

The story delves into all aspects of slavery during this era: the sexual slavery of females, the lucrative slave trade that made men rich but socially reviled, how the police were implicated in facilitating the slavers, the detaining of freedman to be sold into slavery.

In time, Smallwood removed his family to Ontario, while Torrey, whose obsession had alienated him from his family, unwisely personally faced the slave dealer, was arrested, and died of tuberculosis while in prison. First, he wrote an account of his life.

Torrey became famous. Smallwood was not included in Torrey’s memoir, and he was forgotten. And yet, it was Smallwood who assisted more escapes, wrote the articles, and was father to the name Underground Railroad.

Until now.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book. ( )

Celadon Books always, always, always has the best fiction and non-fiction and Flee North: A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery's Borderland is another remarkable book to add to their list of remarkable books. Before reading this book I had never heard of Thomas Smallwood. There are a lot of history books out there describing the underground railroad and slave escape efforts, but none of them I’ve read mentioned this extraordinary man. Author Scott Shane does just that, uncovering the story of Smallwood’s multi-faceted efforts in such a way that you come to know the man, and wonder how history could have overlooked him so. Although the content is not always easy to read, the book itself is; it is so well-written, so informative, so evocative of the times and places, so powerful. A history book, but not the usual dry history book reciting the facts, just the facts, but rather a book that reveals the heroic accomplishments of one brave and resourceful man.

Thomas Smallwood was an abolitionist, a liberator, and a writer who bought his own freedom and then, with Charles Torrey, the young white activist he recruited helped hundreds escape slavery. Together they organized mass escapes from Washington, Baltimore, and surrounding counties to freedom in the north, and very often preventing sale of these humans who were not treated like humans to miserable lives in the south. Although he was well aware of the danger, Smallwood also documented the escapes in satirical newspaper columns, mocking the slaveholders, the slave traders and the police who worked for them hoping to gain more support in the north.

I’m sure we’ve all heard or read about the despicable conditions of slavery, how cruel and inhumane it was, how utterly lacking in guilt or remorse the owners who committed these atrocities were. But having heard about this before does not make each individual story less heart-wrenching or make this book less powerful.

Flee North: A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery's Borderland is inspiring and nearly impossible to put down once you’ve started reading. Another Celadon book that is entertaining, thought-provoking, educational. Thanks to Celadon Books for providing an advance copy of this moving story to me as a Celadon Reader via NetGalley. I voluntary leave this review; all opinions are my own. ( )