Antislavery Activities
He entered publicly into the antislavery struggle for the first time in 1846, when as a "Conscience Whig", he was an unsuccessful candidate for Congress against Robert C. Winthrop. He was one of the founders of an antislavery newspaper, the Boston Daily Commonwealth, which he edited (1851–1853) with the assistance of his wife, Julia Ward Howe. He was a prominent member of the Kansas Committee in Massachusetts, and with Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, George Luther Stearns, Theodore Parker, and Gerrit Smith, was interested in the plans of John Brown. Although he disapproved of the attack upon Harper's Ferry, Howe nevertheless funded John Brown's work as a member of the Secret Six. After Brown's arrest, Howe temporarily fled to Canada to escape prosecution.
According to Samuel Howe’s daughter, Florence Hall, the Howe’s South Boston home was a stop on the Underground Railroad. This is uncertain, but it is known that Dr. Howe vehemently opposed the Fugitive Slave Law. Two incidents clearly demonstrate this. The first occurred in 1850, when Dr. Howe along with Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Theodore Parker and other abolitionists, stormed Faneuil Hall in order to try to free a captured escaped slave, Anthony Burns. Burns was going to be sent back to his slave owner in Virginia in accordance with the Fugitive Slave Law. The abolitionists hoped to rescue Burns from that fate. Howe declared outside the hall that “No man’s freedom is safe until all men are free,” and shortly afterward the abolitionists stormed the hall, breaking through the door with a battering ram. A deputy was accidentally shot in the ensuing fracas. Federal Troops finally put an end to the attempted raid and Burns was returned to Virginia. The men didn’t abandon Burns, however, and within a year of Burns' capture they had raised enough money to purchase Burns’ freedom from his slave owner.
In another violation of the Fugitive Slave Law, in October 1854, with the help of Capt. Austin Bearse and the Captain’s brother, Dr. Howe rescued an escaped slave who had come into Boston Harbor from Jacksonville, FL, as a stowaway aboard the brig Cameo. The Boston Vigilance Committee then helped the man evade slave-catchers and reach freedom.
In 1863, Dr. Howe returned to Canada in order to interview former slaves who had settled there after fleeing on the Underground Railroad. Life in Canada wasn’t free from the bigotry that Freedmen and women experienced in the Northern Eastern United States. However, Howe wrote that overall their lives had improved, as they were now free to earn a living, marry, attend school and church out of the reach of slave-catchers. An account of his interviews and experiences were published in 1864, The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West.
Read more about this topic: Samuel Gridley Howe
Famous quotes containing the word activities:
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)