Customer Reviews

I've Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad

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One would have to read this book several times to completely absorb its multifarious layers, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

First and foremost, it is the compelling life story of Thornton and Lucie Blackburn. They escaped from slavery boldly using forged documents to travel by steamboat to Cincinnati (appropriately arriving on July 4) then settled in Detroit and were subsequently incarcerated under the Fugitive Slave Law. The community (white and black) rose up in their defense, sparking what history records as "The Blackburn Riots of 1833." After their hair raising escape to Canada and subsequent incarceration while appealing extradition under provisions of the Fugitive Offenders Act, they finally settled in Toronto, where Blackburn established the first cab company. The couple acquired affluence and influence - though they always lived modestly - and assisted many other refugees escaping slavery and intolerance before, during and after the Civil War.

Equally fascinating is the process by which their life story was reconstructed. Both Thornton and Lucie remained illiterate, and no one recorded their memoirs. This book is the result of over 20 years of painstaking research and - as the author states in the introduction - no small amount of "historical coalescence." It perfectly illustrates the creative approach historians must take when attempting to break through what genealogists call "The Wall of Slavery." The author relies on everything from Bibles to court documents to glean information and put all the pieces together, and her extensive bibliography alone is worth the price of the book.

While detailing the Blackburn's encounters with the legal system of the time, the author explores the evolution of jurisprudence in both countries: to maintain the Peculiar Institution in the states, and to guarantee civil liberties (and in no small part, autonomy from the U.S.) in Canada. Some slave owners doggedly expended inordinate amounts of time and money to retrieve their "property" and to punish anyone who might have aided their escape. Consequently, there are voluminous court documents related to the Blackburns as their owners pursued them here and abroad, and legal precedents were set which still have impact today. For example, people are often surprised to learn the Ohio River is actually part of Kentucky - that boundary was established to ensure this particular "highway to freedom" remained "slave territory" and this decision was relevant in the lawsuit filed against the steamboat captain and his company.

For American readers, the fact that this book is written from a Canadian's perspective adds yet another interesting layer. (Oh, to see ourselves as others see us!) Yet while pointing out the obvious hypocrisy inherent in U.S. "freedom," Frost does not turn a blind eye to racism and hypocrisy among Canadians. She notes that while Toronto harbored fugitive slaves, it also welcomed slaveholders and Confederate soldiers seeking asylum during the Civil War. Doubly mind boggling is the fact that the Blackburns had personal connections with some of them...and a few of them probably rode in his cab.

In the standard American narrative, slaves escape to Canada and vanish from our story. While many - heartened by the promise of Reconstruction - returned to the United States to reunite with family after the war (only to migrate north again as Jim Crow and sharecropping reinstated the antebellum power structure) the Blackburns lived three-quarters of their highly productive lives as African-Canadians. This book and the work which went into creating it are welcome revelations. I hope they inspire further research into the lives of those who crossed over into Canaan Land.

NB The book describes the role played by the Blackburns in the development of the Elgin Settlement and Buxton Mission, a colony for fugitive slaves south of Chatham. The modern village of North Buxton is still home to about 200 descendants. Several years ago I visited the Buxton Historic Site and Museum and highly recommend it...plan to spend several hours! BuxtonMuseum dot com

Karolyn Smardz Frost's tale of the exodus of the Blackburns from America to Canada via the Underground Railroad is incredibly moving and brutal. Moving, because these people, and their mostly-unknown helpers and friends, risked everything for freedom. They found it in the Glory Land, Canada. But they didn't stop there. Thornton Blackburn actually returned to Hell to free his mother, and he and wife Lucy helped other refugee families settle in Toronto.

It was no bed of roses for them in Canada, but it wasn't slavery. Any nostalgia for 'gone with the wind' depictions of antebellum Southern life is put to rest forever when you read of this brutal system that measured degrees of freedom (free blacks lived alongside slaves; slaves counted as 3/5 of a person for census purposes, giving the South more voting clout than it deserved since the '3/5 men' weren't allowed to vote; slaves could be 'hired out' to companies and taught a trade, but their wages were paid to their masters; women were raped by slavers before being sold down the river as concubines.)

The book has its weaknesses. I could have done without the endless geneologies of inbred Southern planters and instead read quotes from the defense speech given by Blackburn's lawyer after the first Detroit Riot ("The Blackburn Riot") in 1833; surely that must have been printed somewhere? I'd have liked it if there were more direct quotes from the principals. And there is a bit too much of 'they might have' 'they must have' and other vagaries. True, the Blackburns could not read or write and many details of their story were not written down, but other people who traveled North could and did write about their experiences in their own words.

The book will leave a bad taste in your mouth if you are from the USA. The 'peculiar institution' was a perversion in every sense of the word, and this book shows how courageous people escaped it and made their own lives in spite of all obstacles in their path.

And their secrecy was so good, we don't really know the names of the people who helped the Blackburns and the others who made it to the Glory Land, these many long years later.

Canada's role relative to slavery in the United States - little-known by Americans - is excellently told through the life story of a couple born in slavery. The Blackburns' escape from slavery calls out for dramatization in a movie or at least on PBS' "American Experience." It would also make a fine children's book.

I couldn't put this book down. It's a fascinating window into the times and I came away with a much better understanding of it. Some of it was shocking, to be honest. I highly recommend this book.

I cannot overstate the importance of this book. It is a moving, heart-wrenching story. Additionally the Kentucky material was of particular interest to me since my own ancestors were in Mason COunty, KY for a good portion of the story of Thornton Blackburn. I have not finished reading it as of this writing.

I've got a Home in Glory Land is well researched. Karolyn Smardz Frost writes in a very readable form which is important for an academic history book. As we watch the 150th anniversary Civil War events this year, the subject of slavery in the United States is even more important. This book chronicles this dark and shameful chapter in our past. The author uses real stories debunking the myths of African-American inferiority. She tells part of the untold story about what happened to slaves who did escape to Canada. We all know Freedom Seekers followed the Drinking Gourd north, but what happened when they got North? This book answers that question. For more about the life that caused slaves to "Follow the Drinking Gourd",See Negroes To Hire

I agree with what most of what the other reviewers wrote about the book's strengths. My biggest problems with the book are its overblown phrases, and its descriptions of events as though they happened though the author had no way of knowing that they did.

A wonderful book of scholarship and heart and a compelling story. It gets bogged down only at the end when its characters are in their later years. I heartily recommend this book and have given it as a gift.

I was disappointed in this book as I was expecting an exciting fictional/factual story of the underground railroad. It was not exciting, and indeed was far too much like a textbook to make me a happy reader.