A Plausible Man: The True Story of the Escaped Slave Who Inspired Uncle Tom's Cabin, Susanna Ashton, c. 2024.

A Plausible Man: The True Story of the Escaped Slave Who Inspired Uncle Tom's Cabin, Susanna Ashton, c. 2024. Clemson University. Fascinating. Really, really good. 

Introduction

• began in 1850
• visit to Harriet Beecher Stowe's house in Brunswick, Maine
• "a genuine article from the "Old Carliny State"
• Stowe may have never known the man's name, but drawing on that experience in 1850, seven weeks later, Stowe began to write Uncle Tom's Cabin
• a novel that helped inspire th most consequential social revolution in the history of the Western world: the overthrow of modern slavery
• he was fleeing to Canada; he went by the name of John Andrew Jackson
• his story was more significant than the novel
• born enslaved sometime around 1820
• wife Louisa and daughter "Jinny"
• later, a lecturing career under the mercurial patronage of powerful British Baptist Evangelicals who assisted him in publishing his memoir, The Experience of a Slave in South Carolina (1862) -- during the US Civil War!
• feloniously inveigling -- p. xi
• Doctor Clavern ("Doc") -- Sumer County
• Doctor was Jackson's father -- that's another generational story in this book
• that began the author's search for the Jackson family
• the Clavon / Clabon / Clyburn family -- p. xii
• Jackson: no direct descendants but many nephews and nieces survived
• honored their patriarch "Doc" with generation after generation naming at least one child "Doctor," "Dock," or "Doc."
• this modern family of Clavons  (author used this name for the Clavon family and Clavern for Jackson and his father) surprisingly rich with clergy, salespeople and vibrant personalities;
  
• photo of Dr Doctor Clavon, 2022 -- awarded a doctorate degree from George Washington University in engineering, 2022
• 
  

Prelude: The Man Who Came Back -- W.P.A. Interview with Jake McLeod (1936)

• Federal Writers' Project
• 83-years old, Jake McLeod, interviewed in 1936 (born 1853, before the US civil war; would. have been ten years old in 1863)
  
• agreed to be interviewed by federal agents to speak about survivors of slavery
• native of South Carolina
• interviewers: H Grady Davis and Mrs Lucile Young
• mentions a Black Creek man; Charleston area
• a fascinating story: it turned out to be the story of John Andrew Jackson, who achieved almost mythical status in Black memory even while he was effectively erased from history, by many of his former white friends and allies
• 1846: John Andrew Jackson fled a slave labor camp near the area of Lynchburg, South Carolina, close to the Black River, or what McLeod called the "Black Creek."
• after the US Civil War, Jackson returned with barrels and boxes of secondhand goods shipped from Northern communities; Jackson went back and forth over the decades that followed
• 1881: Jackson bought a lot in the tiny town of Lynchburg, close to the crossroads where he had once lived back when he was enslaved by Robert English and, as Sumter County property records demonstrate, immediately adjacent to McLeod's small parcel of land
  

Chapter 1:"Feloniously Inveigling" -- A Judgment on the Kidnapping of Doctor (1821) -- Lynchburg, South Carolina (1821 - 1846)

• story begins with a man named Doctor
• two white men got into a fight over a slave, Doctor, along the Black River 
• along the coast of the Atlantic, slightly closer to Myrtle Beach to the north than to Charleston to the south
• page 10: early genealogy: read this when you have time
  

Chapter 2: The Reverend Loweryk's Story Based on Facts (1911) -- Lynchburg, South Carolina (Fall-Winter 1846)

• from a book by Reverend I. E. Lowery, Life on the Old Plantation in Ante-Bellum Days or A Story Based on Facts
• Lowery's story serves up his competing truths about the Black community of Lynchburg

Chapter 3: "Speaks Plausibly" -- The Reverend and His Runaway Advertisement (1847) -- Lynchburg - Charleston, South Carolina (December 1846 - February 1847)

• begins with facsimile of a $50 reward of a man named Jackson; published in the Sumter Banner
  
• about 30 years of age
• tall, nearly six feet in height, stoug and well proportioned
• "speaks plausibly"
• has a wife in Houston County, Georgia, belong to Mr J. R. Mac Law 
• notice signed by Thomas R. English, March 27, 1847
• the story of Jackson's escape 
  

Chapter 4: Henry Foreman's Boarding House Census Report of 1850 - Boston, Salem, and Western Massachusetts (February 1847 - November 1850)

• begins with a facsimile of a portion of the 1850 Census
• shows Henry Foreman and his family living at the Boston boarding house along wiht a list of Black men in their twenties; all with the profession of "Seaman" and of "unknown" place of birth
• "Andrew Jackson" is listed on the very last line

Chapter 5: "A Genuine Article" -- Harriet Beecher Stowe's Letter to Her Sister (1850) -- Maine (November 1850 - March 1851) -- this is where it really begins!

• begins with a facsimile of part of a letter from Harriet Beecher Stowe to her older sister Catharine Beecher
• tells the story of the man that came to her house and provides a scene that she would later use in Uncle Tom's Cabin
• reminder, where we are
• Jackson, he and his family enslaved at a particularly harsh slaveholder, the English family; Lynchburg, SC
  
• Jackson escaped Christmas Day, 1846; leaving his family behind: Doctor, Betty, Ephraim, others
• after escaping the following is likely:
• traveled chiefly by land; probably from town to town
• terrifying but different than his previous solitary journey across South Carolina and aboard the Smyrna
• quickly through Massachusetts; briefly (one - two nights) in New Hampshire, before that long hike through Maine.
• due to Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 crossing borders did not protect him
• he made one clear exception about naming names; from Salem, MA, to Canada he mentions one name: Mrs Harriet Beecher Stowe -- see notes to Chapter 5 beginning on page 293
• with those words, Jackson referenced the most well-known American writer in the world, Harriet Beecher Stowe, who began to publish her blockbuster serialized novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, in 1851. He knew what he was doing when he wrote that in his memoir, mentioning an encounter that, quite possibly, changed the world.
• Stowe was affected by Jackson, saying he "was the genuine article." 
• the story of his trail from Lynchburg to Salem must have been told earlier; here we seem to begin in Salem, MA; traveling by rail was out of the question, and even by boat now seemed too dangerous.
• he probably traveled along the coast; Salem to border of NH, 30 miles (Salem to Seabrook, NH = 30.9. miles); along the coast from Seabrook to Maine, add another 20 miles. Maine to Canada: another 300 miles. 
• walking that distance was impossible
• Maine: some of the most ardent antislavery movements and activists; the problem: Maine was a maritime state; depended on shipping; and depended on Southern trading partners.
• author now mentions the Underground Railroad -- p. 101; the UGRR; 
• fleeing blacks depended on blacks and whites alike; perhaps longer stays with Black families and short moments with white families
• Brunswick, Maine -- a small college town on the coast; by the mid-19th century, the home of Bowdoin College, a small but prestigious institution that catered to New England's elite and prosperous families; 
• Brunswick: also, a small but active port and, notably, a cotton mil -- dependent upon bales from Southern states
• somehow Jackson directed to the home of one of the most well-known antislavery activists in the state, William Smyhh -- a Bowdoin College professor of mathematics and natural philosophy and founder of Maine's first antislavery newspaper, the Advocate of Freedom. 
• Smyth's home: part of the UGRR
• his wife: Harriet Porter Coffin Smyth
• Professor Smyth probably directed Jackson to knock on the door of the Upham family, a bit farther away and now so close to the urban college area
• the Upham family encounter would be immortalized in Uncle Tom's Cabin
• to sort this out -- an extraordinary account written by Smyth's distant relative and Brunswick neighbor, Harriet Beecher Stowe!
• now the story of Harriet Beecher Stowe begins on page 104, and continues for several pages
• politically following with horror the evolving Compromise of 1850, and the consequent passage of the Fugitive Slave Act.
• she was already writing anti-slavery stories; she was primed to right the novel.
• with her husband away, she looked for friends and found the Upham family; then the Upham family bio starting on page 107; Thomas C Upham and his wife Phebe Upham
  
• page 108, mentions the inspiring life of Phebe Ann Jacobs a freed slave -- and possibly the inspiration for the portrayal of the pious Uncle Tom
• the Uphams cautious but Harriet Beecher Stowe and her brother the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher had become more radical when it came to abolition -- p. 108
• by now, HBS no longer had patience for types such as Thomas Upham
• then it happened; Jackson shows up at the Upham door
• the Uphams give him a dollar, some food, and then send him to HBS! And then the story really takes life -- p. 110
• HBS lived only a block away
• at this time, Jackson says he had been separated from his wife Louisa and daughter Jinny for quite sometime, and perhaps forever
• HBS would direct him to a nearby town along the coast, Bath
• Jackson left; a week later at the Upham family's church pew at the First Parish Church in Brunswick, HBS had a vision and the rest was history
• now the "bio" of the book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, begins on page 114
• it became the bestselling American novel of the enitre 19th century, famously known to have been outsold only the Bible
• came out serialized in a newspaper; then bound / a book that sold millions and HBS received almost nothing
  
• after his one night stay with HBS, what happened next?
• HBS's one line, p. 123 -- Father E____ of Bath ... 
• mention of a Quaker -- p. 130
  

 

Chapter 6: Race: United States -- The New Brunswick Census of 1851: Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada (1851- 1856)

• crossed into Canada in 1851; left five years later, 1856
  
• begins with a facsimile of a portion of the 1851 Census for Saint John County, Kings and Sydney Wards. Note heading of "Blacks in King's Ward -- Chiefly Servants" and John Jackon, age 35; listed as the 19th name in the far left column
• doesn't say much about his time in Canada
• top of page 135: stayed there for quite some time; lawfully his second wife, also an escaped slave from North Carolina; a whitewasher; then embarked for England
• was in Canada for five years; but didn't talk much about it. 
  
• Julia, to become his second wife, is introduced, p. 133
  

Chapter 7: The Experience of a Slave in South Carolina by John Andrew Jackson (1862): The British Isles (1856 - 1862)

• begins with a facsimile of a title page for the book, The Experience of A Slave in South Carolina; 1862.
• the only image of Jackson known today comes from this engraving made in England fo rhte title. page of his book in 1862
• wow
• Julia (with second wife)
•  

Chapter 8: The White Preacher and the Black Slave Lecturer (1865): England and Scotland (1863 - 1865)

• now a published author
• oh-oh!
• begins in spring of 1864

Chapter 9: "One Thousand Acres" -- A Letter to General Howard (1868): New England and South Carolina (1865 - 1880)

• Jackson and Julia made it back to the United States
• General Oliver Otis Howard

Chapter 10: "Hard Labor" -- Court Minutes from Surry County, North Caroline (1881): North Carolina, Massachusetts, and South Carolina (1881 - 1900)

• returns to England;
• leaves his third wife, Ella, behind
• overlapping marriages with Louisa and Julia may have been too overwhelming

Acknowledgments

Notes

Image Sources

Index