Transcripts For CSPAN3 Scott 20240705

It. He recounts the life of abolitionist thomas who bought his own freedom, helped hundreds of others escape in washington. Baltimore and the underground railroad flee north also tells, the story of the baltimore slave trader, hope slaughter, who shaped who shipped hundreds of south from the inner harbor, often them from their families forever. This evening, the author will be joined in conversation by journalist Michael Fletcher scott shane is a former for the New York Times and Baltimore Sun. He is the author of objective troy a terrorist, a president and rise of the drone in dismantling utopia how information ended the soviet union. Michael is a Senior Writer with espns enterprise, an investigative team. He formerly reporter for espns the undefeated and the washington post. He is a coauthor of supreme discomfort the divided soul of clarence thomas. In his review of the book the washington post, richard, who wrote flee north, a gripping story, told at a brisk pace in a no fuss prose of practice. Reporter is a model of the advantages journalists can bring to the writing of history. It is the kind of story we sorely need at a time when there is no shortage of opportunities for inspiring of heroism. Award winning historian Henry Louis Gates come in. The book restores to american one of the most daring African American abolitionists. Author of a neglected slave narrative who only courageously fought slavery but brilliantly satirized it. And then publisher weekly starred review, they wrote this astonishing and propulsive narrative racist, historical, wrong by returning smollett to prominence. Its an absolute must read. It is my great pleasure to welcome scott shane to Michael Fletcher the proud library. Yeah. Thank you, everyone. And i have to say, its a privilege to be here with my old friend and colleague. And when i say old, i mean long, you know, of long standing. And i mean the other. I was going to ask you about saying, know, scott and i worked together at the Baltimore Sun and, you know, back then, like everyone else in the newsroom, i had the utmost for scotts work. He had such a range as a reporter, he could find compelling stories and Research Laboratories on street corners, even at the nsa. You know, this guy knew how do his job and it was always it was just always someone who you know, who i respected. I think everyone in the room looked up to. And hes done it again. Hes done it again. Another compelling piece, this book is is so, so interesting. Its a fascinating read that for me kind of reordered how i thought about how i think about the underground railroad. It sort of added a lot of context, a lot of have to the story. I knew in the story i had learned in school was about Harriet Tubman and the quakers. And and that was basically what i knew again and then this book certainly expands that tale. So, you know, congratulations, scott. I think thanked the service here. Lets start here in the in the subtitle of the you call Thomas Smallwood a forgotten hero. Why forgotten . Well, you know, i think when i kind of came across and dug into his life and found out more and more about him not only the escapes hed organized, but also the fact that hed about those escapes. You know, my question was why do we not know about this guy . And there is an answer to that. He you know, he ends up in canada for his own life. He operating a clandestine network. He wrote about the escapes, but he wrote about them under a pseudonym. But i think theres another element, which is that his white, for the most part, just left him out of the story. So i was warned against not with the microphone, so ill try to hold it still. But i think you know, i think it was theres also an element of even his closest partner in this operation charles story just sort of failing to credit him with what he did. So, you know, i think in you know if justice is done, this guy will be very well known. His story will be taught in schools. And if we could only a picture of him, we could we could build a statue. You know whats amazing . And you mentioned hes so, you know, small was a shoemaker living as a free black man in washington, d. C. With slavery operating all around him. How did managed to organize his kind of how did his operation work . Well so he had been born in slavery himself in bladensburg, right outside d. C. And then bought his freedom time over a of time for 500, paid it off when he was about the age of 30. Hes he starts this shoemaking business he marries has a bunch of kids hes got four kids at the time and another one is on the way. And so, you know, he has sort of vowed a war on slavery but isnt really how to carry it out. And hes a busy guy and its really when this guy, charles story comes to town and two of them meet that they find theyre thinking along the same theyre tired of talking about how terrible is. And they want to do something about it. And it crank in a concrete sense. And so they start organizing these escapes. And you there are several things that set, set their escapes apart, especially the beginning. They were not just waiting for people to decide they wanted to to run. They would actually approach and slave people. Smallwood knew and say, you know, what are you doing on saturday . And which was which was actually a popular time for successful escapes because there was a little more freedom on sunday morning and they werent looking for you sunday morning so and so they were actually recruiting to run. And the other thing was, they werent for most part, setting people off in ones twos. They were trying to do it by the wagon load. And so, you know, repeatedly read about a wagon load of ten, a wagon load of 12, wagon load of 1518. And this would be men women and children in you know, covered with something, taking off in the middle of middle of the night. This is such an interesting couple, i think tori and smallwood. Not only did they free hundreds of people, but then they turned around and rubbed it in the faces of the enslavers. I mean, describe that small to write these columns mocking in slavery, saying we did it again, we pulled this off. Yeah. And you know, i remember when i read the book, you know, early on i said, where did you get the courage, you know, to do that . Yes. Yeah. And where did you the motivation in a way. I mean, thats one of the things i just think of in a practical sense, is hes running this shoemaking by day. Hes helping organize these escapes by night. When does he find time to, you know, settle, light a candle or whatever and, you know, write up these dispatches that he then mails off to albany. But somehow he did it. You mentioned the odd couple. So charles story is about a dozen years younger. He he was not from a wealthy family outside boston, but he was from a wellconnected family. His parents died of tuberculosis and was raised by a grandfather who had actually served in congress. He went to exeter. He went to yale. So he had sort of an elite education. But he so in that sense, he was sort of the opposite of Thomas Smallwood, who had first been taught to read by his, and then was a servant in a house, the household of a an educator in washington, guy who ran a number of schools and that guy who was from scotland and his Adult Children apparently took an interest. Thomas and you know sort of getting him into literature and so on. So strangely enough i think by the time they meet in the beginning of 1842, despite those very different backgrounds, i think there were in some ways comparable because smallwood had just absorb of this from all over the place and later, you know, he sort of constantly quoting philosophers and quoting poets and showing how much he knew. And i think the other thing they had common over the chasm of race, age and edge and formal education was torrey had been as a new englander who an abolitionist. Hed on the lecture circuit. Hed been involved these kind of internecine fights in the in the abolitionist community. So hed been a lot of overheated meeting halls talking for 4 hours and smallwood had taken an interest in colonization which was this movement for africanamericans just give up on this country and move to somewhere else. Sierra leone, barbados but also but in particular, liberia, which the colony in west africa that had been founded by the american cotton Colonization Society and there was a big debate in the black community in d. C. , in baltimore over this question. Basically came down to, is this a good thing to just leave the country that you are the only country know behind and try to get new start somewhere else . And also eventually, kind of what are the motives of the white people who were financing this operation . And smallwood was very interested for a number of years. And then, you know, you get the feeling that the scales fell from his eyes. And he realized that basically talking about ethnic cleansing and that the the people who were funding the american Colonization Society actually their problem was not with enslaved black people, it was with free black people. And they wanted to just, you know, usher them out of the country. And so he broke with that and tried convince all his friends to break with that. But he, too, had been involved in whole lot of talk. Right. So get the feeling they come together in 1842 and theyre both ready to do something very concrete. And thats what they do. Yeah. And very too. Right. And very radical and very dangerous. Now, how did these columns over so well so the you know, the reason tory comes to town is he has a hes a guy who tried his hand as teaching then briefly tries his hand at preaching, just flames out completely in both of those professions. And so he then becomes caught up in the antislavery cause. And hes going to be his new idea is to be a correspondent for a bunch of small abolitionist papers in the north. Hell come to d. C. Hell cover congress. Hell cover the debates over slavery. And hell send his dispatches. North north. But you you get the feeling that he was much more interested in what he could do, sort of hands on and antislavery than than even sending these columns off. But the one of the papers, he is connected with or hes hes formed a little bit of relationship with is a little in albany then called toxin of liberty toxin an old word for bell so basically its the liberty bell and a small abolition this paper and hes sending his columns off to them as he gets his start but they get these wagon loads going off at night. It appears that its smallwood who the lead and and certainly continues to send these dispatches off and you know his its you know if i could get a half hour with thomas i would id pay a lot of money for that. And of the questions i would ask him is just like, what were you about . But you know what . Why were you taking this somewhat risky step, even if youre writing it under a pseudonym of calling attention to the escapes, you know, using the real names of the using real names, the people who escaped writing it in real time. And i have not found any other example of somebody writing about escapes in real time. And it was so much in real time that small would occasionally that he had to hold a column and not send it off to albany until he was sure he from usually that the people he hes writing about were already safe on the other side of the border. But i think of it was his personality his interest in literature. He was a big fan of charles and he took his pseudonym from Charles Dickens and he kind of liked dickensian satirical style. But i also think for as well as for tory, there was sort of a larger strategy that was that was part of their plan, what they wanted to demoralize people. Yeah, basically they wanted to not just move these, you know, in whatever numbers they could out of the reach the enslavers, but their hope was that seeing, you know, there were people in dc people baltimore who had say owned half a dozen people and they wake up one morning and theyre gone. And that was a lot of money. You know, i calculated i made a rough calculation that a wagon of 15 people that small would describe might have been worth Something Like 200,000 in todays dollars. And so youre talking about a big chunk of peoples even wealthy peoples wealth just disappearing overnight. So i there were hoping to essentially undermine faith in this in the system. And smallwood describes overhearing a couple of these in because he would lurk and eavesdrop in his neighborhood and at the market at the rail station and hed hear some of the people who he was relieving shall we say of their human property and writing about hed hear them talking you and so he heard them talking a couple of them talking about how im never going to buy another, im done with this. And of course was music to his ears because thats what wanted he wanted to say, you know what its a heck of a lot easier. Just hire somebody. Pay them. Hmm. What an extraordinary thing. And me, this story hasnt been totally lost to history, but until now, smallwood was. You know, people didnt know about him. Why do you think that is . Well, i think tori came from a a Strong Community of abolition in massachusetts. Hed been on the scene in, massachusetts abolition for a few years before coming south to d. C. So hes kind of wellconnected up there when he dies, he gets a monument, a beautiful graveyard in cambridge. Its kind like an obelisk. It has a has face on it and has some and now its surrounded by flowers. Its its really quite lovely. And he also, after he died another abolitionist kind of together, a memoir of tory thats mostly drawn from his journals, his correspondence, and then more recent years, i guess is 2013, when a distant cousin of wrote a, you know, modern a very good modern biography of charles story. So he is not a wellknown figure, but he has he has certainly not been ignored, whereas smallwood, i think its fair to say, has been ignored and you know, part of it is. The fact that he operated under a pseudonym and that he moved canada. But i think theres definitely more to it. You know in his later years, tory was writing his letters are mostly preserved or many of them are preserved. And he was writing about the escape operations at a time when smallwood safely in canada and, and even when smallwood had been named outed in the in the Baltimore Sun. In fact. And so there was no reason to withhold his name, certainly in a private letter. But he did. And he took essentially credit for the escapes that smallwood had organized not only with tory, but on his own. Tory went off to be the editor of that in albany. And so for for a year or more, smallwood was doing this all by himself. And so so i think there is a racial element. This an element of of racism, of, of sort, of not crediting. Smallwood. God knows why exactly with what he had achieved and maybe little bit of a desperation on tories part to leave mark on history and to to the many doubters even in his own family that he had he had accomplished something. Yeah. I notice in the review that ran in a fine newspaper i worked for for many they point out that you kind of slept with around a little you know for you know for not giving credit to smallwood and i think the word they use the we will use a churlish churlish yes i dont know you to mean scott, but why did you why did you say that . Well, so i first of all, i mean, think that the the post review was fabulous. And and i dont even mind the reviewer me churlish. I like that word churlish always liked that word. Yeah, but thats a great read. But i think i think he and i disagree. But he and i actually exchanged emails, the review ran and and makes a very good point, which is that charles tory risked Everything Everything his family, his his life for this cause, for the antislavery cause and. Thats why this reviewer thought it was kind of a little nit picking to the point out that he had never credited smallwood. But, you know, there were consequences that no ones heard of smallwood. I mentioned tories lovely gray, very impressive grave and sort of memorial in in cambridge, mass. And tories is grave is the toronto necropolis and the old toronto city and my wife franzi and i, whos here, spend a lot of time tromping around that graveyard looking for any trace of smallwoods grave. And it he is buried there. Theres a record that shows hes buried there, but any stone has long since underneath the grass. And theres no sign that, you know, that he was ever there. Interesting. I learned something many things from reading this book. One was you write that smallwood was the one who coined the term underground. Yeah. The origin of that term. And how you able as a journalist to pin that down to . Sort of sort of know that thats true. So its its sort of a fun story. Theres a book about slavery and basically it has a baltimore angle. Im pleased say so there was a Notorious Police constable by the name of john zelle and he like a lot of police in those days made much of his money on side running after people had fled slavery, slavery and drag them back for the reward money that the was offering and so what smallwood heard from somebody who had overheard this guy, john zell exclaiming in frustration one day, you know, i dont know how these people were escaping. Theyre not leaving a trace. They be getting away. But underground railroad or steam balloon. And thats basically, we would say they must have been teleported to canada or or they must have been abducted aliens. In other words, i have no clue how theyre getting out of here because there were no underground railroads. There were railroads, not underground railroads. And steam balloon was sort of like a an experimental technology, we could say. So. So apparently smallwood got wind of this and he he in somewhat snarky fashion, advises a slaveholder who has lost his whos, as smallwood once puts it in one place, puts it whos human property whos walking property had walked off. He advises that person that perhaps they left by the underground railroad or steam balloon that this console was swearing about the other day. And then clearly something clicked and smallwood thought, this is great because first of all, it a huge compliment to him and this operation. And so he starts riffing on the notion of an underground railroad and he he advises the slave holders to report to the office of the underground railroad in washington for of their missing property. And he at one point says he cant reveal the secret of the underground railroad, which is only known to the president. The cabinet. This guy lived a 15 minute walk from the u. S. Capitol. So a sort of an inside the beltway joke way ahead of the beltway and and at one point, he names. General agent of all the of the National Underground railroad. So but, you know, you ask how how can i be sure that no one else had used it before. And i cant be absolutely sure, but terms of print, newspapers, you know, i just went into these giant wonderful databases that they have now that are growing all the time. But newspapers is one. Another one is called genealogy. And they they go way back and they go way back before the 18th forties. And if you put in underground railroad. And also because theyre the way they wrote it out was, somewhat variable the time. So sometimes underground was four words and that to you put that into these Search Engines and you find that the very first references are from smallwoods letters and and you know in the months after that begin to see some people pick it up and use it as he did, as essentially a way to mock slaveholders and eventually within a couple of years, its become a sort fairly commonplace way, handy way to refer escapes from slavery more generally. But i think its its the evidence is very that hes the guy who, you know put this phrase on the map you you say you called the area with smallwood operated dc Baltimore Area bordering the free state of pennsylvania roughly slavery slaverys yeah two things why did why was his work so important. Theyre like where you know youre so close to freedom so to speak, a and b describe kind of the daily horror of free black People Living in this borderland region. So, yeah, what struck me was that if you think about new orleans, youre never going to meet an abolitionist or youre almost never going to meet an abolitionist. Right . If you think about youre never going to meet a slave trader in baltimore, in washington, all of these people are mixed up together together. Enslaved africanamericans are there in numbers, free africanamericans in those cities actually outnumber the enslaved people by a considerable margin. So you have all these different types mixing it up in a way they dont anywhere else. And think its a very combustible mix. And, you know, and thats clear from the story. Im told, in the 1840s. But just an aside, something that happened in baltimore in the 1820s was a a abolitionist publisher, a guy named Benjamin Lundy had called the leading slave trader of that era a monster human shape, among other things. And so slave trader ran into him as lundy trying to go to the post Office One Day and basically the out of him and and lundy sued and it ends up in court but the courts were very kind of proslavery and the judge says ive never seen a worse for a beating and finds the slave trader 1 so you had these of very combustible you know this kind of combustible mix all the time and one of the other things that you realize as you read about folks is that while, you know, manumission crossing from being enslaved to being free is obviously an enormous step for somebody living in maryland. Youre not crossing into full by any means. And, you know, just following the life of thomas, who enslaved and then was free, you realize that, you know, when he was free, like everyone else who was black in this region, in the city, baltimore city, washington, there was a 10 p. M. Curfew. If youre on the street for any reason after, 10 p. M. You get hauled into the police station, you can be fined. You can be beaten, you can be lashed and, you know, and actually the cops would sometimes park themselves outside churches at night, black churches, because if people of get caught up in the spirit and they overrun the 10 p. M. , they can get a whole bunch of churchgoing people their way out. And, you know, extort some bribes or some money. So, you know you couldnt travel out of state and come back in unless you did some got a special permission to do it. Some government paperwork. And at any time, even if youre free, you were subject to the unscrewed pulis bounty hunters kidnapers who would grab free people take them to the slave trader and you know, and the next thing, you know, youre shipped hundreds of miles from. Your family. Yeah, incredible. I was surprised to read about hope slaughter, a slave trader, operates in what is now like baltimore was taurus zone exactly his or his operation was were howard and pratt streets yes ran on pratt and then on the north side of pratt. Right just east of howard and so he he was the biggest slave trader in from about 1838 to 1848. But were a half dozen major slave traders, and most of them were located generally around the inner harbor, which was then known as the basin and. Basically what had happened was this region had a of Agricultural Labor because tobacco was out the soil and so this very labor intensive tobacco crop was being replaced by grain and other kinds of crops that needed farm hands. So, you know, many people were actually many emitted were freed by their enslavers in maryland in early years of the 19th century. But then what happened . The cotton was invented and the cotton plantations of the deep south started to boom. And there the demand for labor down there was insatiable. So instead of just freeing the people, you know, no longer needed, you know, you could summon send a note down to hope slatter at his slave jail that was the terminology his private slave on pratt street. And he would send his boys to come collect, you know, whoever was and give you 500, 600, and then would collect a shipload basically and put them on a ship and send them down to new orleans. How many people are we talking here . And were talking you know, the ships usually other cargo as well, but from the manifest states, this was actually there were there was good Record Keeping by the federal government, strangely enough, because the african trade had been banned, which was the reason the only source of labor was, you know, domestic enslaved people. And so they kind of make sure these people were not coming from africa. The the shippers were required to have a detailed with the name age and other details on all the people who were put on board. So we know that, you know, a load for slaughter might be 40, 50, 60, as many as 100 people on a ship. They would usually be put down in the hold it wasnt as gruesome as the middle passage, but the peak of shipping people south really the winter months. So when they were leaving here it was coal, you know, it could be very cold and and there. You know, people in some cases shackled. And so you could imagine they were shackled usually in the hold with a lot of, you know, it could be livestock could be all kinds of things were being sent down there could be wet so kind of nasty journey of about three weeks usually to get to so slaughter might trafficked how many people a year youd say i mean hundreds yeah hundreds and and on in each case they would go to the new orleans showroom room. Believe it or not, that was the term when like a car was like a car showroom where his brother would operate the sort of southern end of the business. And people would come from the from the, you know, the plantations and buy people. And, you know, part of the tragedy of the domestic slave trade is that if you werent separated your family when you were sold to slatter, which often you were because, you know, an enslaver might say, im going to sell the wife, but not the husband, im going to sell the but you know, the kids can stay so that constantly families being separated there. But if you made it intact as family to new orleans, you know, once again, you could be sent off to to plantations even in different states so, you know, thats something thats hard to imagine today, but if you were shipped off hundreds and hundreds of miles away from your family, it was likely you would never see them again. And, you know, sort of poignant footnote is that for decades after the civil war black families were placing ads basically in papers saying they were sometimes called lost friends ads, and it would say, do you have idea where my mother is heres heres her name, heres a description and she was some of them. Hopes letter, she was taken away by hopes letter in, you know, in 1847. And ive seen her again. Amazing. You know, although slave trading was right and as we know it, somehow not respectable. Right. And at least in certain circles in baltimore. And i this book is so serious and theres so many sad things like chuckled in places reading about hopes letters kind of quest for respectability. Yeah, he seems to have tirelessly quested not only for money, which he made an awful lot of, but for respectability and for except instance, among slaveholding elite and whats interesting, you know, its sort of the psychology thats interesting. Its seen as the slave holders, though, they were very dependent on the slave traders. They used the services of the slave traders, they wanted somebody to look down on. And so you could tell yourself that you were a kind master and you were treating your people well and you were feeding them well. But that, i hope, slatter or you know hes just all about the money so he so theres funny little you can you know in this book that i came across one being that they were building a big new lovely i think was greek revival Methodist Church on charles Street Church is gone now but it was brand and one way they raised the money for church in those days was they would sell the pews. So you would pay a subsidy some and that would be your pew forever, i guess. And so slatter a pew in one of these churches but you know i found a letter to to i guess a letter to to the editor of a newspaper here in which the guy whod bought the behind slatter said he and his family were not going to to church until. You know, if there was any chance of having to on this despicable slave trader so he couldnt get a break and eventually he he finds respect moving to the deep south himself. Yeah yeah. I want to ask you a little bit about kind of the journalism here, how did you get on to this story . How when did you first learn about small wood and and this much about domestic slave trade . And what was it made you think . I heard this a book. Well, actually goes back probably about 25 years. Wed been living for quite a few years in the nineties. Weve been in baltimore for quite a few years. That at that time i kind of thought i knew the city, i knew the history, the city a little bit and but somewhere i came across the fact that this the slave had had thrive at the harbor for many many years kind of 1810 till the civil war and read a little more about the slave trade. I was just completely shocked by it and i found that most of my colleagues at the Baltimore Sun did not. This was news to them too. So i got some eye rolls from the editors i remember who did remind me this is a news paper, but they let me write a long story about the slave trade in baltimore and i always wanted to come back to it because found it such a such an affecting. And one that was so little known to i think most americans so when i quit my day job at the New York Times at 29 at the end of 2019, you my plan was to start researching it looking for a story in the slave trade, of course, there was a pandemic. The archives all closed and libraries closed. But i also found that virtually everyone who being sold south was illiterate and the slave traders were not leaving. Detailed journal tales. So it was very difficult. Find a story strictly in the slave. So i started kind of looking around and i heard about a guy, an abolitionist, who had died and the maryland penitentiary and you know that i started following that thread and eventually i come across its torrey and a guy whos more or less portrayed in the in the few books that him smallwood but smallwood is comes across as sort of a really a black sidekick a black helper of charles story. And then i kind of dig on smallwood and increase i realize small was about a dozen years older than torrey and a whole lot more wise and reliable. So it, you know, torrey has his strengths, one of them being just sort of a wild, reckless ness and boldness, but but it was really the other way around that, that torrey was, the sidekick to smallwood and then when eventually taught the Boston Library into the Boston Public Library into digging up what looks like the fullest run of this obscure albany abolitionist paper. Um, and they put it on microfilm, you know, who knew they were still microfilm ing things, but they put it on microfilm. And i spent it a long day at the Boston Public Library, downloading it from microfilm onto a thumb drive, and then a lot of long days reading this fine print. And once i, you know, had read a lot of smallwoods letters, just said, you know, this guy is the core of this book. So yeah, i notice in the acknowledges acknowledgments you talk about a phone from your brother who makes a brotherly joke. You know, hes like, you know, were going to hear from a white guy. Yeah, i believe his i give me his i think i think when when i got a contract to write this book, i mentioned it to him and he said, oh, thats thats great, scott. Its about time we heard what white people think about. And right there, you, you know, from your your very your your own brother. Yeah, right, right, right, yeah. As only your brother can do. Your brother can do. And you know, i had to deal that. I mean, i did take that to heart in the sense that i, you know, i guess i try to approach it with certain amount of humility and to understand that i dont have the experiences to fully comprehend a guy like smallwood what he was going through then. But, but one of the things that has always, has kind of bugged me is the way black history is sometimes shunted off to the and its in february and lord knows theres a lot of good history taught in february that very reason but it always has. Perplexed me and, sort of annoyed me that slavery is treated as history to be dealt with. In february, you know hopes letter. You may be surprised that here was not black and. The people enslaved you know at that 3 Million People were not. This is white history you know this is American History and history. And in that sense, i guess have been ive taken weird encouraged from the ron desantis of the world talking about how white people are getting their feelings hurt and so on. I think that that strain in our politics, which i find kind of absurd, makes it all the more important for white people to read about this and maybe even to write about this history. Yeah, i think weve reached the point in the program where one hear questions from the audience are microphones on each side. If you have a question, please dont be shy. You know line up. Scotts full of answers. And one final thing. You know when people are thinking of questions, im sure. Was was it a hot property . Did you have to cajole . Havent heard that. Well, funny, you know, my publisher tells me so. One of the folks at my Publishing Office keeps telling me that since the pandemic, its been very hard to sell nonfiction books for them to, sell them to the public and. It was not easy to sell this book actually. I think it was rejected by some the finest publishers in america. And i dont know, you know, the white guy writing about slavery may have been a little bit of a factor in this era. You know, there may have even been some doubt about is it really true that this guy has discovered someone who, you know, we never really knew about . So there may have been some skepticism him about this guy who about i had just spent 15 years writing for the New York Times national security. I you know, i have absolutely no credentials to write this. So so that might have been too interesting. One, go to the questions. Start here. Good evening. I have two questions for you. The first one is, did get any information about smallwoods descendants or get to meet any of them . And the second question is what were his. Okay. So i have done some work on ancestor wickham hunting for descendant its one of the tragic facts of Thomas Smallwoods life is that he lives to a ripe old age but all his children predeceased him and most of them die without children. But there were some children and ive traced to a certain point, but i have not found any living descendants. But frankly, i got to get back to because i think there may well be some. My guess is i think ive counted seven generations or Something Like that. So my guess is when i contact them going to be a big surprise to them that theyre that theyre, you know, descended from this guy. But it would be really a fun a fun thing to do and something im going to keep pursuing in terms of smallwoods pseudonym, as i think i mentioned, he was a big fan Charles Dickens dickens at that time, i guess it was in 1840, had published the pickwick papers and was it became a kind of global bestseller. It was a huge, hugely popular novel. And so. Smallwood so theres a character in there named sam weller. Sam marvell weller, which i think is dickens way of trying capture this guys cockney accent. And so smallwood calls himself somerville. Weller, jr, sam wellers son and and has a lot of fun with that and one of the this is Something Like i cant prove one way or the other but in the middle of everything were talking, Charles Dickens makes a trip to the United States and he makes stops in washington. He makes stops in baltimore. He comments on slavery in baltimore. He comments being in a baltimore in a hotel and being served by someone by a waiter who he suddenly realizes. He talks about his feelings of kind of horror, of being, you know, sort of served by an enslaved man anyway in the guise sam weller in these columns, the albany paper, smallwood says, i met dickens when he came to town and i, you know, led to a slave jail that was there was kind of an infamous slave trader in washington by name of william williams. And his slave jail was right. The national mall, believe it or not, if you walked from the white house to the. Hed go right by and. So according to this, you know, true or false account, samuel or i smallwood helped lead dickens to see this slave jail and. Could this be true . It definitely could. You know small was in town. Dickens was followed a big crowd as he went around town because he very popular guy and so its certainly possible that small would was in the crowd following dickens around and also small dickens very interested in slavery which appalled so if someone had said i could he does not describe this in his book which is called american notes but if someone said mr. Dickens, you want to see a slave traders premises, im sure he would have said, lets go so. So it could have been true. It could have been true. Thank you very much for this talk. And im want to thank you also for this wonderful book that youve written. I wondered i had another question about the that you did to get this this story. And i wondered if in your you came across information in that discussed other members of community in which mr. Smallwood lived for example there other freedmen or freed women who may also have experi some level of either retribution or suspicion that they may have been involved in this were there was whether articles in papers that were written that were accused seeing others also, you know, as a large of people are getting on board this underground. They may have left family members behind. Do we have any information that says it was a you know, that his heroics also may have had some unintended for other people in the area. Thank you so much wow thats a thats a a bunch of good questions let me think i mean, theres actually a moment where smaller it in one of these dispatches mocks the police for having picked up a guy on suspicion basically of being of being the guy whos organized these escapes and apparently that guy was set free but smallwood has a a grand time basically saying know you dummies he calls them poor puppies at one point you know he has lots of names for the cops and, and and he says, you know, you picked up the wrong guy. Youre on the wrong trail. You guys are hopeless and in both baltimore, washington, there were large rewards offered by apparently little syndicates, slave traders and slave holders for the arrest of whoever was behind these escapes and the the then the other question had to do with separating families. I mean, one of the great ironies, of course, of taking of a moment when its possible to run is that youre probably leaving some or, you know, some of your family members behind. Rarely you know, would it be possible to for, you know, say, six members of a family. Enslaved in one place or two places to coordinate and get away without arousing suspicion all at the same time, so that people definitely did depart art. And you see, occasionally smallwood will the enslaver again by name. These are real. I found them, you know, i found them in the records and address someone and say you know, this the woman who used to work for is now living in toronto and she misses her husband, you know, couldnt you see see fit to let him join his family and, you know, in toronto or anything like that. So it was definitely a factor the only thing you can say is that the person who was fleeing knew where the rest of the family was and they could make efforts to either raise the money to, buy their freedom to help them escape. Sometimes, you know, Long Distance you think about Harriet Tubman going down into Dorchester County again and again. She knew where family members were and she kept trying to get them out and she got them out. So it was not the of being separated forever many cases as as the slave trade result it in one other thing occurs to me is that after smallwood in canada living there has just gotten there but hes living with his family and trying to make a new life. You know, three men come to him and say, you helped us get would you help our wives children get here and . Hes like, im sure he was like, oh my god, you know . But he he did it. He did it. He went work to try and make it happen. We have time for two more questions. Hello and im enjoying myself listening. I am. My name is kim manuel. And i had an uncle that was born in 1871. He was in a slave. He wasnt born as a slave because they had a certain amount of freedom. And in 1871, he work for a penny day where he talked to about, you know, the different things. So he said he was born free, but he still held slave in stings. And so he got to a certain age and went into the army. But even in army, he was saying that when he got a certain amount of quarters, you have go and do something else. So he made bullets and a copper mine and south baltimore for the wood army and is so to hear even before he was that it was a trade thing going on and listening to you talk is so and it hits a lot of good things and my uncle died in 1987. No kidding. Wow. Until he was 160 years long. Life. All right. Yeah. Well, i want to thank you for this book. I enjoyed reading about this period of time that you wrote. Its my understanding that around 1808 that kind of ceased the middle passage. However, in the chesapeake, which makes this book very interesting that youre about africanamericans who were bred here. Yes. And that thats where most of at least to almost and a half generations. So motion that you talk about going to from baltimore to new orleans makes for an interesting dynamic in the sense from there they were kind of throughout america. What i do find interesting that you keep speaking in reference to kind of like whole families when in fact during the time of breeding, it wasnt quite that way. And the other element that i coming from you is fact that there seems to be some complicity with regard to the federal government and that they know more than what they are revealing. Do people like myself and it would seem to me, hopefully based on your research that somehow we could get better records with to the chattel because they did do good recognition on things that they perceive even to be mercantile. Yes. Well those those are theres all great points. I mean the reason the feds kept these manifests of the domestic slave trade was essentially enforcing that law that you referred to in 1808 that said you could no longer import meat captives captive, workers from africa. Beyond that, you know you know during the time were talking about the u. S. Census never recorded the names of enslaved people just there, gender and age generally speaking, in the census and it was only later on that people began to be recognize really in the postslavery period as as full human beings. So theres a huge vacuum of information about those who enslaved. And smallwood is a bit of an example. He wrote a memoir, a short memoir in 1851, and he makes no reference whatsoever to his parents. And i couldnt his parents from existing records and. It made me wonder whether, as you point out, im referring to whole families, but in fact, families constantly being shattered and split. And it made me wonder whether his parents might have been separated him at a very early age and moved somewhere else in maryland or shipped down to new orleans and but i it, you know, potentially i found it kind of poignant and potentially very significant that he doesnt talk his parents. Well, is that it, cleve . Is it . Yes, it is. You. Well, thank you, scott, and thank all of you. I guess weve reached bob simon for. Thank you, welcome, everybody. My name is john harwood. Im a journalist and im going to be moderating this panel with robert doar, who you know, who is the chief executive