Dear Reader,
Martha and the Slave Catchers takes place during a time of turmoil in US history. The country was torn between two opposing sentiments: pro-slavery and anti-slavery. Tensions that were building during the 1830s and 1840s became worse with the passage of the Compromise of 1850, which incorporated a new version of the Fugitive Slave Law. From that point on, people living in free states were forced by law to participate in the capture and return of runaway slaves. As a result, the Underground Railroad and local Vigilance Committees worked all the harder to help fugitives reach a safe haven. No longer could those fugitives rely on the security of Northern states. Their freedom was not granted unless they reached Canada.
Since the beginning of the slave trade in the US, more than 100,000 enslaved people made attempts to free themselves. The majority of those were young, strong men who traveled alone. But there were also small groups and even families who made the run for freedom. If captured and returned, they faced torture, maiming, and possible death. In Martha’s story, we learn about Jake’s biological mother, Mariah, and her desperate attempt to free herself and her unborn child from the grip of Robert Dawes. Mariah arrived at Martha’s aunt and uncle’s home alone. How did she get there? Did she travel by herself? Did she have a guide? We never learn about her experience because she died before saying even one word about it.
Those fugitives who traveled through Philadelphia often met with the great abolitionist William Still, who recorded their experiences. They were not made public until 1872, when the stories could be safely told. You can find the book online at no cost. Look for The Underground Railroad: A Record of Facts, Authentic Narrative, Letters, &c., Narrating the Hardships, Hair-breadth Escapes and Death Struggles of the Slaves in their efforts of Freedom, as Related by Themselves and Others, or Witnessed by the Author. You will be amazed by the number of people who risked their lives on their journey to freedom.
The story of the Underground Railroad is an exciting one. My favorite book on the topic is Fergus M. Bordewich’s Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America’s First Civil Rights Movement (2005). It gives a thorough view of the network of safe houses and routes that fugitives might have used to reach freedom up North. For Martha’s story, I decided to center on the location and routes primarily used by Harriet Tubman, a woman I am sure that you have heard about in your classes or in books, movies, or TV shows. For solid information on Tubman’s life and trips to Maryland to help free others, I relied on Kate Clifford Larson’s Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero (2004). It is a wonderful book. Both of these books on the Underground Railroad were written for adults, but I am sure that you would find the stories in them very exciting, clear, and readable.
For me, Martha and Jake are very much like the real people I wrote about in my adult book, Growing Up Abolitionist: The Story of the Garrison Children (2002). You see, I was very curious to know how people involved in the anti-slavery movement raised their children, so I spent ten years researching and writing about the family of William Lloyd Garrison, the anti-slavery leader responsible for the publication of the weekly newspaper The Liberator. I read thousands of personal letters from every member of the family, written to each other and to hundreds of other anti-slavery activists. I learned a great deal about how the parents taught their children to become the next generation of anti-slavery activists if slavery did not end in their own lifetimes.
Many of the details of Martha and Jake’s lives are the same as those of real white and black abolitionist children in the 1800s, especially those who helped runaway slaves through the work of the Underground Railroad. Their home lives, the secrets they kept and, sometimes, the lies they heard and told, and their education through magazines, newspapers, and children’s books were part of their childhood experiences. Their parents were their heroes, as were such great leaders as Harriet Tubman, who plays a key role in Martha and Jake’s story. Abolitionist children were very aware of the dangers their role models faced to fight against slavery.
And as you saw in Martha and Jake’s story, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, in particular, affected their safety and well-being. Martha, like many real abolitionist children, knew about the kidnapping of Northern children by slave catchers seeking to make an easy dollar from rewards for returning fugitives to slavery. Of course, it was easy for a slave owner to claim a person was a runaway if an individual even slightly resembled one of their former “possessions.” So these slave catchers (or slave hunters as they were also called) snatched free children just walking along the road on their way to school or running an errand. It became dangerous for children of color to be out on their own. The examples I use in Martha’s reading of the newspapers came from a booklet published by the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1856 called Anti-Slavery Tracts, No. 18. The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims. These were all real stories about real people, many of them children. I changed the dates of two of the stories to fit into my narrative, but the tales are still true. You can find this document free online if you want to read it for yourself.
Martha and the Slave Catchers contains a great many other facts. For example, even though Liberty Falls, LaGrange, and Aramintaville are figments of my imagination, all the other places are real. (Araminta Ross, by the way, was Harriet Tubman’s original name.) Anti-slavery fairs were held each winter in several places as fund-raisers for the cause. Easily accessible online is The Anti-Slavery Alphabet, as well as other writings for abolitionist children. I introduce and explain other facts on my website: http://harrietalonso.com. Just go to the top of any page and click on Martha and the Slave Catchers.
Another thing I want to share with you is that I used language that was specific to the nineteenth century. Words like “plaits,” “vexed,” “conundrum,” and many others were used at the time. Even expressions like “knee high to a bumblebee” and “you are some pumpkins” date from then. But you can easily understand these from the context.
I also use the words “colored,” “Afric,” and “Afric American” to describe African Americans. These were respectful terms of the time.
Martha’s mother and Adam Burke use “Quaker Plain Speech” when they speak of “thee,” “thou,” “thy” and “thine.” By the time Martha’s story takes place, the use of these words was changing, and different groups of Quakers (or Friends as they were also called) used them in different ways. “Thee,” in particular, became the pronoun of choice for both the subject and object in a sentence. I fashioned my usage after the style of Harriet Beecher Stowe in her best-selling 1852 novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Let me give you an example of what I mean. In Chapter XIII, “The Quaker Settlement,” a Quaker woman says to the runaway slave Eliza, “And so thee still thinks of going to Canada, Eliza? . . . And what’ll thee do, when thee gets there? Thee must think about that, my daughter.” An adult’s ear may want her to use the “thou” form they are more familiar with from Shakespeare and other writers—“thou still thinkest” and “what will thou doest . . . ?” But Quaker Plain Speech of the nineteenth-century US says otherwise. Jessamyn West, a popular contemporary Quaker author, saw her best-selling novel, The Friendly Persuasion, published in 1945. She, too, uses this form of Quaker Plain Speech. The novel is still so popular that it was reissued in 2003.
You may wonder why neither Martha nor Jake use Quaker Plain Speech. Part of the reason is that their father, who is not a Quaker, does not use it. The other is that many Quaker abolitionist children spoke in modern English as they lived within a diverse community.
I hope that you enjoyed reading Martha and the Slave Catchers as much as I enjoyed writing it. I am sure you have heard the expression “It takes a village to raise a child.” Well, it also takes a lot of people to make a book. Although the story is mine, a number of people read it while I was writing it and made lots of good suggestions. I would like to thank them here.
First is my agent, Marie Brown of Marie Brown Associates. An agent is a person who finds a good publisher for her clients. But she does other things as well. Marie gave me good suggestions for improving the story and finding a publisher who would nourish it. I want to thank her from the bottom of my heart for her continued support and faith in Martha and Jake’s story. And I also thank Eugene Nesmith and Michele Wallace for helping me to contact Marie.
The publisher is, of course, Seven Stories Press, and its president is Dan Simon. Triangle Square Books for Young Readers, the imprint of the press that publishes children’s books, became Martha and Jake’s (and my) home. I want to thank Dan, as well as the director of Triangle Square, Ruth Weiner, Lauren Hooker, and the rest of the staff for their care in seeing that Martha and Jake’s story came to light. The dynamic illustrations that you see on the cover and in the pages of the book are the work of Elizabeth Zunon, and I thank her for bringing my imaginary people to life. The maps that help you to envision Martha’s trip south and her and Jake’s trip back north are the beautiful products of geographer Patricia Caro. I based these trips on the real-life journeys of two women who “stole” their freedom: Harriet Tubman and Ann Maria Weems. Finally, the curriculum guide designed to offer your teachers and parents some suggestions for sharing the book with you is thanks to Catherine Franklin, a wonderful professor of childhood education at the City College of New York.
Writers often take courses so they can learn from experts what makes a good story. I attended classes at the Gotham Writers Workshop and would like to thank my instructors, Michael Leviton and Margaret Meacham, for their helpful feedback on the early work I did. Maggie, in particular, stuck with the book through its completion and offered invaluable advice and support.
Writers often rely on other writers, colleagues, and friends to respond to their work. For me this included my writing group: Betsy Rorschak, Lizzie Ross, Laurin Grollin, Gail Gurland, and Joe Nagler, all accomplished writers. I also want to thank Deborah Anne McComb, Bonnie Anderson, Catherine Franklin, Mona Siegel, Anne Marie Pois, and Rebecca Johnson. And my youngest reader, Amelie Ingram, was a very special reader for me. A special thanks goes to the City College of New York history department for a small grant which allowed Lydia Shestopalova to conduct research in The Liberator.
Finally, family is very important to all of us. For me, this includes Victor Alonso, Miguel Alonso, Lucinda Alonso, Pablo Alonso, Lisa Koroleva, and Carolyn Beck. All read the story and discussed its plot and characters and got to know Martha and Jake almost as well as I did.
To all, I owe a great deal. But, mostly, for understanding Jake, I looked to my grandson, Joseph Alonso, to whom this book is dedicated.
HARRIET HYMAN ALONSO