We was away from Miss Irene to make money for her and she was not about to give us our freedom now. She continued to hire us slaves out to Captain Bainbridge, who then hired us out to Samuel and Adeline Russell in March of 1846. They owned a store called Russell and Bennett’s over on Water Street.
Around that time Harriett started going to church more and more, taking Lizzie and Eliza with her. I went from time to time, but my Harriett and the girls never missed a Sunday and sometimes they went during the week nights. In those days there were only two churches for colored folks in all of St. Louis. Harriett ’tended Second African Baptist Church. Before we had them two churches, colored folks went over to Liberty Engine House at Third and Cherry Streets. Before Liberty Engine House, black folks met at each other house.
After church let out, black folks would stand around for hours and talk about how they could get they freedom. Some of them worked and saved money and bought they freedom when they Massa didn’t want slaves after leaving the South. Another way slaves was being freed was if they was born to a free black woman and they could prove it. A few was freed because they had sued they Massa for taking them into free states on they way to St. Louis from the South.
Without telling a soul except Harriett, I had saved enough money over the years to buy our freedom. Miss Irene frowned at me something awful when I told her that I wanted to buy our freedom. Then she said “NO.”
That made my Harriett real mad.
One Sunday Harriett came home and told me that she been talking to folks at church about all the places we had been with our Massa Emerson. When they heard about our travels, folks at the church told my Harriett that she was not a slave no more. They told her that me and the children was not slaves no more. They talked about something called the Missouri Compromise. Harriett said it meant that slaves who was born into or was carried into any territory north or west of Missouri was not slaves no more. That’s what happen to me and my Harriet. We was carried into the free state of Illinois and the free territory of Wisconsin and had worked there as slaves.
Reverend Anderson told Harriett he had somebody he wanted us to meet—someone who would help us because of that Missouri Compromise law. Someone he said could get us our freedom, like him. Yes, Pastor Anderson was a free black man. He was a big man, who mamma was a slave brought to St. Louis from Virginia. Don’t know when his mamma died, but he worked and bought his freedom long before me and Harriett met him. He even learned to read and write from the white folks. He took us to meet a man named Francis B. Murdoch, who was a slave lawyer.
Pastor Anderson and Francis Murdoch both used to live in Alton, Illinois. Reverend Anderson use to be what they called a type-setter over in Alton for a man named Elijah Lovejoy. Mr. Lovejoy went and got himself killed trying to help slave folks. He had lived in St. Louis first and he was publisher of the St. Louis Observer newspaper and he was pastor of Presbyterian Church.
The St. Louis folks decided they had enough of Mr. Lovejoy when he started writing about the murder of a free black man named Francis McIntosh, who was a steward on one of the steamboats. One day when the boat was docked in St. Louis, the sheriff and some of his deputies tried to arrest a free Negro man from the boat and Francis McIntosh stepped in to stop them. A big fight broke out and Mr. Murdoch killed one deputy and hurt another one. He was arrested right away and put in the city jail. When night came, them white men dragged him out of that jail cell. They dragged him over to Tenth and Market Street where they tied him to a tree and set him on fire and burned the poor man to death. Mr. Lovejoy did not think it was right for Francis McIntosh to kill a man, but he said it was wrong for them to burn the man to death. He wrote about it all the time until he got so many death threats that he left St. Louis for good and he moved to Alton.
But that did not stop Mr. Lovejoy from writing about the wrong that was done to slaves. Two times the mad white menfolks tried to burn down his Alton Observer printing shop in the middle of the night. Folks said in November of 1837 Mr. Lovejoy got himself a brand new printer. Mr. Lovejoy, Pastor Anderson, and some other men stayed at the shop day and night to keep the mad white folks from destroying it like the other one. Pastor Anderson said they guarded that printer with they lives. But on November 19, a whole mob of angry white men showed up and tried to take the new printer.
Mr. Lovejoy and his men were ready for them and they had a shoot-out right there in front of the printing shop. They hurt a few of the men, but they shoot Mr. Lovejoy five times and killed him dead. Not only that, Pastor Anderson said they took the printer and threw it in the Mississippi River.
Lawyer Murdoch was the city attorney over there in Alton and he tried real hard to put the men who killed Mr. Lovejoy in jail, but the white folks in town was glad Mr. Lovejoy was dead and they did not support Lawyer Murdoch trying to bring justice for his murder. Soon after that, Lawyer Murdoch and Pastor Anderson moved back to St. Louis.
Lawyer Murdoch told us all about Mr. Lovejoy and how many slaves he helped. He said he was going to help us to get our freedom from Miss Irene. He said that if everything we said was true, and we had really gone to Illinois and Wisconsin, then we was free people. Lawyer Murdoch went on and on about us having the right to go in that courthouse down on Pine Street and ask the judge for our freedom. Night after night me and my Harriett talked about what the preacher and the lawyer said to us.
Free! Me and my Harriett was free Negroes and we didn’t even know it.
Lawyer Murdoch said he would be our lawyer if we wanted him to and he would go over to the old courthouse and help us get our freedom. On April 6, 1846, that is what he did. He marched right into that courthouse and sued Miss Irene Emerson for our freedom. Me and Harriett could not read a word on his papers, but Lawyer Murdoch said he ask the court to charge Miss Emerson with false imprisonment. He said that false imprisonment meant Miss Irene was holding us for her slaves and we were free people. Free just like her.
White folks and the law agreed that slaves could not be married, so they didn’t even include my Harriett’s name on the court papers when that whole mess started. Lawyer Murdoch said that the man at the courthouse wrote my Harriett’s first name and started to write her last name, but he crossed it out. Slave men had no rights, but slave women had even less. I reckon Harriett’s name should have been on every last one of those papers from start to finish. But Lawyer Murdoch said if we won, none of that would matter and we would get ourselves ten whole dollars and our freedom. That money we would get was what he call “damages.” He said damages was payment for mistreating people.
Harriett was scared for the children after we filed our suit, so different abolitionist started to keep them hid round St. Louis for us most of the time. Abolitionist was them white folks that was against slavery. Not just for me and Harriett, but for all people. Surely Miss Irene was mad about this. Harriett thought she would be mad enough to try and sale off our children, but she never did.
Lawyer Murdoch said that Deputy Henry Belt rode all the way out to the California plantation and put them courthouse papers into Miss Irene’s hands. Lord, I wish I would have seen her face when that horse came up with the deputy on it. I wish I could have seen her eyes reading them words.
Miss Irene was supposed to wait to come to court in November to tell the judge why she had been keeping us as slaves when we was free people. But not Miss Irene, no sir, she didn’t wait one day. She went right out and got herself a lawyer named George Goode. He went over to the courthouse the next day and did what Lawyer Murdoch called answering the charges against Miss Irene.
Surely enough, me and my Harriett had a visitor of our own the next day. Sheriff Milburn did not even send a deputy; he came himself with papers for me and Harriett. We couldn’t read the papers, so we ran to Lawyer Murdoch’s office. After he calmed my Harriett down just a little bit, he read the papers to us. “Take notice that on the ninth day of April 1846, I shall move the court to dismiss the suit of yourself against me for your freedom.” He said that meant Miss Irene had ask that the charges against her be dismissed because she said that Lawyer Murdoch did not even pay what they call a bond to cover the cost of court. We didn’t understand any of that legal mess he was telling us. But I did understand him when he said Miss Irene was just trying to stop us from getting our freedom.
That day was the beginning of eleven long years of trying to be what we had already been for many years. Free!
I barely slept all them nights as we waited for Lawyer Murdoch to go back to court for us. But he never made it to court for us. Pastor Anderson came in the alley where we lived one day and gave us the bad news. Before we went to court in 1847, Lawyer Murdoch just upped and moved all the way to California without saying one word. Now we had a day in court almost here and we had no slave lawyer to even talk for us. Till this day I still do not know why Lawyer Murdoch left St. Louis. Truth is, we do not know if he ever left for California. Some white folks believe he was killed for trying to help us get our freedom.
The Lord mighty good because I went and found the only white folks in St. Louis that I knew could help us. The Blow boys! I told them all about Miss Irene and Massa taking us into free states and how Lawyer Murdoch told us we was free. I told them about Lawyer Murdoch moving to California and leaving us high and dry. Just like I thought, they told us they would help us get our freedom.
Thank God their sister Miss Martha Ella had married Lawyer Charles Drake. He told the Blow boys that he would be glad to be our attorney. He started doing the paperwork, but then Miss Martha Ella died and Lawyer Drake was so heartbroken that he move away to Cincinnati. Before he left, he ask a lawyer named Samuel Bay to help us.
On June 30, 1847, Lawyer Bay went to the court house for my Harriett and me. When he came back, he say we still was not free and that there would be another trial for us on the second day of December. By now Miss Irene done got real mad and she went to a bigger court over in St. Louis and tried to stop Lawyer Bay from going to court for us again come December. Miss Irene did stop us for a little while, but Judge Krum said the case would be heard come January and sure enough it was. For the first time in our lives, on January 12, 1848, that same Judge Krum told Lawyer Bay we was now free people.
Miss Irene was not having no such mess and on that same day she ask the judge for another trial. Lawyer Bay called it an appeal and he said he had to go back to court for us and he did. This was getting to be too much for Lawyer Bay so he got some help from two other attorneys named Alexander Field and David Hall. They went to Judge Krum and asked for a new trial. This time the trial would be over in Jefferson City, where they had the Supreme Court.
While we waited for them new lawyers to go over to Jefferson City for us, Judge Krum put us in the hands of the sheriff to hire us out to work for other white folks. The Blow boys was mighty upset about this so they asked Charles Edmund LaBeaume, who was Peter Blow’s wife Eugenie’s brother, to hire us. Mr. LaBeaume didn’t really need no help, though, so often times he would hire us out to other white folks. But always to good white folks.
We was working for a lot of different folks when we got the word that the judge over in Jefferson County said we was not free. So me, my Harriett, and our children were slaves again. Again our lawyers asked for an appeal.
But on May 17, 1849, everything for slaves, free colored folks, rich and poor white folks changed. A big fire started on a steamboat that was docked at the riverfront and spreaded onto land when the wind got real high. It burned down half of downtown St. Louis in just a few hours. After the fire was under a little control, folks just walked around in a daze for days. To make it worse for us all, the cholera broke out and folks in St. Louis started to get sick and die by the dozens. After that no one wanted to come into the city for no court date for some slaves like us.
A lot of people black and white died from that cholera, even our old attorney Samuel Bay.
It was not until January 12, 1850, that we got a new trial. By now Miss Irene had herself new lawyers named Hugh A. Garland and Lyman Norris. Lawyer Field and Lawyer Hall was still our lawyers.
All of this was too much to understand, but when we got to the new trial the judge did what the lawyers called a “overturned verdict” and he freed us again. Not only was we free, but the judge said we had been free ever since we stepped foot in free territory sixteen years ago.
Our freedom was short-lived because Miss Irene went right back over to Jefferson City and asked for another trial and they gave her one. On February 13, 1850, she got what she asked for and we were slaves again.
I never did understood why Miss Irene wanted to keep us as her slaves, because she didn’t even live in St. Louis no more. In 1850 she married a man named Dr. Calvin Chaffee, who lived all the way ’cross country in a place called Boston, Massachusetts. She left her brother John Sanford, who came back and forth to St. Louis from New York, in charge of the case.
The sheriff hired me out to one family and my Harriett to another. For the first time in our lives we had no Massa, but we was not free neither. And then we had no lawyer because David Hall died in 1851 and Alexander Field left St. Louis to be a lawyer in Louisiana.
Again our Blow friends helped and asked Mr. Charles LaBeaume to ask his good friend Roswell Field to be our lawyer. I was working for Lawyer Field at night cleaning his office over at 36½ Chestnut at the time. Lawyer Field was not my Massa. He had hired me from Charles LaBeaume, who had hired me from the sheriff five years earlier for five dollars a month. Seem like everything was changing again.
Lawyer Field said it was just fine if John Sanford took over Miss Irene affairs because he was from New York. I ask Lawyer Field what difference did it make to us where Mr. Sanford lived. He said it made all the difference in the world to a judge, because if a person who lived in another state sue someone in St. Louis, then it’s a federal case. “Federal,” he said, could give us the right to sue in court all the way in Washington, D.C., if need be. There in Washington, D.C., he said was a group of judges called the Supreme Justices, in the highest court in all the land. He was sure they would give us our freedom. Before that, Lawyer Field said he would try again in the federal court in Missouri over in Jefferson City.
Twice that federal court told Lawyer Field “NO” to letting us have a new trial. Lawyer Field told us that the only thing left to do was to go to Washington, D.C. He wrote Lawyer Montgomery Blair, who was a good lawyer who lived in a big mansion right across the street from the White House in Washington, D.C. At first Lawyer Field got no answer from this Lawyer Blair. So Lawyer Field wrote him again and Lawyer Blair wrote him back and said he would go to the Supreme Court for us. He did and on March 6, 1857, a man that Lawyer Field said was the chief judge, Justice Roger Taney, read from a fifty-page paper what that Supreme Court had decided to do about my Harriett and my children and me. Lawyer Blair wrote and told Lawyer Field that it took that man two long hours to say what he had to say. He also wrote that not one person left that courtroom the whole time Judge Taney was reading.
The news that took two hours to read was bad. The judge said that we was first from Africa and no one with any African blood was a citizen of the United States and we had no rights like white folks to even sue in the United States courts. But Lawyer Field said what knocked white folks off they feet was the judge said the United States Congress was wrong for ever making the Missouri Compromise a law. And he said the judge said that law was now nullified. Lawyer Field said that “nullified” meant it was no longer the law. Seven of the judges agreed with this Judge Taney. But two did not.
Lawyer Field said it were over and there was no other court to go to. No more judges that would listen. After eleven long years, we was still slaves.