I was blown away by the story of Thomas Smallwood who, among other things, was the first person to use the phrase, “Underground Railroad” in print to describe the network that supported the escape of enslaved people in the U.S.. Scott Shane has brought us a story I never heard before of this fascinating man. Smallwood was enslaved until he was freed at age 30, per the promise of his enslaver, Ferguson. The thumbnail story of Ferguson is, itself quite interesting. Ferguson taught Smallwood to read, although this was illegal. Smallwood then extensively educated himself. While Smallwood is the focus of Flee North, as we learn of his drive to help as many people as possible escape from the Baltimore/Washington area the story cannot be told without also learning about Charles Turner Torrey. Torrey was a white abolitionist from Boston who partnered with Smallwood in his endeavors, particularly at the beginning of his work.
Key to our comprehension of their work is an understanding of the slave trade at the time. So Shane also delivers a vivid description of a notorious slave trader in Baltimore. Hope Slatter built and owned a slave jail for those being sold (usually to the deep south) for various reasons. Among other things, Shane explains there was an excess of enslaved people in Maryland in the 1830s/40s because tobacco was no longer a viable crop. In addition to that were all the usual reasons we have heard in the past for sales of people: that an enslaver has debts, a particular enslaved person is a “troublemaker” or tried to run away, someone dies and their enslaved people are sold, etc.
Having grown up in an area of Pennsylvania that is (by car) under an hour from Baltimore and home to many “stations” on the Underground Railroad, the geography of Flee North at the start of each trip was familiar. Most of us with any interest in this subject know that The Fugitive Slave Act forced Northern states to support the return of runaways to their enslavers in states that still allowed the practice. Pennsylvania, bordering Maryland to the North, was a fairly friendly state to run to and through. Smallwood and his colleagues routinely went that way, heading to Philadelphia to move people up the coast by boat, train or on foot for Canada.
Smallwood not only took tremendous risks in his actions as a free Black man, but he wrote columns for an abolitionist newspaper Torrey edited in Albany, NY for a period of time. Smallwood, under a pen name, taunted those who lost their “property” to Canada thanks to him. He would name the former “owners” and publicly shame them for how they treated their “chattel.” What distinguishes Flee North is that while it certainly describes parts of the journeys and escape routes, it primarily tells us about slavery and the trade in people during a period in the 1830s through the Civil War in one area, Baltimore and Washington. Shane evokes this period and, in particular what life was like for both free and enslaved Black people, the role of the local police in capturing runaways for significant payments, the danger of trusted people turning informers, the political status of slavery in the United States and how attitudes were evolving. The constant snippets about how various well known, powerful people, religious leaders, society folk etc. behaved, the incidents that exposed their true natures, the descriptions of different factions among abolitionists, how those who ran fared in Canada all make this a constantly interesting read. Ultimately, we follow the lives of Smallwood, Torrey, Slatter and their families to the end in an array of experiences that make this read like a novel. Shane, a pulitzer prize winning Washington Post Reporter painstakingly researched this history and writes beautifully. I highly, highly recommend Flee North. Five Stars.
Audio: NO. I cannot recommend the audio version of Flee North. Do not listen to this book as i did. I should say that Rhett Samual Price, the narrator’s voice, intonation and emphasis when reading most of the book, the narrative parts, were excellent. But there was too much that was not even adequate:
First, if you are reading nonfiction or any book that names real places or real people, GET THE PRONOUNCIATION RIGHT. How can someone possibly record an entire book without finding out that the capital of New York is pronounced “All-bany” not the name “Al as in Alfred-bany.” Chalk on a blackboard folks, because Albany comes up constantly.
I live a block from the Susquehanna River, pronounced, “Sus-kwa-hanna.” It, too came up multiple times and was consistently pronounced wrong as, “Sus-kah-hanna.” It jarred. Hagerstown, Md. is supposed to be pronounced with a long a, “Hay-gers-town.” He pronounced it “Hag” like a witch. All of us who read a lot pronounce many words wrong because we do not look them up. If I were a professional reader, recording for a major company, I would look up names and get them right. It sounds amateurish to go with your best guess when I’d venture to say most people at least know how to pronounce Albany.
Second, someone made a decision that if anything from one word to a whole piece of correspondence was a direct quote, the narrator would voice it as a character, like is done with fiction. I would not have done this with a word or two even if the voicing was well done. It was distracting and disturbed the flow of the book to do this. Worse, this narrator would earn one star from me for his character voices and accents. It made me cringe to hear any first person speech in this history. The narrator seems to be a successful audio book reader but I personally will avoid listening to him again. That’s rare for me. I would change my mind in a minute If I knew he would get pronunciations right and either ditch doing voices or learn more about how to create voices and use appropriate accents, Because I would give his narrative reading style (except for mispronunciations) five stars. So, Mr. Price gets 3 stars from me but he needs to become far more professional.
They Called me Bookworm 