Benjamin F. Shambaugh Award winner
During the 1850s and early 1860s, 鶹, the westernmost free state bordering a slave state, stood as a bulwark of antislavery sentiment while the decades-long struggle over slavery shifted westward. On its southern border lay Missouri, the northernmost slaveholding state. To its west was the Kansas-Nebraska Territory, where proslavery and antislavery militias battled. Missouri slaves fled to 鶹 seeking freedom, finding opponents of slavery who risked their lives and livelihoods to help them, as well as bounty hunters who forced them back into bondage. When opponents of slavery streamed west across the state’s broad prairies to prevent slaveholders from dominating Kansas, 鶹ns fed, housed, and armed the antislavery settlers. Not a few young 鶹 men also took up arms.
In Necessary Courage, historian Lowell J. Soike details long-forgotten stories of determined runaways and the courageous 鶹ns who acted as conductors on this most dangerous of railroads—the underground railroad. Alexander Clark, an African American businessman in Muscatine, hid a young fugitive in his house to protect him from slavecatchers while he fought for his freedom in the courts. While keeping antislavery newspapers fully apprised of the battle against human bondage in western 鶹, Elvira Gaston Platt drove a wagon full of fugitives to the next safe house under the noses of her proslavery neighbors. John Brown, fleeing across 鶹 with a price on his head for the murders of proslavery Kansas settlers, relied on 鶹ns like Josiah Grinnell and William Penn Clarke to keep him, his men, and the twelve Missouri slaves they had liberated hidden from the authorities. Several young 鶹ns went on to fight alongside Brown at Harpers Ferry. These stories and many more are told here.
A suspenseful and often heartbreaking tale of desperation, courage, cunning, and betrayal, this book reveals the critical role that 鶹ns played in the struggle against slavery and the coming of the Civil War.
“This book represents the culmination of the 鶹 Freedom Trail Grant Project, which presents the first comprehensive statewide survey of the intriguing people, long-forgotten places, and exciting events associated with the history of abolition and the underground railroad in 鶹 prior to and during the Civil War.”—Douglas W. Jones, 鶹 Freedom Trail grant project manager, State Historical Society of 鶹, Des Moines
“For far too long, Underground Railroad histories have ignored the important role that 鶹 played in the fight to end slavery. In a nice overview, Soike tells the stories of those individuals—enslaved and free, black and white, male and female—who had the ‘necessary courage’ to prevail against the tragedy of slavery.”—Deanda Johnson, Midwest regional manager, National Park Service’s Network to Freedom
2014 Benjamin F. Shambaugh Award
