"It was April 1857, and in the past decade hundreds of Black Marylanders had slipped off the farms and plantations where they were enslaved. Now local white leaders were beginning to suspect that Green knew more about the runaways than he let on. Green was a free Black man who lived in a cottage in Dorchester County, on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, where he farmed a modest plot and preached the word of God."
"The sheriff and his posse soon found what they were looking for: a letter from Green's son, Sam Jr.; a map of Canada; railroad schedules for northbound trains; and a copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe's blockbuster antislavery novel, published five years earlier. None of the items proved that Green had helped usher anyone to freedom-but the book turned out to be sufficiently incriminating."
Samuel Green bought his freedom and covertly assisted conductors on the Underground Railroad, including Harriet Tubman. In April 1857 county authorities in Dorchester County, Maryland, searched his cottage and seized a letter from his son, a map of Canada, railroad schedules, and a copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Prosecutors charged Green under a Maryland law banning 'abolition pamphlets' that could 'create discontent amongst the people of color of this state' and argued that mere possession of such a book warranted imprisonment. Green's arrest highlighted Maryland's large free Black population and tense position around slavery.
Read at Smithsonian Magazine
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