Defending Freedom in Southwestern Michigan’s Rural Landscape: Resisting the Kentucky Raid

Abstract

Defending Freedom in Southwestern Michigan’s Rural Landscape: Resisting the Kentucky Raid Veta Smith Tucker (bio) Americans who supported slavery secured the right to enslave by enshrining that power in the US Constitution. Even so, that constitutional advantage was contested multiple times in Michigan throughout the nineteenth century. With its proximity to an international border, Michigan eventually became a battleground where advocates for and against slavery clashed. For many who sought freedom, Detroit was Michigan’s last terminus on their journey to Canada. Yet many lesser-known Michigan towns were depots where freedom seekers stopped on their way to Detroit. In the late 1840s, the African American population of Cass County rivaled Detroit’s in size. As a result of its significant African American population and geographical position on the Michigan-Indiana border, Cass County attracted the attention of freedom seekers as well as slave hunters. Located in rural southwestern Michigan, the county was known throughout the region as an antislavery sanctuary where African Americans enjoyed freedom. In 1847, the abolitionist beliefs of many county residents were thoroughly tested, and they rallied to defend African American freedom. They thwarted an attempt by Kentucky slave catchers to recapture African Americans who had successfully emancipated themselves from the Kentucky farms where they had been enslaved. The 1847 Kentucky Raid in Cass County resulted in temporary victories and crushing defeats that echoed throughout the nation. Mastering Freedom: African Americans in Antebellum Cass County Cass County’s Black population in 1847 can be categorized as self-emancipated, manumitted, or freeborn. Henry H. Way, a Quaker from Wayne County, Indiana, is credited with seeding Cass County’s African American community in 1836, before Michigan became a state.1 Several Cass County [End Page 49] histories report that Way brought the first known self-emancipated African American, Howell Lawson, to the county that year.2 C. P. Knuth names this self-emancipated migrant “Lawson Howell” and states further that Howell (or Lawson) was a native of North Carolina who established himself on a farm near the Osborn settlement in Porter Township, close to Birch Lake.3 Remarkably, by 1850 fifteen percent of Michigan’s African Americans lived in Cass County; only Detroit’s Wayne County had a larger African American population.4 Several Underground Railroad routes from Indiana made their way to Cass County. Nathan Macy Thomas, a prominent Quaker physician, recorded that he was receiving fugitives from Cass County at his home in Schoolcraft (Kalamazoo County) by 1838. Thomas also wrote that he and his wife hid the freedom seekers, provided sustenance for them, and forwarded them to Erastus Hussey in Battle Creek.5 He also mentioned that Josiah Osborn of Calvin Township in Cass County forwarded the first fugitive to him in 1838.6 In 1839, Jacob Cummings emancipated himself from slavery in Chattanooga, Tennessee. After a number of recaptures and subsequent escapes, Cummings arrived in Wayne County, Indiana. From there, Cummings traveled to Goshen and Elkhart, Indiana—eventually arriving in Cass County.7 By 1840, Willis Brown and Jesse Scott, both considered “runaways,” were living in Cass County.8 The 1840 census listed only eight “Negroes” in Cass County.9 The African American population grew quickly in the early 1840s. Five years later, in 1845, fifty free “colored” persons were enumerated in the county; yet one local history states that “there were one hundred runaway ‘slaves’ in Cass County in 1846, mostly in Penn and Calvin Townships in what were known as the East and Osborn settlements.”10 Just four years later, in 1850, Cass County’s African [End Page 50] American population had dramatically increased to 389.11 Some of these were African Americans born in the South and manumitted by Quakers complying with the church’s 1758 directive to Friends to “free those they enslaved.”12 Many of the manumitted African Americans accompanied Quaker migrants from Southern states to rural areas in Ohio, Indiana, and Cass County.13 Chain Lake Baptist Church, purported to be the second oldest organized African American congregation in Michigan, was founded in Cass County in 1838.14 Church history recorded that early congregants met from “house to house.”15 The migration pattern of many founders of...