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Samuel Green (freedman)
Encyclopedia
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
slave
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
, freedman
Freedman
A freedman is a former slave who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, slaves became freedmen either by manumission or emancipation ....
, and minister of religion
Minister of religion
In Christian churches, a minister is someone who is authorized by a church or religious organization to perform functions such as teaching of beliefs; leading services such as weddings, baptisms or funerals; or otherwise providing spiritual guidance to the community...
, who was jailed in 1857 for possessing a copy of the anti-slavery novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman....
by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author. Her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was a depiction of life for African-Americans under slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and United Kingdom...
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He was born in East New Market, Maryland
East New Market, Maryland
East New Market is a town located in Dorchester County, Maryland. As of the 2000 census, the town had a total population of 167. The zip code is 21631.-Geography:East New Market is located at ....
, to an enslaved mother. His father may have been enslaved. The identity of both parents remains unknown. He labored for his enslaver, Henry Nichols, until Nichols's death in 1832. A provision in Nichols's will enabled Green to buy his freedom. Samuel then worked as a farmer
Farmer
A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, who raises living organisms for food or raw materials, generally including livestock husbandry and growing crops, such as produce and grain...
and as a minister or exhorter in the African American Methodist Episcopal Church in Dorchester County, Maryland
Dorchester County, Maryland
Dorchester County is a county located in the U.S. state of Maryland on its Eastern Shore. It is bordered by the Choptank River to the north, Talbot County to the northwest, Caroline County to the northeast, Wicomico County to the southeast, Sussex County, Delaware, to the east, and the Chesapeake...
. He was able to buy the freedom of his wife Catherine (Kitty) in 1842 from her enslaver, Ezekiel Richardson. Sam and Kitty's two children, Sam Jr. (born 1829) and Susan (born 1832) were subsequently sold by Richardson to Dr. James Muse in 1847, taking them out of Sam and Kitty's household.
Reverend Samuel Green's reputation grew in stature in both the African American and white community of Dorchester County. In 1852, he served as a delegate to the Convention of the Free Colored People of Maryland in Baltimore, where he resisted efforts to encourage emigration to Africa. In October 1855 he attended the National Convention of the Colored People of the United States, held at Franklin Hall in Philadelphia, as a delegate from Maryland. He mingled with many prominent Northern black abolitionists during the convention, including Frederick Douglass, Jacob Gibbs, Stephen Myers, William Cooper Nell, Charles Lennox Remond, John S. Rock, and Mary Ann Shadd Carey.
In August 1854, Sam Green’s son, Sam Jr., a skilled blacksmith, ran away from Dr. Muse after learning that he might be sold. Using instructions probably given to him by Harriet Tubman, he found his way to the office of William Still, Philadelphia’s most notorious Underground Railroad stationmaster, who forwarded him to the home of Charles Bustill, another prominent African American Underground Railroad agent in Philadelphia. From there, he was sent along swiftly to Chipaway, Ontario, Canada, just across the U.S. border near Niagara Falls, where he joined other Eastern Shore runaways living relatively free lives. Sam Green Sr. is known to have helped Harriet Tubman and other runaway slaves from the region, and no doubt these connections helped Sam Jr. successfully reach freedom.
Once settled in Chipaway, Sam, Jr. wrote to his parents, telling them news of his successful journey to freedom, which included “plenty of friends, plenty to eat, and to drink.” He told his father to tell Peter Jackson and Joe Bailey, both locally enslaved men, to come to Canada as soon as they could. Jackson soon fled North with Tubman and her brothers in December 1854; Bailey would wait another two years before the right time presented itself. Tragically, Sam Jr.’s sister Sarah was unable to flee; as the mother of two young children, Sarah may have been unwilling or unable to run away with her brother. Muse, angry over the escape of Sam Jr. and suspicious that Sarah might run off as well, sold her to a Missouri family, cruelly separating her from her family forever.
By mid-March 1857, rumors were circulating that the Rev. Green had played a role in the escape of the Dover Eight, a group of eight runways who had successfully eluded capture in a dramatic flight from Dorchester County.
When the Dorchester County sheriff
Sheriff
A sheriff is in principle a legal official with responsibility for a county. In practice, the specific combination of legal, political, and ceremonial duties of a sheriff varies greatly from country to country....
searched Green's house, he found the letters from Samuel Jr. naming Jackson and Bailey, two slaves who had escaped to Canada with Harriet Tubman. Raising further suspicions, Green had recently returned from a trip to Canada to visit with his fugitive son. Authorities also discovered a Canadian map, various railroad schedules, and a copy of one volume of the two volumes set of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 best seller, Uncle Tom's Cabin in Green's home.
Green was arrested on and charged with "knowingly having in his possession a certain abolition pamphlet called 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' of an inflammatory character and calculated to create discontent amongst the colored population of this State" and "knowingly having in his possession certain abolition papers and pictorial representation of an inflammatory character calculated to create discontent amongst the colored population of this State."
He was acquitted on the second charge, but convicted on the first, and on 14 May 1857 he was sentenced to ten years imprisonment.
The case caused a great deal of concern, with abolitionists calling for Green to be released and slaveholders calling for him to remain in jail. John Dixon Long
John Dixon Long
John Dixon Long was a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church and a leading U.S. abolitionist. His 1857 book, Pictures of Slavery in Church and State, was influential in abolitionist circles....
wrote in 1857:
Dorchester County is almost exclusively a Methodist County. If the members of the M. E. Church of Dorchester had been liberty-loving, slavery-hating Methodists, no judge or jury would have dared to consign their brother in Christ to ten years' incarceration in a State prison, separated from wife and children, for having a book in his possession which might have been found on the shelves of the very Judge that pronounced the sentence. To the best of my recollection, I never saw a jury at any County Court on the Eastern Shore of Maryland that was not partially composed of members of the M. E. Church. The Judge who pronounced the sentence was, when I was a boy, a member of the New-school Presbyterian Church in Snow Hill, Md.; and, I presume, he is still a member of that church. He ought to have resigned his seat rather than have pronounced such a sentence. The Methodists of Maryland could have poor Green pardoned in six months, should they desire it. May the prayers of all the good go up to the Throne of Grace for this oppressed brother! I blush for my native State when I think of her bloody code of laws--a code that would disgrace a savage tribe. I blush for the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Episcopalians, and the Baptists of Maryland, who, united, could wipe off from the statute book the black laws that tarnish her fair fame. Maryland denies the humanity of one hundred thousand slaves, and oppresses seventy-five thousand free negroes. May the Omnipotent speed the hour when American slavery shall be blasted by the thunders of His power, amidst the shoutings and hallelujahs of a redeemed race!
The governor of Maryland
Governor of Maryland
The Governor of Maryland heads the executive branch of the government of Maryland, and he is the commander-in-chief of the state's National Guard units. The Governor is the highest-ranking official in the state, and he has a broad range of appointive powers in both the State and local governments,...
, Thomas Holliday Hicks
Thomas Holliday Hicks
Thomas Holliday Hicks was an American politician from Maryland. He served as the 31st Governor of Maryland from 1858 until 1862, and as a U.S...
, sided with the slaveholders. Green, because he was literate, worked in the warden's office doing paperwork. The cost of the trial, however, forced Kitty and Sam to sell their property in Dorchester County. Kitty then moved to Baltimore to be closer to Sam, supporting herself by taking in laundry. Hicks's successor Augustus Bradford
Augustus Bradford
Augustus Williamson Bradford , a Democrat, was the 32nd Governor of Maryland in the United States from 1862 to 1866. He served as governor during the Civil War and paid a heavy price for his devotion to the Union.-Biography:...
freed Green in 1862, on condition that he leave Maryland. Green and his wife toured Philadelphia, New York, and New England, before emigrating to Canada. Their daughter Susan remained in slavery in Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
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Sam and Kitty returned to Maryland after the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, settling in Dorchester County to resume their pre-trial lives. He was a very active member of the Delaware Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, working on committees for education and religious instruction. He later became involved in the Centenary Biblical Institute in Baltimore, which trained young men for the ministry and in time became known as Morgan State University. He and Kitty moved to Baltimore around 1874, presumably to devote more time to the Institute. Sam Green died there on .