The Underground Railroad and Domestic Slave Trade in Baltimore & Washington

"The Underground Railroad and Domestic Slave Trade in Baltimore and Washington" Presented by Scott Shane

Welcome to an exciting event where author and journalist, Scott Shane will take you on a journey through a very local story of both tragedy and triumph with his book, Flee North. It unearths the lost tale of Thomas Smallwood, born into slavery in Maryland, who bought his freedom, educated himself, and became a shoemaker in Southwest Washington, a short walk from the U.S. Capitol.

Smallwood began to organize mass escapes from slavery by the wagonload, with the help of a young white partner, Charles Torrey -- and wrote about the escapes in extraordinary satirical dispatches for an abolitionist newspaper in Albany. It was Smallwood, Scott Shane discovered, who gave the underground railroad its name. But Smallwood's daring operation took place against the very dark background of the domestic slave trade, which thrived on Washington's Mall and at Baltimore's Inner Harbor, shipping thousands of people every year away from their families to the cotton and sugar plantations of the deep south.

The book's third major character, Baltimore's Hope Slatter, was the era's dominant slave trader, operating from his private "slave J*il" on Pratt Street. The domestic slave trade is still too little understood, even in Baltimore, where it prospered for half a century -- and became an engine driving the underground railroad.

You can learn more at scottshane.org.

Host or Publisher The Society for the Preservation of Federal Hill & Fell's Point