EVANSVILLE, INDIANA,
March 31st, 1851.
WM. STILL: Dear Sir,
— On last Tuesday I mailed a letter to you, written by Seth Concklin. I presume
you have received that letter. It gave an account of his rescue of the family
of your brother. If that is the last news you have had from them, I have very painful
intelligence for you. They passed on from near Princeton, where I saw them and
had a lengthy interview with them, up north, I think twenty-three miles above
Vincennes, Ind. where they were seized by a party of men, and lodged in jail.
Telegraphic dispatches were sent all through the South. I have since learned
that the Marshall of Evansville received a dispatch from Tuscumbia, to look out
for them. By some means, he and the master, so says report, went to Vincennes
and claimed the fugitives, chained Mr. Concklin and hurried all off. Mr.
Concklin wrote to Mr. David Stormon, Princeton, as soon as he was cast into
prison, to find bail. So soon as we got the letter and could get off, two of us
were about setting off to render all possible aid, when we were told they all
had passed, a few hours before, through Princeton, Mr. Concklin in chains. What
kind of process was bad, if any, I know not. I immediately came down to this
place, and learned that they had been put on a boat at 3 P. M. I did not arrive
until 6. Now all hopes of their recovery are gone. No case ever so enlisted my
sympathies. I had seen Mr. Concklin in Cincinnati. I had given him aid and
counsel. I happened to see them after they landed in Indiana. I heard Peter and
Levin tell their tale of suffering, shed tears of sorrow for them all; but now,
since they have fallen a prey to the unmerciful blood-hounds of this state, and
have again been dragged back to unrelenting bondage, I am entirely unmanned.
And poor Concklin! I fear for him. When he is dragged back to Alabama, I fear
they will go far beyond the utmost rigor of the law, and vent their savage
cruelty upon him. It is with pain I have to communicate these things. But you
may not hear them from him. I could not get to see him or them, as Vincennes is
about thirty miles from Princeton, where I was when I heard of the capture.
I take pleasure in stating that, according to the letter he
(Concklin) wrote to Mr. D. Stewart, Mr. Concklin did not abandon them, but
risked his own liberty to save them. He was not with them when they were taken;
but went afterwards to take them out of jail upon a writ of Habeas Corpus, when
they seized him too and lodged him in prison.
I write in much haste. If I can learn any more facts of
importance, I may write you. If you desire to hear from me again, or if you
should learn any thing specific from Mr. Concklin, be pleased to write me at
Cincinnati, where I expect to be in a short time. If curious to know your
correspondent, I may say I was formerly Editor of the “New Concord Free Press,”
Ohio. I only add that every case of this kind only tends to make me abhor my
(no!) this country more and more. It
is the Devil’s Government, and God will destroy it.
Yours for the slave,
N. R. JOHNSTON.
P. S. I broke open this letter to write you some more. The
foregoing pages were written at night. I expected to mail it next morning
before leaving Evansville; but the boat for which I was waiting came down about
three in the morning; so I had to hurry on board, bringing the letter along. As
it now is I am not sorry, for coming down, on my way to St. Louis, as far as
Paducah, there I learned from a colored man at the wharf that, that same day,
in the morning, the master and the family of fugitives arrived off the boat,
and had then gone on their journey to Tuscumbia, but that the “white man” (Mr.
Concklin) had “got away from them,” about twelve miles up the river. It seems
he got off the boat some way, near or at Smithland, Ky., a town at the mouth of
the Cumberland River. I presume the report is true, and hope he will finally
escape, though I was also told that they were in pursuit of him. Would that the
others had also escaped. Peter and Levin could have done so, I think, if they
had had resolution. One of them rode a horse, he not tied either, behind the
coach in which the others were. He followed apparently “contented and happy.”
From report, they told their master, and even their pursuers, before the master
came, that Concklin had decoyed them away, they coming unwillingly. I write on
a very unsteady boat.
Yours,
N. R. Johnston.
SOURCE: William Still, The Underground Railroad: A
Record of Facts, Authentic Narratives, Letters &c., p. 30-1
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