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Troy 1860

Page history last edited by Mr. Hengsterman 12 years, 4 months ago

Harriet Tubman's Rescue of Charles Nalle
by Irina Fleming


In the spring of 1860, Gerrit Smith requested Harriet Tubman  go to Boston to attend a large Anti-Slavery meeting. On her way, she stopped in Troy to visit a cousin, and while there heard the news that a fugitive slave, by the name of Charles Nalle, had been followed by his master. He was already in the hands of the officers, and was to be taken to the South. His master was his younger brother and not one-grain whiter than he was. The instant she heard the news, she started for the Office of the Unites States Commissioner, on First and State Street, scattering the tidings as she went. An excited crowd was gathered about the office, through which Harriet forced her way, and rushed up the stairs to the door of the room where the fugitive was detained. A wagon was already waiting before the door to carry off the man, but the crowd was then so great, and in such a state of excitement, that the officers did not dare to bring the man down. On the opposite side of the street stood some members of the African American community, watching the window where they could see Harriet’s sunbonnet, and feeling assured that so long as she stood there, the fugitive was still in the office. 

 

Time passed on, and he did not appear. “They’re taken him out an-other way depend on that,” said some of the African Americans. “No,” replied others, “There stands Moses’ yet, and as long as she is there, he is safe.” Harriet, now seeing the necessity for tremendous effort for his rescue, sent out some little boys to cry fire. The bells rang, the crowd increased, till the whole street was a dense mass of people. Again and again the officers came out to try and clear the stairs, and make a way to take their captive down; others were driven down, But Harriet stood her ground her head bent and her arms folded. “Come, old woman, you must get out of this,” said one of the officers; “I must have the way cleared; if you can’t get down alone, some one will help you.” Harriet, still putting on a greater appearance of decrepitude, twitched away from him, and kept her place. Offers were made to buy Charles from his master, who at first agreed to take twelve hundred dollars for him; but when this was subscribed, he immediately raised the price to fifteen hundred. The crowd grew more excited. A gentleman raised a window and called out, “ Two hundred dollars for his rescue, but not one cent to his master!” The response was a roar of satisfaction from the crowd. At length the officers appeared, and announced to the crowd, that if they would open a lane to the wagon, they would promise to bring the man down the front way. The lane was opened, and the man was brought out, a tall, handsome, intelligent white man, with his wrists manacled together, walking between the US Marshall and another officer, and behind him his brother and his master, appeared. Harriet roused from her stooping posture, threw up a window, and cried to her friends “Here he comes, take him!” She darted down the stairs like a wildcat. She seized one officer and pulled him down, then another and tore him away from the man; and keeping her arms about the slave, cried to her friends: “ Dray us out! Dray him to the river! Drown him! But don’t let them have him!” They were knocked down together, and while down, she tore off her sunbonnet and tied it on the head of the fugitive. When he rose, only his head could be seen, and amid the surging mass of people the slave was no longer recognized, while the master appeared like the slave. Again and again they were knocked down, the poor slave utterly helpless, with his manacled writs streaming with blood. Harriet’s outer clothes were torn from her, and even her stout shoes were pulled from her feet. Yet she never relinquished her hold of the man, till; she had dragged him to the Hudson River. “Oaken clubs and chisels struck against heads and pistols blazed. Abolitionists, anti-slaver’s and sympathizers crushed with the pro-slavers and blood washed the streets of Troy that afternoon.” Nalle was able to catch a ferry to West Troy, now Watervliet. Harriet followed in a ferryboat to the other side. But the telegraph was ahead of them, and soon as they landed he was seized and hurried along, from her sight. After a time, some school children came hurrying along, and to her anxious inquiries they answered, “He is up in that house, in the third story,” Harriet rushed up to the place. Some men were attempting to make their way up the stairs. The officers were firing down, and two men were lying on the stairs, shot. Over their bodies our Heroine rushed, and with the help of others burst open the door of the room, and dragged out the fugitive, whom Harriet carried down the stairs in her arms. A gentleman who was riding a fine horse, stopped to ask what the disturbance meant; and on hearing the story, his sympathies seemed to be thoroughly aroused; he sprang from the wagon calling out, “That is a blood-horse - drive him till he drops." The poor man was hurried in; some of his friends jumped in after him and drove at the most rapid rate to Schenectady.


Sources: Harriet Tubman, The Moses of her People and articles from the Troy Sentinel of 1860
http://www.nyhistory.com/spurr/harriet_tubman_old.htm

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