Slavery and Freedom in the Mid-Hudson Valley by Michael E. Groth

Author:Michael E. Groth [Groth, Michael E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, State & Local, Middle Atlantic (DC; DE; MD; NJ; NY; PA), Social Science, Ethnic Studies, American, African American & Black Studies
ISBN: 9781438464589
Google: vqOuDgAAQBAJ
Publisher: SUNY Press
Published: 2017-04-17T03:19:20+00:00

7

Black Dutchess County at Midcentury

IT IS DIFFICULT TO IMAGINE the intense anxiety John Bolding must have felt in the summer of 1851. Having fled bondage in South Carolina a few years earlier, John, his brother David, and a young woman named Susan had made their way to Dutchess County and assumed new identities. Susan married Francis Moore, a Poughkeepsie tailor, and the Bolding brothers moved into the Moore household. John assisted Francis in the tailoring trade and quickly earned a reputation as a “first rate workman” in his own right. Early in 1851, John married Henrietta, a local woman of mixed racial ancestry in her early twenties. Despite his success, however, Bolding found himself in increasingly grave danger. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, an integral component of the famous Compromise of 1850 that narrowly averted the dissolution of the Union, dramatically strengthened a slaveowner’s authority to retrieve runaway slaves. The statute enlisted federal authorities in the pursuit and capture of fugitives, severely circumscribed the legal rights of accused runaways, and imposed stiff penalties on anyone who assisted fugitives or impeded the execution of the law. Bolding’s apprehension must have only intensified in January 1851, when a party of slave catchers arrived in Poughkeepsie in pursuit of another runaway whom they had tracked to the village. The fugitive, like Bolding, had assumed a new identity, supporting a family as a carpenter. After an attempt to seize the fugitive failed, the man simply disappeared.1

Bolding’s greatest fears were realized several months later. By chance, a Southern woman who had been staying in Poughkeepsie for an extended period recognized Bolding and informed one of his owners, Robert Anderson of Columbia, South Carolina. Anderson promptly procured a warrant from the United States Commissioner in New York City for Bolding’s arrest. United States Marshal Henry F. Tallmadge planned the fugitive’s capture carefully. Federal marshals procured a carriage upon their arrival in Poughkeepsie on Monday, August 25th; claiming to be in pursuit of a counterfeiter, they insisted that the curtains of the carriage be drawn lest they be detected. The unsuspecting Bolding was hard at work when the carriage pulled up to his shop. The officers jumped from the carriage, seized the startled Bolding, and raced directly to the rail station, having carefully timed their operation so that they boarded the two o’clock train to New York City only minutes before its scheduled departure. Events transpired so quickly that no one in Poughkeepsie had an opportunity to react to what was happening. Once the facts became known, Bolding’s supporters sprang into action to redeem the fugitive. After two failed attempts to procure a writ of habeas corpus, Bolding’s case came before Mr. Nelson, the US commissioner in New York City. Denied the right to testify on his own behalf by the federal statute, Bolding’s defense fell to attorneys Mr. Culver and Mr. Upton, who pursued a two-pronged strategy. The first was to challenge the validity of the original arrest warrant. The second principal argument focused on Bolding’s racial ancestry.

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