Mosana (The Union) - Part I
EPISODE 1
“Mel! Mosana!”
Margaret rushed into the house like her gathering of skirts was on fire. We quickly put our fingers to our lips to shush her. Then I pointed to the right with my thumb, to indicate the house where our neighbor, Olivia lived, to let Meg know that we already knew what was happening.
We all stood silently in the living room with held breaths, as we heard (and felt) Olivia being dragged out of her home. We heard the family with whom Olivia lived protesting, but all fell on deaf ears. Olivia was an escaped slave who had been granted asylum in the home of the Masons, by the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, until she got her papers. But now, she had been caught by the same people she had escaped from, and there was little to do about it because she didn’t have her papers yet.
After Olivia was loaded in the constable’s wagon, we heard a knock on our door. I saw the panicked look on both Meg’s and Mel’s faces, and raised a hand to calm them down.
“We have papers,” I whispered.
Still, it didn’t do much to remove the scared look on their faces. Ever since we escaped, we (especially, the two women with me) had always looked over our shoulders in fear. Working at the Society was a way to hear of how things were in the Southside, so we would know if trouble was coming. We had never fully settled down, and weren’t totally confident that we were free. Any day now, we expected the Russells to send constables after us. They were powerful enough to do that, and it seemed the same thing had happened to Olivia.
I went to the door and opened it, with a straight face.
“Hello, gentlemen. How may I help you?”
“Papers, please,” one burly constable said, without hesitation.
“Of course,” I said, with a thin smile. The bastard didn’t even return my greeting.
While the constables waited in the living room, Meg, Mel and I went to our drawers to produce our forged, but very real-looking papers. We never went anywhere without them, because if we were found on the streets without, we would be hurled into the next available wagon back to the South.
The constables inspected our papers one by one. As if one pair of eyes wasn’t enough to determine if they were really free papers or not. I stood calmly and watched them do their jobs. I knew they would never be able to determine if the papers were real or not. All they had to see was that I was a free woman born to a free father and a slave mother, who married and moved to Pennsylvania where I was born.
This was a lie, of course, but like I said, there was no way they would be able to disprove that.
When they were done, they returned our papers to us, and with a curt nod, left our house. A moment later, we heard them banging on the door of the house to our left.
“What’s happening?” Meg asked, her voice in a whisper for no reason.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “But Edwin will know. We have to get to the Society to find out.”
“Feels like a raid,” Mel added. “But this is Pennsylvania. Why would the authorities be suddenly interested in escaped slaves?”
“Let’s ask Edwin.” I said.
We went to the Society where we worked as assistants, filing and documenting escaped and rescued slaves that sought sanctuary with us. The plan was to speak to Edwin, the resident manager, who documented us himself when we had first arrived at the Society. Edwin had been born a free man, and had worked at the Society for years, where he did his bit to help slaves freed through the Underground Railroad. As the years had gone by, he had taken a shine to Mel. She tried to hide her blush when he was around, but I had eyesight built for this kind of thing; so I knew she liked him too.
“Edwin.”
“No news about Flint yet,” he answered automatically, without looking up. For years, we had been trying to use the Society to get word about Flint back in the South. I didn’t think he had been able to escape, and with every new slave that came in, I inquired about Flint. So far, nothing.
“Edwin!”
He was in the middle of documenting some newly arrived slaves. You could tell by the way they looked. Haggard, and scared out of their wits. He finally looked up, saw Mel’s face, and excused himself from the seated slaves in front of him.
“What’s going on?” His face was already a mask of worry, as he walked towards us. I noticed the way he stood near Mel, half shielding her from God-knows-what. It made me miss Flint. But I brought my mind back to focus and explained to him in a few words what had happened.
“They went through the whole neighborhood,” Mel added, making Edwin put a hand on the small of her back.
“I’m sorry y’all had to go through that. It’s this new law the government just passed, called the Fugitive Slave Act. It stipulates that escaped slaves can be recovered by their owners, even if they have sought refuge in a free state.”
Mel gave a small gasp. “Is that possible?”
“Apparently, now it is.”
“Even when they have papers?”
“I’m not sure. We don’t know what the full stipulation of the law is yet. But we’ll find out more.”
“It’s because of what Araminta is doing, isn’t it?” I asked quietly. My brain had been working to figure out the reason this would be happening. The only explanation was Araminta Ross, who the Society just referred to as, Rossie. She was a stone-headed woman who had seen more loss than any of us. Highly respected in the Society, she had escaped on her own in 1849 from slavery a hundred miles in Maryland, and had already gone back multiple times to rescue her brothers, mother and father. I wished I had her courage. Maybe Flint would be with us now.
Rossie was also a conductor on the Underground Railroad. The Conductors of the Underground Railroad were a special group of people who regularly went to the South to rescue slaves. They weren’t ordinary members of society, either. They were people with wealth, land and the connections to make a slave disappear forever and be free. They were the lifeblood of the Abolition Society, and soldiers for the freedom cause. The South called them ‘slave stealers’, but to us, they were heroes. At present, Rossie was the only female conductor, and she had already had more rescues than any man in the Underground Railroad.
“It’s because of what we all are doing,” Edwin spoke. “Our work here is dangerous. We had to have known that the South wouldn’t just sit back and watch as their source of livelihood escaped through the borders. We knew they’d fight back. That’s why we’ve been doing more to help freed slaves move farther north to New York; Canada even, so that they aren’t concentrated here.”
With the spike in the number of stolen slaves, especially by Rossie – who hadn’t just gone back for her family, but also for more suffering slaves – the South began lobbying the government to move the motion for the recovery of their lost slaves. After many months, the agitated slave owners had finally won, and the result was the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
“But I thought Pennsylvania was a free state.” I stated, more than asked.
“It is. And we wouldn’t have given consent on the motion to pass the Slave Act bill. But I guess they would have had the required quorum for them to have passed that law. The constables that searched your neighborhood… I’m guessing they were from the South, here to implement the stipulations of the law.”
“But can they do that?” I asked.
“Yes. America recognizes the power of the state. If a state wants a slave, they’re going to get that slave back. Nothing Pennsylvania can do about it. As long as the slave escaped from somewhere else, the new law says they can be retrieved and taken back.”
‘So, what do we do?” Meg asked, reading my next thought.
“I was going to talk to you guys about that, as soon as you came in tomorrow. But since you’re here…” Edwin paused and took a breath. “We might have to move you guys further north, maybe to New York.”
He was talking to the three of us, but he was looking at Mel. The latter started shaking her head even as I spoke.
“No.”
“No?” Meg asked, looking at me. “You have to agree with Edwin. It’s becoming unsafe for us here. Moving up north will keep us free and ensure we’re not recaptured.”
Mel was quiet, but I could guess what she was thinking. She would have agreed with Meg if not for the fact that it meant she would be leaving Edwin behind in Pennsylvania.
“Meg’s right,” Edwin stated. “New York is safe. They’re farther north and not as penetrable as Pennsylvania is.”
“No,” I said again, then quickly added, “let me explain.” “You’re right. We can’t stay here. But we can’t go up north either. Not yet, at least. With everybody fleeing to the North, we need more people to help slaves escape.”
“What are you thinking?” Edwin asked, squinting at me like he was trying to draw my thoughts out.
I looked at the three people around me, one by one, eye to eye.
“We go back to the South.”
“Mel! Mosana!”
Margaret rushed into the house like her gathering of skirts was on fire. We quickly put our fingers to our lips to shush her. Then I pointed to the right with my thumb, to indicate the house where our neighbor, Olivia lived, to let Meg know that we already knew what was happening.
We all stood silently in the living room with held breaths, as we heard (and felt) Olivia being dragged out of her home. We heard the family with whom Olivia lived protesting, but all fell on deaf ears. Olivia was an escaped slave who had been granted asylum in the home of the Masons, by the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, until she got her papers. But now, she had been caught by the same people she had escaped from, and there was little to do about it because she didn’t have her papers yet.
After Olivia was loaded in the constable’s wagon, we heard a knock on our door. I saw the panicked look on both Meg’s and Mel’s faces, and raised a hand to calm them down.
“We have papers,” I whispered.
Still, it didn’t do much to remove the scared look on their faces. Ever since we escaped, we (especially, the two women with me) had always looked over our shoulders in fear. Working at the Society was a way to hear of how things were in the Southside, so we would know if trouble was coming. We had never fully settled down, and weren’t totally confident that we were free. Any day now, we expected the Russells to send constables after us. They were powerful enough to do that, and it seemed the same thing had happened to Olivia.
I went to the door and opened it, with a straight face.
“Hello, gentlemen. How may I help you?”
“Papers, please,” one burly constable said, without hesitation.
“Of course,” I said, with a thin smile. The bastard didn’t even return my greeting.
While the constables waited in the living room, Meg, Mel and I went to our drawers to produce our forged, but very real-looking papers. We never went anywhere without them, because if we were found on the streets without, we would be hurled into the next available wagon back to the South.
The constables inspected our papers one by one. As if one pair of eyes wasn’t enough to determine if they were really free papers or not. I stood calmly and watched them do their jobs. I knew they would never be able to determine if the papers were real or not. All they had to see was that I was a free woman born to a free father and a slave mother, who married and moved to Pennsylvania where I was born.
This was a lie, of course, but like I said, there was no way they would be able to disprove that.
When they were done, they returned our papers to us, and with a curt nod, left our house. A moment later, we heard them banging on the door of the house to our left.
“What’s happening?” Meg asked, her voice in a whisper for no reason.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “But Edwin will know. We have to get to the Society to find out.”
“Feels like a raid,” Mel added. “But this is Pennsylvania. Why would the authorities be suddenly interested in escaped slaves?”
“Let’s ask Edwin.” I said.
We went to the Society where we worked as assistants, filing and documenting escaped and rescued slaves that sought sanctuary with us. The plan was to speak to Edwin, the resident manager, who documented us himself when we had first arrived at the Society. Edwin had been born a free man, and had worked at the Society for years, where he did his bit to help slaves freed through the Underground Railroad. As the years had gone by, he had taken a shine to Mel. She tried to hide her blush when he was around, but I had eyesight built for this kind of thing; so I knew she liked him too.
“Edwin.”
“No news about Flint yet,” he answered automatically, without looking up. For years, we had been trying to use the Society to get word about Flint back in the South. I didn’t think he had been able to escape, and with every new slave that came in, I inquired about Flint. So far, nothing.
“Edwin!”
He was in the middle of documenting some newly arrived slaves. You could tell by the way they looked. Haggard, and scared out of their wits. He finally looked up, saw Mel’s face, and excused himself from the seated slaves in front of him.
“What’s going on?” His face was already a mask of worry, as he walked towards us. I noticed the way he stood near Mel, half shielding her from God-knows-what. It made me miss Flint. But I brought my mind back to focus and explained to him in a few words what had happened.
“They went through the whole neighborhood,” Mel added, making Edwin put a hand on the small of her back.
“I’m sorry y’all had to go through that. It’s this new law the government just passed, called the Fugitive Slave Act. It stipulates that escaped slaves can be recovered by their owners, even if they have sought refuge in a free state.”
Mel gave a small gasp. “Is that possible?”
“Apparently, now it is.”
“Even when they have papers?”
“I’m not sure. We don’t know what the full stipulation of the law is yet. But we’ll find out more.”
“It’s because of what Araminta is doing, isn’t it?” I asked quietly. My brain had been working to figure out the reason this would be happening. The only explanation was Araminta Ross, who the Society just referred to as, Rossie. She was a stone-headed woman who had seen more loss than any of us. Highly respected in the Society, she had escaped on her own in 1849 from slavery a hundred miles in Maryland, and had already gone back multiple times to rescue her brothers, mother and father. I wished I had her courage. Maybe Flint would be with us now.
Rossie was also a conductor on the Underground Railroad. The Conductors of the Underground Railroad were a special group of people who regularly went to the South to rescue slaves. They weren’t ordinary members of society, either. They were people with wealth, land and the connections to make a slave disappear forever and be free. They were the lifeblood of the Abolition Society, and soldiers for the freedom cause. The South called them ‘slave stealers’, but to us, they were heroes. At present, Rossie was the only female conductor, and she had already had more rescues than any man in the Underground Railroad.
“It’s because of what we all are doing,” Edwin spoke. “Our work here is dangerous. We had to have known that the South wouldn’t just sit back and watch as their source of livelihood escaped through the borders. We knew they’d fight back. That’s why we’ve been doing more to help freed slaves move farther north to New York; Canada even, so that they aren’t concentrated here.”
With the spike in the number of stolen slaves, especially by Rossie – who hadn’t just gone back for her family, but also for more suffering slaves – the South began lobbying the government to move the motion for the recovery of their lost slaves. After many months, the agitated slave owners had finally won, and the result was the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
“But I thought Pennsylvania was a free state.” I stated, more than asked.
“It is. And we wouldn’t have given consent on the motion to pass the Slave Act bill. But I guess they would have had the required quorum for them to have passed that law. The constables that searched your neighborhood… I’m guessing they were from the South, here to implement the stipulations of the law.”
“But can they do that?” I asked.
“Yes. America recognizes the power of the state. If a state wants a slave, they’re going to get that slave back. Nothing Pennsylvania can do about it. As long as the slave escaped from somewhere else, the new law says they can be retrieved and taken back.”
‘So, what do we do?” Meg asked, reading my next thought.
“I was going to talk to you guys about that, as soon as you came in tomorrow. But since you’re here…” Edwin paused and took a breath. “We might have to move you guys further north, maybe to New York.”
He was talking to the three of us, but he was looking at Mel. The latter started shaking her head even as I spoke.
“No.”
“No?” Meg asked, looking at me. “You have to agree with Edwin. It’s becoming unsafe for us here. Moving up north will keep us free and ensure we’re not recaptured.”
Mel was quiet, but I could guess what she was thinking. She would have agreed with Meg if not for the fact that it meant she would be leaving Edwin behind in Pennsylvania.
“Meg’s right,” Edwin stated. “New York is safe. They’re farther north and not as penetrable as Pennsylvania is.”
“No,” I said again, then quickly added, “let me explain.” “You’re right. We can’t stay here. But we can’t go up north either. Not yet, at least. With everybody fleeing to the North, we need more people to help slaves escape.”
“What are you thinking?” Edwin asked, squinting at me like he was trying to draw my thoughts out.
I looked at the three people around me, one by one, eye to eye.
“We go back to the South.”
___________________________________________
Hey you!
We're back! I know this came late. As at the time I'm posting this, it's 12:39am. But I made up for it with this very long chapter.
So enjoy!
Till next Sunday,
xoxo,
Ava.
P.S. Pray for me, that I have time to be consistent.
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