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\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\nOf the many narratives of enslaved people that were published in the interest of abolition in the early 19th century, there were few in which an escapee wrote to his former owner years later to give him a piece of his mind.<\/p>\n
But such a letter was written by the Rev. James\u00a0W. C.\u00a0Pennington\u00a0of Hartford,\u00a0circa\u00a01844,\u00a0to\u00a0aging\u00a0plantation owner\u00a0Frisby Tilghman of Maryland, still legally his\u00a0\u201cmaster\u201d: \u201cI called you master when I was with you by the mere force of circumstances; but I never regarded you as my master\u2026.You struck me with your walking\u00a0cane, called me insulting names, threatened me, swore at me\u2026.You are soon\u00a0to meet those you have held, and do hold, in\u00a0slavery, at the impartial bar of the impartial Judge of all\u00a0who doeth right.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u00a0was\u00a0only\u00a0seventeen\u00a0years since Pennington had left his blacksmith\u00a0forge\u00a0on the plantation\u00a0and fled to freedom. By now\u00a0he was an accomplished anti-slavery orator,\u00a0the pastor of\u00a0Hartford\u2019s\u00a0respected Talcott Street Church, and\u00a0a delegate to\u00a0a\u00a0World Anti-Slavery Convention in London the year\u00a0before. He\u00a0had studied at Yale and\u00a0was a few years away from an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree\u00a0at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.\u00a0But\u00a0his legal status\u2014which\u00a0he had kept a secret\u2014was that of a fugitive slave.<\/p>\n
Fugitive Blacksmith<\/h5>\n
James William Charles Pennington was born James Pembroke at Tilghman\u2019s father\u2019s plantation in 1807. He had, with his mother, been given to Frisby Tilghman and his bride as a wedding present when James was about 4 years old. He was hired out to a stonemason and then apprenticed to an enslaved blacksmith, who found him to be a quick study. But one morning he witnessed his father beaten by Tilghman; \u201cI never was a Slave after it,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n
His escape took him to Pennsylvania, where he was taken in\u00a0by\u00a0white Quaker\u00a0families. Here he began\u00a0his education\u2014learning to read\u00a0and speak out (in a barn, by himself, at first).\u00a0A move to Brooklyn, N.Y.,\u00a0brought him employment with another family, this one Presbyterian, who\u00a0encouraged his studies and where\u00a0he went through both a Christian spiritual awakening and a deeper realization of the enormity of slavery.\u00a0Pennington\u2014he\u00a0had changed his name after his escape\u2014married,\u00a0taught in an \u201cAfrican\u201d school,\u00a0and studied for ordination into the ministry.\u00a0In\u00a0the mid-1830s he was able to study\u00a0at Yale Divinity School with the aid of New Haven abolitionists\u2014but in an extremely limited way.\u00a0He could attend classes, but \u201cmy voice was not to be heard in the classroom\u00a0asking or answering a question.\u00a0I could not get a book from the\u00a0library\u00a0and my\u00a0name was\u00a0never to appear in the\u00a0catalogue.\u201d\u00a0(It was not until 2023\u00a0that, thanks to a group of determined Divinity School\u00a0students, he was awarded a Master of Arts\u00a0posthumously.)<\/p>\n
Pennington was ordained back in New York in 1838\u2014and was soon after called to perform the wedding of another escapee from slavery, Frederick Douglass, and Ann Murray, who had financed Douglass\u2019s escape.<\/p>\n
This was the era of national anti-slavery conventions that were the seedbed of the abolitionist movement, and Pennington\u00a0had\u00a0joined in\u00a0with\u00a0a vengeance.\u00a0In the late\u00a01830s\u00a0he\u00a0heard much of the\u00a0legal\u00a0battles\u00a0of\u00a0the Amistad\u00a0mutineers\u00a0and, in New York, he joined many of his anti-slavery\u00a0colleagues in opposing \u201ccolonization,\u201d the\u00a0idea that freed slaves could never be absorbed into white American\u00a0society and\u00a0should be returned to Africa.\u00a0\u201cI am an American to the backbone,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
His first major speech was at an\u00a01839\u00a0event celebrating the anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the British empire. \u201cIn proportion as British\u00a0influence prevails in this land,\u201d he said, speaking of America, \u201coppression will continue to feel the effect of this event until it is\u00a0dead!\u00a0dead!!\u00a0DEAD!!!\u201d\u00a0The power\u00a0of his oratory won him fame in the world of anti-slavery\u00a0activism, and in 1840\u00a0came the ministerial call to the Talcott Street Church in Hartford.<\/p>\n
Polemics from the Pulpit<\/h5>\n
The city was a river port town of 10,000 people, with a black population of about 500. The church had been founded by African Americans tired of crowding into the segregated pews and balconies of the white churches. Pennington assumed the role of pastor and also served as headmaster of the school for the city\u2019s Black children that met in the church\u2019s small basement. Among his parishioners were Ann Plato, the poet\u2014Pennington wrote an introduction to her book published in Hartford in 1841\u2014and James Mars, who had suffered under Connecticut slavery in its waning days. It was in 1841, early in his eight-year Hartford stay, that he published A Text Book on the Origins and History, Etc., of the Colored People<\/em>, the first book to record the history of African Americans. The book makes arguments from the Bible to counter pro-slavery biblical propaganda: How could African Americans be descended from Cain, for example, when any such descendants would have been drowned in the Flood? But the book goes on to make logical, precise, and eloquent arguments for African, and thus African American, equality of intelligence, while acknowledging that prejudice, enslavement, and degradation had held the race back. \u201cPrejudice,\u201d he said, \u201cis hating the image of God.\u201d Examples of such hatred he provided included the racist attack on Prudence Crandall\u2019s school in Canterbury, Connecticut.<\/p>\n Pennington used his pulpit\u00a0to condemn the institution whenever he\u00a0could, once turning a Thanksgiving sermon into a polemic against\u00a0what he called\u00a0\u201ca\u00a0covenant with hell.\u201d\u00a0New England and New York groups\u00a0chose him\u00a0as a delegate to the Second World Anti-Slavery conference\u00a0in London. Though he was lauded\u00a0there and\u00a0on\u00a0travels in\u00a0England, when he boarded\u00a0an American ship to\u00a0return,\u00a0he\u00a0was relegated to an inferior cabin\u00a0despite holding a first-class ticket.<\/p>\n In Hartford he\u00a0made the acquaintance of John Hooker, the abolitionist lawyer, who was married to Isabella Beecher Hooker, the famed feminist, suffragist, and spiritualist.\u00a0In 1844 he confessed to his friend that he was a runaway slave\u2014something he had not even told his wife.\u00a0Making him\u00a0legally \u201cfree\u201d\u00a0would relieve him of uncertainty, because\u00a0even in a\u00a0Northern state\u00a0he could be at risk.<\/p>\n Hooker\u00a0got in touch with\u00a0Tilghman, Pennington\u2019s \u201cowner,\u201d and tried to buy\u00a0the pastor\u00a0and his still-enslaved parents, but the price was too steep.\u00a0This was when\u00a0Pennington wrote the\u00a0\u201cimpartial Judge\u201d letter to Tilghman.\u00a0It\u00a0wasn\u2019t\u00a0until after Tilghman\u2019s death that Hooker, in 1850, was able to get\u00a0the administrator of his estate\u00a0to let Pennington go for a more reasonable price. Pennington was back in England at the time, worried about returning\u00a0at all\u00a0because the Fugitive Slave Law had\u00a0made it easier for Southern\u00a0slave hunters\u00a0to retrieve their \u201cgoods\u201d in the North.\u00a0Hooker\u00a0\u201cfreed\u201d Pennington after a half-hour during which, he said,\u00a0with tongue in cheek,\u00a0he\u00a0savored\u00a0the sensation of owning a Doctor of Divinity.<\/p>\n Such whimsy, however, belied the seriousness of the deteriorating situation in the United States leading up to the brutal Civil War. Pennington had left Hartford by 1850, following a new call to the Shiloh Presbyterian Church in New York. The same year Pennington published his vivid and passionate memoir of slavery and escape, The Fugitive Blacksmith<\/em>. In wrapping up near the conclusion he writes:<\/p>\n The only harm I wish to slaveholders is\u00a0that they may be speedily delivered from\u00a0the guilt of\u00a0a sin which, if not repented of,\u00a0must bring down the judgment of Almighty God upon their devoted Heads. The least I\u00a0desire\u00a0for the slave\u00a0is,\u00a0that he may be speedily released from drinking a cup whose bitterness I have\u00a0sufficiently tasted, to know\u00a0that it is insufferable.<\/p>\n The New York years brought him national prominence, as\u00a0he continued his work with the anti-slavery conventions\u00a0and his eloquent oratory, sharing platforms with the likes of Douglass, Gerrit Smith, and\u00a0James\u00a0McCune Smith. They also included an early foreshadowing of the 20th\u00a0century\u00a0civil\u00a0rights movement when\u00a0Elizabeth Jennings, a young organist on her way to church on a Sunday, was forcibly removed from a streetcar\u00a0because of her race.\u00a0Sticking to her guns, Jennings won her court case, ending segregated\u00a0public transportation in New York\u2014but as with the civil rights movement,\u00a0that end came\u00a0slow and\u00a0reluctantly. Pennington, who had supported Jennings\u2019 cause,\u00a0was\u00a0himself\u00a0later\u00a0ejected from\u00a0a streetcar\u00a0and lost his\u00a0lawsuit against the\u00a0company\u00a0despite the\u00a0law.<\/p>\n When the Civil War came\u00a0Pennington\u00a0advocated and supported the enlistment of African Americans. Although he was out of the city at the time,\u00a0he\u00a0saw the\u00a0aftermath of the murderous race riots triggered by the introduction of the draft in New York City.<\/p>\n After the war he spent time in ministries in Natchez, Mississippi, and Portland, Maine,\u00a0and finally in Jacksonville, Florida,\u00a0where he died in 1870, ministering to those who, like him, had been born as the property of others.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Fugitive Blacksmith<\/a><\/p>\n A Text Book of the Origin And History, Etc. Of The Colored People<\/a> (excerpts)<\/p>\n To the Reader<\/a> (preface to Ann Plato’s book)<\/p>\n God is No Respecter of Persons<\/a><\/p>\n Letter to Harriet Beecher Stowe<\/a><\/p>\n James Pennington – Biographical and Critical Sources<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Prejudice is Hating the Image of God by Steve Courtney Of the many narratives of enslaved people that were published in the interest of abolition in the early 19th century, there were few in which an escapee wrote to his former owner years later to give him a piece of his mind. But such a … Continue reading James W. C. Pennington (1807-1870)<\/span> War in New York<\/h5>\n
Anthology Selections<\/h5>\n