The Cost of Freedom

Elijah’s rough homespun cotton shirt clung to his back, glued there by the sweat that seemed to be pouring out of every pore of his body. The heat had been increasing every day for the last 80 miles and didn’t seem likely to end soon. He reckoned that Wheeling was only a few hours away and his anxiety increased with every mile that brought them closer.

The iron collar that attached him by a chain attached to the slave trader’s wagon in front and his twelve-year-old daughter behind him had worn blisters on his shoulders. The pain of turning his head to check on his daughter caused him to call out to her instead.

“You kay back dere Ruthy?”

“I’s tired and hungry, Papa. We ever gonna stop?”

“You gots to keep moving Ruthy, they gonna leave you behint ifn you don. Couple mo hours, you kin do it, Baby girl.”

The slave trader on the horse following behind nodded in his saddle, his eyes closed with his rifle laying across the pommel. The wagon driver was fighting exhaustion as well but had to keep the mules on the trail.

They would be meeting a large coffle of slaves headed for Mississippi, already in Wheeling. From there they would take a steamboat down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to Natchez to be auctioned off.

Elijah let his mind wander, thinking about his wife and older son, sold to a neighboring farm back in Maryland, when their owner had passed with no heirs. He had pleaded with the farmer to purchase the whole family, to no avail. Now he and his daughter belonged to a pair of slave traders joining a coffle of 40 some slaves to be sold “Down River.”

Just before dark, they reached a point on the trail overlooking the town. They could see the Ohio River for the first time. Elijah knew that just the other side of that river was freedom, but he had no way to get there. Twenty miles to the east was Pennsylvania, and freedom, but the iron collars and chains kept he and his daughter in check.

Elijah was a blacksmith and had created collars just like the one he wore, and he understood how they worked and what the weak points were. For the last four days, as they rested for the night, he had been working on the collar, at first to keep it from chaffing his shoulders, but on the second night he realized the collar was poorly made and had a defect next to the locking clasp. He worked on that with a piece of metal he had pulled from the wagon, and thought he could unhook it if the opportunity came along.

The traders decided to camp overlooking the river for the night and go into Wheeling in the morning. They had pushed the pace and were arriving a day ahead of schedule. They unhooked Elijah and Ruth to let them answer natures call, but stood and watched them, guns at the ready. Afterwards they were given a small piece of cornbread and some cold cooked rice. Then they crawled under the wagon to sleep. Elijah always waited for Ruth to go to sleep first so he could watch her. She looked so much like his wife, he would cry silently thinking he would never see her or his son again.

Just as he began to drift off, am arm reached under the wagon, grabbed Ruth by the arm and dragged out.

“Common, honey, you gonna entertain us tonight.”

Ruth screamed and the trader slapped her hard across the face. “You shut up, nigger, or you’ll get much worse.”

Elijah tried to crawl out from under the wagon thinking to protect Ruth from what he feared was coming, but one trader pointed his gun at him and snarled, “You best get back, nigger, if you want to see tomorrow. “

The other trader now had Ruth pinned to the ground but she fought him, twisting with all her strength, but was no match for the big man. He pulled up her skirt and fumbled with his britches, then turned to his partner. “Come and hold her down, I can’t get my britches off with her wiggling like that.”

His partner turned and walked over and held Ruth’s arms while his partner unbuttoned his britches. “Just leave me some, will ya.”

With both trader’s attention now focused on Ruth, Elijah took his metal piece and with all his might, broke the clasp on his collar. He held the collar in his hand, quietly crawled out from under the wagon, and charged the men like a raging bull, swinging the collar at the first man’s head, knocking him to the ground, out cold. His partner stood transfixed and before he could move, Elijah hit him as well knocking him on his back. The man pulled his knife from his belt and rose to come at Elijah, but Elijah had grabbed the first man’s gun from the ground and fired point blank at the trader. The bullet hit him in the stomach and knocked him backwards. He sat looking at the blood pouring out of the bullet hole then at Elijah with a stunned expression. Elijah raised the gun again and shot him in the face, killing him instantly. He then turned and shot the other man through the heart before he could recover.

Elijah stood stunned at what he had done. His thoughts were in disarray. He had never so much as raised his hand against a white man, let alone kill one.They had no choice but to flee now. He looked around and was relieved no one else was in sight. Self-defense or protecting a daughter’s honor were not a defense any Black man could use. Any act of violence against a White man was not allowed no matter the circumstances.

He knew he would now be facing a death warrant, but only if they were captured, and he now started planning how to avoid That. Crossing the Ohio in Wheeling without being noticed was out of the question. The only safe course of action was to head east, into Pennsylvania. He knew that even should they reach the relative safety of that state, the Fugitive Slave Law passed last year meant that many people would be unwilling to help.

Canada! That was the answer. They were only a week’s walk from the new railroad bridge at Niagara, but had to cross several wide rivers to get there. But that was the only option Elijah felt they now had.

He went through the trader’s pockets and found the key for Ruth’s collar and removed it. He also found several gold and silver coins, totaling over $100, a fortune in his eyes. The mules grazed where the traders had hobbled them and paid no attention to Elijh and Ruth as they dragged the bodies to the edge of the slope and watched them roll and bounce down the hillside, which Elijah found satisfying.

He turned to Ruth. “We let dem mules go and push dat wagon over da edge, after we gets what we can fum it. We gots to travel at night and stay offa da roads daytime. Mebbe we fin someon dat hep us, mebbe not, but we gots to move fum here tonight.”

Ruth was still in a state of shock at how quickly things had happened, but helped him rummage through the supplies in the wagon until they had two bags with food, extra white people clothing, a map, two pistols and ammo. They pushed the wagon to the edge and watched it careen down the hill.

They each threw a sack over their shoulder and stood looking at each other. Elijah took Roth’s hand and together they started walking east. To freedom.