Shadrach Minkins

From Fugitive Slave to Citizen

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by Gary L. Collison

Harvard University Press

Due/Published October 1998, 304 pages, paper

ISBN 0674802993

Minkins was the first runaway slave to be arrested under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. By uncovering Minkins's story, Collison gives us a look at the life of a 19th-century black man who was a slave in Virginia, a fugitive in Boston, and a free man in Montreal. Boston's black community, which rescued Minkins' after his arrest, comes into view as does the largely unknown black community established by Minkins and other refugee blacks in Montreal. Behind the scenes are the readily recognized figures of Daniel Webster, Fredrick Douglass, Richard Henry Dana Jr., Hariett Jacobs, and Harriet Beecher Stow, who along with the disastrous Compromise of 1850 are shown in as having had ample influence on a singular life.