What do you think?
Rate this book
Necessary Courage: Iowa's Underground Railroad in the Struggle against Slavery
During the 1850s and early 1860s, Iowa, the westernmost free state bordering a slave state, stood as a bulwark of antislavery sentiment while the decades-long struggle over slavery shifted westward. On its southern border lay Missouri, the northernmost slaveholding state. To its west was the Kansas-Nebraska Territory, where proslavery and antislavery militias battled. Missouri slaves fled to Iowa seeking freedom, finding opponents of slavery who risked their lives and livelihoods to help them, as well as bounty hunters who forced them back into bondage. When opponents of slavery streamed west across the state’s broad prairies to prevent slaveholders from dominating Kansas, Iowans fed, housed, and armed the antislavery settlers. Not a few young Iowa men also took up arms.
In Necessary Courage , historian Lowell J. Soike details long-forgotten stories of determined runaways and the courageous Iowans who acted as conductors on this most dangerous of railroads—the underground railroad. Alexander Clark, an African American businessman in Muscatine, hid a young fugitive in his house to protect him from slavecatchers while he fought for his freedom in the courts. While keeping antislavery newspapers fully apprised of the battle against human bondage in western Iowa, Elvira Gaston Platt drove a wagon full of fugitives to the next safe house under the noses of her proslavery neighbors. John Brown, fleeing across Iowa with a price on his head for the murders of proslavery Kansas settlers, relied on Iowans like Josiah Grinnell and William Penn Clarke to keep him, his men, and the twelve Missouri slaves they had liberated hidden from the authorities. Several young Iowans went on to fight alongside Brown at Harpers Ferry. These stories and many more are told here.
A suspenseful and often heartbreaking tale of desperation, courage, cunning, and betrayal, this book reveals the critical role that Iowans played in the struggle against slavery and the coming of the Civil War.
In Necessary Courage , historian Lowell J. Soike details long-forgotten stories of determined runaways and the courageous Iowans who acted as conductors on this most dangerous of railroads—the underground railroad. Alexander Clark, an African American businessman in Muscatine, hid a young fugitive in his house to protect him from slavecatchers while he fought for his freedom in the courts. While keeping antislavery newspapers fully apprised of the battle against human bondage in western Iowa, Elvira Gaston Platt drove a wagon full of fugitives to the next safe house under the noses of her proslavery neighbors. John Brown, fleeing across Iowa with a price on his head for the murders of proslavery Kansas settlers, relied on Iowans like Josiah Grinnell and William Penn Clarke to keep him, his men, and the twelve Missouri slaves they had liberated hidden from the authorities. Several young Iowans went on to fight alongside Brown at Harpers Ferry. These stories and many more are told here.
A suspenseful and often heartbreaking tale of desperation, courage, cunning, and betrayal, this book reveals the critical role that Iowans played in the struggle against slavery and the coming of the Civil War.
- GenresHistory
304 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2013
34 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 8, 2024
An Important Part of Iowa’s History
Primarily about Iowa’s Under Ground Railroad. It is well written, interesting and informative. There are many specific stories about the experiences of individual run-a-way slaves, their conductors and the challenges they faced. Plenty of names if your into geneology. But, Abolitionist’s were still a minority and not always popular with fellow Iowans. It tells the story of communities like Tabor and Civil Bend, that not only played an important role in the Underground Railroad, but also in the anti-Slavery fight taking place in Kansas. But this is also about Iowa’s political and moral evolution between 1839 to 1868. In 1839, Iowa’s Territorial Goverment passed the “Act to Regulate Negro’s and Mulatto’s”. In 1851 the Iowa State Goverment passed the Exclusion Law” that completely prohibited all Free Negro Immigration into Iowa. But in 1868 (before the 15th Amendment,1870) Iowa became the 3rd state in the Union to give Negros the right to vote.
Primarily about Iowa’s Under Ground Railroad. It is well written, interesting and informative. There are many specific stories about the experiences of individual run-a-way slaves, their conductors and the challenges they faced. Plenty of names if your into geneology. But, Abolitionist’s were still a minority and not always popular with fellow Iowans. It tells the story of communities like Tabor and Civil Bend, that not only played an important role in the Underground Railroad, but also in the anti-Slavery fight taking place in Kansas. But this is also about Iowa’s political and moral evolution between 1839 to 1868. In 1839, Iowa’s Territorial Goverment passed the “Act to Regulate Negro’s and Mulatto’s”. In 1851 the Iowa State Goverment passed the Exclusion Law” that completely prohibited all Free Negro Immigration into Iowa. But in 1868 (before the 15th Amendment,1870) Iowa became the 3rd state in the Union to give Negros the right to vote.
July 14, 2020
A shining star of radicalism.
September 6, 2014
A useful, if somewhat pedestrian, account of the details of African Americans' encounters with slave catchers and kidnappers in Iowa and of the white Iowans who came to the aid of those African Americans. It's actually surprising to me how few of these stories fit my image of the Underground Railroad, in which escaped slaves are escorted from one secret station to another along a route to freedom ultimately in Canada.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews