Status Updates From Charles Sumner: Conscience ...

This page is comedic – and tragedic - gold. Good thing everyone is asleep, because I was honestly laughing out loud. Pairs nicely with that song “happy to keep his dinner warm“ from “how to succeed in business without really trying.“

Still glad I read Puleo's book(s) first for what I got about Preston Brooks (man, how many ways can I screw up that man's name) and about Taney, since Tameez doesn't spend much time on their personalities/backround. Fair! but I still found that stuff interesting. Actually, just sitting here poking around in "The Great Abolutionist" again is fun re: the difference in stylistic approach Puleo takes anyway.

Randomly, I pulled a copy of Puleo's book to kind of compare the two for a minute. This is 533 pages with 535 - 611 backmatter (not include index). "The Great Abolitionist" is 404 pages, with 405 - 433 backmatter, making this the more scholarly of the two. But also, 208-533 (63.5 percent) of this book is after the caning; 160 - 404 (60.6 percent) in "The Great Abolitionist."

Ugh, Andrew Johnson. On the backs of the Blacks, you son of an expletive.

“We have more to suffer; we have deserved it.“ 8(

And then I think they just end up leaving because they are viewed as mouthy abolitionists and railroaded out, or something like that. But it's not really that she was eight years a slave and then "returned" to Pennsylvania; she's five years a slave and then eight years a ward? houseguest? and there's drama and a love interest and a jealous southern belle and other complications generally.

Ida May is kidnapped at five and is indeed sold as a slave. She is bought five years later by a philanthropic young southerner (who is already operating under the assumption that he is rescuing a kidnapped white child), and then her race and identity are dramatically revealed. She continues to live with his family for another eight years before her father, who has been AWOL looking for her, finally tracks her down.

Bit on page 177 about "Ida May": In the story, a young white girl was abducted and sold into slavery. She spent eight years enslaved in South Carolina before being rescued and returned to her home in Pennsylvania." Not quite. I read this book, and I've gone now to Internet Archive and to Broadview Books (the publisher whose edition I read) to refresh my memories.