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The Struggle Intensifies j J 3 Jim White’s Story Northeastern Missourians were not wrong to worry. The battle over the Walkers and the Fulchers was just one of many struggles over fugitive slaves during the late 1840s and early 1850s. Often, as in that case, the legal conflict hinged on proving whether a person was enslaved or free. That question was rarely as simple to answer as it now seems. To give an example, about the same time that Daggs’s slaves escaped from his farm with the help of people in Salem, a young black man named Jim White arrived in the city today called Muscatine, then a town of about two thousand people and known as Bloomington (until about 1850). In this Mississippi River town, situated on a great bend at which all steamboats landed , White found work at the American House, a hotel owned by James Borland.1 Five months later, in early November 1848, Horace M. Freeman arrived from St. Louis and got a room at the hotel. Late the next afternoon, when he noticed a steamboat coming toward the mooring dock, he left his room to check out in the hotel lobby. Paying his bill, he asked Borland whether he happened to know of a black boy named Jim. When told that Borland had just such a young man working for him in the kitchen, Freeman immediately headed there. He spotted Jim working with Borland’s wife and grabbed him by the collar. To the accompaniment of Mrs. Borland’s startled screams, Freeman began dragging Jim from the room.2 James Borland rushed to the kitchen and demanded to know what Freeman was doing. Jim had escaped from slavery in St. Louis, Freeman shouted, and he meant to get the fugitive back to 48 :: chapter three his master there. When Borland demanded to know Freeman’s authority to do this, Freeman pulled from his pocket a letter showing that he held power of attorney for Thomas R. Hughes, supposedly Jim’s owner. That was not enough, replied Borland, who directed Freeman to turn the boy loose and get out of his hotel. If Jim was in fact a runaway slave, Borland insisted, Freeman needed to get a warrant for his arrest from the justice of the peace based on proven ownership. Freeman bellowed he would “be d— —d if he would do any such thing; that he intended to take him to Saint Louis and try him there, and if any man interfered, he would blow his brains out”—all this as he continued pulling Jim toward the door. When Borland stepped in to prevent Jim’s removal, Freeman drew a pistol from his pocket, and in turn Borland grabbed a set of tongs. News that a hotel guest was aiming a pistol at Borland’s breast and threatening to shoot him spread through the house and brought two other people running in to help the hotelkeeper. Seeing himself outnumbered and unable to take Jim on his own, Freeman grudgingly backed off and agreed to get a warrant. But Borland arrived first at the office of D. C. Cloud, justice of the peace, where he filed a warrant for the arrest of Horace Freeman, charging him with assault with a deadly weapon. Then in walked a man named Lowry who, acting on Freeman’s behalf, wanted a warrant to apprehend an escaped slave. Cloud told him that the writ for Freeman would require that some preliminary steps be taken. More importantly, “he had better get an attorney because, from the feeling that was aroused, he would have difficulty in getting the Slave.” Cloud ordered the arrest of Freeman, who posted bail, while Jim was held in jail until trial. Word of Jim’s arrest spread quickly, causing considerable public excitement. The next morning, crowding into Cloud’s twentyby -twenty-six-foot office were as many people as could fit. Many, Cloud remembered, were there not so much to listen as to “take sides for or against ‘Jim.’” The trial took two days, and each day at noon and in the evening, proslavery and antislavery friends constantly buttonholed Cloud to persuade him one way or the other.3 One friend awakened Cloud (a widower who slept in a room ad- The Struggle Intensifies :: 49 joining his office) by rapping at his door at midnight. The man, an old Virginian, asked where the situation stood, and they discussed the matter briefly. Then, turning to leave, he...

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