Description
"The Kansas Narrative of John Doy of Lawrence, Kansas - A Plain, Unvarnished Tale" - - (Researcher's note: Due to the numerous references to Platte County, only selected excerpts have been indexed.)
Chapter IX The Fate of Hays and Smith, p. 51-52 - - I advised the men (Wilson George Hays and Charles Smith) to ask the (Platte City) jailer to see the judge or magistrate, and get him to come to the jail and receive their depositions, so that he might prevent any one from taking them away before they could establish their freedom by competent proof.
They did so, and the jailer promised to comply with their request. But nothing came of it, for, on the 3d of February, Jake Hurd came to the jail about 10 o’clock in the morning, and told Smith and Hays to get ready to go with him. They refused, and said they preferred to remain in jail, etc., as before. Jake cried out: “I’m your master now, you d----- d niggers, and by G—d I’ll make you mind me.”
He then made them put on their coats, handcuffed them, and chained them together, and whipped them most unmercifully to make them confess they were slaves, but they persisted in asserting that they were freemen.
I could see the whole through the grated door, and I called upon the jailer, who stood by, a silent spectator of the scene, to detain the two men, and prevent the kidnapper from taking them away to sell. He told me he could not prevent it, as he had no commitment with them. I said he was as bad as Hurd if he had kept them without authority, and allowed the kidnappers to sell them. He retorted that I had better mind my own business, and that he thought I should have enough to do to look out for my own case, without troubling myself with what didn’t concern me.
Hurd cursed me for a d----- d nigger-thief, and shook his whip at me, saying he would cut my head off if he had me outside, and muttering horrid oaths between his teeth.
He then drove his victims out of the jail, and I saw them no more. As one of them turned to bid us good-bye, Hurd struck him over the face with the butt-end of his whip, inflicting a severe wound.
What was to be the fate of these poor men I could not doubt, for I knew the desperate and cruel character of their kidnapper. I afterwards learned that he sold them in Independence, Missouri, for $1000 dollars apiece.
Thus two free-born men, citizens of Ohio and Pennsylvania, were dragged off and sold into slavery without an opportunity to prove themselves free; and the authorities of the State of Missouri were cognizant of the facts and would not interfere.
(Researcher's note: In January 1859 abolitionist John Doy agreed to take a group of 13 African American Kansans north to Iowa on one leg of the Underground Railroad. Dr. Doy and his group were then captured 12 miles north of Lawrence by a group of Missouri slave hunters which included Weston Mayor Benjamin Wood. Doy and his 21 year old son, Charles, were transported back to Weston, Missouri and placed in jail. He was later transferred to the Platte City jail and then to the St. Joseph, Missouri, jail. Along the way they were displayed in the streets and hounded, beaten and nearly hanged. He was charged with a federal offense of "slave stealing” and awaited a sentence of hard labor or death. In jail after a second trial that found him guilty, ten men went from Lawrence to St. Joseph in July 1859 and broke Doy out of jail. He returned to Kansas and later wrote a 137-page narrative describing in detail his experiences in Platte County, Missouri.)Date(s) of Creation
1/1/1860
