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 XI, Incidents of The Slave Trade, p. 61 - - Very early one morning a yellow man was brought in, who said he had been kidnapped from Kansas in the night.
As he stood weeping, the picture of despair, with his wrists handcuffed across each other, he said to the man who brought him, and who, it seemed, had bought him of the kidnappers, “I told you I was free; and I am, ought to be, as free as you are. I’ve got my free papers in my pocket.”
Without a word, the trader put his hand into the poor man’s pocket and pulled out a tin case, five or six inches long, opened it by removing the lid, took out the papers which proved that he was entitled to his freedom, read them, tore them up and threw them into the stove.
And that man was driven off South that very night with a large gang of slaves.
(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
