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. 61-62 - - In the afternoon, before one of these gangs was sent off, a very dark woman was brought with quite a light-colored baby. One of the traders asked the owner, likewise a trader, what he was going to do with that brat.
“D-----d if I know,” was the reply. “I’m bothered to know what to do with it.”
"We can’t take it in the wagons and have it squalling all the way.”
“Here,” said the owner to an inhabitant of Platte City, who just then came in with a boy for sale,
“Don’t you want this thing? You may have it for $25 dollars. “D—n it,” he continued, snatching the babe from its mother’s arms by the shoulder and hefting it, “It weighs 25 pounds! Will you take it?”
“Yes.”
“Take it now.”
And the child was carried off amid the heart-rending shrieks and pleadings of the agonized mother.
(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
