Can you imagine being arrested for possessing a copy of the most popular novel of the age?
Samuel Green was a free Black man living in Dorchester County in eastern Maryland in the mid-19th century. Manyland’s location was unique: it was a slave state bordering free states. Consequently, it was relatively simple for slaves to sneak away north. After a series of escapes, local slaveholders began to suspect Samuel Green might be involved. (Spoiler alert: he was.) So in April 1857 the sheriff came and searched his home.
Slaveholders were determined to preserve their “peculiar institution” at all costs. Previous actions to protect the status quo had included taking voting rights and the right to testify in court away from Black men, and prohibiting free Black people from other states from entering Maryland. In the words of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass, “Slaveholders…mean to cling to their slaves as long as they can, and to the bitter end.”
Unfortunately, the search of Green’s home yielded a number of items that got the sheriff’s attention: a letter from Green’s son, Sam Jr., who had previously escaped to Canada (with his father’s help); a map of Canada; railroad schedules for northbound trains; and a copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s best-selling antislavery novel.
Green was put on trial based on an 1841 act that only applied to free Blacks: the possession of “inflammatory” material that could “create discontent” or foment “insurrection” among the Black population was strictly prohibited.
Green was able to mount an effective defense: the map and railroad schedules were such general, public-knowledge documents that their possession proved nothing as far a “creating discontent” was concerned. Surprisingly, the judge agreed.
The problem was the book. People in Dixie had decided that Uncle Tom’s Cabin actually threatened the very foundation of Southern society. This time, the judge agreed with the prosecution. Samuel Green, the former slave, was sentenced to ten years in prison.
The trial and verdict were publicized throughout the eastern United States. But despite widespread outrage, it wasn’t until the election of a Union loyalist as governor of Maryland in1862 that Green was finally pardoned.
By the way, are books really that dangerous?
For the complete story and the aftermath, see “Samuel Green Freed Himself and Others From Slavery. Then He Was Imprisoned Over Owning a Book” at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/samuel-green-freed-himself-others-slavery-imprisoned-owning-book-180987848/ and “Samuel Green, the Abolitionist Who Was Convicted for Possessing a Copy of an Anti-Slavery Novel” at https://talkafricana.com/samuel-green-the-abolitionist-who-was-convicted-for-possessing-a-copy-of-an-anti-slavery-novel/