Frances Wright pressed her fingers longingly to the glass and sighed as she watched the orchards and fields of Nashoba fade out of view of her carriage.

A lingering fever still held onto her body, but the worst of the malaria was behind her. The plan was for her to travel back to Europe and recuperate there. Her doctor was adamant that a cabin on a communal farm was not the ideal place for her recovery.

Deep inside, she feared for her grand experiment that was the Nashoba Commune. Feared that either she would not return to it, or that, even worse, it would not be here to return to.

Nearly all of her energy these past few years had gone into setting up the farm and keeping it going. She’d had to invest a large amount of her own money, as most wealthy Southerners found the idea of a racially mixed communal farm with the goal of ending slavery utterly abhorrent.

Their group had never blossomed like she’d hoped, but those that lived their were motivated, especially the slaves working toward freedom.

Frances knew the time away would be a test of her work.

She hoped it would pass.

Memphis Note
The Nashoba Commune was a communal farm designed as an economically viable system to do away with slavery. Slaves brought onto the commune would work to pay their way out of slavery, and then could either stay and work the land or be given transport to Haiti or Africa. Unfortunately, the farm was never self-sustaining or accepted by the locals. It collapsed while Frances Wright was recovering in Europe. After which she emancipated all 30 of the farm’s slaves and sent them to Haiti.

Wagon wheels groaned as the caravan made its way down the muddy road. Misty rainy fell, the world wept as the Chickasaw left their home.

To the side of the road, two men hunkered under the branches of a pecan tree. Both dark skinned, one African, the other an Indian with an empty bottle of whiskey at his feet.

The African was the son of a minor village leader, his family sold into slavery to feed the ambitions of a rival tribe. His earliest memories were nightmares of the crossing.

To his master, the Indian, he was known as Mark. His real name was Kwesi, but he didn’t know this. He knew the word, but only as something his mother would whisper to him at night. The memory of her was now merely whisper to him as well.

The Indian began to snore. The African contemplated taking his master’s knife and…

No, he thought, the world was already rife with suffering. The Chickasaw were losing their home as he had lost his. He would choose a different path.

So, Kwesi called Mark took his master’s knife, along with his money and the good blanket, and strode out into the rain.

Memphis Note
It may be strange to think about, but Indians owned slaves. And when the Indian tribes were forced to leave their ancestral homes by the guns of the US Army, their slaves went with them, died with them, on the Trail of Tears.

“Mother, you need to calm down.” I chased down the stairs after her, worrying for a moment that she might break her neck, she was going so fast.

She hit the landing at the bottom and wheeled on me, fury boiling over in her eyes, her hand raised, ready to strike.

“Calm down? Calm down? How dare you!” Her hand shook with rage, vibrating in the air.

“They were hungry, starving out in the rain. What was I supposed to do? They are people, mother!”

“They are runaway slaves. They are someone’s property, for God’s sake!” She gasped.

“I don’t sem them that way. I’m not some secesh like you. I don’t believe the same things that you and father -”

For that, she cut me off with a slap. “Don’t you invoke his. Not like that. Not using some filthy hypocritical colloquialism. Not while you’re betraying everything he built for us.”

I touched my cheek where she slapped me, I could fell a welt rising where her wedding ring had struck. “War is coming, mother, and change with it. You can’t stop it.”

“Perhaps not, but I can stop this madness. Either they’re gone by morning light…or you are.”

Memphis Note
Secesh is a word used during the Civil War for pro-Secessionists. Memphis, being captured early, was a flash point of conflict between those that had supported secession and those that hadn’t. This was not helped by the large number of freed slaves that migrated into the city for protection in the latter years of the war.

It was well past any decent hour when the knock sounded on Jacob Burkle’s door. Yet the door swung open mere moments later, Burkle fully dressed and his lantern already lit.

“Mister Burkle?” said the dusty man on the porch.

Burkle nodded, anxiously.

“Your package is here.” He said, then turned away, Burkle following behind.

The man led him off the porch and around the side of the house to a large shed Burkle used to store feed for the stock animals.

“I’m afraid your package was a bit larger than expected.” The man said as he opened the shed and let Burkle look in.

Burkle held the lantern up. Out of the darkness four pairs of frightened eyes looked back.

“What? No. NO!” He staggered backwards, panicking. “I can’t take that many! They’ll kill me if they find out!”

The dusty man slapped Burkle across the mouth.“And they’ll kill them if they’re found out! The path they must walk to freedom is tortuous, Mister Burkle. Please, help make this step easier for them.”

Holding his lantern up again, Burkle looked into those scared eyes.

“The cellar.” He said, finally. “There might be space for all in the cellar.”

Memphis Note
Jacob Burkle was a some what successful stockyard owner in North Memphis during the dark days of slavery. But he did something most weren’t willing to do – he opened his home as a stop on the Underground Railroad.