Brown was captured and executed for treason.)Īt the Battle of Black Jack, August fought alongside two other Jews: Theodore Wiener, from Poland, and Jacob Benjamin, from Bohemia.Īt the Battle of Black Jack, August fought alongside at least two other Jews: Theodore Wiener, an immigrant from Poland, and Jacob Benjamin, from Bohemia. (August fought alongside the notorious anti-slavery figure John Brown, though he later declined to participate in Brown’s most infamous adventure, the 1859 raid on an arsenal in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, in order to obtain arms for anti-slavery fighters. Anti-slavery forces captured 48 “Border Ruffians” who’d been menacing and attacking anti-slavery Kansans. It seemed that anti-slavery activists would win the election, but on election day thousands of heavily armed pro-slavery “Border Ruffians” poured into the territory from Missouri, seized control of polling places and ballot boxes, and declared that the Kansas territory had elected a pro-slavery legislature.Īs pro-slavery zealots attacked anti-slavery activists, August joined with other anti-slavery activists in the Battle of Black Jack, on June 2, 1856. When Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, allowing the residents of Kansas to decide whether they would be a slave state or a free state once they were admitted to the Union, August moved to the Kansas Territory to work for the Free State Movement. He began to understand that his only option as a moral human being was to oppose it. August later recalled that whereas he’d once felt indifferent to the plight of America’s slaves, he began to appreciate just how evil the institution of slavery was. August yelled at the teenager, and was shocked when all the white captains turned on him, chiding him and calling him an abolitionist for protesting this appalling cruelty. When one enslaved oarsman accidentally dropped his oar and scared the ducks away, the teenage son of a ship captain shot the slave in the shoulder. “When in Galveston the howlings of the slaves receiving their morning ration of cowhiding waked me at 4 o’clock….”Īugust went duck hunting with a group of white ship captains and their children. Working on a riverboat, August travelled through Texas and later recorded his horror at the cruel outrages of American slavery: “During my stay in Texas I gathered a great deal of information on Southern life,” he wrote. Louis in 1848 and August worked various jobs throughout the Midwest where the treatment of slaves shocked him. Their home became a refuge for an unknown number of slaves, and the Bondis worked tirelessly, as Jews, to oppose the horror of slavery.Īugust Bondi was born Anshl Mendel Bondi in Vienna in 1833 into a Yiddish-speaking family which was involved in radical politics. One important stop on the Underground Railroad was the home of a Jewish couple, August and Henrietta Bondi, in Greeley, Kansas. In the 1830s, as railroads crossed America, people began using the language of trains to describe this network, calling it the Underground Railroad, labeling hiding spots “depots” or “stops”, and dubbing people who risked their lives and freedom to help runaway slaves “Conductors”. Historians estimate that 100,000 slaves escaped this way between 18, primarily from border states such as Maryland, as Harriet Tubman did. Historians estimate that 100,000 slaves escaped through the Underground Railroad between 18. What we do know is that as far back as the 1700s, a loose network of individuals – both Black and White – worked together to help hide runaway slaves and guide them to safety. It’s unclear whether this moving scene is accurate historians disagree about just how organized the “Underground Railroad” was. One of the most moving scenes in the film is when Harriet is led to a top-secret cellar where she is inducted into Underground Railroad and named a “Conductor” who guided slaves to freedom. She guided three boats full of Union soldiers along the Combahee River in South Carolina, attacking Confederate soldiers and freeing 750 slaves who worked in plantations along the river. In 1863, while the Civil War raged, Tubman became one of the only women in US history to lead an armed military raid. Born a slave in Maryland in the year 1822, she escaped to freedom in 1849, then returned to the South 19 times to help other slaves escape, ultimately shepherding over 300 slaves to freedom. The stirring new movie Harriet brings the incredible bravery and heroism of Harriet Tubman to life.
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