October 31^st 1831

My mother, brother and I live on a farm here in Jackson, Mississippi. My name is Ben and I am turning 18 tomorrow. I work in the field while my brother Jeff, who is 12 years old, collects all of the crops that our ready and brings them back to the house to be kept for baking and given to my master to be sold. My mother is getting old now so she was transferred to my master’s house to do the cooking, washing and other household jobs. We receive one meal a day, if we are lucky, and we work from sunset till sundown daily. Every day I work as hard as I can, but if Master believes I can work harder he gives me 5 lashes. I have always dreamed of what life must be like as a free person. From what I have heard, Canada is the place to go for people like us. For as long as I have been under my master’s possession, rumours have been told of something called the Underground Railroad. A nice friend of mine tried to run and was never heard from since. Considering that he could be in Canada, shot, killed or back as a slave, nobody wants to take action of running to freedom just yet.

Today, when I was going to collect water from the river, there was a coloured man who jumped out of the bushes on to me and pulled me into the bush. He told me to be quiet and asked to see my papers since this is a slave state. Soon enough he didn’t care about any of my papers and said he recognized me. His name was Manny and as he said that, I knew it was my friend who ran to freedom 2 years ago. Anyway, he told me that he is a Methodist now and if we wanted to get to Canada we would have to meet him at the same river we were at 9:00 pm. It was a lot to take in, but I knew this might be my only chance.

November 1^st 1831

Well today was a long and hard day. I never would have expected to meet up with my friend Manny again, but he is the one who gave us hope ever since he left. When we met Manny at the river, he gave us an old revolver and a map that was still in pretty good condition thankfully. Manny arrived just past 9:00 pm with 2 horses and a wagon being pulled behind. He took us all the way from where we met on the Mississippi River to Memphis, Tennessee. When he took us through the more populated towns, we started looking through the little crevasses of wood in the sides and we saw lots of wanted posters of us. It would have been easier to travel along the river but the river only flows in the direction that takes us back home. The three of us were dropped off in Memphis where we had to hustle over to our first safe-house. Manny told us to look for candles in windows at night to make obvious of which houses are safe for us slaves and when we arrive to use the term “friend of a friend”.

We knew that people would always be on our backs and looking for us. In order to get to the first house, we had to cross a small river. Crossing the river may have been a good way to lose the dogs, but we still got to keep moving because if they even such as see us, we will be in their possession. Not long after we crossed the river, we spotted a candle in a window to a rather small house. I went to knock on the door and an old light-skinned man opened the door, so it was scary at first but I said, “Friend of a friend” and I signalled my brother and mother to come in. We had to sleep in the Quaker’s basement that had a secret entrance in the floor to get into. We heard some other men knock on the main door and then came in to look for us. The candle must have given away the fact that this was a safe-house. They must have left because they could not find us and the secret door.

The next morning we left the house and we saw smoke in the forest as well as a horse. We hurried because we knew that the man chasing us was nearby. We hid in the back of the Quaker’s ride with the products he was loading on the train and the man told us to head toward the river when we get off. We secretly hopped on to the train with all of his products and luggage, and went with it in the direction we needed heading towards Louisville. When we were slowing down at our stop we opened the sliding door and jumped out before anyone noticed and dashed for the river where a boat was waiting. Some young men were off quickly too and saw us just before we reached the hillside. They chased after us with their firearms and ran to the river as well. We jumped into the boat that was waiting for us with not noticing that my mother had tripped and fallen behind. As she was getting up she was shot in the leg and so we had to leave her behind. It was a tragic day but we had to keep moving since we are not in Canada yet but we are only in a free state where we can still be caught.

When we reached Cincinnati, they supplied my brother and I with one horse where we could ride on out to Detroit hopefully with the daytime we had left. My brother and I have not eaten in a while but we are accustomed to this already and we were getting tired. Soon after we reached a small town in Columbus, a man made his way over to us and asked for our papers. I quickly made a decision and we galloped away fast on the horse and by that time the man pulled out a gun and shot at us. We kept riding, but Jeff whispered in my ear that he was hit. I pulled off my shirt and told him to keep it on where it was bleeding. After a long day we made our way into Detroit and searched for help immediately for Jeff. Although it wasn’t the best birthday, we finally had made it into a free state as free men.

We had one last stretch to our journey. The last portion of our journey was to travel from Detroit to York. When we arrived in Upper Canada, we were welcomed by many and there were many black immigrants like us as well.

November 4^th 1831

Looking back at when we ran for freedom, recalls many good and bad memories. It wasn’t the best birthday I had wished for, but now all we can be thankful for is that we are free men. I cannot believe that my mother is gone and it is just Jeff and I now. Whenever I have spare time I feel like I should be working and when I am outside I should be sweating. I just turned 18 a couple of days ago and now I am the oldest in my family, and so I have to take responsibility of how to start off our new lives in Canada. Currently money is our main concern and so whenever a job is offered we will take it because we need any money we can get. We started off our own farm and so we can harvest crops to sell and use for our own living. The crops were a good idea to get us started because we have been doing this kind of thing for the past couple years. Where we live in York is perfect for us because there is a lake right nearby where we can use water for watering crops and also washing clothes and utensils. Our shelter that we created is made up of wood from trees we cut down and also from logs we find laying around. Jeff and I live happy lives in Upper Canada where we will live for the rest of our lives. All we can ask for now is to live a peaceful life in Canada and live like normal people in this world.

REFLECTION

I found this project a little difficult to come up with ideas and express the characters feelings and emotions, but I liked how it was basically just making a story. I would much rather write a story than an essay because it just gives me an idea on what should come next. This took me quite a while to create because once I start with an idea, I just keep writing. Next time I would probably try to make my information a little more historically accurate instead of just making a story of what I think should happen. Making my work into a journal at the end is the part that made brought it all together.