DATE: Sunday, May 11, 1997                  TAG: 9704300725

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J2   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Book Review

SOURCE: BY GEORGE HOLBERT TUCKER 

                                            LENGTH:   78 lines

NORFOLK SLAVE HAD PIVOTAL ROLE IN HISTORY

SHADRACH MINKINS

From Fugitive Slave to Citizen

GARY COLLINSON

Harvard University Press. 294 pp. $27.95.

Norfolk, as a long-established Southern city with a multiracial population, is increasingly being featured in important books on African-American history. Recently, Free Blacks in Norfolk, Virginia 1790-1860, by Tommy L. Bogger of Norfolk State University, revealed hitherto unknown facts concerning the city's pre-Civil War manumitted population.

Now we have Shadrach Minkins: From Fugitive Slave to Citizen by Gary Collison, an associate professor at Pennsylvania State University. His book further augments the social and economic background of early 19th-century Norfolk, which served as the milieu for Bogger's study. All of which is cause for rejoicing since much of the material used by both authors has previously been ignored.

As the biography of an individual, Collinson's book is more particular than Bogger's more generalized account. Nevertheless, it is no less detailed, for in recounting the life of his subject Collison has projected it against the broad panorama of American history.

Minkins was an illiterate man with a burning desire for personal freedom. His case, because of the national interest it elicited, became the catalyst in one of the most dramatic episodes of rebellion and legal wrangling before the Civil War ended, giving all enslaved blacks their first hopes of standing tall as unshackled human beings.

Briefly, this is Shadrach Minkins' story: Born in Norfolk around 1814, he was a slave of John DeBree's. On May 3, 1850, Minkins ran away from his master, eventually winding up as a waiter in the Cornhill Coffee House in Boston.

Five months after Minkins' dash for freedom, President Millard Fillmore signed the Fugitive Slave Law, making it possible for owners of runaway slaves to reclaim their property with government assistance. Minkins' owner was not long in asserting his rights. Once his escaped slave was located, DeBree provided the federal marshal in Boston with the necessary papers to bring Minkins back to Norfolk in chains.

On the morning of Feb. 15, 1851, the marshal and another law officer had breakfast at the Cornhill Coffee House where they were waited on by an unsuspecting Minkins. After finishing their meal the two men arrested Minkins and took him to the city courthouse without giving him time to take off his apron. On the way, Minkins vehemently protested that he would never be taken back to Virginia alive.

Meanwhile, the news of Minkins' arrest spread like wildfire, and shortly thereafter a racially mixed mob headed for the courthouse. In the excitement, five prominent Boston lawyers volunteered for Minkins' defense. They included Samuel E. Sewell, a descendant of one of the 17th-century Salem witchcraft judges, and Richard Henry Dana Jr., author of the still popular nautical yarn, ``Two Years Before the Mast.''

Later, when the presiding judge adjourned the case for a few days, Minkins' black friends took over and forcibly liberated him from his captors. Once he was out of Boston, he was speeded on his way by abolitionists to Canada, where he finally became a free man on Feb. 21, 1851.

Minkins' bold rescue created a national furor. In Washington Daniel Webster pronounced it ``treason,'' while Henry Clay declared himself ``inexpressibly distressed'' and proposed severer penalties for those who attempted to interfere with the Fugitive Slave Law. Not to be outdone, President Fillmore sent a special message to Congress promising speedy prosecution of those who had aided Minkins to escape. This eventually took place, but because one of the jurors held out stubbornly for acquittal, the case was dropped.

In the meantime, Minkins settled in Montreal, married, had a family, and worked as a barber until his death in December 1875. He was buried in the Protestant Cemetery there.

In telling Minkins' story, Collison has drawn on hitherto little known sources of Norfolk and national African-American history. As a consequence, a careful reading of his text and particularly the copious notes that he has appended to each chapter will provide any serious student of American history with fascinating offbeat insights that have formerly been unavailable. MEMO: George Holbert Tucker is a columnist for The Virginian-Pilot.

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