BEYOND THE RIVER

BEYOND THE RIVER
The Untold Story of the Heroes of the Underground Railroad
Ann Hagedorn, author
2002, Simon & Schuster
ISBN 0-684-87965-7
279 pages

“One summer day in 1817, at a church in the Abingdon group, he explained to his audience, with fierce certitude, that the mission of Christianity was to drive oppression from the earth, and that the Bible was opposed to ‘all forms of oppression.’” (p. 30)

Thus author Ann Hagedorn describes the very beginnings of the prophetic ministry of John Rankin, Presbyterian pastor, abolitionist, and conductor on the Underground Railroad.

Beyond the River is a historical account of the Underground Railroad, primarily as it functioned in the river town of Ripley, Ohio. Hagedorn has used a plethora of primary sources, as well as a great many secondary sources, to document the lives of the heroes of the abolition movement. The book encompasses not only the Underground Railroad, but also various anti-slavery societies. In artistic fashion, Hagedorn has also highlighted the significance of geography, national politics, local economy, weather, and personal tragedy to the movement and to the lives of its movers.

I first became aware of John Rankin because some of his descendants are cousins to my mother, and essays about him were included in a family history. He aroused my interest because he was a Presbyterian pastor, and because in his later years he started two Presbyterian congregations not far from where I live in east-central Kansas (both are now closed). A local friend knew of m interest in Rankin, and referred me to this book when it was reviewed in Time magazine. Once I bought it, I could not put it down.

Because the book deals with a prophetic ministry I found it hauntingly current, as I have struggled with how to express misgivings about America’s foreign policy and the current war with Iraq- and how to express those misgivings in community famed for its conservatism. Preaching abolition was a task that required more than moral courage- it required physical courage as well, as Hagedorn documents. But Rankin and the others of his cause went beyond preaching- they were “agitators,” in the parlance of their times, agitators who operated outside the law at risk to their lives, property, and family. Yet they were very rarely deterred.

With Rankin, abolition seems to have been a matter of integrity. What is striking about Rankin is that he saw beyond slavery, and was from the beginning an advocate for equality of the races, a notion that exceeded the opinions of the times, even of many famous abolitionists. In nearby Cincinnati, the students at Lane Seminary (The college president was Lyman Beecher) became active not only in the abolition movement, but in educating local freedmen. “Using a system of rotation devised…out of respect for the students’ own classwork, they conducted reading classes every evening during the week, and during the days they taught geography, science, grammar, and arithmetic. Classes were so crowded that some days people were turned away…Every minute that they could spare form their studies, the students devoted to their cause.” (p. 70)

Even though the seminary was founded by abolitionists, the trustees, faculty, and president were all distressed by the extent of student activism, “mostly over the actual contact between the students and the black community” (p. 70) During the summer break, the trustees abolished the student’s antislavery society, and gave themselves powers to censure the students and limit their activities. Reason given for this was the threat of physical damage to the school by the surrounding community, which was even more agitated by the student activism.

“Upon their return for the fall term, the students asked the faculty if they could discuss the new rules imposed on them, and were told they could not. Weld (one of the students) wrote a statement on behalf of the students, and signed by fifty-one of them. And then, in one of the great moments of America’s history of protest movements, the students who signed Weld’s impassioned statements simply walked out the doors of Lane.” (p. 71)

Rankin supported the students, and in an editorial he wrote, “Far better for the Seminary and the religion, had the mob (from the community) torn the building to the ground. It could have been reared again as a monument to integrity.” (p. 71)

What particularly struck me were the dates of many of the things that happened. The student activism happened in 1834, 27 years before the Civil War. Once these heroes made a commitment to the cause, they had to live through decades if danger and national unrest. And the nation had to live through decades of anger, mistrust, and hatred.

The book documents carefully the change in Rankin over this great time period. In the early years, he was content to preach against slavery only from the pulpit (though he received national fame for a series of letters, widely published, that opposed slavery). But after the Lane College incident, he became much more active nationally in organizing anti-slavery societies, speaking at meetings, and raising funds for the cause.

While the book clearly makes a connection between abolition and the evangelical convictions of its early proponents, it does not clearly show the history of what was happening in the Presbyterian Church during the era. Various historical church events are mentioned, but in a scattered sort of way that does not help one is not already familiar with them- such as Rankin’s departure from First Presbyterian of Ripley and the founding of the Free Presbyterian denomination, nut nothing about the reunion and little about the Old School/New school split. And while it documents the struggles Rankin had in learning to preach (mostly from his autobiography), there is virtually no discussion of how he preached. But this does not in any way diminish what Hagedorn has done, which is to chronicle what may truly be the most courageous chapter in American history.

Other person, too, were given attention by Hagedorn. These included the slave girl who escaped across the river on fast-breaking ice. Her story was later told by Rankin to Harriet Beecher Stowe, and was given national attention in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (though Harriet herself is rarely mentioned in Across the River); John B. Mahon, a colleague of Rankin’s, who was extradited to Kentucky, spent months in prison, lost his health and his property, and whose family suffered poverty after his death; and John Parker, an escaped slave living in Ripley who time and time again crossed back into Kentucky to find other slaves and bring them out. In doing so, Parker risked his life and his won freedom. Hagedorn calls Parker a “tiny minority within the abolitionist minority,” (p. 256), one who used tactics that even troubled Rankin.

These were certainly heroes. Without their agitation, American history would have been vastly different. “After the war, one of Lyman Beecher’s sons, the renowned preacher Henry Ward Beecher, was asked, ’Who abolished slavery?’ His response: ‘Rev. John Rankin and his sons did it.’” (p. 274)

Well, certainly they had some help. But maybe a better question would have been, “What abolished slavery?” And the answer would have been, “Courage.”

George R. Pasley