Scott shane to the library. His latest book, flee north a forgotten hero in the fight for freedom, slavery, borderland in it. He recounts the life of abolitionist thomas who bought his own freedom, helped hundreds of others escape in washington. Baltimore and the underground railroad flee north also tells, the story of the baltimore slave trader, hope slaughter, who shaped who shipped hundreds of south from the inner harbor, often them from their families forever. This evening, the author will be joined in conversation by journalist Michael Fletcher scott shane is a former for the New York Times and Baltimore Sun. He is the author of objective troy a terrorist, a president and rise of the drone in dismantling utopia how information ended the soviet union. Michael is a Senior Writer with espns enterprise, an investigative team. He formerly reporter for espns the undefeated and the washington post. He is a coauthor of supreme discomfort the divided soul of clarence thomas. In his review of the book the washington post, richard, who wrote flee north, a gripping story, told at a brisk pace in a no fuss prose of practice. Reporter is a model of the advantages journalists can bring to the writing of history. It is the kind of story we sorely need at a time when there is no shortage of opportunities for inspiring of heroism. Award winning historian Henry Louis Gates come in. The book restores to american one of the most daring African American abolitionists. Author of a neglected slave narrative who only courageously fought slavery but brilliantly satirized it. And then publisher weekly starred review, they wrote this astonishing and propulsive narrative racist, historical, wrong by returning smollett to prominence. Its an absolute must read. It is my great pleasure to welcome scott shane to Michael Fletcher the proud library. Yeah. Thank you, everyone. And i have to say, its a privilege to be here with my old friend and colleague. And when i say old, i mean long, you know, of long standing. And i mean the other. I was going to ask you about saying, know, scott and i worked together at the Baltimore Sun and, you know, back then, like everyone else in the newsroom, i had the utmost for scotts work. He had such a range as a reporter, he could find compelling stories and Research Laboratories on street corners, even at the nsa. You know, this guy knew how do his job and it was always it was just always someone who you know, who i respected. I think everyone in the room looked up to. And hes done it again. Hes done it again. Another compelling piece, this book is is so, so interesting. Its a fascinating read that for me kind of reordered how i thought about how i think about the underground railroad. It sort of added a lot of context, a lot of have to the story. I knew in the story i had learned in school was about Harriet Tubman and the quakers. And and that was basically what i knew again and then this book certainly expands that tale. So, you know, congratulations, scott. I think thanked the service here. Lets start here in the in the subtitle of the you call Thomas Smallwood a forgotten hero. Why forgotten . Well, you know, i think when i kind of came across and dug into his life and found out more and more about him not only the escapes hed organized, but also the fact that hed about those escapes. You know, my question was why do we not know about this guy . And there is an answer to that. He you know, he ends up in canada for his own life. He operating a clandestine network. He wrote about the escapes, but he wrote about them under a pseudonym. But i think theres another element, which is that his white, for the most part, just left him out of the story. So i was warned against not with the microphone, so ill try to hold it still. But i think you know, i think it was theres also an element of even his closest partner in this operation charles story just sort of failing to credit him with what he did. So, you know, i think in you know if justice is done, this guy will be very well known. His story will be taught in schools. And if we could only a picture of him, we could we could build a statue. You know whats amazing . And you mentioned hes so, you know, small was a shoemaker living as a free black man in washington, d. C. With slavery operating all around him. How did managed to organize his kind of how did his operation work . Well so he had been born in slavery himself in bladensburg, right outside d. C. And then bought his freedom time over a of time for 500, paid it off when he was about the age of 30. Hes he starts this shoemaking business he marries has a bunch of kids hes got four kids at the time and another one is on the way. And so, you know, he has sort of vowed a war on slavery but isnt really how to carry it out. And hes a busy guy and its really when this guy, charles story comes to town and two of them meet that they find theyre thinking along the same theyre tired of talking about how terrible is. And they want to do something about it. And it crank in a concrete sense. And so they start organizing these escapes. And you there are several things that set, set their escapes apart, especially the beginning. They were not just waiting for people to decide they wanted to to run. They would actually approach and slave people. Smallwood knew and say, you know, what are you doing on saturday . And which was which was actually a popular time for successful escapes because there was a little more freedom on sunday morning and they werent looking for you sunday morning so and so they were actually recruiting to run. And the other thing was, they werent for most part, setting people off in ones twos. They were trying to do it by the wagon load. And so, you know, repeatedly read about a wagon load of ten, a wagon load of 12, wagon load of 1518. And this would be men women and children in you know, covered with something, taking off in the middle of middle of the night. This is such an interesting couple, i think tori and smallwood. Not only did they free hundreds of people, but then they turned around and rubbed it in the faces of the enslavers. I mean, describe that small to write these columns mocking in slavery, saying we did it again, we pulled this off. Yeah. And you know, i remember when i read the book, you know, early on i said, where did you get the courage, you know, to do that . Yes. Yeah. And where did you the motivation in a way. I mean, thats one of the things i just think of in a practical sense, is hes running this shoemaking by day. Hes helping organize these escapes by night. When does he find time to, you know, settle, light a candle or whatever and, you know, write up these dispatches that he then mails off to albany. But somehow he did it. You mentioned the odd couple. So charles story is about a dozen years younger. He he was not from a wealthy family outside boston, but he was from a wellconnected family. His parents died of tuberculosis and was raised by a grandfather who had actually served in congress. He went to exeter. He went to yale. So he had sort of an elite education. But he so in that sense, he was sort of the opposite of Thomas Smallwood, who had first been taught to read by his, and then was a servant in a house, the household of a an educator in washington, guy who ran a number of schools and that guy who was from scotland and his Adult Children apparently took an interest. Thomas and you know sort of getting him into literature and so on. So strangely enough i think by the time they meet in the beginning of 1842, despite those very different backgrounds, i think there were in some ways comparable because smallwood had just absorb of this from all over the place and later, you know, he sort of constantly quoting philosophers and quoting poets and showing how much he knew. And i think the other thing they had common over the chasm of race, age and edge and formal education was torrey had been as a new englander who an abolitionist. Hed on the lecture circuit. Hed been involved these kind of internecine fights in the in the abolitionist community. So hed been a lot of overheated meeting halls talking for 4 hours and smallwood had taken an interest in colonization which was this movement for africanamericans just give up on this country and move to somewhere else. Sierra leone, barbados but also but in particular, liberia, which the colony in west africa that had been founded by the american cotton Colonization Society and there was a big debate in the black community in d. C. , in baltimore over this question. Basically came down to, is this a good thing to just leave the country that you are the only country know behind and try to get new start somewhere else . And also eventually, kind of what are the motives of the white people who were financing this operation . And smallwood was very interested for a number of years. And then, you know, you get the feeling that the scales fell from his eyes. And he realized that basically talking about ethnic cleansing and that the the people who were funding the american Colonization Society actually their problem was not with enslaved black people, it was with free black people. And they wanted to just, you know, usher them out of the country. And so he broke with that and tried convince all his friends to break with that. But he, too, had been involved in whole lot of talk. Right. So get the feeling they come together in 1842 and theyre both ready to do something very concrete. And thats what they do. Yeah. And very too. Right. And very radical and very dangerous. Now, how did these columns over so well so the you know, the reason tory comes to town is he has a hes a guy who tried his hand as teaching then briefly tries his hand at preaching, just flames out completely in both of those professions. And so he then becomes caught up in the antislavery cause. And hes going to be his new idea is to be a correspondent for a bunch of small abolitionist papers in the north. Hell come to d. C. Hell cover congress. Hell cover the debates over slavery. And hell send his dispatches. North north. But you you get the feeling that he was much more interested in what he could do, sort of hands on and antislavery than than even sending these columns off. But the one of the papers, he is connected with or hes hes formed a little bit of relationship with is a little in albany then called toxin of liberty toxin an old word for bell so basically its the liberty bell and a small abolition this paper and hes sending his columns off to them as he gets his start but they get these wagon loads going off at night. It appears that its smallwood who the lead and and certainly continues to send these dispatches off and you know his its you know if i could get a half hour with thomas i would id pay a lot of money for that. And of the questions i would ask him is just like, what were you about . But you know what . Why were you taking this somewhat risky step, even if youre writing it under a pseudonym of calling attention to the escapes, you know, using the real names of the using real names, the people who escaped writing it in real time. And i have not found any other example of somebody writing about escapes in real time. And it was so much in real time that small would occasionally that he had to hold a column and not send it off to albany until he was sure he from usually that the people he hes writing about were already safe on the other side of the border. But i think of it was his personality his interest in literature. He was a big fan of charles and he took his pseudonym from Charles Dickens and he kind of liked dickensian satirical style. But i also think for as well as for tory, there was sort of a larger strategy that was that was part of their plan, what they wanted to demoralize people. Yeah, basically they wanted to not just move these, you know, in whatever numbers they could out of the reach the enslavers, but their hope was that seeing, you know, there were people in dc people baltimore who had say owned half a dozen people and they wake up one morning and theyre gone. And that was a lot of money. You know, i calculated i made a rough calculation that a wagon of 15 people that small would describe might have been worth Something Like 200,000 in todays dollars. And so youre talking about a big chunk of peoples even wealthy peoples wealth just disappearing overnight. So i there were hoping to essentially undermine faith in this in the system. And smallwood describes overhearing a couple of these in because he would lurk and eavesdrop in his neighborhood and at the market at the rail station and hed hear some of the people who he was relieving shall we say of their human property and writing about hed hear them talking you and so he heard them talking a couple of them talking about how im never going to buy another, im done with this. And of course was music to his ears because thats what wanted he wanted to say, you know what its a heck of a lot easier. Just hire somebody. Pay them. Hmm. What an extraordinary thing. And me, this story hasnt been totally lost to history, but until now, smallwood was. You know, people didnt know about him. Why do you think that is . Well, i think tori came from a a Strong Community of abolition in massachusetts. Hed been on the scene in, massachusetts abolition for a few years before coming south to d. C. So hes kind of wellconnected up there when he dies, he gets a monument, a beautiful graveyard in cambridge. Its kind like an obelisk. It has a has face on it and has some and now its surrounded by flowers. Its its really quite lovely. And he also, after he died another abolitionist kind of together, a memoir of tory thats mostly drawn from his journals, his correspondence, and then more recent years, i guess is 2013, when a distant cousin of wrote a, you know, modern a very good modern biography of charles story. So he is not a wellknown figure, but he has he has certainly not been ignored, whereas smallwood, i think its fair to say, has been ignored and you know, part of it is. The fact that he operated under a pseudonym and that he moved canada. But i think theres definitely more to it. You know in his later years, tory was writing his letters are mostly preserved or many of them are preserved. And he was writing about the escape operations at a time when smallwood safely in canada and, and even when smallwood had been named outed in the in the Baltimore Sun. In fact. And so there was no reason to withhold his name, certainly in a private letter. But he did. And he took essentially credit for the escapes that smallwood had organized not only with tory, but on his own. Tory went off to be the editor of that in albany. And so for for a year or more, smallwood was doing this all by himself. And so so i think there is a racial element. This an element of of racism, of, of sort, of not crediting. Smallwood. God knows why exactly with what he had achieved and maybe little bit of a desperation on tories part to leave mark on history and to to the many doubters even in his own family that he had he had accomplished something. Yeah. I notice in the review that ran in a fine newspaper i worked for for many they point out that you kind of slept with around a little you know for you know for not giving credit to smallwood and i think the word they use the we will use a churlish churlish yes i dont know you to mean scott, but why did you why did you say that . Well, so i first of all, i mean, think that the the post review was fabulous. And and i dont even mind the reviewer me churlish. I like that word churlish always liked that word. Yeah, but thats a great read. But i think i think he and i disagree. But he and i actually exchanged emails, the review ran and and makes a very good point, which is that charles tory risked Everything Everything his family, his his life for this cause, for the antislavery cause and. Thats why this reviewer thought it was kind of a little nit picking to the point out that he had never credited smallwood. But, you know, there were consequences that no ones heard of smallwood. I mentioned tories lovely gray, very impressive grave and sort of memorial in in cambridge, mass. And tories is grave is the toronto necropolis and the old toronto city and my wife franzi and i, whos here, spend a lot of time tromping around that graveyard looking for any trace of smallwoods grave. And it he is buried there. Theres a record that shows hes buried there, but any stone has long since underneath the grass. And theres no sign that, you know, that he was ever there. Interesting. I learned something many things from reading this book. One was you write that smallwood was the one who coined the term underground. Yeah. The origin of that term. And how you able as a journalist to pin that down to . Sort of sort of know that thats true. So its its sort of a fun story. Theres a book about slavery and basically it has a baltimore angle. Im pleased say so there was a Notorious Police constable by the name of john zelle and he like a lot of police in those days made much of his money on side running after people had fled slavery, slavery and drag them back for the reward money that the was offering and so what smallwood heard from somebody who had overheard this guy, john zell exclaiming in frustration one day, you know, i dont know how these people were escaping. Theyre not leaving a trace. They be getting away. But underground railroad or steam balloon. And thats basically, we would say they must have been teleported to canada or or they must have been abducted aliens. In other words, i have no clue how theyre getting out of here because there were no underground railroads. There were railroads, not underground railroads. And steam balloon was sort of like a an experimental technology, we could say. So. So apparently smallwood got wind of this and he he in somewhat snarky fashion, advises a slaveholder who has lost his whos, as smallwood once puts it in one place, puts it whos human property whos walking property had walked off. He advises that person that perhaps they left by the underground railroad or steam balloon that this console was swearing about the other day. And then clearly something clicked and smallwood thought, this is great because first of all, it a huge compliment to him and this operation. And so he starts riffing on the notion of an underground railroad and he he advises the slave holders to report to the office of the underground railroad in washington for of their missing property. And he at one point says he cant reveal the secret of the underground railroad, which is only known to the president. The cabine