Abolitionist Jermain Wesley Loguen: the Original “Undocumented and Unafraid”
“I don’t respect this law – I don’t fear it – and I won’t obey it! It outlaws me and I outlaw it, and the men who attempt to enforce it on me.” Jermain Wesley Loguen
Jermain Wesley Loguen (born Jarm Logue) was the son of an enslaved mother named Cherry in Davidson County, TN, and David Logue, a white-identifying man who claimed them both as his own property. His life gives us a tiny window into what slavery, with respect to human potential, took from us. Jermain was one of the handful of people who’d escaped slavery and found ways to thrive despite it. But for nearly four million others, even their lives weren’t their own.
In 1825, Jarm, as he was then called, made his second escape attempt. He was 21. He owed his success to his mother, his father/owner’s mistress, and a horse appropriated from that same father. He utilized the Underground Railroad to escape north and eventually into Canada. Changing his first name to Jermain and adding an "n" to the end of his last name, he became known as Jermain Loguen. He learned to read, went on to hold various jobs in Canada and New York, studied at Oneida Institute in Whitesboro, NY, and founded schools for children of escaped slaves in Utica and Syracuse.
It was after settling in Syracuse that Jermain opened his home for use as a major Underground Railroad station. As testament to the kind of courage he exhibited regularly, he spearheaded the rescue of William Henry, a cooper (barrel maker) and former slave. On October 1, 1851, Henry, nicknamed "Jerry", was arrested pursuant to the newly enacted Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.
The anti-slavery Liberty Party (Gerrit Smith’s political party) was holding its state convention in Syracuse, and Jermain, himself an escapee, took it upon himself to rally as many members as he could to the cause. Word spread fast, and several hundred abolitionists ended up physically breaking into the city jail, freeing Jerry, and assisting Jermain in hiding him until the Railroad could ferry him on to Canada. The event became widely known as the Jerry Rescue.
A decade later, Jermain would receive a letter that was shocking in its sheer audacity; handwritten by the wife of his father/ex-owner (the very definition of wicked stepmother), Sarah. In a classic case of victim-reversal, the February 20, 1860 letter, written only months before Lincoln’s election, demanded Jermain pay her $1,000 for his freedom – in effect, selling himself to himself – while at the same time, setting herself up as the one who had been wronged.
She asserted, without any sense of irony; that both God and the Bible shared her opinion and affirmed her actions. The letter began like any other from a family member, before getting to the heart of her claims and blaming him for her dire financial situation; how his escape caused her immense hardship.
To JARM:—
I now take my pen to write you a few lines, to let you know how well we all are. I am a cripple, but I am still able to get about. The rest of the family are all well. Cherry is as well as Common.
I write you these lines to let you know the situation we are in – partly in consequence of your running away and stealing Old Rock, our fine mare. Though we got the mare back, she was never worth much after you took her; and as I now stand in need of some funds, I have determined to sell you; and I have had an offer for you, but did not see fit to take it. If you will send me one thousand dollars and pay for the old mare, I will give up all claim I have to you. Write to me as soon as you get these lines, and let me know if you will accept my proposition.
In consequence of your running away, we had to sell Abe and Ann and twelve acres of land; and I want you to send me the money that I may be able to redeem the land that you was the cause of our selling, and on receipt of the above named sum of money, I will send you your bill of sale. If you do not comply with my request, I will sell you to someone else, and you may rest assured that the time is not far distant when things will be changed with you. Write to me as soon as you get these lines. Direct your letter to Bigbyville, Maury County, Tennessee. You had better comply with my request.
She then did something I’ve had done to me by more than one member of the faithful; pretend to be self-effacing while being insulting:
I understand that you are a preacher. As the Southern people are so bad, you had better come and preach to your old acquaintances. I would like to know if you read your Bible? If so can you tell what will become of the thief if he does not repent? And, if the blind lead the blind, what will the consequence be? I deem it unnecessary to say much more at present. A word to the wise is sufficient. You know where the liar has his part. You know that we reared you as we reared our own children; that you was never abused, and that shortly before you ran away, when your master asked if you would like to be sold, you said you would not leave him to go with anybody.
Sarah Logue.
Jermain wrote her back with his rebuttal a month later.
MRS. SARAH LOGUE:
Yours of the 20th of February is duly received, and I thank you for it. It is a long time since I heard from my poor old mother, and I am glad to know she is yet alive, and, as you say, "as well as common." What that means I don't know. I wish you had said more about her. You are a woman; but had you a woman's heart you could never have insulted a brother by telling him you sold his only remaining brother and sister, because he put himself beyond your power to convert him into money.
You sold my brother and sister, ABE and ANN, and 12 acres of land, you say, because I ran away. Now you have the unutterable meanness to ask me to return and be your miserable chattel, or in lieu thereof send you $1,000 to enable you to redeem the land, but not to redeem my poor brother and sister! If I were to send you money it would be to get my brother and sister, and not that you should get land. You say you are a cripple, and doubtless you say it to stir my pity, for you know I was susceptible in that direction. I do pity you from the bottom of my heart.
Jermain’s expression of genuine pity would be all his stepmother would get from him. The niceties were over.
Nevertheless I am indignant beyond the power of words to express, that you should be so sunken and cruel as to tear the hearts I love so much all in pieces; that you should be willing to impale and crucify us out of all compassion for your poor foot or leg.
I found myself thinking of then-26-year-old Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann who, two seconds after arriving at a playground, shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was playing with a toy gun. Timothy, during his recorded debrief, showed no remorse for killing a child, but he complained, no less than seven times, that he’d sprained his poor ankle while moving to shelter behind the car after shooting Tamir, and how much it still hurt.
Wretched woman! Be it known to you that I value my freedom, to say nothing of my mother, brothers and sisters, more than your whole body; more, indeed, than my own life; more than all the lives of all the slaveholders and tyrants under Heaven. You say you have offers to buy me, and that you shall sell me if I do not send you $1,000, and in the same breath and almost in the same sentence, you say, "You know we raised you as we did our own children." Woman, did you raise your own children for the market? Did you raise them for the whipping-post? Did you raise them to be driven off in a coffle in chains? …Do you say you did not do it? Then I reply, your husband did, and you approved the deed – and the very letter you sent me shows that your heart approves it all. Shame on you!
Then Jermain got to the heart of the matter; the relationship between him and his father, who he never calls such.
But, by the way, where is your husband? You don't speak of him. I infer, therefore, that he is dead; that he has gone to his great account, with all his sins against my poor family upon his head. Poor man! Gone to meet the spirits of my poor, outraged and murdered people, in a world where Liberty and Justice are MASTERS. Before God and High Heaven, is there a law for one man which is not a law for every other man? Did you think to terrify me by presenting the alternative to give my money to you, or give my body to Slavery? Then let me say to you, that I meet the proposition with unutterable scorn and contempt. The proposition is an outrage and an insult. I will not budge one hair's breadth. I will not breathe a shorter breath, even to save me from your persecutions.
As I read his closing words, I couldn’t help but think of the way we’re treating so many Mexican Americans (which is what they are, both Mexican and American) today. The parallels hit me hard. While we stole people from Africa and thrust them into slavery, we also stole land, in this case, from Mexico, then used citizenship to deny the descendants of those who’d lived on that land, access to it. I thought of the “undocumented and unafraid” movement, which now includes well over a half-million activists.
And I thought about the people who stood by those like Jermain, and I recognized how I can do more to stand by people today. Because passing a law to make a bad thing legal doesn’t make it moral. And in a society where only the most powerful get to make the rules, any law the powerful go through the trouble of getting passed is one that almost certainly benefits them, and, in most cases, harms someone in equal measure.
Jermain then concluded:
I stand among a free people, who, I thank God, sympathize with my rights, and the rights of mankind; and if your emissaries and venders come here to re-enslave me, and escape the unshrinking vigor of my own right arm, I trust my strong and brave friends, in this City and State, will be my rescuers and avengers.
Yours, &c., J.W. Loguen
Jermain changed America for the better. But he had to break laws and live in constant peril to do so. People like him were the first to live as undocumented and unafraid. And it’s to our shame that they weren’t also the last.