Ayres, Katherine. Stealing South; a story of the Underground Railroad.Random House, Dell, Yearling yearling an animal in its second year of age, e.g. yearling cattle, yearling filly, yearling colt. yearling disease rinderpest in wildebeeste in the Serengheti. . 201p. c2001. 0-440-41801-1. $4.99. J To quote from the review of the hardcover in KLIATT, May 2001: This is a companion book to Ayres' North by Night, which tells of a family, especially the daughter Lucy, active in the Underground Railroad Underground Railroad, in U.S. history, loosely organized system for helping fugitive slaves escape to Canada or to areas of safety in free states. It was run by local groups of Northern abolitionists, both white and free blacks. in a small town in Ohio. They are a way station on a major route from the Ohio River Ohio River Major river, eastern central U.S. Formed by the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, it flows northwest out of Pennsylvania, and west and southwest to form the state boundaries of Ohio–West Virginia, Ohio-Kentucky, Indiana-Kentucky, and across to Cleveland and Lake Erie Lake Erie Great Lake; once so polluted, referred to as Lake Eerie. [Am. Hist.: NCE, 887] See : Filth , enabling slaves to arrive in Canada and become free. Stealing South features Lucy's brother Will, who now is 16 years old and wants to become a peddler peddler or hawker, itinerant vendor of small goods. In rural America peddlers carried their packs or drove a horse and cart from door to door. , leaving his small town behind. His plans change after he helps Noah, a runaway slave, who pleads with Will to travel to Kentucky and try to steal Noah's brother and sister, slaves at a breeding farm--a place that breeds slaves for profit, selling the boys to Mississippi to work on the cotton plantations and using the girls for breeding purposes. Will decides he can begin his peddling business in that direction, doing what he can for Noah's brother and sister. Will is appalled by what he finds in Cincinnati and then farther south in Kentucky as he encounters slave catchers, slaveholders, even slave breeders. He does get started with his peddling business, buying goods in warehouses in Cincinnati and actually is successful as he travels into Kentucky, selling and trading at isolated farmhouses. He finds the blacksmith, Ezekiel, a slave Noah has told him will help in the escape of the brother and sister. Will does find Noah's family but all plans change on the spur of the moment Adv. 1. on the spur of the moment - on impulse; without premeditation; "he decided to go to Chicago on the spur of the moment"; "he made up his mind suddenly" suddenly . Excitement mounts as Will manages to convey seven young boys and an older woman across Kentucky to the site of a station on the Underground Railroad on the Ohio side of the Ohio River. Will's own life is in jeopardy, his new business destroyed, yet he eventually succeeds in his mission, although not in any way as planned. Ayres is good at making clear the issues, moral and political, surrounding the slave trade slave trade Capturing, selling, and buying of slaves. Slavery has existed throughout the world from ancient times, and trading in slaves has been equally universal. Slaves were taken from the Slavs and Iranians from antiquity to the 19th century, from the sub-Saharan in the U.S. in the 1850s. Her ability to describe the geography, the weather conditions, the methods of the Underground Railroad, and the motives of her teenage protagonists is excellent. There is a bit of a romantic interest, as Will meets a young German immigrant in Cincinnati who helps him choose the goods to stock in his peddler's wagon. Elise and her mother become crucial in Will's later escape from the slave catchers. All together, this is an exciting story about a most important part of American history. |
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