Investigator Ch 7-9

I wanted to look into the underground railroad that Emma, Joe, and Charles were planning to take to get to Ohio and see if there was really a route that would take them from Kentucky to freedom. I found this map that shows the routes of the Underground Railroad, and it looks like there was a perfect route from Kentucky to Cincinnati. I think this map is really cool because I can visualize how far some slaves had to travel to get to the "free" north, and how difficult their journeys must have been. The website I got this image from is www.slaveryinamerica.org.

Connecter Ch 5-6

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/murray:@field(DOCID+@lit(lcrbmrpt2305div7))

The above link tells the love story of Jeffrey and Dorcas. It is taken from a pamphlet titled “What became of the slaves on a Georgia plantation? : Great auction sale of slaves, at Savannah, Georgia, March 2d & 3d, 1859. A sequel to Mrs. Kemble's Journal” that Julius Lester drew a lot of the novel from. The story from the pamphlet is a little different from the book, because it says that Dorcas was sold with a family of four others, and that is why Jeffrey’s master will not buy her.

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/murray:@field(DOCID+@lit(lcrbmrpt2305div6))

The pamphlet also has a small section about Bob and Mary, characters portrayed in Ch 5, that you can access from the above link!

Discussion Ch 5-6

1) Sarah is obviously very upset about Emma being sold and acted out a few times at the auction. How do you think she will act towards her father and Frances once they get home?

2) Slave buyer 4 is called over to a stall by a slave named Bob. Bob's wife, Mary, seems a little hesitant about how slave buyer 4 was looking at her. Do you think that a lot of slaves were in denial or naive about what could potentially happen to their wives? Or do you think they just knew and were okay with it?

3) How do you foresee how Emma's mother, Mattie, will feel once they get home from the auction? How do her and Jeffrey's feelings compare?

Vocab Ch 5-6

I found it interesting reading the slaves dialogue in chapter 5. There were a lot of phrases the slaves used when talking to other masters, that had not been widely used in the first part of the book.

Suh......p 54

Sunup to Moondown......p54

She sho' can..........p54

There is her..........p71

I liked how the author wrote these passages in the slave vernacular, because it makes the plot more authentic.

Vocab Ch 1-4 Day of Tears

In these chapters, I noticed that the characters obviously use a very different dialect. Here are some examples of how different language was back during this time.

-"Say" instead of "said"

-"What" instead of "that" (which was one I have never heard before.) ("The one what bought my sister didn't even let her say good-bye to me.")

-"Was" instead of "were"

-"Think" instead of "thinks"

-"Knowed" instead of "knew"

-"Good Book" is referred to as the Bible

A strange phrase I noticed was "The rain comes down like fiery sorrow." I have never heard this phrase before.

Connector 1-4

http://www.glynngen.com/slaverec/butler.htm
This site actually lists out the names and prices of the slaves sold in the Butler auction. It has other notes that the author of the site found during research. It's actually a really cool website, so check it out!

The Butler auction is often referred to as "the weeping time," which explains why the book was given its' title.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2918.html
"It is a dreadful affair, however, selling these hereditary Negroes. . . . Families will not be separated, that is to say, husbands and wives, parents and young children. But brothers and sisters of mature age, parents and children of mature age, all other relations and the ties of home and long association will be violently severed. It will be a hard thing for Butler to witness and it is a monstrous thing to do. Yet it is done every day in the South. It is one among the many frightful consequences of slavery and contradicts our civilization, our Christianity, or Republicanism. Can such a system endure, is it consistent with humanity, with moral progress? These are difficult questions, and still more difficult is it to say, what can be done? The Negroes of the South must be slaves or the South will be Africanized. Slavery is better for them and for us than such a result."
-Philadelphia socialite Sidney George Fisher regarding the Butler auction

http://www.savannahga.gov/cityweb/rlibcat.nsf/f0bad60b4a15a12785256b1b006ac5ad/3e173fa8463ec3f6852572ec00412ebd?OpenDocument
This website is from the city of Savannah, GA. It discusses the different laws and the timeline regarding slavery in Savannah.

Other books:
Saving Savannah
Savannah Tempest: the Hidden Savannah

Investigator Ch 1-4

I found it very interesting that Sarah and France's mother was an English actress, and was only allowed to see her children only twice a year. I questioned why did their mother marry their father, if she had such strong feelings against slavery? I did a little research about actress Fanny Kemble and about her marriage to Pierce Butler. Fanny came from a famous theatrical family and in 1832 she toured the US. She was a very independent woman and had strong beliefs about anti-slavery. She married Pierce Butler in 1834 whom was a Philadelphia native, but inherited his family's Georgia plantation only after their two daughters were born. In 1838 they traveled south to inspect their new land and 1000 slaves, and she was shocked by their living conditions. She kept a one year account recording the horror's of slavey, and published her observations in "Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation." Her work was praised by abolitionists and union supports across the country. She left the south in 1839; the couple divorced in 1849. She continued acting to support herself and writing against slavery. She never remarried.