"A Plausible Man: The Storied Life of Fugitive Slave and Transatlantic Agitator, John Andrew Jackson"

In 1846 John Andrew Jackson escaped from an inland South Carolina plantation and, with courage and luck, made his way to Massachusetts. On his way to Canada he hid with the then obscure magazine writer and Bowdoin faculty wife, Harriet Beecher Stowe, just a few weeks before she began Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Eventually he toured England and Scotland and lectured on abolition, returning to the U. S. after the war. He settled first in Springfield, Massachusetts and then in New Haven CT to work as a laborer during the day but at night as a tireless philanthropist, lecturer, and advocate for the destitute South Carolina freedmen.

His narrative of 1862 is little-known, as is the complex life he had for the decades afterwards when he sought to bring the broken parts of the Union together. Dr. Ashton’s research on Jackson’s life begins as a portrait of a man but is also about the archive of the marginal, the folklore of the underground, and the forgotten networks that make up how we see our histories and our communities. This talk is part of the GLC Brown Bag Lunch Series. Bring your lunch and we’ll provide the drinks & dessert.