The Princeton Fugitive Slave: The Trials of James Collins Johnson. By Lolita Buckner Inniss. Notes, Bibliography, and Index. 272 pp., 2019. Fordham University Press, www.fordhampress.com, cloth, $29.95.
Reviewed by David Marshall
Lolita Inniss tells the story of James Johnson, a runaway slave from Maryland who ended up in Princeton, N.J., in The Princeton Fugitive Slave. In 1839, Johnson found his way to this college town in New Jersey where he obtained a job and became someone well known by many. Working on campus in 1843, he was recognized by a student from Maryland and arrested on suspicion of being a fugitive. Johnson’s owner came to the college and had him taken to jail and kept there until his trial based on the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act. He was convicted and shortly before being returned to his former life, a local
100 Significant Civil War Photographs: Atlanta Campaign presents a riveting collection of George Barnard’s camera work. Most of the photographs are from Barnard’s time in Atlanta, mid-September to mid-November 1864, during the Federal occupation of the city. With this volume, Stephen Davis advances the scholarly literature of
white women paid off his former titleholder.
In The Trials of James Collins Johnson, offers a fascinating tale of a man who spent several years paying off his debt and how he lived a fascinating life. He became an independent entrepreneur at Princeton who came in contact with many people throughout a six-decade life on campus. At his death in 1902, students described him as “the students’ friend”. This was a man who had freedom, safety, and independence for sixty-three years.
The author makes an insightful question regarding Johnson keeping his feelings to himself throughout his time dealing with many students, Princeton employees, and well-known local citizens. A second intriguing question that the writer covers is who betrayed Johnson to his former owner. In the end, Innis proposes that the Princeton University provost actually was involved in laying out school funds to buy the former slave’s freedom. As he often indicated to people, the college owned him. This man’s life is one of being a slave in the Mid-Atlantic, the challenges of living at a university during the Antebellum Era in New Jersey, and being an independent business person safe and secure for the balance of a productive and long existence.
This new and interesting title consists of seven very readable chapters and a narrative that was difficult to put down. She writes about the life of James Collins Johnson in Maryland, and how he was able to flee from his captives. The author explains the minutiae of Johnson’s move to Princeton and how he succeeded in fitting into the college community. The third chapter is the most complete in detailing the main character’s experience of disloyalty and detention. An excellent point this writer addresses are the different people who were involved with the main character’s arrest. Chapter four analyzes the fugitive slave trial, who the lawyers and jurors were, and how they arrived at their guilty verdict. Chapter 5 elucidates how Johnson went from a slave to a free person. An intriguing point brought up concerns the former slave’s patron and the prominent family she was a member of. Chapter six defines Johnson’s life after the trial and contests the appearance of this man as a typical free person during Jim Crow but someone who made a successful independent life as an entrepreneur. The concluding chapter goes over the book’s central ideas
The cameramen include the better-known, such as George N. Barnard and George S. Cook, as well as some lesser-known ones: Samuel Cooley, Charles Quinby, the partners Haas & Peale, Osborn & Durbec.
Text by Stephen Davis and Jack Melton accompanies each featured photograph, describing the pictured scenes and the history surrounding them. The selected images depict a variety of settings: that portion of Charleston known as The Battery, the “Burnt District” (the area of the city destroyed by the Great Fire of December 1861), the Charleston Arsenal, and the many churches that allow Charlestonians to call theirs “the Holy City.” Special sections of this book are devoted to the huge Blakely guns imported from England by the Confederates and close-ups of Barnard’s views.
The history of Civil War Charleston goes back to The Defense of Charleston Harbor (1890) by John Johnson, Confederate major of engineers, and to Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-’61 (1876) by Capt. Abner Doubleday, Federal second-in-command. Since Charlestonians have contributed to the history of their city, notably Robert N. Rosen and Richard W. Hatcher III. The historical text surrounding 100 Significant Photographs draws on these and other works. A unique feature is its reliance upon the writings of actual participants, such as Augustine T. Smythe (1842–1914) and Emma Edwards Holmes (1838–1910).
As a contribution to this literature, 100 Significant Civil War Photographs: Charleston in the War offers rewards for all readers, from the casual novice to the serious student.
and makes excellent conclusions that will cause some readers to rethink their own opinions of runaway slaves and free people.
Disappointing is Inniss’s inability to write about Johnson’s life prior to 1839. This would have completed the story and provided a much greater context to what he became. Sadly, Johnson failed to leave any writing of his life prior to 1839. However, this writer does full justice to the unfolding drama in a narrative rich in biographical detail and perceptive analysis. She was able obtain a great deal of information from primary source material in the Princeton College records, census records, newspapers, family records, and local histories, that discloses Johnson’s life story. One fascinating anecdotal point the author found is that Jonson was well known on campus but nicknamed by Princeton students as “Jim Stink” which says a great deal of the individuals he came in
This book is highly recommended for a short but insightful look at the life of James Johnson, a runaway slave, whose freedom during the antebellum period and the Jim Crow era is threatened by lack of opportunity and a local interpretation of several disputed laws. It is a thought-provoking study that should be required reading for students and enthusiasts of an often-neglected topic.
David Marshall is a high school American history teacher in the Miami-Dade School district for the past thirty-three years. A lifelong Civil War enthusiast, David is president of the Miami Civil War Roundtable Book Club. In addition to numerous reviews in Civil War News and other publications, he has given presentations to Civil War Round Tables on Joshua Chamberlain, Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln, and the Battle of Gettysburg.