(Excerpt from The Rev. J. W. Loguen, as a Slave and as a F...)
Excerpt from The Rev. J. W. Loguen, as a Slave and as a Freeman: A Narrative of Real Life Again. For obvious reasons, we have not always used real names when writing of real persons for we would not involve living friends, or their families, for their good deeds. We refer now to Mr. Loguen's life in Tennessee, not to his life in New York, or Canada. In Tennessee, slavery rules the tongue, the press, and the pen. In New York and Canada, these are given to free judgment and discretion. At the north, men are answerable for such judgment and discretion to the law only. At the south, they are amenable to an over grown monster that devours alike law and humanity. At the south, we give Mr. Loguen's connection with slavery, and therefore conceal names. At the north, we give his connection with liberty, and therefore give names of friends and enemies alike. Because the circuit of Mr. Loguen's activities has been large, We have necessarily followed him all around the course; and have been obliged briefly to note the growth of public Opinion in favor of freedom, until freedom snapped her cords in Syracuse, and in the country around Syracuse, and in other places. In doing so, we have given particulars, and used the names of friends and foes with absolute truthfulness. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Jermain Wesley Loguen was born on February 5, 1813 near Manscoe's Creek in Davidson County, Tennessee, United States, the natural son of a white resident, David Logue, and a slave mother, Cherry, who had been kidnapped in Ohio. The story of the experiences of Cherry and her family forms one of the blackest pictures of the slavery system.
He studied at Oneida Institute, Whitesboro, where he received the only schooling he had.
Jermain long planned to break away from slavery, but determined never to buy his freedom. Although his first attempt at escape failed, the sale of his sister aroused anew his resolution. The account of his flight through Kentucky and southern Indiana, antecedent to the organization of the Underground Railroad, shows that the preliminary surveys for that system had been made and that a few lines already ran through the homes of Quakers as unerringly as railroads run through the large towns and cities. Jermain crossed from Detroit to Canada, making his way to Hamilton, Ontario, in search of work. Writing to Frederick Douglass in May 1856, he refers to this episode as "twenty-one years ago--the very winter I left my chains in Tennessee" and to himself as "a boy twenty-one years of age (as near as I know my age). " This statement furnishes the best available guide to the chronology of his early life.
In Canada, he learned to read, while by hard farm labor and thrift, in the face of great discouragement, he made a start towards competency. He worked as a porter in a hotel at Rochester, New York for two years. He then opened a school for colored children in Utica, and later one in Syracuse. Settling in Syracuse shortly afterward, he became one of the local managers of the Underground Railroad. He subsequently became an elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, with successive pastorates (1843 - 1850) in Bath, Ithaca, Syracuse, and Troy. He was presiding elder of the last-named district. He had begun to call himself Loguen, and through the persuasion of his Methodist friends he adopted Wesley as his middle name.
As a speaker against slavery he aroused much interest. Citizens of Cortland, New York, raised a fund to purchase his mother, but her master, Manasseth Logue, a brother of David, refused to sell her unless Jermain would buy his freedom also. His liberty imperiled by the Fugitive-slave Act of 1850, he left Troy and returned to the comparative safety of Syracuse, where his home again became an important station of the Underground Railroad.
During the decade before the Civil War, he was a central figure in the activities of that organization, especially such as centered around his Peterboro neighbor, Gerrit Smith. In various ways he assisted some fifteen hundred fugitives. Indicted for participation in the "Jerry rescue" case (1851), he sought temporary refuge in Canada.
Just before John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, Loguen went again into Ontario with John Brown, Jr. , in behalf of the League of Liberty and possibly also to further plans of the elder Brown. In 1864, Loguen declined election as a bishop of his denomination, but accepted in 1868, and was assigned to the Fifth District (Allegheny and Kentucky conferences). After two years he was transferred to the Second District (Genesee, Philadelphia, and Baltimore conferences). In 1872 he was reelected bishop and appointed to take charge of mission work on the Pacific Coast, but he died at Saratoga Springs, New York, before he could go to his field.
Jermain Wesley Loguen served as a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church from 1868 till 1872 and championed missionary work among the freedmen in New York. He also became a well known abolitionist speaker and authored an autobiography, "The Rev. J. W. Loguen, as a Slave and as a Freeman, a Narrative of Real Life".
(Excerpt from The Rev. J. W. Loguen, as a Slave and as a F...)
Loguen married Caroline Storum, a woman with some negro blood at Busti, New York in November 1840. He had six children.
