While reading such a modern interpretation of life during segregation, it can be difficult to decipher between fact and fiction; as most of the text has obvious fictional aspects. As previously mentioned in blog post one, it involves modern cars, technology, thought processes and language. However, readers interpret text in different ways due to the individual ways of thinking that we all possess. Some have background knowledge to affirm plausibility, or some may have no knowledge at all on the topic. In my opinion, however, it is safe to say that most readers know the history of slavery in the United States.
When it comes to slavery laws being mentioned in Underground Airlines, I am genuinely interested and wanting to learn more, given that I am aiming towards my Pre-Law degree. Laws shape the government and the governed people’s (citizens) lives in many ways, especially when they are amended.
A certain court case that was mentioned regarding slave law was the Gulliver case. (Winters, 235) Based on the text provided, the case involved a Louisiana slave named Gulliver. He was brought to New York by his master for his cousin’s wedding. While the wedding reception was concluding, he was attacked outside of the nightclub. He was sent to a federal prison on a gun charge for about eight months. Abolitionists came to seek his freedom under the domicile clause. Subsequently, the abolitionists won the support of the New York circuit court, but was then denied by the Supreme Court. It all had to do with a lawyer from Alabama, who fought relentlessly to sway the opinions of the judges in the Supreme Court. What won them over was this conclusion, “Not the duration of possession but the intent of the possessor that is determinative of the statute.” (Winters, 236) This interpretation of the matter at hand was a blow for the abolitionists as Gulliver was forced to be returned to his master Peabody. He was later sold and never heard from again.
Given this tragic ending, I was questioning whether or not this occurred in history or if it is just another fictional aspect. While searching for answers, nothing came about of the Gulliver case. I conclude this occurred in history, but certain details were changed to best fit the storyline of the text. I did come across a book written by Stephen Best (published by the University of Chicago Press) titled, “The Fugitive’s Properties : Law and the Poetics of Possession”. It consists of author’s opinions and conclusions of slavery.
I was surprised that the topic of slave trade and my previously mentioned Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was in the beginning of the text. According to Harriet Stowe in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, “(Stowe ) implicitly maintains that a system of property relations indicated by yet hidden beneath the figure of blackness has two enduring effects on both property and figuration. The first is to secure a system that could only be “abolished” once the figures were “pu[t] out of memory.” The second is to create a unique species of “living property”—an everyday animism that cuts across the founding difference between persons and property and that, by turns, violates liberal standards of sovereign possession (standards in which the first thing one owns is oneself ).” (Best, 2) This statement sheds a light on the lack of human dignity towards the slaves and how much they were treated like property in the eyes of the law. This only enhances reasoning for the Supreme Court not siding with the abolitionists in the Gulliver case in Underground Airlines, as well as affirming my conclusion that the Gulliver case has fictional aspects, but more than likely is based on actual historical events.
Best, Stephen Michael. The Fugitive’s Properties Law and the Poetics of Possession. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. https://doi.org/10.7208/9780226241111.
Winters, Ben H. Underground Airlines. First edition. New York: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown and Company, 2016