It was the night before Christmas

[David Lockmiller]

Jarm, who escaped on his enslaver’s horse on Christmas Eve, made it to Canada, but he didn’t stay there. He soon moved to upstate New York, where he learned to read and write and took the name Jermain Wesley Loguen. He became a respected minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and opened schools for Black children, and his home became an important stop on the Underground Railroad.

But because of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Loguen was not entirely safe. Even in abolitionist-heavy New York, bounty hunters could have legally attempted to recapture him at any time.

In February 1860, 26 years after his escape, he received a letter from the widow of his enslaver demanding $1,000, or else, she threatened, she would sell him to someone who would come up and get him. Loguen’s furious reply is one for the history books and worth reading in full, but this is how he closed:

I will not budge one hair’s breadth. I will not breathe a shorter breath, even to save me from your persecutions. I stand among a free people, who, I thank God, sympathize with my rights, and the rights of mankind; and if your emissaries and venders come here to re-enslave me, and escape the unshrinking vigor of my own right arm, I trust my strong and brave friends, in this City and State, will be my rescuers and avengers.