Wednesday, March 7, 2007

John Brown's Last Trip Across Iowa

John Brown's early-1859 last trip across Iowa is the only Iowa story told by Fergus Bordewich in his 2005 book Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America.

Bordewich posted that passage on his blog at http://www.fergusbordewich.com/blog/archives/2006/01/john_browns_sub.html. I added a comment expanding on his account of J.B. Grinnell arranging for the boxcar that took the freedom seeking band from West Liberty to Chicago. In a gracious private reply, he thanked me and said he had "planned a chapter about the UGRR in the 'West' -- that is, the western Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, and Kansas," but ran out of time. "I know that there's a lot of excellent material in that region yet to be pulled together," he said.

That pretty well sums up my purpose for launching this new blog.

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