Shadrach Minkins

The story of how an illiterate black man from Virginia found himself to be the catalyst of a dramatic episode of rebellion and legal wrangling before the Civil War. As the story unfolds, the reader sees what life was like for a slave in Norfolk, Virginia, and for a free black man in Montreal, where a community was established by Minkins and other refugee blacks from the United States. Minkins life is traced from Virginia to Boston to Montreal, through his arrest and rescue and the issues of urban slavery and Boston abolitionism are addressed.