I recall three occasions as a child where my father turned the car into the shady and ragged Evergreen Cemetery.
"Dad...what are we doing here?"
Always cryptic about his motives "Just paying respects."
I'd follow him beneath the cool shade of oaks to a small, relatively unknown stone obelisk carved with a sideways hand marked SS, and the words:
Capt.
Walker's
Branded
Hand.
And we'd just stand there. My dad looking at the stone. Me kicking at the grass impatiently.
"Daaaaaaaaad....can we gooooooo?"
"Son..."
Silence.
"When did he die?"
"1878. That SS on his hand was put there by the US Government. They branded it SS for Slave Stealer."
"Dad...? What does brand mean?"
"It means they heated up a piece of iron until it was white hot and fried the letters into his skin."
In 1844 the United States government locked Captain Johnathan Walker's head and hands in a wooden pillory, heated a branding iron in a kiln, and seared the letters SS into his flesh for the crime of attempting to smuggle 7 slaves to freedom on a fishing boat headed for the British West Indies. Those Brits apparently have been one step ahead of us in certain questions of progressive action for quite some time...in some things, anyway.
While in prison in Florida he was chained to the floor and deprived of food and light. And then the US Government bound this guy and branded his right hand, and imprisoned him in the name of enforcing the ownership of human beings. The US Government. Walker was the only man in US history to be branded by a Federal court (branded OUTSIDE a Federal court, that's a different story).
Originally from Massachusetts, Walker grew up in a very Anti-Slavery town and started his young career as a fishing boat captain. That's where the "Captain" title comes from. But it seems the guy fell in love with the beauty of the South and its warm climate. But there was that whole slavery thing that never seemed to sit right with him. And to make matters worse he was a railroad contractor and he watched ill treated slaves worked all day every day, worked to death.
He worked with Africans that did the same work for far less pay [Wait...pay? Hm]. He was nursed back to health by strangers who had dark skin. He saw the evils of slavery in the fields
-- article
One hot, sultry coastal Florida night, with the rhythmic sound of waves in the background he agreed to help 4 slaves escape to the British West Indies for their freedom...but three more showed up. And who can blame that? Walker set off on the journey but midway through he was overtaken by violent illness and was unable to sail, which kinda sucked because he was the only one on the ship who knew HOW to sail. All eight faced a drowning death until by chance a wrecking sloop found them and brought them back to Key West.
I don't know what happened to the slaves from there. I can almost guarantee it was far less pleasant than what happened to Captain Walker. None the less, Walker went on "trial" and endured months of food and light deprivation, and was then sentenced by a US Martial to a branding.
SS
Slave Stealer.
Slave Savior, some later called him.
He sat in prison for nearly a year until a group of abolitionists raised enough money to free him. He then spent the next five years going from town to town showing people his hand and telling them about the evils of slavery and the government's complicity in it. As my father tells it, he went from bar to bar telling the story. And that sounds more likely, being a man of the sea. This guy with a branded hand sits down next to you at a bar...conversations are sure to start. But whether it's bar to bar, or church to church, or town square to town square, he spent five years of his life actively educating Americans about the abolitionist cause, and the inhumanity of slavery.
I have long since cast into oblivion all sectional and hostile feelings toward my fellow-man. I have no ill-will to the slave-holders, or the advocates of slavery; but I pity them for their awful depravity in regarding as property those who are, by the rules of right and the laws of god, entitled to the same privileges and benefits as themselves. It is the system of slavery, that sheds mildew upon the fair prospects of our country -- blasting its social, political, moral, and religious prosperity -- which I do unhesitatingly contend against...
--Trial and Imprisonment of Jonathan Walker
He then settled in Muskegon, and incidentally lived the rest of his life as a blueberry farmer. Upon his death his memory was given a small memorial tombstone.
The poet Johnathan Wittier wrote a poem about this early abolitionist entitled "The Branded Hand"
THE BRANDED HAND
by John Greenleaf Whittier
Welcome home again, brave seaman! with thy thoughtful brow and gray,
And the old heroic spirit of our earlier, better day;
With that front of calm endurance, on whose steady nerve in vain
Pressed the iron of the prison, smote the fiery shafts of pain.
Is the tyrant's brand upon thee? Did the brutal cravens aim
To make God's truth thy falsehood, His holiest work thy shame?
When, all blood-quenched, from the torture the iron was withdrawn,
How laughed their evil angel the baffled fools to scorn!
They change to wrong the duty which God hath written out
On the great heart of humanity, too legible for doubt!
They, the loathsome moral lepers, blotched from footsole up to crown,
Give to shame what God hath given unto honor and renown!
Why, that brand is highest honor! than its traces never yet
Upon old armorial hatchments was a prouder blazon set;
And thy unborn generations, as they tread our rocky strand,
Shall tell with pride the story of their father's branded hand!
As the Templar home was welcome, bearing back-from Syrian wars
The scars of Arab lances and of Paynim scimitars,
The pallor of the prison, and the shackle's crimson span,
So we meet thee, so we greet thee, truest friend of God and man.
He suffered for the ransom of the dear Redeemer's grave,
Thou for His living presence in the bound and bleeding slave;
He for a soil no longer by the feet of angels trod,
Thou for the true Shechinah, the present home of God.
For, while the jurist, sitting with the slave-whip o'er him swung,
From the tortured truths of freedom the lie of slavery wrung,
And the solemn priest to Moloch, on each God-deserted shrine,
Broke the bondman's heart for bread, poured the bondman's blood for wine;
While the multitude in blindness to a far-off Saviour knelt,
And spurned, the while, the temple where a present Saviour dwelt;
Thou beheld'st Him in the task-field, in the prison shadows dim,
And thy mercy to the bondman, it was mercy unto Him!
In thy lone and long night-watches, sky above and wave below,
Thou didst learn a higher wisdom than the babbling schoolmen know;
God's stars and silence taught thee, as His angels only can,
That the one sole sacred thing beneath the cope of heaven is Man!
That he who treads profanely on the scrolls of law and creed,
In the depth of God's great goodness may find mercy in his need;
But woe to him who crushes the soul with chain and rod,
And herds with lower natures the awful form of God!
Then lift that manly right-hand, bold ploughman of the wave!
Its branded palm shall prophesy, "Salvation to the Slave!"
Hold up its fire-wrought language, that whoso reads may feel
His heart swell strong within him, his sinews change to steel.
Hold it up before our sunshine, up against our Northern air;
Ho! men of Massachusetts, for the love of God, look there!
Take it henceforth for your standard, like the Bruce's heart of yore,
In the dark strife closing round ye, let that hand be seen before!
And the masters of the slave-land shall tremble at that sign,
When it points its finger Southward along the Puritan line
Can the craft of State avail them? Can a Christless church withstand,
In the van of Freedom's onset, the coming of that band?
Now, over 150 years later, his grave and life are little known.
The Johnathan Walker memorial website has been visited 817 times since September 1st 2000.
But there are some, mostly relatives, who aim to keep the story and history alive.
I find it a compelling story of civil disobedience, and a man who refused to be silent and used his enemies punishments against them. It's people like this who energized Americans to stand up for what's right at great sacrifice to themselves and their loved ones. And America became the stronger for it.
Further reading
http://sonnetsat4am.blogspot.com/...
http://co.muskegon.mi.us/...
This is a repost from a diary I wrote in May 2009