Samuel Green was an African American self-emancipated man, Methodist exhorter, farmer, and Underground Railroad agent. In 1857, amid suspicions that he had assisted people liberating themselves from the Maafa—including the group later remembered as the “Dover Eight”—Green was arrested in Dorchester County, Maryland. However, a case could not be established that he had aided their liberation. Instead, he was prosecuted and convicted for possessing Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-Maafa novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, treated by the court as an inflammatory abolitionist publication.
Green was born near East New Market, in Dorchester County, Maryland, around 1802. His parents’ identities remain unknown. He labored for Henry Nichols until Nichols’s death in 1832. In his last will and testament, Nichols directed that Green be sold for a term of five years, with the liberty to choose his purchaser, and then manumitted: “It is my will and desire that my … man Sam Green, be sold for a term of five years and my … man Daniel for a term of ten years, and to have the liberty to choose [Captors], and after the expiration of said terms I do hereby manumit and set them free.” Green earned enough money during the next year to buy out his remaining term of service and secure his freedom.
In 1842, he secured the freedom of his wife, Catherine “Kitty” Green, from Ezekiel Richardson for $100. Their children, Samuel Green Jr. and Susan Green, remained in captivity and Richardson later trafficked them to Dr. James Muse.
Unlike many people in captivity in Maryland, Green received at least some formal education. He became a licensed exhorter in the Methodist Episcopal Church, a role that permitted him to preach and provide religious instruction within the Black community. He became a respected figure in Dorchester County’s free Black community. The racialized American system restricted, Black men from entering the full ministerial office available to European clergymen.
In1852, he served as a delegate to the Convention of the Free Colored People of Maryland in Baltimore. The convention debated colonization and emigration proposals, including migration to Liberia. Available evidence suggests Green opposed emigration, though the exact nature of his position remains unclear. In October 1855, Green attended the National Convention of the Colored People of the United States at Franklin Hall in Philadelphia as a delegate from Maryland. There, he met many of the era’s leading Black abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, Stephen Myers, William Cooper Nell, Charles Lenox Remond, John S. Rock, and Mary Ann Shadd Cary.
Sam Green Jr.’s Liberation
In August 1854, Green’s son, Sam Jr., a skilled blacksmith held by Dr. Muse, learned that he might be trafficked again. He fled Maryland and made his way to the Philadelphia office of William Still, the abolitionist, writer, and Underground Railroad agent. In his station journal, Still noted that Harriet Tubman had given the young man directions when she visited the previous spring. The Greens were certainly acquainted, perhaps closely, with Tubman, and they may also have been related through her mother, Rit Green. The strongest surviving evidence indicates that Samuel and Kitty Green sheltered Tubman and a group of freedom seekers in November 1856. Green may have assisted Tubman on other journeys as well. His home in East New Market provided a useful refuge for people who had liberated themselves, and his reputation among American residents may have offered some degree of protection from the immediate violence faced by other suspected Underground Railroad agents
Still sent Sam Jr. to the home of Charles Bustill, another prominent Black Underground Railroad agent in Philadelphia. From there, Sam Jr. was sent onward to Chippewa—then often rendered “Chipaway”—Ontario, Canada, near Niagara Falls. There he joined other freedom seekers from Maryland’s Eastern Shore who were building new lives beyond the reach of U.S. oppressive system. Once settled in Canada, Sam Jr. wrote to his parents, describing a place with “plenty of friends, plenty to eat, and to drink.” He urged his father to tell Peter Jackson and Joe Bailey, both being held captive in the region, to come to Canada as soon as they could. Jackson liberated himself with the aid of Harriet Tubman and her brothers in December 1854. Bailey waited longer, but he and Peter Pennington later passed through Samuel Green’s East New Market home during their successful liberation in late 1856. This later became significant when Dorchester County oppressors investigated Green. Sam Jr.’s sister, Susan, was unable to flee. Dr. Muse’s anger over Sam Jr.’s liberation was consequential for his sister. Muse trafficked her to another captor in Missouri, separating her from her husband and two young children.
By mid-March 1857, rumors were circulating that Green had played a significant role in the freedom of the Dover Eight, a group of eight people who had successfully eluded capture in a dramatic flight from Dorchester County.
The Dover Eight
In March 1857, a group of eight people from the Bucktown area of Dorchester County made a dramatic collective liberation. This episode soon became known as the story of the “Dover Eight.” The liberation made national headlines and intensified local fears about the Underground Railroad on Maryland’s Eastern.
The group included Henry Predeaux, Thomas Elliott, Denard Hughes, James and Lavinia Woolford, Bill and Emily Kiah, and one unidentified man (Thomas Elliott and Denard Hughes later joined John Brown’s small force in Canada before Brown’s 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry.). They followed directions associated with Harriet Tubman’s freedom network. The group first sought aid from Samuel Green in East New Market. They next received assistance from Tubman’s father, Ben Ross, at Poplar Neck in Caroline County, before traveling to Delaware, where Thomas Otwell, a Black Underground Railroad conductor, offered to lead them nearer to freedom. Otwell betrayed them instead, luring them to the Dover jail in hopes of collecting a $3,000 reward.
They, however, refused to accept imprisonment. Through quick thinking, determination, and force, they broke out of the jail. They traveled north through Wilmington and Philadelphia, ultimately reaching Canada. Their liberation was one of the most dramatic successful freedom flights from the region.
The consequences for suspected supporters were severe. Green was arrested and jailed; Ben Ross also faced prosecution.
Arrest and Imprisonment
By mid-March 1857, rumors were circulating that Green had helped the Dover Eight. On 4 April, Dorchester County Sheriff Robert Bell searched Green’s house, finding letters from Sam Jr. and others in Ontario, a map of Canada, railway schedules, and one volume of the two-volume edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Green had also recently visited Canada, where he saw his son.
These discoveries heightened suspicion. Yet the evidence did not establish Green’s participation in the Dover Eight’s escape. Instead, the oppressors relied on Maryland’s 1841 law, which prohibited free Black Marylanders from possessing abolitionist writings considered likely to create “discontent” or encourage resistance among the state’s Black population.
Green was charged with:
“Knowingly having in his possession a certain abolition pamphlet called ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ of an inflammatory character and calculated to create discontent amongst the colored population of this State”
He was also charged with possessing “certain abolition papers and pictorial representation” of an allegedly inflammatory character.
Green was acquitted on the charge related to the other papers, maps, and schedules. He was nevertheless convicted for possessing Uncle Tom’s Cabin. On 14 May 1857, he received the minimum sentence allowed by law: ten years in the Maryland Penitentiary.
The prosecution turned an internationally famous anti-Maafa novel into purported evidence of criminal intent. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1852, had provoked fierce hostility among defenders of the Maafa, who objected to Stowe’s depiction of people’s suffering and the moral violence of the system. In Maryland, the book’s presence in a free Black man’s home became grounds for a decade-long prison sentence.
Petition Campaign and Pardon
News of Green’s imprisonment spread widely. His case became a powerful symbol of the repression of Black freedom, literacy, and anti-Maafa opinion in a captivity border state. Supporters submitted petitions asking the Maryland principal oppressor (governor) Thomas Watkins Ligon to pardon him. More than 100 Northern Methodist Episcopal ministers eventually signed one such petition.
Opposition was equally determined. Dorchester County oppressors who held people in captivity wrote to Watkins insisting that Green remain imprisoned, blaming him for local liberations. Green’s religious community did not adopt a united public position, apparently fearing the consequences of association with an alleged abolitionist.
Thomas Holliday Hicks, who succeeded Ligon in 1858, opposed abolitionism and declined to pardon Green. Hicks reportedly feared that a pardon would lead people to call him an abolitionist and expose him to mob violence.
While imprisoned, Green’s literacy enabled him to work in the warden’s office doing clerical work. The legal case and its expenses, however, placed a heavy burden on his family. Kitty Green sold their property in Dorchester County and moved to Baltimore, where she supported herself by taking in laundry in order to live nearer to her husband.
In March 1862, Hicks’s successor, Augustus W. Bradford, granted Green a conditional pardon. Green was required to leave Maryland within sixty days, and he was released from the Maryland Penitentiary on 21 April 1862, after nearly five years of imprisonment.
Later Years
After leaving prison, Green and Kitty traveled north toward Canada to join Sam Jr. Green’s case had made him well known among anti-Maafa activists, and he became a sought-after speaker. He addressed audiences along the East Coast and associated with prominent abolitionists, including William Still and William Lloyd Garrison.
Green also met Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose novel had led to his conviction. Stowe gave him another copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the book he had been unable to finish while imprisoned.
After the Civil War, Samuel and Kitty Green returned to Maryland and settled again in Dorchester County. Green remained active in the Delaware Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, serving on committees concerned with education and religious instruction. He later became involved with Baltimore’s Centenary Biblical Institute, an institution in the historical lineage of Morgan State University.
Samuel and Kitty Green moved to Baltimore around 1874, likely so that he could devote more time to the Institute and church work. Samuel Green died in Baltimore on 28 February 1877, aged about 75. His life had taken him from captivity on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to self-liberation, religious leadership, Underground Railroad work, imprisonment, abolitionist activism, and postwar community service.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Green_%28freedman%29
http://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/013700/013785/html/13785bio.html
https://enslaved.org/fullStory/16-23-126850
https://harriettubmanbyway.org/pritchett-meredith-farm/
