A01=Carol Gardner
abolitionist
abolitionist networks across states
African American activism in the North
African American pioneers in New England
African diaspora in New England
antebellum racial tensions
antislavery
Author_Carol Gardner
Black and White childhood in early America
Black church history in New England
Black leadership before the Civil War
Category=NHK
Category=NHTB
Category=NHTS
Category=WQH
civic activism in early America
Civil War
contested ideas of liberty
dual family biography of race and class
economics
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
equality
ethics
everyday life in port cities
family histories of freedom and oppression
forgotten abolitionist leaders
forgotten figures of abolition
forgotten Maine history of race and slavery
free Black community in Maine
freedom
Gordon family
grassroots equal rights campaigns
hidden history of Maine
hidden history of the North
interracial childhood friendships
Maine
Maine history beyond lighthouses
Maine shipping industry
Maine Underground Railroad connections
maritime trade and human bondage
maritime wealth and moral conflict
Missouri Compromise
moral contradictions of prosperity
moral dilemmas of maritime commerce
New England connections to Africa and the Caribbean
New England in the age of slavery
New England sea captains
nineteenth century New England race relations
nineteenth-century history
Northern complicity in slavery
Northern perspectives on slavery
Northern ports and global trade
Portland
Portland Maine maritime history
racism
Ruby family
seafaring family rivalries
segregation
social divisions in the Free States
transatlantic slave trade narratives
Underground Railroad
untold Northern struggles for equality
Product details
- ISBN 9781625348753
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 25 Apr 2025
- Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Reuben Ruby and Nathaniel Gordon II were born eleven months apart in 1798 and 1799 and spent much of their boyhoods roaming the noisy, bustling waterfront of Portland, Maine. They lived just blocks from one another, attended school together, and went to the same church with their families. But they were worlds apart, separated by family, culture, and race. Reuben Ruby was Black and Nathaniel Gordon was white.
The Rubys became prominent antislavery activists, equal rights advocates, and operatives on the Underground Railroad. Their neighbors, the Gordons, became well-to-do ship masters, owners, and merchants: among them, the most notorious American slave ship captain of the century, Nathaniel Gordon III. As activists, sea captains, businessmen, prospectors, and politicians, members of these two families traveled to New York, California, Texas, Louisiana, Africa, Haiti, and Brazil, where their experiences were shaped by their racial identities. At home in the “Free North,” they faced social and political divisions nearly as sharp as those they encountered elsewhere.
To understand the issues that divided nineteenth-century America—and, in many ways, still divide the nation—few have looked to the far North. In this compelling narrative history and intimate dual-family biography, Carol Gardner traces the Rubys and Gordons as they navigate the turbulent 1800s. As families and individuals, they demonstrate that the North was a critical proving ground for American notions of freedom and equality, as telling as any town, plantation, or battlefield in the South. Their experiences help reveal what it meant to live in a free state during the age of slavery, with all the promise, disappointment, irony, and hope that the notion entailed.
The Rubys became prominent antislavery activists, equal rights advocates, and operatives on the Underground Railroad. Their neighbors, the Gordons, became well-to-do ship masters, owners, and merchants: among them, the most notorious American slave ship captain of the century, Nathaniel Gordon III. As activists, sea captains, businessmen, prospectors, and politicians, members of these two families traveled to New York, California, Texas, Louisiana, Africa, Haiti, and Brazil, where their experiences were shaped by their racial identities. At home in the “Free North,” they faced social and political divisions nearly as sharp as those they encountered elsewhere.
To understand the issues that divided nineteenth-century America—and, in many ways, still divide the nation—few have looked to the far North. In this compelling narrative history and intimate dual-family biography, Carol Gardner traces the Rubys and Gordons as they navigate the turbulent 1800s. As families and individuals, they demonstrate that the North was a critical proving ground for American notions of freedom and equality, as telling as any town, plantation, or battlefield in the South. Their experiences help reveal what it meant to live in a free state during the age of slavery, with all the promise, disappointment, irony, and hope that the notion entailed.
Carol Gardner is author of The Involuntary America: A Scottish Prisoner’s Journey to the New World. She has written pieces for The Washington Post, Portland Press Herald, Time-Life Books, and The Women’s Review of Books, among others. She collaborated on content development, writing, and editing for Blue Planet Quarterly, a magazine on ocean issues.
