BIBFRAME Work

Title

The divided north

Other Titles (e.g. Variant)

Black and white families in the age of slavery

Type

  • Text
  • Monograph

Contribution

Subject

Genre Form

Language

Classification

Content

Supplementary content

Summary

"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"-- Provided by publisher.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Family portraits in black and white -- Free state -- Free trade -- Towns divided -- Metropolis of liberty -- Gold rush -- Fugitives -- Freebooters -- The War Within the States -- Carpetbaggers and Exodusters -- Up in smoke -- Family fortunes -- Epilogue: Lost and found.

Authorized Access Point

Gardner, Carol, 1954-. The divided north

Geographic Coverage

Admin Metadata

  • Date: 2026-09-11T21:06:54.938240+00:00
  • Agent: cbc
  • Status: c
  • Derived from: 24042544

Admin Metadata

  • Date: 2026-09-11
  • Cataloger id: Unknown
  • Description level: http://id.loc.gov/ontologies/bibframe-2-6-0/
  • Description language: eng
  • Description authentication: pcc

Alternative Formats

Blue Core Actions

  • Load to Marva Marva loads Instances, not Works. Open one of this Work's Instances and load that into Marva instead.
  • Load to Sinopia
  • Export to Catalog Only Instances can be exported. Open one of this Work's Instances and export that instead.