Journey to Freedom: Uncovering the Grayson Sisters’ Escape from Nebraska Territory

The bold wintertime escape of two enslaved sisters and the major role their story played in national tensions leading to the Civil War is painstakingly pieced together in this revelatory debut account from historian Blankenau. In 1858, with the help of local abolitionists, Celia and Eliza Grayson fled their enslaver Stephen Nuckholls’s home in Nebraska City and crossed the Missouri River into neighboring Iowa, a free state, where for over a week they hid in the abolitionist towns of Civil Bend and Tabor as proslavery mobs crossed the border in pursuit, ransacking homes and lighting prairie fires to prevent the sisters from traveling clandestinely by night. The conflict made national headlines, provoking debate about the unclear status of slavery in the Nebraska Territory (officially neither permitted nor banned, but in practice widespread). Celia and Eliza eventually made it across Iowa and into Illinois, but in 1860 Nuckholls and his henchmen tracked down Eliza on the streets of Chicago and attempted to drag her into a carriage. A crowd formed to heckle the kidnappers, and an abolitionist lawyer began throwing punches. Eliza was arrested for “disturbing the peace,” and officials made plans to return her to Nebraska, but during a prisoner transfer, she was forcibly liberated by “Underground Railroad agents.” Blankenau paints a remarkable portrait of antebellum turmoil. It’s a vital resurfacing of a largely forgotten story. (Mar.)