Frederick Douglass and "Allender's Jake": a research note

There are very few people who will be interested in this post, but for the few among you who study Frederick Douglass, a small research discovery.

Jake Ellis -- aka "Allender's Jake", aka William Dixon -- the fugitive slave Douglass encountered on his first day of freedom in New York City, the one who warned him about slave catchers and who was at the center of a years-long legal battle that pulled in underground railroad conductor David Riggles -- was not the property of Dr. Joseph Allender, as Blassimgame et al. suggested in the footnotes to their (excellent) annotated edition of My Bondage, My Freedom.

Period newspaper accounts of Ellis's trip explicitly say Ellis was the property of "Dr. William T. Alexander" of Baltimore. They got the name wrong. This would be William T. Allender (1807-1880), Dr. Alexander's son.

That is all. You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

Speaking on American Nations / American Character, Bath, Maine, Mar. 2

I'm pleased to be speaking about North American regionalism, the central political argument it has fostered over the past 400 years, how it interacts with Trumpism, and the path forward to shoring up the world's oldest liberal democracy.... all on March 2nd at the Patten Free Library in Bath, Maine.

The event, based on American Nations and American Character, kicks off at 10:30 am and is free and open to the public. More details here.

My next American Character talk is at the HR Policy Association annual meeting in Orlando later in March, but that one isn't open to the public at large.