Harriet Tubman’s Presence in Troy
Buoyed by the Republican victory in Connecticut, a Massachusetts anti-slavery coalition announces a convention and invites Harriet Tubman to attend. On her way there in late April, she stops in Troy, New York just as a mob of angry liberals begins to form around a jail. Inside, a captured runaway slave is held, to be returned South to his owner – but Tubman leads the mob to break into jail and free the man. Weeks later, her firestorm has not quieted at all. Into this environment, Sperry’s recruitment letter to newspaper editors boasts that “wherever the fight is hottest, there is their post of duty, and there the Wide Awakes are found.” A Troy Wide Awakes chapter forms, made up of Irish factory workers who perpetually battle for higher wages – standing alongside the newly fired-up abolitionists. The Irish Wide Awakes of Troy travel to take part in Wide Awake rally excursions with chapters in Pittsfield MA, Burlington VT, Albany NY, and even Newark NJ.