A Branded Man

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Oh, these rabbit holes. And where do I find them????? One rabbit hole that I have yet to completely find my way out of involves a 19th century man by the name of Jonathan Walker. His is a fascinating story that makes me wonder why I waited until weeks before my 62nd birthday to hear of him. Jonathan Walker was born in Massachusetts in 1799. Early on he saw the evils of slavery. In 1834 he joined with a group of abolitionists who planned to start a "freed slave" colony in Mexico, where the slaves would be out of the reach of their owners. Instead, while there he was robbed of the supplies on his ship and shot by pirates. Undaunted, Captain Walker moved to Pensacola, Florida with his family in 1837. He soon sent his family back to Massachusetts, stating he didn't want his children exposed to the evils of slavery. While working as a railroad contractor his anti-slavery reputation became known among other abolitionists in the area. In 1844 he was hired to spirit seven escaped slaves away on his vessel to the Bahamas. Unfortunately, he fell ill and couldn't navigate his ship. With a $1,700 bounty on his head (that was 1844 money, remember! The online inflation calculator says that'd be about $64,000 today) ships pursued him. One found his vessel adrift and took him and the slaves to Key West, then all were returned to Pensacola. At his federal trial in November 1844 he was found guilty and sentenced to the following penalties: *One hour standing in a public pillory. *Imprisonment. *A fine. *Branding. "Branding"? Say what???? Unlike the "Branded Man" that Merle Haggard sang about, with a reputation following him, Walker was LITERALLY branded. As in, they made a branding iron (interesting fact: two blacksmiths refused to make it, stating that branding was for animals, not humans) with the letters SS (not mentioned in the newspapers of the time to have a meaning but widely regarded to mean "slave stealer"), and seared Walker's right hand for about 20 seconds. As you can imagine, the opinion of the punishment depended on whether the person opining was a slave owner or not. Someone wrote in a southern newspaper that he hoped the branding of Captain Walker would send a message to the people in the north to keep their noses out of people's business in the south. The northern papers decried the notion that a man would be branded like a cow. Friends from Massachusetts eventually raised enough money to get Walker out of prison. He returned to the north and spent much of his time as a vocal anti-slavery speaker. At the end of his lectures he would hold up his branded right hand as a symbol of what it was doing to people...and to the country. A year later Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a poem in tribute to Walker, titled The Branded Hand. Walker died on May 1, 1878 in Michigan. A monument was erected to his bravery in the cemetery where he is buried. What an amazing story. Why it is buried in the rabbit holes of history, I'll never know. More people need to know about this man. Here's a video from "The History of Pensacola" about Walker's trial: