Walker, Jonathan (abolitionist)

During his youth in Massachusetts, Walker learned to swim and became the captain of a fishing vessel. At the beginning of 1837, he went to Florida and became a railway contractor. He was interested in the condition of the slaves, and in 1844 Walker helped many of them when they tried to escape in an open boat from the coast of Florida to the British West Indies .. He was sent in shackles aboard the OSS General Taylor Template: USS in Pensacola , where was imprisoned, chained to the floor, and deprived of light and normal food. Walker later wrote about the humiliating conditions inside the prison and the cruelty towards slaves.

Presenting himself before a federal court, Walker was convicted and sentenced to be tied to a pillory and publicly stigmatizing his right palm with the letters “SS” (“slave kidnapper”), as well as to imprisonment and heavy fines. But for some, he was the "Savior of slaves." USA Marshal Eben Dorr, a slave trader, stigmatized with hot iron. ^[1] Walker was then returned to prison, where he spent eleven months, and was released only after the northern abolitionists paid his fine.

For five years after his release, Walker gave lectures on slavery in the northern and western States. He moved to Michigan in 1850 and lived near Muskegon by the lake until his death. He is buried there along with his wife, who survived him for seven years and two sons who died early. A monument was erected there.

Walker inspired John Greenleaf Whittier to write the poem The Man with the Stigma. ^[2] Whittier heard about him after reading a book entitled “With the Convivial Process and the Imprisonment of Jonathan Walker.” ^[3]