How the the story of the slave who inspired ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ still has lessons for South Carolina | Opinion

Enslaved farmhand John Andrew Jackson fled a plantation in Sumter County by riding a horse along the roads towards Charleston. This brazen escape happened in 1846, as he fled on Christmas Day by posing as a man with authority, a man with a plan, a man with a horse.

It worked. Jackson made it to Charleston and observed dockworkers until he could figure out a way to hide aboard a northbound ship.

Suspicious locals challenged him — “Who do you belong to?”

Jackson dodged the question by stoutly asserting: “I belong to South Carolina.”

It was a nonsensical answer but delivered with enough bravado to dissuade harassment.

He later noted: “It was none of their business to whom I belonged. I was trying to belong to myself.”

This was just the beginning of Jackson’s story.

His story and his determination to always remain a South Carolinian should represent to us today the kind of inclusive and determined love that can save us. To broaden stories of our state to include people who have been dispossessed, disenfranchised and disappeared, such as Jackson, is to honor our complete history.

In my new book, “A Plausible Man, the True Story of the Escaped Slave who Inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” I tell the incredible story of Jackson, a self-made man in every sense of the word — he was raised to be a machine for picking cotton, but instead charted out a life which would feature mistakes and misadventures but would be his to shape. He would always fight for change.

And while I discovered that Jackson’s life was attached to one of the most consequential novels that changed the world, we can see that his real story was always his, a man from South Carolina who never gave up on the state, even when it gave up on him.

Jackson eventually managed to make it to Boston. He found friends and allies in the North, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” who hid him as he fled to Canada. After a few years in Canada, he moved to England, and wrote a memoir of his life.

For almost a decade, he lectured about slavery in Great Britain, trying to change the world one heart at a time.

As soon as the American Civil War ended, he sailed back to the United States. Rather than retire quietly, he worked for the next 35 years to stitch the nation back together. He traveled between New England and South Carolina, raising money for the freed people, distributing supplies, and trying to establish schools and churches in Sumter County. He even raised funds to house Black families on some land in Sumter — land formerly owned by Jackson’s former enslaver.

This scheme failed. A lot of his schemes failed. He wasn’t discouraged. He was unstoppable.

He was thrown off trains when protesting ill treatment. In North Carolina, he was found guilty of fraudulent solicitation and placed on a convict labor gang. That would have humbled most men, but he escaped. Records show that he continued to raise money for South Carolinians for years thereafter.

While he died in the early 20th century, his legacy was one of positivity and love for his community. He wasn’t going to quit on South Carolina.

Jackson’s comment that he “belonged to South Carolina” wasn’t just bluster. It was an aside which spoke a deeper truth: He did belong to South Carolina.

Jackson’s story isn’t well known. Indeed, it was largely lost until recently. But he offers a model for citizens seeking to rise, to help others never to forget their roots and to see different parts of our nation as always connected.

Those final years of his life when he moved between the northern and southern states, trying to bring the nation together to see that anyone’s need is everyone’s need, model a kind of compassion we could use today.

Jackson’s story is uniquely South Carolinian — he believed that he belonged to this state even when he fought against forces that saw him as a divisive troublemaker.

At a time when South Carolina needs more heroes, we should seek to broaden access to hard histories to see anew the rich, rough beauty of our heritage.