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1032 HISTORICAL ANNOTATION

Thome and Joseph Horace Kimball provide numerous accounts of the response to the
abolition of slavery in the island of Antigua. As one eyewitness describes it, on the
stroke of midnight a black congregation "broke forth in prayer; they shouted, they
sung, 'Glory,' 'alleluia,' they clapped their hands, leaped up, fell down, clasped each
other in their free arms, cried, laughed, and went to and fro, tossing upward their
unfettered hands." Thome and Kimball describe other, similar scenes of prayer and
rejoicing from ex-slaves during this day of emancipation, although other forms of
celebration, including drumming, dancing, drinking, and torchlight processions, were
reported in Jamaica and Trinidad. Thome and Kimball, Emancipation Day in the West Indies, 114-17; J. R. Kerr-Ritchie, Rites of August First: Emancipation Day in the
Black Atlantic World (Baton Rouge, La., 2007), 17-25 .

471.5-8 "When a deed ... East to West."] Douglass quotes the first lines of James
Russell Lowell's poem 'The Present Crisis." Lowell, Poetical Works, 1:185.

472.5-6 William Knibb] Born in Kettering, England, William Knibb (1803-43)
was a printer's apprentice before he became affiliated with the London-based Baptist
Missionary Society. Along with Thomas Burchell, Knibb was sent as a missionary to
the black population of Jamaica in 1824, eventually heading the mission post at
Falmouth. Harassed even before the Jamaician slave insurrection of 1831-32. Knibb
and Burchell were persecuted during and shortly after it by Jamaician authorities and
white colonists who held them responsible for this so-called Baptist War. Both men
were arrested and tried for inciting slave insurrection but were acquitted because
evidence against them had been fabricated. Nevertheless, proslavery mobs, composed
partly of militia, destroyed the chapels, manses, and personal effects of both men. The
missionaries fled the island in spring 1832. Knibb went to England, where he lectured
extensively on behalf of West Indian emancipation for the Anti-Slavery Agency. By
1834 the two men were able to return to Jamaica, where they spent the rest of their
lives expanding their missionary operations, working with the freed people, and
speaking out against the abuses of the apprenticeship system and the imposition of the
planter class. Knibb attended the 1840 World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London.
[William Knibb], Facts and Documents Connected with the Late Insurrection in
Jamaica (London, 1832); John H. Hinton, Memoir of William Knibb, Missionary in
Jamaica (London, 1847); Philip Wright, Knibb "The Notorious": Slaves' Missionary,
1803-1845 ( London, 1973).

473.37-38 Fremont's order, freeing the slaves of the rebels in Missouri] On 30
August 1861, John Charles Fremont, commanding general of the Western Department,
issued a proclamation from his headquarters in St. Louis that instituted martial law in
Missouri, threatened to execute those found guilty of bearing arms against the federal
government, and declared free the slaves of all persons in Missouri who were aiding
the Confederacy. In a letter of 11 September 1861, President Lincoln ordered Fremont
to amend the portion of his proclamation concerning slaves so that it would conform
to the Confiscation Act of 6 August 1861. That act deprived the owners of slaves
being used to aid the rebellion or their claim to the labor of such slaves but did not