ABSTRACT

On 1 October 1851, in Syracuse, New York, a man named Jerry was arrested by federal marshals acting under the authority of the Fugitive Slave Act. Within hours, Jerry was freed by a crowd and, several days later, surreptitiously transported to Canada and freedom. Two years after these events, the defendants in what became known as the Jerry rescue case still had not been tried. Protesting what it saw as “the indirect punishment of persons obnoxious to the Government, whom it does not hope to con­ vict,” the abolitionist paper The Liberator exclaimed, “Had we an Ameri­ can Dickens, this might afford a text for a new Bleak House, quite as suggestive as the Court of Chancery itself. But, le bon temps viendral Better times will come.”1 And so better times did come, indeed had already come, if better times mean new Bleak Houses, Americanized and even African Americanized Bleak Houses. Antebellum African Americans and aboli­ tionists seized upon Bleak House and put it to work in a surprising number of ways, from brief if suggestive references such as this one to reprintings of the novel in whole or in part and from the literal reenactment of one of its events to an actual rewriting of the novel in something like the way The Liberator envisioned.