Summary
Grandison stands before the colonel and Dick with his hat in his hand. Colonel Owens asks if he has always treated Grandison right, giving him all he’s wanted to eat and as much whiskey and tobacco as is good for him. Grandison replies to each question with: “Yas, marster.” Grandison confirms he is better off than the “free negroes down by the plank road” who have no master to look after them or mistress to give them medicine when sick. Grandison says it’s sad they don’t belong to anyone. He says that if anyone asks him who he belongs to, he is not ashamed to tell them.
Grandison's praise and gratitude make the colonel beam. He becomes indignant at the thought that any wicked person would want to break up the blissful relationship of a slave-master offering protection in exchange for loyalty and subordination. Colonel Owens tells Grandison that he will join Dick on his trip and warns him to watch out for the abolitionists “who try to entice servants from their comfortable homes and their indulgent masters.” He says Canada is a dreary country full of snow, wildcats, and bears, where runaway slaves get sick, starve, and die un-cared for.
Grandison says he’d hit any abolitionist who came to him, a statement that delights Colonel Owens. Colonel Owens tells him to stick by Dick for protection, and Grandison is alarmed to think people might try to abduct him. Colonel Owens reassures him he’ll return safely and be rewarded well if he sticks with Dick. Colonel Owens sends him away with a pinch of his own chewing tobacco and Grandison calls him the best master in the world. Colonel Owens tells Dick he may take Grandison because he’s “abolitionist-proof.”
Dick and Grandison stay at a New York hotel designed to be comfortable for Southerners; it maintains the atmosphere of subordination between white slave owners and Black servants. Nonetheless, Dick hopes the gregarious Grandison will talk with the waiters and bellboys and soon enough become inoculated with “the virus of freedom.” Dick plans not to say anything about freedom to Grandison, worrying that it would be embarrassing for him if Grandison were caught and the truth came back to his father.
Dick spends a week or two meeting with acquaintances and making new ones, a rich and handsome young Southern gentleman having no trouble being introduced to high-society people. He thinks of Charity’s face fondly. He gives Grandison spending money and leaves him to do what he likes during the day. Every evening Dick hopes Grandison will have run away, but inevitably Grandison is there at their hotel, ready to remove Dick’s boots. One morning Dick asks Grandison if he’s met any other Black people while in New York. Grandison says he has, but they’re different from those down South, and they don’t have enough sense to know they’d be better off with a master.
After two weeks, Dick goes to Boston and writes to several well-known abolitionists whose addresses he finds in the city directory. Writing anonymously, Dick says a wicked Kentucky slaveholder is in town, staying at the Revere House. He suggests they ought to rescue the slave. Dick then sends Grandison out often on various errands. He hopes Grandison will be abducted, but Grandison always returns to the hotel.
One day Dick finds Grandison talking on the street to a white man in a clerical outfit. Grandison edges away from the man when he sees Dick approaching. Grandison immediately explains that the abolitionists have been pestering him constantly, and it has taken a lot of control not to hit them. With fear and hope, he asks Dick if they’ll go home soon. Dick reassures him they’ll return in not too long.
Irritated by Grandison’s loyalty, Dick tries once again. He goes away for a day and leaves a hundred dollars, telling Grandison to spend it because it’ll be his last chance for a while to enjoy himself in a free State. However, Grandison is still there when he comes back to the hotel. Dick writes to his father to compliment Grandison’s loyalty, saying the Boston newspaper should interview Grandison to see how content Southern slaves truly are. He also writes to Charity to tell her she’d overwhelm him with love and admiration if she knew how hard he was working for her.
Having failed to rid himself of Grandison, Dick considers his options. He could run away himself, but then Grandison would still be in the U.S., and legally a slave still. To bring Grandison to freedom, Dick needs to bring Grandison to Canada and leave him there permanently. Dick figures it would be too obvious if he extended the trip to Canada, so the best thing to do is visit Niagara Falls and leave Grandison on the Canadian side. Dick believes that once Grandison realizes he is actually free, he will stay.
Analysis
With the possibility of Tom’s escape likely, the colonel recommends his son bring Grandison instead. While Tom’s hunger for freedom was so evident that both Dick and the colonel picked up on it, Grandison’s loyalty is without question. Standing before his master, Grandison gives the colonel all the answers he wants to hear. In their exchange, the colonel perpetuates the slaveholder myth that Black people are better off being taken care of by masters, and it seems Grandison has bought into the idea himself. Having had his spirits buoyed by Grandison’s display, the colonel pronounces the man “abolitionist-proof,” thereby setting his son up with an even greater challenge.
Once in the North, Dick gives Grandison every opportunity to escape and is dismayed to find he never abandons his post. Just as the colonel predicted, Grandison is unceasingly loyal. As Grandison did with the colonel, he continues to speak of how he is better off having a master than being free; for this reason, Grandison claims he cannot relate to other Black people he meets in New York. To him, their freedom arouses pity.
After his lazy approach to emancipating Grandison fails in New York, Dick puts in slightly more effort in Boston. With Dick’s anonymous letter to local abolitionists, Chesnutt introduces another instance of comic situational irony to the story. Adopting the language of abolitionists for cynical purposes, Dick writes of himself as a wicked slaveholder, hoping to drum up enough outrage that Grandison will be abducted into freedom. The situation is so absurd that the abolitionists would never suspect a slaveholder of going to such lengths to free a recalcitrant slave.
Dick’s duplicitous letter achieves no results, however, as Grandison remains immune to the abolitionists who try to convince him to leave Dick’s service. The pressure from abolitionists seems only to make Grandison want to return to the plantation sooner. Dick then writes another duplicitous letter in which he ironically commends Grandison for his loyalty, a message sure to delight his father.
While slavery was outlawed in much of the northern United States in the 1850s, it was abolished nationwide in Canada in 1834. Because of the Fugitive Slave Act, those who escaped slavery in the South were at risk of being recaptured as long as they remained within U.S. federal jurisdiction. For this reason, between 15,000 and 20,000 Black Americans escaped to Canada in the 1850s, some of whom were freeborn people who were at risk of being captured by Southern slave hunters and sold into slavery. Suspecting Grandison wouldn’t truly feel free as long as he was in the States, Dick decides his only option is to bring Grandison to Canada.
