Summary
Traveling slowly via the transportation methods available in the period, Dick and Grandison eventually make it to Niagara. For several days they walk by the Falls, and on one morning they visit the Canadian side, where they watch the wild whirl of waters below. Dick tells Grandison he is now in Canada, where his people go after running from their masters. Dick informs Grandison that he could walk away from Dick and Dick could not legally try to take him back.
Grandison looks around uneasily and tells Dick he’d like to go back to the other side. He fears losing Dick and having no master to take him home. Dick is discouraged, but says he’s going up the road. He tells Grandison to stay there until he returns. Grandison looks fearful and asks if there are any abolitionists around. Dick says he doesn’t think there is, meanwhile wishing there were. Dick walks to a British-looking stone inn and orders an ale and a sandwich. He sits at a table by the window and watches Grandison standing at his post. He hopes in vain that Grandison will leave, but Grandison ignores the spectacle of the great waterfall and stares anxiously toward the inn where Dick sits and despairs over Grandison’s fidelity. An attractive woman brings Dick’s order, and he becomes distracted by her. When he looks again, Grandison is gone.
However, Dick retraces his steps and finds Grandison sleeping on the ground, oblivious to the majestic scenery surrounding him. To himself, Dick says he doesn’t deserve to be an American citizen and to have the power he has over Grandison. He is certainly not worthy of Charity if he isn’t smart enough to get rid of Grandison. But he has an idea. Still addressing Grandison in his head, Dick tells Grandison to sleep on and dream of Kentucky because it is only in his dreams that he will see the blue skies and blue grass again.
The point of view shifts to the young woman who served Dick at the inn. She sees him walk toward the inn, stopping to speak with a colored man who works at the inn as a hostler (taking care of the guests' horses). Something passes between their hands. Duties bring her away from the window. She looks back to see that Dick is gone. The hostler is with two other men, one white and one colored, and they are walking rapidly toward the Falls.
Dick returns to Kentucky alone, having written ahead to tell his father the news. His father is angry, but more so upset that a slave he trusted betrayed him. Colonel Owens believes the false story Dick tells, and assumes the abolitionists, rather than Grandison, are really to blame. Dick tells the truth to Charity, who can’t believe he actually risked being sent to prison. Dick is upset that she is more outraged by his risk-taking than impressed by his heroism. Charity concludes that she supposes she’ll have to marry him because someone so reckless needs to be taken care of. Dick says they were made for each other.
Dick and Charity get married three weeks later. A week after the wedding, they are seated on the colonel’s piazza when the colonel’s buggy pulls into the driveway. Beside him sits Grandison, ragged, travel-stained, and weary. With an expression of joy and indignation, Colonel Owens instructs slaves to help Grandison down and bring him water and whiskey. Colonel Owens explains that three miles away he heard a voice calling from the roadside and Grandison crawled from the woods with a broken limb. Colonel Owens says the people who kidnapped him had gotten the idea he “belonged to a nigger-catcher” and was in the North to spy on runaway servants. He says Grandison was captured and taken to a hut in the forest, fed on water and bread for three weeks. They were going to kill him, but Grandison escaped and made his way back to the plantation on his own. Colonel Owens says it’s the stuff of a novel.
Dick smokes a cigar calmly and suggests to his father that the story sounds a little improbable. He asks if there might be a more likely explanation. But Colonel Owens says it’s the truth, and the abolitionists are capable of anything. There are almost tears in Colonel Owens’s eyes as he thinks of poor Grandison’s suffering. Dick maintains skepticism and ignore’s his wife’s questioning gaze.
News of Grandison’s story spreads through the county. Colonel Owens gives him a permanent place among the house servants so that Grandison will be conveniently nearby to tell the story of his adventures to the admiring visitors to the plantation house. However, three weeks after Grandison’s return, the colonel’s faith in the relationship between slave and master is rudely shaken. On a Monday morning, Grandison goes missing.
It isn’t just Grandison. Grandison’s wife Betty, as well as his mother, aunt, father, uncle, brothers, and little sister are all gone as well. The colonel and his friends are alarmed by the loss of so much property and put a lot of energy into finding out what has happened. Colonel Owens and his slave hunters trace Grandison’s family on their northward run through Ohio. Although the hunters get close several times, Grandison and his family move quickly enough through the Underground Railroad that it seems the tracks have been cleared for them in advance.
Colonel Owens catches a last glimpse of Grandison, his “vanishing property,” as the colonel stands next to a United States marshal on the south shore of Lake Erie. A group of familiar dark faces stands on the back end of a boat making its way toward Canada. They do not look back in longing for what they are leaving behind. Colonel Owens sees Grandison talk to one of the boat crew and point out the colonel. The crewman waves derisively at the colonel, and the colonel shakes his fist powerlessly in response. The story ends with the statement: “and the incident was closed.”
Analysis
Despite Dick’s hopes, Grandison continues to frustrate him in Canada. In a moment when Dick more or less tells Grandison he would like him to escape, Dick informs Grandison of his rights in Canada, a country where their relationship as owner and slave has no legal standing. But Grandison, unsurprisingly, expresses fear at the prospect of them being separated.
Faced with Grandison’s anxiety, Dick promptly separates himself from the worried man and goes to a nearby inn to consider what he can do. For a moment he believes his plan has succeeded, but it turns out that Grandison has merely lain down on the spot where Dick left him. Angry now, Dick resorts to a more rash solution to the problem of Grandison’s stubborn refusal to free himself. Paying someone to kidnap Grandison is by far the riskiest approach Dick takes, but it is still characteristically lazy.
Upon return to Kentucky, Dick is disappointed to find that Charity is far less impressed by his would-be heroic deed than he expected. Nonetheless, his risky endeavor pays off, as Charity agrees to marry him if only to keep him from making such foolish decisions in the future. Happy enough with that, Dick and Charity get married, and it appears Dick’s plan worked.
However, in an instance of situational irony, the figure of Grandison reappears at the plantation several weeks after his disappearance. Too loyal to be kept away, Grandison has worn himself out in a harrowing journey across the country. Grandison’s return restores the colonel’s faith in his slaves’ loyalty, and he rewards Grandison for standing as an example of why the relationship between slave and master is sacred and ought to be cherished.
But in another twist of irony, Grandison flees the plantation with his family in tow. The duplicity of Grandison’s bid for freedom is so shocking to the colonel and his fellow slaveholders that they assemble a slave-hunting posse and trace Grandison’s movements North. At the time, the men had their Fugitive Slave Law on their side, and it was a legal responsibility for citizens to help them reclaim their “property.”
However, the slave hunters find their efforts curtailed by impediments along the way: it turns out that the Underground Railroad—the informal network of safe houses and conveyances that brought fugitive slaves north—is working so efficiently for Grandison that there is no question but that he prepared the route in advance. With this detail, it becomes clear to the reader that Grandison didn’t crawl back to the plantation after escaping a kidnapping: he was busy talking with members of the Underground Railroad to plot a safe escape for his family.
The story ends with the image of Grandison and his family on a boat headed toward freedom in Canada while the colonel powerlessly shakes his fist at their shrinking forms. With this departure, Chesnutt highlights how Grandison had most likely longed for freedom all along; the reason he didn’t escape from Dick is that it would have meant separating from his family. In the end, Grandison had been playing the part of the loyal slave as a survival strategy, and it paid off. Having exploited the colonel’s egotistical vision of himself as a benevolent slaveholder, Grandison secures freedom for his family.
