May I But Safely Reach My Home

Abstract

On Tolbert Major’s last day in America, he wakes at dawn in a room at the Staten Island Quarantine Grounds. He rouses his sons and then walks down to the pier to see the Luna, the vessel that will take him and his family to Liberia, Africa. Tolbert recalls the send-off ceremony held the previous day, July 4, 1836, when officials from the New York Colonization Society joined dozens of newly emancipated slaves and freeborn black people in singing hymns, praying, and listening to speeches. (The emigrants weren’t ill; the mayor had temporarily housed them at the quarantine grounds.) The next morning, Tolbert, his sons, his brother Austin, their former neighbor Agnes Harlan, and the other emigrants board the ship Luna and prepare to sail. The passengers endure seasickness and weeks of anticipation as they sail across the Atlantic. Every sunset leaves behind loved ones and everything that is familiar. Every sunrise tugs them toward a new life.