A complicated tale of slavery
Caribbean Life, O BQ CTOBER 25-31, 2019 51
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
Home Sweet Home.
Be it ever so humble, there’s
no place like it. It’s where your
family is, where you hang your
coat, where you keep your stuff.
Even the word “home” equals
safety and comfort, and in the
new book “Sweet Taste of Liberty”
by W. Caleb McDaniel, getting
home could mean payback,
too.
For many years, Zebulon
Ward bragged about being “the
last American… to pay for a
slave,” but that wasn’t quite
true.
He paid her, not for her, and
Harriet Wood made sure he
did.B
orn in a small town in northern
Kentucky, Wood guessed
that she entered the world in
1818 or 1820, but no one knew
for sure. Moses Tousey owned
her then and when he died in
1834 after a series of misfortunes,
she was sold to a Louisville
man named Henry Forsyth.
She toiled two years for him,
and when Forsyth’s business fell
on hard times, he sold Wood to
William Cirode, a French immigrant
who was living “a version
of the American dream.”
Cirode purchased Wood in
Lexington and, because he was
“restless,” he moved to New
Orleans shortly afterward, taking
her with him. Although he
seemed to prosper there for a
time, Cirode found himself in
dire financial troubles in early
1844, so he abandoned his family
and sailed to France. His
wife, Jane, took the slaves she’d
retained and returned to Kentucky,
and then she took Wood
to Ohio, which was a free state.
Agreements between Kentucky
and Ohio meant that Harriet
Wood was still a slave until
Jane Cirode freed her, which
happened at some point in 1848.
Finally, Wood was free and she
had the papers to prove it.
She didn’t have them with
her, though, when Zebulon
Ward conspired to kidnap her
and take her to market to sell
back into slavery. The papers
never surfaced during a lawsuit
challenging Ward’s ownership
of Wood. She didn’t have them
when he sold her down the river
to Natchez.
And for 17 years, she burned
at what he’d done…
Don’t be surprised if, as
you’re reading “Sweet Taste of
Liberty,” you begin to feel rather
overwhelmed. There’s a lot
going on inside this book.
The names, firstly, may cause
you to page back and forth to
remember who’s who; that this
is a highly-peopled account is
only a part of the issue, never
mind the similarity of some
surnames. You’ll truly have to
take your time here — which
you won’t wish to do, since it’s
a story you’ll want to gobble up.
Author W. Caleb McDaniel
tells a breathless tale with an
ominously dark feel through
many of its pages, because the
monsters here were real. Yes,
it’s a complicated tale that races
from north to south, but the
righteous audacity that ultimately
occurred in Ohio in 1870
makes it worthwhile, fist-pumping,
and satisfying.
Historians, of course, will
want “Sweet Taste of Liberty.”
Feminists shouldn’t miss it.
Folks with an opinion on reparations
should find it. All of you
will want
to take it
home.
“Sweet Taste of Liberty:
A True Story of Slavery
and Restitution in America”
by W. Caleb McDaniel
c.2019, Oxford University
Press
$27.95 / $30.95 Canada
340 pages
Book cover of “Sweet Taste of Liberty” by W. Caleb Mc-
Daniel.
“Sweet Taste of Liberty” author W.Caleb McDaniel. Christina Tan
/W.Ca