The Passing of Grandison

“The Passing of Grandison” is a short story by Charles W. Chesnutt published in his 1899 collection The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line. This study guide refers to the free, open-access ebook published by Full Text Archive.

Content Warning: The source text depicts slavery in the pre-Civil War South and contains outdated and offensive terms for Black Americans. This guide will obscure the author’s use of the n-word.

The story takes place in the early 1850s, roughly 10 years before the start of the United States Civil War, when anti-slavery sentiments were growing in the North and pro-slavery sentiments were growing in the South. Chesnutt’s story is a satire that uses humor and irony to comment on difficult themes such as the brutality of American slavery and racism and the complexity of identity.

The story begins with the statement, “When it is said that it was done to please a woman, there ought perhaps to be enough said to explain anything; for what a man will not do to please a woman is yet to be discovered” (59). This quip by an unnamed third-person narrator establishes the frame for the story that follows: To win over the object of his affection, Charity Lomax, a young, rich southerner named Dick Owens tries to free one of his father’s many slaves.

The narrator reveals that Owens earlier attended the trial of a young abolitionist from Ohio who sought to help an enslaved person escape a “hard master” (59). The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 declared that anyone who “shall aid, abet, or assist [an enslaved] person […] to escape” should be subject to “imprisonment” (Fugitive Slave Act Section 7, September 18, 1850). The abolitionist was sentenced to imprisonment under this law and, while caring for fellow prisoners with cholera, falls sick and died in prison.

When Dick recounts the story to Charity, she says she regards the young abolitionist as a hero: “I could love a man who would take such chances for the sake of others” (60). When Dick asks Charity if she would love him for such a deed, she replies that he would never do such a thing, as he is too lazy. Dick resolves to prove himself worthy of Charity’s affection by helping one of the people his father enslaves escape to Canada.

Initially, Dick selects an enslaved man named Tom to accompany him on a trip North. Dick hopes that it will take “but little persuasion” (60) to convince Tom to run away. Dick asks his father, Colonel Owens, if he can take Tom with him on a visit to New York and Boston without revealing that he intends to free him once there. The colonel says Tom is “too smart to trust among those low-down abolitionists” (62). In other words, he might try to escape from enslavement. He proposes that Dick instead take an enslaved man named Grandison, whom the colonel believes more suitably demonstrates loyalty, declaring Grandison “abolitionist-proof” (64).

Dick hopes that, being surrounded by free Black men and abolitionists in New York, Grandison will be infected “with the virus of freedom” (64). Once in the North, he leaves Grandison to his own devices day after day, hoping to return to their hotel and find Grandison gone, but day after day Grandison is still there when he returns.

Not finding the atmosphere in New York conducive to his plans, Dick moves on to Boston, where he goes so far as to pen anonymous letters to famous abolitionists, telling them that a “wicked slaveholder” would soon “insult the liberty-loving people” of Boston by bringing his “slave” into town (65). Here, too, Dick’s plans are thwarted. After meeting abolitionists, Grandison tells Dick that he paid them no mind and asks when they will return to Kentucky: “I don’ pay no ’tention ter ’em […] but I don’ like it […] Is we gwine back home ’fo’ long, Mars Dick?” (65).

Increasingly frustrated and desperate, Dick abandons hope of Grandison running away from him and decides to run away from Grandison instead. He cannot do this in the United States, where the Fugitive Slave Act would compel authorities to find and return Grandison to Kentucky. The pair journey to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, where Dick deserts Grandison.

On his way home, he breaks the news of Grandison’s “escape” to his father via letter. The colonel is initially angry but settles into disappointment and blames the abolitionists “who were undoubtedly at the bottom of it” (68). Dick privately tells Charity the truth. Resolving that he is “too reckless for anything” (68) and “needs someone to look after him” (69), she agrees to marry him three weeks later.

A week after the wedding, Grandison reappears at the colonel’s plantation. The colonel is thrilled, more convinced than ever of the evil of the abolitionists and the loyalty of the people he has enslaved. The colonel promotes Grandison to serve inside the house and allows him to marry an enslaved woman named Betty.

Three weeks later, the colonel wakes up to find not only Grandison but also his wife Betty and the rest of Grandison’s extended family missing. He launches an effort to retrieve the escaped family but finds that the “magnitude of the escaping party” (70) begot an equal effort to see the family to safety. While the colonel occasionally gets close to finding the escapees, he finds that “the underground railroad seemed to have had its tracks cleared and signals set for this particular train” (70). Detailed plans had already been made to get Grandison and his family to safety. The colonel catches one last glimpse of the family on a steamboat crossing Lake Erie “with her nose pointing toward Canada” (70).