In Search of the Promised Land

John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger’s historical work, In Search of the Promised Land (2006), focuses on several generations of the Thomas-Rapier family to offer a look at the status of mixed-race enslaved and ostensibly free blacks in America during the age of slavery.

The book opens with an account of the hearing granted to James Thomas and his owner, Ephraim H. Foster, in Nashville in 1851. Foster had purchased James at the request of James’s mother, Sally, who worried that James was about to be sold to a cruel master. Impressed with James, Foster seeks to grant the young mixed-race man his freedom. After Foster posts a bond assuring Thomas’s good behavior, the request is successful; James is emancipated. James makes a special plea to the judges, requesting permission to remain in Tennessee after acquiring his freedom. The judges grant this on the condition that Thomas also posts a bond for his good behavior. Successful, James’s excitement is tempered by sadness over his recently deceased mother, Sally, who died still a slave after spending a considerable amount of her life securing the freedom of James’s brothers John Rapier and Henry Thomas.

The authors travel back to 1814. Sally is traveling as part of the Thomas estate after her owner, Charles, and his wife both passed away. Sally has been allowed to keep her two sons with her but worries that they are being moved to Nashville in order to sell them as they are both handsome and athletic boys who will bring a good price at the slave markets.



In Nashville, Sally’s status is “quasi-free,” meaning that although she is a slave, she has a certain amount of personal freedom. She is allowed to live apart from her master and can run her own business, even keeping a portion of her earnings for herself. Sally takes advantage of this status to launch a laundry business that quickly thrives as Sally gains dedicated customers from the wealthy white families in the city. Sally does not enjoy the fruits of her labors, however, as she is painfully aware of her legal status as a slave—which extends to her two sons, both the sons of white men. Sally is determined to gain freedom for her children from a very early date—a process that was possible but not guaranteed, and which required the sponsorship and assistance of whites. The authors note that their choice of subject, the Thomas-Rapier family, is, in fact, exceptional and had benefits and advantages that other slave families did not.

In 1827, Sally has a third son, James, the son of the wealthy white lawyer James Catron who would go on to sit on the Supreme Court of the United States. In 1834, when James is six and Henry is twenty-five, Sally makes bold moves designed to secure her children’s freedom, asking Foster to purchase James because he is known to champion slaves’ freedom when he believes they are deserving, and encouraging Henry to run away despite the very real legal and physical dangers associated with being a runaway slave. Henry takes his mother’s advice and flees, heading north and arriving in Buffalo. Although safer from capture in New York, Henry is still in danger as the South employed legal slave catchers who identified and captured runaways in the north. Henry keeps moving, eventually making his way to Canada where he launches a business as a barber.

In Nashville, James builds his own barbering business into a success, but despite ostensibly having his freedom, he finds himself in a similar situation as his “quasi-free” mother: His business is popular among the wealthy whites in Nashville, attracting rich landowners and politicians. As a result, he must tread carefully, as his status as a freed slave can be easily revoked. He is careful never to insult or irritate his customers. On one of the rare occasions when James enters a conversation with his customers about politics and other issues, he is angrily told to mind his business.



When the Civil War breaks out, Nashville is a divided city, but most of James’ customers support the Confederacy, and James himself briefly considers doing so.

In 1857, James witnesses his father, who has no legal obligation to him and never acknowledges his parentage, vote to deny blacks the rights and protections of citizenship in the infamous Dred Scott case.

John Rapier’s son, Dick, leaves Tennessee and travels west in search of gold and freedom in California. He does not strike it rich, but he does establish his own farm in Sacramento, living in freedom. James, tiring of the racial tensions of Nashville, leaves town as well, traveling to Nicaragua, Cuba, and Panama before returning to the U.S. by way of New York. James is surprised at how racist the supposedly enlightened North is. John’s second son, John Jr., goes to Haiti and Jamaica before moving to Michigan, where he poses as a foreigner in order to enroll in medical school. John Jr. joins the Northern Army during the Civil War as a surgeon and meets Frederick Douglas. After the war, however, John Jr. becomes gravely ill and dies of a fever.