"By following the story of my great-grandmother Isabella Ford's life, and adding to it with information from available sources, I have been able to get a better understanding of the circumstances of Lancaster's free blacks. Her story provides a sense of life in mid-nineteenth century Lancaster County and shows how free black families held their own, despite an environment that was often unfriendly and that restricted their opportunities by both law and custom."
An essay written during the Civil War that warns that slavery has concentrated power in the slave owners in the South - those who had been able to buy slaves and expand their business. Such power was destabilizing for society as a whole and should not be permitted following the war. "A numerous and independent yeomanry - that is to say , a large class of fairly schooled, intelligent, and respectable freeholders, of moderate, yet sufficient estate - spread over the country, with an honorable share in its government, constitutes one of the most important elements of a healthful state of a nation, and is wholly indispensable to a people whose type of government is that of substantial and orderly freedom..."
