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“Grandison,” soliloquized his master, as he stood gazing down at his ebony encumbrance, “I do not deserve to be an American citizen; I ought not to have the advantages I possess over you; and I certainly am not worthy of Charity Lomax, if I am not smart enough to get rid of you. I have an idea! You shall yet be free, and I will be the instrument of your deliverance. Sleep on, faithful and affectionate servitor, and dream of the blue grass and the bright skies of old Kentucky, for it is only in your dreams that you will ever see them again!”
These lines occur when Dick comes across Grandison napping by the falls in Canada. At first reading, they seem to suggest that Dick actually believes what he says about not deserving his citizenship, position in society, or Charity’s love. But the word if matters greatly here. Dick says he doesn’t deserve these things unless he can figure out how to force Grandison into the freedom the “servitor” has so far resisted.
Not only does Dick fail to respect Grandison’s choices, but he still sees himself as Grandison’s liberator, the “instrument” of his “deliverance” from slavery. In a sense, Dick does play this role by taking Grandison north with him. However, it is Grandison who, through careful planning during the days in New York, Boston, and Niagara Falls, secures not only his freedom but his family’s.
Dick thinks Grandison is simple and that his behavior is childlike because he is an enslaved Black man without the “advantages” that Dick’s white skin and inherited wealth bring him. Dick underestimates Grandison by not considering him to be a mature, thoughtful man who, like Dick, wants to protect, be with, and love his family.
Once, twice, the colonel thought he had them, but they slipped through his fingers.
One last glimpse he caught of his vanishing property, as he stood, accompanied by a United States marshal, on a wharf at a port on the south shore of Lake Erie. On the stern of a small steamboat which was receding rapidly from the wharf, with her nose pointing toward Canada, there stood a group of familiar dark faces, and the look they cast backward was not one of longing for the fleshpots of Egypt. The colonel saw Grandison point him out to one of the crew of the vessel, who waved his hand derisively toward the colonel. The latter shook his fist impotently—and the incident was closed.
Because of the discriminatory opinions Colonel Owens holds of all Black people, enslaved or free, he sees Grandison in two inaccurate ways: as a childlike man and as property. These lines, which end the story, suggest the shock the colonel experiences at Grandison’s escape, an event that demonstrates his mature intelligence and human desire for freedom.
The colonel still thinks of the escaping family as property, but they will never return. The narrator’s allusion to the “fleshpots of Egypt” recalls the narrative from the Book of Exodus in the Bible, in which the Israelites escape from slavery in Egypt. Facing privations in the desert, some of the fugitive Israelites wondered whether they would have been better off as slaves with enough meat (“flesh”) to eat. Similarly, the colonel made much, earlier in the story, of how Grandison had enough to eat and drink because of his care.
But Grandison is a responsible adult, not a child to be fed or property to be maintained. The crew member who assists the family’s escape waves “derisively” to the “master” who still perceives the family through the lens of discrimination.
