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“The Passing of Grandison” has five distinct settings: the plantation in Kentucky, New York, Boston, Niagara Falls, and the shores of Lake Erie in Ohio. Chesnutt spends little time describing these locations because how they look and sound is not as important as how they shape the development of the story’s conflict and resolution.
Kentucky is Dick’s home, where he lives an easy life of wealth and privilege. It’s also Grandison’s home, but not by choice. For Grandison, the plantation is a prison where his daily life is dictated. This is why Dick expects Grandison to take advantage of their travels to seek freedom.
In each subsequent setting, Grandison learns something necessary to his plans. In New York, he can speak openly and at length with free Black men. He feigns not to like these men, but this is a necessary deception required to complete his plan. In Boston, Dick’s anonymous letters put Grandison in contact with abolitionists who can advise him on how to help his family escape, even as Grandison pretends that the abolitionists are “pesterin’” him. In Canada, Grandison could simply walk away to freedom. Unlike in New York and Boston, where he would still need to escape slave hunters, he is free simply by virtue of being on Canadian soil. It’s here that Grandison encounters two men, “one white and one colored,” who we can infer help him plan his later arrival in Canada with his family.
The story’s final setting is Lake Erie, which borders the Free state of Ohio as well Canada. The broad lake separates the fleeing family from the infuriated colonel and the U.S. marshal who stands with him on the wharf in Ohio, ready to take them into custody. Once they cross the lake, the family will be free, and the story’s conflict will be resolved.
