Rainbow’s Journey by Jacob Abbott, 1859.
This is the second book in the Stories of Rainbow and Lucky series. I’ve covered the first book this series, and I have to do all five books in a row because the series is set up like a mini-series. That is, none of the books in the series can stand alone; they are all installments of one, longer story. It’s an unusual series from the mid-19th century, written on the eve of the American Civil War, by a white author with a young black hero. Rainbow is a teenage black boy who, in the previous installment of the story, is hired by a young carpenter who is just a few years older than he is to help him with a job in another town. The rest of the series follows the two young men, particularly Rainbow, through their adventures, learning life lessons, even dealing with difficult topics like racism. (Lucky is a horse, and Lucky enters the story later.) The story is unusual for this time period because it was uncommon for black people to be the heroes of books and for topics like racism to be discussed directly. It’s also important to point out that our black hero is not a slave, he is not enslaved at any point in the series, and the series has a happy ending for him. People don’t always treat him right, but he does have friends and allies, and he manages to deal with the adversity he faces and builds a future for himself. Keep in mind along the way that there are a lot of pun names in this series and that people’s names are often clues to their characters.
This book is easily available to read online in your browser through NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN CHILDREN & WHAT THEY READ, I’m going to do a detailed summary below. If you’d rather read it yourself before you read my review, you can go ahead, but some people might want to know what it’s like in more detail.
The Story
Leaving on the Journey
For most of the last story, the focus was on Handie, his family’s financial problems, the inheritance he receives from his uncle, and how the lawyer who is the executor of the estate arranges for Handie to use the estate to his best advantage. Because Handie is 19 years old, he is still considered a minor. (The legal age is 21 during this time period and would stay the legal age until about halfway through the 20th century.) His uncle’s will specifically stated that Handie cannot take full ownership of the farm that he left to him until he is 22 years old. Uncle that time, the lawyer, Mr. James, will manage the estate on his behalf, using the money provided with the estate to hire someone to fix up the farm to rent it out to a tenant until Handie is old enough to take it. The Level family’s money problems are because Handie’s father is not good at managing his money, and Handie’s uncle knew that if Handie’s father got his hands on his son’s estate, he would probably blow the money and end up having to sell the farm to cover his debts, leaving Handie with nothing.
In the previous book, Mr. James discusses the situation with Handie, and they work out another solution to the Levels’ debt problems. He helps Handie take steps to separate the money he earns from his father’s money, and he hires Handie as the carpenter to work on repairing the farm he inherited on behalf of his own estate. It’s a somewhat odd arrangement because Handie is effectively being hired to work for himself but will be paid by Mr. James on behalf of the estate. Under the circumstances, it’s the best system for solving the family’s money problems and setting Handie up for a better future.
Because Handie will need a little help while he’s working on the farm, Mr. James also provides money from the estate so he can hire an assistant. Handie offers the job to 14-year-old Rainbow. Rainbow doesn’t have any carpentry experience, but he’s strong for his age and a good worker, and Handie would rather bring someone he knows with him rather than trying to find someone else when he arrives at this new town. At the end of the previous book, Handie offers Rainbow the job as a carpenter’s assistant and tells him that they will be living in the town of Southerton for about 2 or 3 months during the summer while they do the job. The job will involve hard, physical work, but Rainbow can handle it, and this job could give him some good work experience. Rainbow accepts the job offer, with his mother’s permission, and they begin preparing for the journey.
When this story begins, Handie and Rainbow are about to leave the village where they both live. It’s a summer evening with good weather, and they will be traveling by stage coach. When Handie offered Rainbow the job, he didn’t explain that the farm where they will be working actually belongs to him, but word of Handie’s inheritance has spread around town since. Rainbow is astonished at the idea of someone so young having a farm of his own, and he decides that he will ask Handie more about it later, although he knows he should be careful to be polite about asking because he doesn’t want to seem rude by prying. Although these boys are friendly with each other, having grown up in the same small town, they also have a professional relationship now, and Rainbow’s mother impressed on him that he needs to treat Handie respectfully as his employer. They are becoming young men and venturing out into the world for the first time, so they need to learn how to behave professionally with each other, as befits their new, professional relationship. Neither of the young men is experienced with traveling anywhere, and they’re both looking forward to this exciting journey.
Things seem to be going well at the start of the journey, but then, the stage coach driver, while chatting with Handie mentions that he doesn’t like the look of one of the passengers. At first, Rainbow worries that the driver is talking about him because he’s accustomed to people making comments about him, ridiculing him, or telling him that he isn’t welcome among them for being black. Even though they are from a small village, and many people there like Rainbow for his good nature and helpfulness, he’s already seen his share of discrimination. However, the driver is talking about someone else. He explains that there’s a man on the stage coach called Burkill, who is wearing a bright waistcoat. He’s met Burkill before, and he knows that the man is trouble.
Right now, Handie and Rainbow are riding on the top of the stage with the driver, but when Burkill joined them, he made a fuss to the driver about whether or not Rainbow would be riding inside the coach, objecting to the idea of riding with a black person. The driver, Trigget, who knows Rainbow and doesn’t like Burkill anyway, told him that Rainbow has paid his fare and will ride wherever he wants to: “I don’t pay any attention to the different shades of complexion of my passengers … Rainbow is suitable company for any honest man. You can judge best whether he is suitable company for you or not, and act accordingly.” It’s a bit of a slam. He’s implying that, if Burkill can’t get along with Rainbow, he’s probably not an honest man, and the driver already has reason to think he’s not, so he’d better not make a big deal about it. The other passengers also know Burkill’s reputation, so they get the joke and laugh at Burkill. Embarrassed, Burkill just gets on the stage coach without saying anything else. All of this happens before Handie and Rainbow get on themselves, and they don’t hear any of it, so their choice to sit up with the driver was just by preference, not because they were required to sit there. Trigget just tells them about it later, as they ride along.
(Note: I’m using the term “black”, and so did Burkill when he was speaking, but the driver corrects him, using the word “colored” because “colored” is considered the more polite word at the time this story was written. I’ve explained before that “colored” and “Negro” used to be considered more polite terms prior to the Civil Rights Movement in the mid-20th century. At that point, “black” became the accepted generic word, where it had once been considered somewhat rude, and “African American” became the polite, formal term. I’ve been using “black” in the modern generic sense for the purpose of these reviews because I think the modern audience will find it easier to follow, but this series was meant to be educational for 19th century children, like the author’s other books, so there are points in the story where the characters actually discuss which racial terms are more polite. The general rule they establish is that the best thing to call someone is whatever they would like to be called, and I think it’s a pretty good, general rule. I’m just explaining because it’s a plot point, and the racial words that people use are clues to their characters. Characters who use the wrong racial words are either ignorant or antagonistic, and Burkill falls into the second category. We haven’t know him long, but we’ve already established that Burkill is disreputable and a trouble-maker, and he also uses the wrong racial words and has a racist attitude. Basically, he’s bad news all the way around, and this incident is establishing his character for readers and setting the scene for further misbehavior from him.)
Traveling and An Accident
The author of this series likes to include detailed information about daily life in his stories for educational purposes, which is a boon to modern people who like learning about the details of life in the past. Some of what he says might have once been common knowledge to 19th century people, but it’s really helpful for people studying history. In this case, we leave off the racial talk to talk about the trials and tribulations of travel in the mid-19th century.
While they ride with Trigget, Trigget asks Handie about his journey to Southerton and the inheritance he’s heard about. Handie explains to him about the farm he’s inherited and his arrangements with the lawyer, so Rainbow gets the rest of that story without needing to ask. Trigget explains that the stagecoach needs to be in Southerton by 4 o’clock because there’s a train that leaves Southerton at that time. Some of his passengers will want to be on that train. However, he’s also carrying mail on the stagecoach, and it’s even more important for the mail to make it there on time than the human passengers.
Handie asks if people shouldn’t be considered more important than letters, and Trigget explains, “the passengers go at their own risk. We get them through if we can, but if we can’t it is their misfortune. We don’t absolutely engage to get them through at such a time. But as to the mail, it is different. We contract with the government to deliver it, without fail, at four o’clock at the station, and if we don’t do it we have a heavy fine to pay.” In other words, there are laws and consequences to guarantee that the mail gets to its destination on time, but nobody’s imposing consequences for delivering people safely to their destination, so the people just have to look out for themselves. That sounds worrying, but Trigget further explains that he can’t wait for people who just have to finish the story they’re telling at a stagecoach stop. The coach has to leave each stop at a specific time to make it to its destination on time for the sake of the mail, so the passengers need to make sure that they’re ready to go, or they’ll be left behind. It’s not much different from missing a bus, a train, or a plane today.
When Trigget says that they will reach Southerton at four o’clock, he means four o’clock in the morning. They set out in the evening, and this stagecoach travels all night. As they pass through the countryside and towns along the way, they notice that lights in houses start going out around 10 o’clock, the usual time for people in the countryside to go to bed, although the author notes that lights in the towns stay on for longer because people stay up later there.
Along the way, they stop at the post offices in various small towns and villages to sort the mail. The post offices are sometimes in buildings by themselves, but in some places, they’re located inside another business, like a store or a tavern. At each stop, they have to leave behind the mail for that particular area. At one point, they change horses on the coach, and Rainbow says that he might want a job like that someday, caring for horses. Each stop only takes a few minutes, but Trigget tries to keep things moving quickly so they can be at the next stop on time. He plans for an extra hour on his journey in case anything goes wrong, and they are about to need that extra time.
After the coach is moving again, Trigget suddenly realizes that the boy who harnessed the horses has accidentally left the reins on the right sides of the horses’ mouths unbuckled on the lead horses. It’s serious mistake because, when Trigget pulls on the reins, he’s pulling the lead horses off to the left instead of evenly on both sides, causing the entire team and coach to turn. When he tries to stop the horses from moving, he loses control of them, and they’re coming to a place where a dangerous turn could wreck the coach!
In desperation, Rainbow decides to try a dangerous stunt. He climbs out over the backs of the moving horses to reach the lead horses to fix the problem with the reins. At first, the horses are nervous with Rainbow climbing on them, but Rainbow is good with horses and manages to calm them. Unfortunately, he doesn’t manage to get the reins completely fixed before disaster strikes. They hit the turn that Trigget feared, and the coach overturns!
Fortunately, Rainbow manages to escape injury. He swings down from the horse he’s riding and manages to calm the horses down. The horses are uninjured, but the coach is on its side, and the passengers are in a panic! Trigget and Handie are also unhurt, and they begin helping the other passengers out of the overturned coach and assessing them for injuries. One of the young women who was in the coach is unconscious. The other passengers fear that she may be hurt very badly and will need a doctor, but Trigget thinks that she has only fainted from the shock. The axle-tree of the coach is broken, so they can’t merely right the coach and continue traveling. Trigget asks Rainbow to take one of the horses and ride back to the last stop and get some help and a wagon to pick up the mail and baggage from the coach. Trigget’s first concern, as he said before, is to keep the mail moving. Once someone comes to take the mail bags on, he turns his attention back to his passengers.
The unconscious girl revives, and she is not badly injured. When Rainbow returns with another wagon, they load all the luggage on it, and the entire party returns to the last tavern they passed, where they stay for the rest of the night. The owner’s wife, Mrs. Norton, gives the young women a room upstairs, but she doesn’t have enough unoccupied rooms for everyone. She suggests that Rainbow stay in the barn with the man who manages the horses, and Handie says that he’ll stay there with Rainbow, too. Mrs. Norton is grateful that they’re willing to take this lesser accommodation, and she gives them both sheets and blankets to use. The man who manages the horses, Hitover, offers his bed to Handie, and he says that Rainbow can use his assistant’s bed because the assistant, Jex, is the one who is currently taking the mail to its next stop. However, the boys decide that they would prefer to sleep on the hay with their sheets and blankets. Handie shows Rainbow how to shape the hay into a more comfortable bed, rolling up some to make pillows. (I thought that part was interesting because I’ve read about people sleeping on hay in other books, but I think this is the first story I’ve read that explains how to make an improvised bed in hay.) Then, they say their prayers and go to sleep.
Rainbow has a more difficult time going to sleep than Handie does, thinking about everything that’s happened and how strange it feels to be away from home. Both of the boys are becoming young men and venturing out into the world without their families for the first time, but in some ways, Rainbow’s position feels more precarious than Handie’s because he never knows how the people he meets might react to him, just because of his race. The book says:
Besides, the going away from home of a colored boy like Rainbow is a much more momentous event for him than such a change is for a white boy. A white boy, if he is of an amiable disposition and behaves well, even if he goes among entire strangers, soon makes plenty of friends. The world is prepared every where to welcome him, and to receive him kindly. But a boy like Rainbow feels that his fate is to be every where disliked and shunned. In every strange town that he enters he expects that the boys, instead of welcoming him as a new companion and playmate, will be ready to deride him, and to point at him, and to call him opprobrious names; so that, when he goes out into the world, there is no bright side of the picture to relieve the regret which he feels at leaving his home. He expects, wherever he goes, and however bright and beautiful may be the outward aspects of the novel scenes through which he may pass, that every thing human will look dark and scowling upon him, and that all who have loved him, or will love him, or care any thing about him, are left behind.
The one point of reassurance for Rainbow is Handie. Handie is kind to him, and he’s also Rainbow’s link to what’s safe and familiar to him. When he falls asleep, Rainbow dreams that he’s riding a wild horse.
Theft
At one point during the night, Rainbow wakes up and sees Burkill sneaking around. Burkill hides a carpet bag under some hay, not seeing that Rainbow is awake and watching. Rainbow tells himself that he’ll have to mention it to Handie, and he goes back to sleep.
The next day, Handie goes to see about breakfast, and Rainbow gives Hitover some help with the horses. While Rainbow is helping with the horses, Burkill comes to the barn again, and he starts hassling Hitover about getting him a horse and wagon so he can get to Southerton faster. Hitover says that Burkill has been giving him a lot of trouble about that since the coach party arrived after the accident, but he keeps telling Burkill that he can’t help him. They only have one wagon, and Trigget will probably need it for handling his passengers and their baggage. When Trigget returns after getting the broken stage coach to a blacksmith, he says the same thing. Burkill tries to persuade him to forget about the other passengers because he’s willing to pay more, but Trigget says that he has a duty to all the passengers. Out of curiosity, Rainbow looks under the hay and sees that the carpet bag is still hidden there.
When Rainbow next speaks to Handie, Handie tells him that everyone’s bags and trunks will have to be searched because some things have been stolen. Handie’s pretty sure that he knows who will be most reluctant to have his bags searched, but he doesn’t say so aloud. (I think we all know at this point who the thief probably is.) While the search is being conducted, Rainbow quietly tells Trigget about Burkill’s hidden carpet bag. Trigget tells him not to say anything to anyone else yet.
Instead, while Burkill is pressing him again about getting the wagon and leaving, Trigget says that he needs to get John Easterly and Handie to come to the barn with him first to talk about some hay he wants to buy. Burkill, worried about the possible discovery of the bag, goes with them without being invited. Trigget asks Rainbow to move some of the hay with a pitchfork, and Burkill tries to distract them from looking in the spot where the bag is hidden. When Rainbow uncovers the bag, Burkill admits that the bag is his and claims that he put it there to keep it from being lost. He tries to keep everyone from examining the bag, but Trigget says that, if he doesn’t show them what he has in the bag, they’ll all assume that he has the stolen goods, and they’ll fetch an officer to search the bag. For a moment, Burkill pretends that he’s lost the key to the bag, but Trigget finds it and opens the bag. Burkill does have John Easterly’s stolen watch in his bag, and he tries to claim that he just happened to find it and didn’t know who it belonged to, but nobody believes him. They fetch an officer, and Burkill is arrested. They can’t find the money that was taken from the young women on the coach, but everyone assumes that Burkill took that, too. Since the girls lost their money, Handie offers to lend the girls some money so they can continue their journey, and they accept.
Continuing the Journey
Trigget says that he’s having the coach repaired, and any of the men (except for the arrested Burkill) who wants to wait for it can go with him that night. He is arranging for the girls to continue on immediately in the wagon, but if the men don’t want to wait for the coach, he will refund part of their coach fare, and they can make their own travel arrangements. Trigget says that they can continue to Southerton on foot, if they wish, and he’ll bring their baggage later, so Handie decides that’s what he and Rainbow will do. They’re about 20 miles away from Southerton at this point, and Handie says they can walk the distance and get there by five o’clock, maybe around seven o’clock in the evening, if they stop for a couple of hours on the way. That means that they will still get there faster than if they waited for the coach to be fixed. They remove a few things from their bags that they will need until Trigget can bring them their luggage in Southerton. Then, they set off on their way.
While they walk, they pass the place where the coach was wrecked. They look around to see if maybe the girls’ wallet with their money fell out somewhere. They don’t find it, and they consider going by the blacksmith’s shop to see if it’s still in the coach. The problem is that, when they come to a crossroads, they realize that Southerton is one way, and the blacksmith’s shop is another. They have to decide if they’re willing to go out of their way to visit the blacksmith and see if the girls’ wallet is in the coach. Handie doesn’t want to delay their journey too much because he doesn’t have much money. He gave what he could spare to the girls, and a delay in the journey would cause them to have to spend more money for food or accommodation. However, he feels like they ought to try looking for the purse anyway because he wants to feel like he did all he could for the unfortunate girls.
At the blacksmith’s shop, the blacksmith gives them permission to search the coach for the wallet. It doesn’t take them long to find it. When they do, Rainbow says that they ought to check if the money is there and maybe take what they need to pay themselves back what Handie lent to the girls, but Handie doesn’t think it’s right to look in the wallet without the girls’ permission. He thinks that it would be only right to deliver it to the girls intact. In fact, after he thinks about it, he decides that he should show it to the blacksmith, since the coach was in his custody, and that he will also seal it up for security. (The narrator says at this point that he’s not sure himself whether Handie is being truly right in this level of scrupulousness or just being overly particular. Rainbow thought this was going too far, but he didn’t want to say so. The narrator invites child readers who are unsure about the right thing to do in such a circumstance to discuss it with their parents or a trustworthy adult, which sounds like the advice that teachers typically gave us in school when I was a kid and anything came up on which they didn’t want to render an opinion or didn’t think it was their place to discuss.)
Handie shows the wallet to the blacksmith, and they discuss the proper way to handle it. The blacksmith says, in a way, he wishes that Handie hadn’t found the wallet because it does create an ethical quandary about which of them is the best person to handle it, since it doesn’t really belong to any of them, and he doesn’t want there to be any question about whether he might have taken any money from it himself, since it was in his possession. Handie suggests that they wrap the wallet up in paper and seal it, and he’ll write on the outside that they found it but didn’t open it and that they all sealed it up together. Then, the blacksmith can give it to Trigget when Trigget comes for the coach, and Trigget can deliver it to the girls. The blacksmith is satisfied with this arrangement.
After they’ve resolved that matter, Handie and Rainbow talk about how Trigget was wrong that Burkill stole the money, and Handie says, “And it shows us that we ought to be pretty careful how we judge and condemn people, even when we know that their characters are bad.” (I also took the lesson from it that a person like Burkill has made the kind of reputation for himself where nobody believes him on those rare occasions when he is telling the truth, so it’s also his fault when people don’t believe him. I mean, it’s hard to convincingly argue that you haven’t stolen something when people have already caught you with a different thing you just stole, lied about, and tried to conceal in the same 24 hour period, but that’s not where the story puts its emphasis.)
They continue on with their journey, and when they come to the next tavern, Handie decides to see if they will give them dinner in exchange for work instead of money, so he can save the money they still have. The tavern owner, Mr. Dorling, is a little “slack”, as one of his neighbors puts it. He’s not very on top of things, but his daughter, Margery, minds the business, and she can think of some things for Handie to fix around the place. Margery is very pleased with their help and considers that they have paid for their dinner many times over. Handie thinks that they probably still owe some money for dinner, so he asks Margery’s father what he thinks is fair. At first, it seems like Margery’s father still insists on them paying for most of the cost of their meals, which doesn’t seem fair, but then, they realize that they’ve misunderstood what he said. Mr. Dorling means that he will give them not only the promised meals but almost enough to buy two more meals for themselves. In other words, he’s the one who owes them more money, not the other way around. In fact, they’ve done such good work that Margery proposes that Handie and Rainbow stay the rest of the afternoon. There is more work to do, they can have their evening meals at the tavern, and Margery will also arrange for a wagon to take them to Southerton so they will arrive there at about the time they had planned. Handie accepts the offer, and they continue their work.
The boy who will be taking them to Southerton in a wagon, Tolie, says that he can drive them when he’s done bringing the cows in from the pasture, and they can go sooner, if Rainbow will help him finish the task. Rainbow and Tolie go out to the pasture together, and while they’re out there, they decide that they both want some lilies from the pond. Rainbow often helped younger children from his village get pond lilies and a couple of them have asked him to send some lilies from his journey, so he’s happy to help Tolie. When they collect the lilies, Tolie says he doesn’t see how Rainbow can send lilies back to his town without them wilting on the way. Rainbow does his best to get lilies with their roots intact, and he asks Handie if he can think of a way to send them home undamaged. Handie thinks about it, and he remembers that there’s an empty paint keg in the shed that the Dorlings probably don’t want anymore. He says they can ask the Dorlings if they can have it, and then, Trigget can pick up the lilies and carry them home when he passes this way again. Margery says it’s fine for them to have the paint keg, and she’ll make sure that Trigget picks up the lilies. Trigget is happy to do Rainbow the favor of delivering the lilies because Rainbow was so helpful during and after the coach accident.
Tolie is a little later in leaving with Handie and Rainbow than they originally agreed, and Handie talks to him about the importance of punctuality, telling him a little story about some boys trying for a job and how the one who planned ahead against accidents making him late was the one who got the job. They discuss the story a little, and then, Handie asks Tolie some questions about Southerton and what he knows about the Three Pines farm. Tolie says that Southerton is a small town but pretty nice. He is familiar with the Three Pines farm because boys in the area like to go fishing in a stream nearby. The Three Pines farm used to be very nice, but it has become run down. It was originally established by a man name Captain Stanfield, an early settler in the area. There really are three pine trees on the farm. Tolie says that Captain Stanfield deliberately left the three pine trees there when he cleared the land for planting, and there’s supposed to be a story about why he did that, but Tolie doesn’t know what the full story is.
Handie’s plan, on arriving in Southerton, is to get a room for himself and Rainbow at the local tavern. He only plans to stay at the tavern for a day or two, while he and Rainbow check out the farm, see what condition the buildings are in, and arrange a place for them to sleep there while they’re repairing the farm. Handie doesn’t expect to find furniture at the farm, so they stop at a farm on the way and buy some straw that they can use to make beds at the farm, if they can’t find anything else.
This volume of the story ends at this point, mentioning that Handie and Rainbow had other adventures in Southerton before they finally settle at the farm house and make beds for themselves from the straw they bought. The story promises that it will explain what happened in the next volume. It also explains that, when Trigget comes to bring them their luggage, he also brings them the girls’ wallet they found and turns it over to Handie to return to the girls, telling him to write to them about it. When he does, the girls tell him to take the money from the purse to pay himself back what he loaned them (so he might as well have done that in the first place). They say that he can mail the wallet to them, but instead, he arranges to send them the remaining money and purchases the wallet from them, with their permission. He finds a piece of poetry in the wallet along with the money and tries to ask the girls which of them actually owned the wallet, but they refuse to say. Handie keeps the poem as a keepsake.
Meanwhile, Burkill goes to trial for his theft of the watch, and Rainbow is called as a witness in court. We do not get to see the trial in the story, but we are told that Burkill is found guilty and sent to prison, and the rest of the story has to wait for the next installment in the series.
My Reaction
I liked this installment of the series better than the last one because it had more action to it! The last installment established the reasons for this journey and how Handie came to hire Rainbow as his assistant, but much of it focused on the money problems in the Level family and Handie’s negotiations with the lawyer handling their affairs. In this part of the series, we see Handie and Rainbow setting off on their journey by stage coach! We get to see them riding on top of a stage coach, a daring stunt by Rainbow to try to prevent an accident, and the aftermath of the accident when he isn’t successful. Everyone gives Rainbow credit for risking his neck to try to save the situation, and nobody regards it as his fault when the accident happened anyway. He didn’t do anything to cause it, and he was brave to try to save everyone. Fortunately, there were no fatalities or serious injuries from the accident, so it’s exciting without anyone having to feel scared or too sad about the outcome.
Then, we also have a theft among the stage coach travelers. It’s not much of a mystery who committed it because we have one very definite shady character in the group, and Rainbow sees that person doing something suspicious, which gives it all away. For a while, I was afraid that someone would blame Rainbow for the theft or that our suspicious character might try to claim that the bag he was hiding actually belonged to Rainbow. I half expected it because parts of this series focus on racial issues, so I could see why some characters might be tempted to try to use Rainbow as a scapegoat. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen. It might not have worked even if someone tried because everyone knows who owned which bags because they were loaded on the stage coach in front of everyone, and both Handie and the driver know Rainbow, but I was glad to avoid the stress of a false accusation. Instead, the other characters believe what Rainbow saw, and the real thief is caught with the stolen goods, and we are told that Rainbow is later called as a witness against him in court. There is a definite point where racism enters the story, specifically from the suspicious character, but I want to talk more about racial issues below.
Even the parts of the story that are more educational were pretty interesting. As I said, the author liked to describe parts of daily life and how things work for the education of his young readers, and this is very helpful to people in the 21st century as information about how people lived and worked in the 19th century. In this installment, we really get a look at Handie’s work skills for the first time when he does some work at a tavern to pay for their food. We see him mending a broken door, a window, and a leak in a roof, and before that, we also see him fixing the tavern owner’s tools because they haven’t been well-maintained and Handie’s tools are with the rest of his luggage, waiting to be taken to the next town. The details of Handie’s work are minor details in the narrative, but they’re interesting for people with a fascinating for DIY skills.
Racial Issues in the Mid-19th Century
When you’re reading the parts about racism and the people who stand up for Rainbow or correct the way that other people talk about black people, I’d like to remind you again that this book was written in the late 1850s. This book is pre-Civil War, not just in its setting, but when it was actually created. It was written about 100 years before the Civil Rights Movement. The author of this book, Jacob Abbott, did not live to see the Civil Rights Movement and never heard the term “woke” in its 21st usage or about Black Lives Matter, with all the emotional baggage those carry.
However, like many 19th-century children’s authors, he was very concerned with children’s education. He specifically wrote children’s books for educational purposes, not just pure entertainment. In his books, he explains to children how the world works around from, from the details about travel and mail delivery to the notes about when people habitually go to bed in the countryside vs. the towns to the ways people look at black people, speak about them, and treat them. These things are all parts of the world his child audiences were growing up in, and he wrote about them both to explain what children were seeing around themselves and also to teach the children some lessons about how he and others wanted them to behave and respond to situations they might encounter. Along with the lessons about the importance of hard work, money management, and prudent living (the main focus of the first installment in this series), there are lessons about the polite ways to address black people, how to treat them, and how to respond to someone who isn’t speaking or behaving well. The language that the author uses as polite racial terms isn’t what we would expect in the 21st century, as I explained above, because he didn’t see some of the cultural shifts that inspired the change in the terms that people use. For his time, “colored” and “Negro” were among the more polite words, and the generic “black” we use today was discouraged. However, I think his attitude that it’s best to call people what they want to be called or what they call themselves is generally in keeping with modern principles.
One of the reasons why I want to emphasize that this story, and its author, are from the 1850s, pre-Civil War, is to make sure that readers keep historical events and attitudes in perspective and in their proper order. People like Jacob Abbott existed before the Civil War. He wasn’t the only one who believed in principles of treating other people, including people of different races, with politeness and consideration. There were always people like that. They may not have always said it or shown it in precisely the same way, but there were people with similar attitudes and similar principles in Abbott’s time and even before that. They were there every step of the way, and it matters that they were because none of what happened next would have happened without them, and we wouldn’t be where we are today without their influence behind us.
When I said that his principles are generally in keeping with modern principles, I’m not saying that Abbott was a man ahead of his time. The point that I’m really trying to make was that he was very much a man of his time. The Civil War was looming, tensions about slavery and treatment of black people had been building for some time, the country was sharply fractured, it was discussed openly, hostilities had already taken place, and people could see the war coming. This was the atmosphere in which Abbott was writing for children, and that’s why I find it intriguing that he was writing about racial issues. He is writing not to prepare the children for the coming war but for the little, everyday battles of their lives, for the times when they will live and work alongside people of different races and must learn to get along together. It matters because the man who fusses about where the black boy will sit on the stage coach aren’t that much different from the 1950s/1960s issues about who would sit where on a bus. When the stage coach driver says that Rainbow has paid his fare and can sit where he wants, he’s not that much different from people who defied segregation in restaurants by saying that one paying customer’s money is just as green as another’s, and that’s the color that matters. Different day, but same issues.
The people who stood up against segregation and racism were partly fueled by other people who came before them, people like Abbott and books and magazines with themes like the ones in this story. The children who read this story were children during the Civil War. Their children lived during the second half of the 19th century, through increasing westward expansion and industrialization. Their grandchildren lived through the Jim Crow eras and segregated schools, seeing the popularity of Birth of a Nation in 1915 and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1910s and 1920s. Their great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren would have been alive around the time of the Civil Rights Movement and the end of segregation, but what may have helped determine how they felt about all of these issues and how they felt about them in their daily lives was how their families felt about these things for all the generations leading up to those points when situations came to a head and whether they passed on those principles, generation after generation. Those children who read stories like this, absorbed the lessons, and believed in the principles probably also passed on those attitudes, even if they didn’t give their kids the same books to read.
The Rainbow and Lucky Series isn’t well-known today, but I think it’s just one of those little pieces of the bigger puzzle. It’s the little things that add up to bigger ones later on. Even if later generations of the family didn’t read the same books, they might have been told by parents and grandparents not to call people impolite names or things they don’t like to be called. They might have been taught that people who are behaving themselves and paying good money for services should receive good service in return, no matter what they look like. There were white people who were against slavery long before the Civil War, there were white people who were supportive of the Civil Rights Movement in the mid-20th century, and there are still people in the 21st century who are determined to do what they can to help people suffering from forms of discrimination. Stories come and go, but the lessons we learn along the way and see our families and friends acting out in small, daily ways can stay not just for one lifetime, but the ones that follow. Major changes don’t happen overnight, and it can take generations for them to build, but it’s all the steps and all the people along the way who get us there and keep us moving forward. What I’d like people to remember is that this children’s series is one of those steps. You may not remember every step on the staircase as you go up, but each one gets you a little further up than you were before.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 