Jonathan Walker, born 1799 in Massachusetts, was an abolitionist who spent his life aiding excaped slaves find safe lands to settle and build new lives.
His fame as an abolitionist came in 1844 when he was a ship captain attempted to smuggle slaves from Florida to the Bahamas, where the abomination of slavery was abolished, but unfortunately fell deathly ill and couldn't navigate his ship to freedom. His boat was rescued by a salvage sloop who took him to Key West where he was promptly arrested for stealing slaves and taken to Pensacola to languish in a squalid prison cell for months before being allowed his right to trial.
He was sentenced to one hour in the public pillory, a year's time in prison, to pay court costs and a $600 fine, and to receive a branding of "SS" denoting slave stealer on his right hand.
Upon his release in 1845 he would begin to tour the New England States, delivering fiery speeches of the horrific conditions he saw the slaves of the south were suffering, punctuating the end of each of his speeches by lifting his right hand to the audience and proclaiming it "the seal, the coat of arms of the United States."
He spent the rest of his life fighting against slavery, culminating in the reorganization the Michigan Anti-Slavery Society in 1853 in Adrian, Michigan alongside other named abolitionists such as Stephen and Abby Foster, Sojourner Truth, Marius Robinson, and Sallie Holley.
Famed poet and abolition advocate John Greenleaf Whittier, paid tribute to Walker in his poem, "The Branded Hand,"
Welcome home again, brave seaman! with thy thoughtful brow and gray,
And the old heroic spirit of our earlier, better day,—
With that front of calm endurance, on whose steady nerve in vain
Pressed the iron of the prison, smote the fiery shafts of pain!
Is the tyrant’s brand upon thee?
Did the brutal cravens aim
To make God’s truth thy falsehood, his holiest work thy shame?
When, all blood-quenched, from the torture the iron was withdrawn,
How laughed their evil angel the baffled fools to scorn!
They change to wrong the duty which God hath written out
On the great heart of humanity, too legible for doubt!
They, the loathsome moral lepers, blotched from footsole up to crown,
Give to shame what God hath given unto honor and renown!
Why, that brand is highest honor!—than its traces never yet
Upon old armorial hatchments was a prouder blazon set;
And thy unborn generations, as they tread our rocky strand,
Shall tell with pride the story of their father’s BRANDED HAND !
Jonathan Walker, the man whose Branded Hand stands fore the highest honour borne to those who worke to bring Salvation to the Slaves
