The Divided North

Black and White Families in the Age of Slavery

In The Divided North, Alna writer Carol Gardner traces two Maine families, one Black and one White, as they navigate the turbulent nineteenth century. The Rubys were antislavery activists; the Gordons, prominent ship masters — among them, the only American executed for participating in the transatlantic slave trade. Their experiences reveal what it meant to live in a free state during the age of slavery.

Hear Carol speak about the ships at the heart of this story — Damariscotta and Newcastle Ships of the Slave Trade — at the Alna Meetinghouse on Saturday, June 20, 2026 at 2:00 PM. Event details →

About the Book

Reuben Ruby and Nathaniel Gordon II were born eleven months apart in 1798 and 1799 and spent much of their boyhoods roaming the noisy, bustling waterfront of Portland, Maine. They lived just blocks from one another, attended school together, and went to the same church with their families. But they were worlds apart, separated by family, culture, and race. Reuben Ruby was Black and Nathaniel Gordon was White. The Rubys became prominent antislavery activists, equal rights advocates, and operatives on the Underground Railroad, while the Gordons became well-to-do ship masters, owners, and merchants — among them, the most notorious American slave ship captain of the century, Nathaniel Gordon III.

In this compelling narrative history and intimate dual-family biography, Carol Gardner traces the Rubys and Gordons as they navigate the turbulent 1800s. As families and individuals, they demonstrate that the North was a critical proving ground for American ideals of freedom and equality, as telling as any town, plantation, or battlefield in the South. Their experiences help reveal what it meant to live in a free state during the age of slavery, with all the promise, disappointment, irony, and hope that the notion entailed.

Praise

The Divided North offers readers something fresh: historians have not given this side of Maine's history much attention, and the two families are not well known. Their stories are braided beautifully, moving back and forth without confusing the reader, and the writing is excellent.

— John Harris, author of The Last Slave Ships: New York and the End of the Middle Passage

Carol Gardner takes us to an overlooked place in the history of American slavery: Portland, Maine. Such an intimate portrait of nineteenth-century America's racial politics helps us better understand what was at stake in the struggle for human freedom and dignity. It was a struggle that echoes into our own time.

— Jared Ross Hardesty, author of Black Lives, Native Lands, White Worlds

Purchase

Paperback · 251 pages · ISBN 978-1-62534-875-3 · $34.95

Ships via USPS Media Mail. Allow 2–8 business days for delivery. Local pickup available — see options at checkout.

About the Author

Carol Gardner is a native of Portland, Maine with more than 30 years' experience as a writer, researcher, and journalist. She earned a PhD in English from Johns Hopkins University, taught at Johns Hopkins, Wake Forest, and Florida State Universities, and has published pieces in a wide variety of books and periodicals. She is a past winner of a Maryland Individual Artists Award and is the author of a narrative history, The Involuntary American: A Scottish Prisoner's Journey to the New World (2019). She lives in Alna, Maine.