Buying Back Frances

“Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.” — Psalm 82:3 (ESV)

Amanda’s younger sister Frances was born free, in Pennsylvania, to free parents. That should have been the end of the danger. It was not. When Frances was small she went to live with an aunt in Maryland, and things went badly — the aunt was harsh, Frances ran away to a family that treated her better, and in the chaos of the Civil War years, when Black people were being seized and sold if they could not instantly prove they were free, a freeborn child was simply sold anyway. For forty dollars. To a man for a term of ten years.

Amanda was working as a servant for six dollars a month when the word reached her. She borrowed fifty dollars against her wages and went — traveling into a slave state as a Black woman during a war to get her sister back. She reached the area and started walking the miles to the farm, alone, having eaten nothing all day. She was afraid to stop at houses for even a drink of water. At one fine house with a pump right there in the yard she asked an old woman on the porch for water and was told, “No, no; go on, go on.” Amanda nearly fainted, then prayed that God would just take the thirst away — and, she said, it left her completely, and she walked on another mile in the sun.

When she reached the farm and found Frances, the man who “owned” her sister raved and swore and refused to let a freeborn girl go for less than the forty dollars he had paid. It was outrageous — Amanda had no legal duty to pay a cent for a person who was never lawfully anyone’s property. But there was no one to swear for Frances in court, no protection coming, and a furious man with a horsewhip in his hand. So Amanda paid. She handed over the money, and Frances left with the single dress she stood in and one more under her arm. Amanda spent years working off that debt.

Be honest about how this story makes you feel, because the feeling is the point. It is infuriating. Amanda did everything right and still had to buy back her own free sister from a man with no right to sell her, because the law and the people around them would not protect a Black girl. Sometimes doing the loving thing means paying a price that is completely unjust — a price you should never have been handed. Amanda paid it because Frances mattered more to her than the principle of the thing.

That is a hard, grown-up kind of love, and you will need to understand it. There will be times when the fair solution is simply not available — when standing up for someone, or cleaning up a mess that was not yours, or protecting a person who is cornered, costs you money, time, comfort, or credit you did not owe. The immature response is, “That’s not fair, so I won’t.” Amanda’s response was to count the person as worth more than the unfairness. She never pretended it was fair. She just decided Frances came first.

One thing to do: think of one person in your life who is being treated unfairly and cannot fix it alone — a sibling, a friend, someone at school. Do one thing to help them this week that costs you something and that you technically “don’t have to” do. Love that only shows up when it is fair and convenient is not the kind Amanda’s family practiced.