Description In August 1846, abolitionist Gerrit Smith revealed his intent to parcel out 120,000 Adirondack acres to three thousand black New Yorkers to enable them to win the right to vote through property ownership. This book is the story of this so-called grant, the actuality of the lives of the new homesteaders in the North Country of the Adirondacks, and the legacy of their experiences. The Black Woods is the history of a Black settlement in the Adirondack Mountains in the mid19th century. Organized by a radical white reformer and his Black allies in 1846, Gerrit Smith won support from Frederick Douglass, John Brown, Horace Greely, and New York's leading abolitionists for a "scheme of justice and benevolence, aimed at furnishing three thousand Black New Yorkers with Adirondack gift lots that could help enfranchise them when Black men could only vote if they owned land. Godine will follow her summary of the story with her discoveries about its many ties to Vermont, from the Vermonters who supported it to the several Black Adirondack pioneers who eventually chose to make Vermont their next frontier. Amy Godine is an independent scholar, lecturer and writer with a longstanding interest in the Adirondack social, ethnic, migratory, and Black experience. The recipient of a Michener Fellowship from the Iowa Writers Workshop, Godine has published fiction in TriQuarterly, The Quarterly, and North American Review, and has won numerous awards for her articles on northern New York history in Adirondack Life. She lives in Saratoga Springs, NY, and in Hartland Vermont.