The influence of James Ford was felt as far away as Springfield, Illinois, which can be attested to in the Sangamo Journal newspaper, where he ran a fugitive slave notice, with detailed physical descriptions of two runaway slaves he owned. The cruel and ruthless treatment Ford showed toward his slaves was told in numerous stories many true and untrue. In one tale, Ford was alleged to have punished one of his slaves by using a vise to secure the head of the slave and cut off his ears and pull out his teeth. The 1832 runaway slave notice Ford had printed in the Sangamo Journal indicated that a slave named "Ben" had his ears removed for "robbing a boat on the Ohio River". In another tale, James Ford allegedly bound hand to foot an offending slave and dragged him to death behind a mule, through a field of tree stumps.
