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THE
UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM
[Illustration: THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD:
LEVI COFFIN RECEIVING A COMPANY OF FUGITIVES IN THE OUTSKIRTS OF
CINCINNATI, OHIO.
(From a painting by C. T. Webber, Cincinnati, Ohio.)]
THE
UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM
A COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY
Wilbur H. Siebert
_With an Introduction by_
Albert Bushnell Hart
DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.
Mineola, New York
_Bibliographical Note_
This Dover edition, first published in 2006, is an unabridged
republication of _The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom_,
originally published by The Macmillan Company, New York and London,
in 1898. The original fold-out map facing page 113 has now been set
into the book on three separate pages in the same location.
_International Standard Book Number: 0-486-45039-2_
Manufactured in the United States of America Dover Publications,
Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N. Y. 11501
To My Wife
INTRODUCTION
BY ALBERT BUSHNELL HART
Of all the questions which have interested and divided the people
of the United States, none since the foundation of the Federal
Union has been so important, so far-reaching, and so long contested
as slavery. During the first half of the nineteenth century the
other great national questions were nearly all economic--taxation,
currency, banks, transportation, lands,--and they had a strong
material basis, a flavor of self-interest; but though slavery had
also an economic side, the reasons for the onslaught upon it were
chiefly moral. The first objection brought by the slave-power
against the anti-slavery propaganda was the cry of the sacredness
of vested and property rights against attack by sentimentalists;
but what dignified the whole contest was the very fact that the
sentiment for human rights was at the bottom of it, and that the
abolitionists felt a moral responsibility even though property
owners suffered. The slavery question, which in origin was
sectional, became national as the moral issues grew clearer; and
finally loomed up as the dominant question through the determination
of both sides to use the power and prestige of the national
government. From the moral agitation came also the personal element
in the struggle, the development of strong characters, like Calhoun,
Toombs, Stephens and Jefferson Davis on one side; like Lundy,
Lovejoy, Garrison, Giddings, Sumner, Chase, John Brown and Lincoln
on the other.
Among the many weak spots in the system of slavery none gave such
opportunities to Northern abolitionists as the locomotive powers
of the slaves; a "thing" which could hear its owner talking about
freedom, a "thing" which could steer itself Northward and avoid
the "patterollers," was a thing of impaired value as a machine,
however intelligent as a human being. From earliest colonial times
fugitive slaves helped to make slavery inconvenient and expensive.
So long as slavery was general, every slaveholder in every colony
was a member of an automatic association for stopping and returning
fugitives; but, from the Revolution on, the fugitives performed the
important function of keeping continually before the people of the
states in which slavery had ceased, the fact that it continued in
other parts of the Union. Nevertheless, though between 1777 and 1804
all the states north of Maryland threw off slavery, the free states
covenanted in the Federal Constitution of 1787 to interpose no
obstacle to the recapture of fugitives who might come across their
borders; and thus continued to be partners in the system of slavery.
From the first there was reluctance and positive opposition to this
obligation; and every successful capture was an object lesson to
communities out of hearing of the whipping-post and out of sight of
the auction-block.
In aiding fugitive slaves the abolitionist was making the most
effective protest against the continuance of slavery; but he was
also doing something more tangible; he was helping the oppressed, he
was eluding the oppressor; and at the same time he was enjoying the
most romantic and exciting amusement open to men who had high moral
standards. He was taking risks, defying the laws, and making himself
liable to punishment, and yet could glow with the healthful pleasure
of duty done.
To this element of the personal and romantic side of the slavery
contest Professor Siebert has devoted himself in this book. The
Underground Railroad was simply a form of combined defiance of
national laws, on the ground that those laws were unjust and
oppressive. It was the unconstitutional but logical refusal of
several thousand people to acknowledge that they owed any regard
to slavery or were bound to look on fleeing bondmen as the property
of the slaveholders, no matter how the laws read. It was also a
practical means of bringing anti-slavery principles to the attention
of the lukewarm or pro-slavery people in free states; and of
convincing the South that the abolitionist movement was sincere and
effective. Above all, the Underground Railroad was the opportunity
for the bold and adventurous; it had the excitement of piracy, the
secrecy of burglary, the daring of insurrection; to the pleasure
of relieving the poor negro's sufferings it added the triumph of
snapping one's fingers at the slave-catcher; it developed coolness,
indifference to danger, and quickness of resource.
The first task of the historian of the Underground Railroad is to
gather his material, and the characteristic of this book is to
consider the whole question on a basis of established facts. The
effort is timely; for there are still living, or were living when
the work began, many hundreds of persons who knew the intimate
history of parts of the former secret system of transportation;
the book is most timely, for these invaluable details are now fast
disappearing with the death of the actors in the drama. Professor
Siebert has rescued and put on record events which in a few years
will have ceased to be in the memory of living men. He has done for
the history of slavery what the students of ballad and folk-lore
have done for literature; he has collected perishing materials.
Reminiscence is of course, standing alone, an insufficient basis
for historical generalization. On that point Professor Siebert
has been careful to explain his principle: he does not attempt
to generalize from single memories not otherwise substantiated,
but to use reminiscences which confirm each other, to search out
telling illustrations, and to discover what the tendencies were from
numerous contrasted testimonies. Actual contemporary records are
scanty; a few are here preserved, such as David Putnam's memorandum,
and Campbell's letter; and the crispness which they give to the
narrative makes us wish for more. The few available biographies,
autobiographies, and contemporary memoirs have been diligently
sought out and used; and no variety of sources has been ignored
which seemed likely to throw light on the subject. The ground has
been carefully traversed; and it is not likely that much will
ever be added to the body of information collected by Professor
Siebert. His list of sources, described in the introductory chapter
and enumerated in the Appendices, is really a carefully winnowed
bibliography of the contemporary materials on slavery.
The book is practically divided into four parts: the Railroad
itself (Chapters ii, v); the railroad hands (Chapters iii, iv,
vi); the freight (Chapters vii, viii); and political relations and
effects (Chapters ix, x, xi). Perhaps one of the most interesting
contributions to our knowledge of the subject is the account of
the beginnings of the system of secret and systematic aid to
fugitives. The evidence goes to show that there was organization
in Pennsylvania before 1800; and in Ohio soon after 1815. The book
thus becomes a much-needed guide to information about the obscure
anti-slavery movement which preceded William Lloyd Garrison, and
to some degree prepared the way for him; and it will prove a
source for the historian of the influence of the West in national
development. As yet we know too little of the anti-slavery movement
which so profoundly stirred the Western states, including Kentucky
and Missouri, and which came closely into contact with the actual
conditions of slavery. As Professor Siebert points out, most of the
early abolitionists in the West were former slaveholders or sons of
slaveholders.
Professor Siebert has applied to the whole subject a graphic form of
illustration which is at the same time a test of his conclusions.
How can the scattered reminiscences and records of escapes in
widely separated states be shown to refer to the results of one
organized method? Plainly by applying them to the actual face of the
country, so as to see whether the alleged centres of activity have
a geographical connection. The painstaking map of the lines of the
Underground Railroad "system" is an historical contribution of a
novel kind; and it is impossible to gainsay its evidence, which is
expounded in detail in one of the chapters of the book. The result
is a gratifying proof of the usefulness of scientific methods in
historical investigation; one who lived in an anti-slavery community
before the Civil War is fascinated by tracing the hitherto unknown
stretches north and south from the centre which he knew. The map
bears testimony not only to the wide-spread practice of aiding
fugitives, but to the devotion of the conductors on the Underground
Railroad. How useful a section of Mr. Siebert's map would have been
to the slave-catcher in the 50's, when so many strange negroes were
appearing and disappearing in the free states! The facts presented
in the brief compass of the map would have been of immense value
also to the leaders of the Southern Confederacy in 1861, as a
confirmation of their argument that the North would not perform its
constitutional duty of returning the fugitives; yet there is no
record in this book of the betraying of the secrets of the U. G. R.
R. by any person in the service. The moral bond of opposition to the
whole slave power kept men at work forwarding fugitives by a road
of which they themselves knew but a small portion. The political
philosophers who think that the Civil War might have been averted by
timely concessions would do well to study this picture of the wide
distribution of persons who saw no peace in slavery.
Amid all the varieties of anti-slavery men, from the Garrisonian
abolitionist to faint-hearted slaveholders like James G. Birney,
it is interesting to see how many had a share in the Underground
Railroad; and how many earned a reputation as heroes. Professor
Siebert has gathered the names of about 3,200 persons known to
have been engaged in this work--a roll of honor for many American
families. Everybody knew that the fugitives were aided by Fred
Douglass, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Gerrit Smith, Joshua Giddings,
John Brown, Levi Coffin, Thomas Garrett and Theodore Parker; but
this book gives us some account of the interest of men like Thaddeus
Stevens, not commonly counted among the sons of the prophets; and
performs a special service to the student of history and the lover
of heroic deeds, by the brief account of the services of obscure
persons who deserve a place in the hearts of their countrymen. Men
like Rev. George Bourne, Rev. James Duncan and Rev. John Rankin,
years before Garrison's propaganda, had begun to speak and publish
against slavery, and to prepare men's minds for a righteous
disregard of Fugitive Slave Acts. Joseph Sider, with his carefully
subdivided peddler's wagon, deserves a place alongside the better
known Henry Box Brown. The thirty-five thousand stripes of Calvin
Fairbank, seventeen years a convict in the Kentucky penitentiary,
range him with Lovejoy as an anti-slavery martyr. Rev. Charles
Torrey had in the work of rousing slaves to escape, the same
devotion to a fatal duty as that which animated John Brown. And no
one who has ever heard Harriet Tubman describe her part as "Moses"
of the fugitives can ever forget that African prophetess, whose
intense vigor is relieved by a shrewd and kindly humanity.
The quiet recital of the facts has all the charm of romance to
the passengers on the Underground Railroad: whether travelling
by night in a procession of covered wagons, or boldly by day in
disguises; whether boxed up as so much freight, or riding on passes
unhesitatingly given by abolitionist directors of railroads; the
fugitives in these pages rejoice in their prospect of liberty. The
road sign near Oberlin, of a tiger chasing a negro, was a white
man's joke; but it was a negro who said, apropos of his master's
discouraging account of Canada: "They put some extract onto it to
keep us from comin'"; and neither Whittier in his poems, nor Harriet
Beecher Stowe in her novels, imagined a more picturesque incident
than the crossing of the Detroit River by Fairfield's "gang" of
twenty-eight rescued souls singing, "I'm on my way to Canada, where
colored men are free," to the joyful accompaniment of their firearms.
To the settlements of fugitives in Canada Professor Siebert has
given more labor than appears in his book; for his own visits
supplement the accounts of earlier investigators; and we have here
the first complete account of the reception of the negroes in Canada
and their progress in civilization.
Upon the general question of the political effects of the
Underground Railroad, the book adds much to our information, by its
discussion of the probable numbers of fugitives, and of the alarm
caused in the slave states by their departure. The census figures
of 1850 and 1860 are shown to be wilfully false; and the escape
of thousands of persons seems established beyond cavil. Into the
constitutional question of the right to take fugitives, the book
goes with less minuteness, since it is intended to be a contribution
to knowledge, and not an addition to the abundant literature on the
legal side of slavery.
It has been the effort of Professor Siebert to furnish the means for
settling the following questions: the origin of the system of aid to
the fugitives, popularly called the Underground Railroad; the degree
of formal organization; methods of procedure; geographical extent
and relations; the leaders and heroes of the movement; the behavior
of the fugitives on their way; the effectiveness of the settlement
in Canada; the numbers of fugitives; and the attitude of courts and
communities. On all these questions he furnishes new light; and he
appears to prove his concluding statement that "the Underground
Railroad was one of the greatest forces which brought on the Civil
War and thus destroyed slavery."
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
SOURCES OF THE HISTORY OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
PAGE
The Underground Road as a subject for research 1
Obscurity of the subject 2
Books dealing with the subject 2
Magazine articles on the Underground Railroad 5
Newspaper articles on the subject 6
Scarcity of contemporaneous documents 7
Reminiscences the chief source 11
The value of reminiscences illustrated 12