Iowa, forwarded fugitives to Mr. J. B. Grinnell, after whom the town
of Grinnell was named. The latter gives the following note as a
sample of the messages that passed between them:--
_Dear Grinnell_:--Uncle Tom says if the roads are not too bad
you can look for those fleeces of wool by to-morrow. Send them
on to test the market and price, no back charges.
Yours,
HUB.[136]
[136] J. B. Grinnell, _Men and Events of Forty Years_, p. 217.
There were many persons engaged in underground work that did not
always take the precaution to veil their communications. Judge
Thomas Lee, of the Western Reserve, was one of this class, as the
following letter to Mr. Putnam, of Point Harmar, will show:--
CADIZ, OHIO, March 17th, 1847.
MR. DAVID PUTNAM,
_Dear Sir_:--I understand you are a friend to the poor and are
willing to obey the heavenly mandate, "Hide the outcasts, betray
not him that wandereth." Believing this, and at the request of
Stephen Fairfax (who has been permitted in divine providence to
enjoy for a few days the kind of liberty which Ohio gives to the
man of colour), I would be glad if you could find out and let me
know by letter what are the prospects if any and the probable
time when, the balance of the family will make the same effort
to obtain their inalienable right to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. Their friends who have gone north are very
anxious to have them follow, as they think it much better to
work for eight or ten dollars per month than to work for nothing.
Yours in behalf of the millions of poor, opprest and downtrodden
in our land.
THOMAS LEE.
In the conveyance of fugitives from station to station there existed
all the variety of method one would expect to find. In the early
days of the Underground Road the fugitives were generally men. It
was scarcely thought necessary to send a guide with them unless some
special reason for so doing existed. They were, therefore, commonly
given such directions as they needed and left to their own devices.
As the number of refugees increased, and women and children were
more frequently seen upon the Road, and pursuit was more common,
the practice of transporting fugitives on horseback, or by vehicle,
was introduced. The steam railroad was a new means furnished to
abolitionists by the progress of the times, and used by them with
greater or less frequency as circumstances required, and when the
safety of passengers would not be sacrificed.
When fugitive travellers afoot or on horseback found themselves
pursued, safety lay in flight, unless indeed the company was large
enough, courageous enough, and sufficiently well armed to give
battle. The safety of fugitives while travelling by conveyance lay
mainly in their concealment, and many were the stratagems employed.
Characteristic of the service of the Underground Railroad were
the covered wagons, closed carriages and deep-bedded farm-wagons
that hid the passengers. There are those living who remember
special day-coaches of more peculiar construction. Abram Allen, a
Quaker of Oakland, Clinton County, Ohio, had a large three-seated
wagon, made for the purpose of carrying fugitives. He called it
the Liberator. It was curtained all around, would hold eight or
ten persons, and had a mechanism with a bell, invented by Mr.
Allen, to record the number of miles travelled.[137] A citizen
of Troy, Ohio, a bookbinder by trade, had a large wagon, built
about with drawers in such a way as to leave a large hiding-place
in the centre of the wagon-bed. As the bookbinder drove through
the country he found opportunity to help many a fugitive on his
way to Canada.[138] Horace Holt, of Rutland, Meigs County, Ohio,
sold reeds to his neighbors in southern Ohio. He had a box-bed
wagon with a lid that fastened with a padlock. In this he hauled
his supply of reeds; it was well understood by a few that he also
hauled fugitive slaves.[139] Joseph Sider, of southern Indiana,
found his pedler wagon well adapted to the transportation of slaves
from Kentucky plantations.[140] William Still gives instances of
negroes being placed in boxes, and shipped as freight by boat, and
also by rail, to friends in the North. William Box Peel Jones was
boxed in Baltimore and sent to Philadelphia by way of the Ericsson
line of steamers, being seventeen hours on the way.[141] Henry Box
Brown had the same thrilling and perilous experience. His trip
consumed twenty-four hours, during which time he was in the care of
the Adams Express Company in transit from Richmond, Virginia, to
Philadelphia.[142]
[137] Judge R. B. Harlan and others, _History of Clinton County,
Ohio_, pp. 380-383; letter of Seth Linton, Oakland, Clinton
County, O., Sept. 4, 1892; Smedley, _Underground Railroad_, p.
187.
[138] The _Miami Union_, April 10, 1895, article entitled "A
Reminiscence of Slave Times."
[139] Letter of Mrs. C. Grant, Pomeroy, Meigs Co., O.
[140] The _Republican Leader_, March 16, 1894, article,
"Reminiscence of the Underground Railroad," by E. H. Trueblood.
[141] See _Underground Railroad Records_, pp. 46, 47.
[142] _Ibid._, pp. 81-84; see also _Narrative of Henry Box Brown,
who escaped from slavery enclosed in a box 3 feet long and 2
wide, written from a statement of facts made by himself_, 1849,
by Charles Stearns.
Abolitionists that drove wagons or carriages containing refugees,
"conductors" as they came to be called in the terminology of the
Railroad service, generally took the precaution to have ostensible
reasons for their journeys. They sought to divest their excursions
of the air of mystery by seeming to be about legitimate business.
Hannah Marsh, of Chester County, Pennsylvania, was in the habit
of taking garden produce to the Philadelphia markets to sell;
when, therefore, she sometimes used her covered market-wagon, even
in daytime, to convey fugitives, she attracted no attention, and
made her trips without molestation.[143] Calvin Fairbank abducted
the Stanton family, father, mother and six children, from the
neighborhood of Covington, Kentucky, by packing them in a load of
straw.[144] James W. Torrence, of Northwood, Ohio, together with
some of his neighbors exported grain, and sometimes feathers, to
Sandusky. These products were generally shipped when there were
fugitives to go with the load. As the distance to Sandusky was a
hundred and twenty miles, refugees who happened to profit by this
arrangement were saved much time and no small amount of risk in
getting to their destination.[145] Mr. William I. Bowditch, of
Boston, used a two-horse carryall on one occasion to take a single
fugitive to Concord.[146] Mr. John Weldon and other abolitionists,
of Dwight, Illinois, took negroes to Chicago concealed in wagons
loaded with sacks of bran.[147] Levi Coffin, of Cincinnati, Ohio,
frequently received large companies for which safe transportation
had to be supplied. On one occasion a party of twenty-eight
negroes arrived, towards daylight, in the suburbs of Cincinnati,
from Boone County, Kentucky, and it was necessary to send them on
at once. Accordingly at Friend Coffin's suggestion a number of
carriages were procured, formed into a long funeral-like procession
and started solemnly on the road to Cumminsville.[148] An almost
endless array of incidents similar to these can be given, but enough
have been recited to illustrate the caution that prevailed in the
transportation of fugitive slaves toward Canada.
[143] Smedley, _Underground Railroad_, pp. 138, 139.
[144] _The Rev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times_, pp. 24,
25; see also the _Chicago Tribune_, Jan. 29, 1893, p. 33.
[145] Conversation with James W. Torrence, Northwood, Logan Co.,
O., Sept. 22, 1894.
[146] Letter of William I. Bowditch, Boston, Mass., April 5, 1893.
The routes were very far from being straight. They are perhaps best
described by the word zigzag. The exigencies that determined in
what direction an escaping slave should go during any particular
part of his journey were, in the nature of the case, always local.
The ultimate goal was Canada, but a safe passage was of greater
importance than a quick one. When speed would contribute safety the
guide would make a long trip with his charge, or perhaps resort
to the steam railroad; but under ordinary circumstances, in those
regions where the Underground Railroad was most patronized, a guide
had almost always a choice between two or more routes; he could, as
seemed best at the time, take the right-hand road to one station, or
the left-hand road to another. In truth, the underground paths in
these regions formed a great and intricate network, and it was in
no small measure because the lines forming the meshes of this great
system converged and branched again at so many stations that it was
almost an impossibility for slave-hunters to trace their negroes
through even a single county without finding themselves on the wrong
trail. It was a common stratagem in times of special emergency to
switch off travellers from one course to another, or to take them
back on their track and then, after a few days of waiting, send
them forward again. It is, then, proper to say that zigzag was one
of the regular devices to blind and throw off pursuit. It served
moreover to avoid unfriendly localities. It seems probable that the
circuitous land route from Toledo to Detroit was an expedient of
this sort, for slave-owners and their agents were often known to
be on the lookout along the direct thoroughfare between the places
named. The two routes between Millersburgh and Lodi in northern
Ohio are explained by the statement that the most direct route,
the western one, fell under suspicion for a while, and in the
meantime a more circuitous path was followed through Holmesville and
Seville.[149]
[147] Letter of John Weldon, Dwight, Ill., Nov. 7, 1895.
[148] _History of Darke County, Ohio_, p. 332 _et seq._
[149] Letter of Thomas L. Smith, Fredericksburg, Wayne Co., O.,
Oct. 6, 1894.
During the long process by which the slave with the help of friends
was being transmuted into the freeman he spent much of his time
in concealment. His progress was made in the night-time. When a
station was reached he was provided with a hiding-place, and he
scarcely left it until his host decided it would be safe for him to
continue his journey. The hiding-places the fugitive entered first
and last were as dissimilar as can well be imagined. Slaves that
crossed the Ohio River at Ripley, and fell into the hands of the
Rev. John Rankin, were often concealed in his barn, which is said
to have been provided with a secret cellar for use by the slaves
when pursuers approached. The barn of Deacon Jirch Platt at Mendon,
Illinois, was a haven into which many slaves from Missouri were
piloted by way of Quincy. A hazel thicket in Mr. Platt's pasture-lot
was sometimes resorted to,[150] as was one of his hayricks that
was hollow and had a blind entrance.[151] Joshua R. Giddings, the
sturdy anti-slavery Congressman from the Western Reserve, had an
out-of-the-way bedroom in one wing of his house at Jefferson, Ohio,
that was kept in readiness for fugitive slaves.[152] The attic over
the _Liberator_ office in Boston is said to have been a rendezvous
for such persons.[153] A station-keeper at Plainfield, Illinois,
had a woodpile with a room in the centre for a hiding-place.[154]
The Rev. J. Porter, pastor of a Congregational church at Green Bay,
Wisconsin, was asked to furnish a place of hiding for a family of
fugitives, and at his wife's suggestion he put them in the belfry
of his church, where they remained three days before a vessel came
by which they could be safely transported to Canada.[155] Mr. James
M. Westwater and other citizens of Columbus, Ohio, fitted up an
old smoke-house standing on Chestnut Street near Fourth Street as
a station of the Underground Railroad.[156] A fugitive reaching
Canton, Washington County, Indiana, was secreted for a while in a
low place in a thick, dark woods; and afterwards in a rail pen
covered with straw.[157] Eli F. Brown, of Amesville, Athens County,
Ohio, writes: "I built an addition to my house in which I had a room
with its partition in pannels. One pannel could be raised about a
half inch and then slid back, so as to permit a man to enter the
room. When the pannel was in place it appeared like its fellows....
In the abutment of Zanesville bridge on the Putnam side there was
a place of concealment prepared."[158] "Conductors" Levi Coffin,
Edward Harwood, and W. H. Brisbane, of Cincinnati, Ohio, had a
number of hiding-places for slaves. "One was in the dark cellar of
Coffin's store; another was at Mr. Coffin's out-of-the-way residence
between Avondale and Walnut Hills; another was a dark sub-cellar
under the rear part of Dr. Bailey's residence, corner of Sixth
and College Streets."[159] The gallery of the old First Church at
Galesburg, Illinois, was utilized as a place of concealment for
refugees by certain members of that church.[160] Gabe N. Johnson, a
colored man of Ironton, on the Ohio River, sometimes hid fugitives
in a coal-bank back of his house.[161] This list of illustrations
could be almost indefinitely continued. A sufficient number has been
given to show the ingenuity necessarily used to secure safety.
[150] Letter of J. E. Platt, Guthrie, Ok., March 28, 1896. Mr.
Platt is a son of Deacon Jirch Platt.
[151] Letter of William H. Collins, Quincy, Ill., Jan. 13, 1896.
[152] Conversation with J. Addison Giddings, Jefferson, O.
[153] Letter of Lewis Ford, Boston, Mass. See also _Reminiscences
of Fugitive Slave Law Days in Boston_, by Austin Bearse, 1880, p.
12.
[154] Letter of John Weldon, Dwight, Ill., Jan. 10, 1896.
[155] Letter of the Rev. J. E. Roy, Chicago, Ill., April 9, 1896.
[156] W. G. Deshler and others, _Memorial on the Death of James
M. Westwater_, pp. 14, 15.
[157] Letter of E. H. Trueblood, Hitchcock, Ind.
[158] Letter of E. F. Brown, Amesville, O.
[159] _Cincinnati Commercial Gazette_, Feb. 11, 1894, article by
W. Eldebe.
[160] Letter of Professor George Churchill, Galesburg, Jan. 29,
1896.
[161] Conversation with Gabe N. Johnson, Ironton, O., Sept. 30,
1894.
In the transit from station to station some simple disguise was
often assumed. Thomas Garrett, a Quaker of Wilmington, Delaware,
kept a quantity of garden tools on hand for this purpose. He
sometimes gave a man a scythe, rake, or some other implement to
carry through town. Having reached a certain bridge on the way to
the next station, the pretending laborer concealed his tool under
it, as he had been directed, and journeyed on. Later the tool was
taken back to Mr. Garrett's to be used for a similar purpose.[162]
Valentine Nicholson, a station-keeper at Harveysburg, Warren
County, Ohio, concealed the identity of a fugitive, a mulatto,
who was known to be pursued, by blacking his face and hands with
burnt cork.[163] Slight disguises like these were probably not used
as often as more elaborate ones. The Rev. Calvin Fairbank, and
John Fairfield, the Virginian, who abducted many slaves from the
South, resorted frequently to this means of securing the safety of
their followers. Mr. Fairbank tells us that he piloted slave-girls
attired in the finery of ladies, men and boys tricked out as
gentlemen and the servants of gentlemen; and that sometimes he found
it necessary to require his followers to don the garments of the
opposite sex.[164] In May, 1843, Mr. Fairbank went to Arkansas for
the purpose of rescuing William Minnis from bondage. He found that
the slave was a young man of light complexion and prepossessing
appearance, and that he closely resembled a gentleman living in the
vicinity of Little Rock. Minnis was, therefore, fitted out with the
necessary wig, beard and moustache, and clothes like those of his
model; he was quickly drilled in the deportment of his assumed rank,
and, as the test proved, he sustained himself well in his part. On
boarding the boat that was to carry him to freedom he discovered his
owner, Mr. Brennan, but so effectual was the slave's make-up that
the master failed to penetrate the disguise.[165]
[162] Smedley, _Underground Railroad_, p. 242.
[163] Letter of Valentine Nicholson, Indianapolis, Ind., Sept.
10, 1892.
[164] _The Rev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times_, p. 10.
[165] _Ibid._, p 34. _et seq._
[Illustration: BARN OF SEYMOUR FINNEY, ESQ., DETROIT, MICHIGAN.
A shelter for fugitives in Detroit, formerly standing where the
Chamber of Commerce Building now stands.]
[Illustration: THE OLD FIRST CHURCH, GALESBURG, ILLINOIS.
Fugitive slaves were sometimes concealed in the gallery of this
church.]
A similar story is told by Mr. Sidney Speed, of Crawfordsville,
Indiana, when recalling the work of his father, John Speed, and that
of Fisher Doherty. "In 1858 or 1859, a mulatto girl about eighteen
or twenty years old, very good-looking and with some education, ...
reached our home. The nigger-catchers became so watchful that she
could not be moved for several days. In fact, some of them were
nearly always at the house either on some pretended business or
making social visits. I do not think that the house was searched,
or they would surely have found her, as during all this time she
remained in the garret over the old log kitchen, where the fugitives
were usually kept when there was danger. Her owner, a man from New
Orleans, had just bought her in Louisville, and he had traced her
surely to this place; she had not struck the Underground before, but
had made her way alone this far, and as they got no trace of her
beyond here they returned and doubled the watches on Doherty and
my father. But at length a day came, or a night rather, when she
was led safely out through the gardens to the house of a colored
man named Patterson. There she was rigged out in as fine a costume
of silk and ribbons as it was possible to procure at that time,
and was furnished with a white baby borrowed for the occasion, and
accompanied by one of the Patterson girls as servant and nurse."
Thus disguised, the lady boarded the train at the station. But what
must have been her feelings to find her master already in the same
car; he was setting out to watch for her at the end of the line.
She kept her courage, and when they reached Detroit she went aboard
the ferry-boat for Canada; her pretended nurse returned to shore
with the borrowed baby; and as the gang-plank was being raised, the
young slave-woman on the boat removed her veil that she might bid
her owner good-by. The master's display of anger as he gazed at the
departing boat was as real as the situation was gratifying to his
former slave and amusing to the bystanders.[166]
[166] Letter from Mr. Sidney Speed, Crawfordsville, Ind., March
6, 1896.
John Fairfield, the Virginian, depended largely on disguises in
several of his abducting exploits. At one time he was asked by a
number of Canadian refugees to help some of their relatives to
the North, and when he found that many of them had very light
complexions, he decided to send them to Canada disguised as white
persons. Having secured for them the requisite wigs and powder, he
was gratified with the transformation in appearance they were able
to effect. He therefore secured tickets for his party, and placed
them aboard a night train for Harrisburg, where they were met by
a person who accompanied them to Cleveland and saw them take boat
for Detroit. Later Fairfield succeeded in aiding other companies of
slaves to escape from Washington and Harper's Ferry by resorting
to similar means.[167] Among the Quakers the woman's costume was a
favorite disguise for fugitives. No one attired in it was likely to
be in the least degree suspicioned of being anything else than what
the garb proclaimed. The veiled bonnet also was peculiarly adapted
to conceal the features of the person disguised.[168] One incident
will suffice to show the utility of the Quaker costume. One evening
Joseph G. Walker, a Quaker of Wilmington, Delaware, was appealed
to by a slave-woman, who was closely pursued. She was permitted to
enter Mr. Walker's house, and a few minutes later, in the gown and
bonnet of Mrs. Walker, she passed out of the front door leaning upon
the arm of the shrewd Quaker.[169]
[167] _Reminiscences of Levi Coffin_, pp. 439-442.
[168] M. G. McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, p. 61.
[169] Smedley, _Underground Railroad_, p. 244.
It is quite apparent that the Underground Railroad was not a formal
organization with officers of different ranks, a regular membership,
and a treasury from which to meet expenses. A terminology, it is
true, sprang up in connection with the work of the Road, and one
hears of station-keepers, agents, conductors, and even presidents of
the Underground Railroad; but these titles were figurative terms,
borrowed with other expressions from the convenient vocabulary of
steam railways; and while they were useful among abolitionists to
save circumlocution, they commended themselves to the friends of the
slave by helping to mystify the minds of the public. The need of
organization was not felt except in a few localities. It was only in
towns and cities that the distinctions of "managers," "contributing
members," and "agents" began to develop in any significant way, and
even in the case of these places the distinctions must not be pushed
far, for they indicate merely that certain men by their sagacious
activity came to be called "managers," while others less bold, the
contributing members, were willing to give money towards defraying
the expenses of some trusty person, the agent, who would run the
risk of piloting fugitives.
The first reference to an organization devoted to the business of
aiding fugitive slaves occurs in a letter of George Washington,
bearing date May 12, 1786. Washington speaks of a "society of
Quakers in the city [Philadelphia], formed for such purposes...."[170]
We have no means of knowing how this body conducted its work, nor
how long it continued to exist. It is sometimes stated that the
formal organization of the Underground Road took place in 1838,
but this is not an accurate statement. An organized society of the
Underground Railroad was formed in Philadelphia about the year
1838. Mr. Robert Purvis, who was the president, has called this
body the first of its kind, but this may be doubted in view of the
quotation from Washington's letter above cited. The character of
the organization appears from the following account of its methods
given by Mr. Purvis:[171] "The funds for carrying on this enterprise
were raised from our anti-slavery friends, _as the cases came
up_,"[172] and their needs demanded it; for many of the fugitives
required no other help than advice and direction how to proceed.
To the late Daniel Neall, the society was greatly indebted for his
generous gifts, as well as for his encouraging words and fearless
independence.... The most efficient helpers or agents we had, were
two market-women, who lived in Baltimore....
[170] Spark's _Washington_, IX, 158, quoted in _Quakers of
Pennsylvania_, by Dr. A. C. Applegarth, _Johns Hopkins Studies_,
X, 463.
[171] The letter from which this quotation is made will be found
in _Underground Railroad_, by R. C. Smedley, pp. 355, 356.
[172] The italics are my own.
"Another most effective worker was a son of a slaveholder, who lived
at Newberne, S.C. Through his agency, the slaves were forwarded
by placing them on vessels.... Having the address of the active
members of the committee, they were enabled to find us, when not
accompanied by our agents.... The fugitives were distributed among
the members of the society, but most of them were received at my
house in Philadelphia, where ... I caused a place to be constructed
underneath a room, which could only be entered by a trap-door in the
floor...."
This account shows clearly that the organization of 1838 was
limited; and while it was officered with a president, secretary
and committee, and had helpers at a distance called agents, it
can scarcely be said that the plan of action of the society was
different in essential points from that which developed without
the formality of election of officers in many underground centres
throughout the Northern states. Levi Coffin, by his devotion to the
cause of the fugitive from boyhood to old age, gained the title
of President of the Underground Railroad,[173] but he was not
at the head of a formal organization. In northeastern Illinois,
Peter Stewart, a prosperous citizen of Wilmington, who was a very
active worker in the cause, was sometimes called President of the
Underground Railroad,[174] but here again the distinction seems
to have been complimentary and figurative. In truth the work was
everywhere spontaneous, and its character was such that organization
could have added little or no efficiency. Unfaltering confidence
among members of neighboring stations served better than a code
of rules; special messengers sent on the spur of the moment took
the place of conferences held at stated seasons; supplies gathered
privately as they were needed sufficed instead of regular dues; and,
in general, the decision and sagacity of the individual was required
rather than the less rapid efforts of an organization.
[173] Howe, _Historical Collections of Ohio_, Vol. II, pp. 103,
104; see also the _Reminiscences of Levi Coffin_.
[174] George H. Woodruff, _History of Will County, Illinois_, p.
268.
In a few centres where the amount of secret service to be done
was large, a slight specialization of work is to be noticed. This
division of labor consisted in the employment of a regular conductor
or agent at these points to manage the work of transportation of
passengers to points farther north; while the station-keepers
attended more closely to the work of receiving and caring for the
new arrivals. The special conductors chosen were men thoroughly
acquainted with the different routes of their respective
neighborhoods. At Mechanicsburg, Champaign County, Ohio, Udney
Hyde, a fearless and well-known citizen, acted as agent between the
local stations of J. R. Ware and Levi Rathbun, and stations to the
northeast as far as the Alum Creek Quaker Settlement, a distance of
forty miles.[175] The stations at Mechanicsburg were among the most
widely known in central and southern Ohio. They received fugitives
from at least three regular routes, and doubtless had "switch
connections" with other lines. Passengers were taken northward over
one of the three, perhaps four roads, and as one or two of these
lay through pro-slavery neighborhoods a brave and experienced agent
was almost indispensable. George W. S. Lucas, a colored man of
Salem, Columbiana County, Ohio, made frequent trips with the closed
carriage of Philip Evans, between Barnesville, New Philadelphia and
Cadiz, and two stations, Ashtabula and Painesville, on the shore of
Lake Erie. Occasionally Mr. Lucas conducted parties to Cleveland
and Sandusky and Toledo, but in such cases he went on foot or by
stage.[176] His trips were sometimes a hundred miles and more in
length. George L. Burroughes, a colored man of Cairo, Illinois,
became an agent for the Underground Road in 1857, while acting as
porter of a sleeping-car running on the Illinois Central Railroad
between Cairo and Chicago.[177] At Albany, New York, Stephen Meyers,
a negro, was an agent of the Underground Road for a wide extent of
territory.[178] At Detroit there were several colored agents; among
them George De Baptiste and George Dolarson.[179]
[175] Conversation with J. R. Ware, and with the daughter of Mr.
Hyde, Mrs. Amanda Shepherd, Mechanicsburg, O., Sept. 7, 1895;
conversation with Major Joseph C. Brand, Urbana, O., Aug. 13,
1894.
[176] Conversation with George W. S. Lucas, Salem, Columbiana
Co., Aug. 14, 1892, when he was fifty-nine years old. He was
remarkably clear and convincing in his statements, many of which
have since been corroborated. Citizens of Salem referred to him
as a reliable source of information.
[177] Letter from George L. Burroughes, Cairo, Ill., Jan. 6,
1896. Mr. Burroughes said that Mr. Robert Delany, a friend from
Canada, proposed to him that they both take an agency for the
Underground Railroad. Delany took the Rock Island route and
Burroughes the Cairo route.
[178] Letter of Martin I. Townsend, Troy, N.Y., Sept. 4, 1896.
Mr. Townsend was counsel for the fugitive, Charles Nalle, in
the Nalle or Troy Rescue case. See the little book entitled,
_Harriet, the Moses of Her People_, 2d ed., p. 146; see also
_History of the County of Albany, New York, from 1609-1886_, p.
725.
[179] Conversation with Judge J. W. Finney, Detroit, Mich., July
27, 1897.
The slight approach to organization manifest in some centres in the
division of labor between station-keepers and special agents or
conductors was caused by the large number of fugitives arriving at
these points, and the extreme caution necessary. When, at length,
indignation was aroused in the minds of Northern abolitionists by
the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, September 18, 1850, the
determination to resist this measure displayed itself in certain
localities in the formation of vigilance committees. Theodore Parker
explains that it was in consequence of the enactment of this measure
that "people held indignant meetings, and organized committees of
vigilance whose duty was to prevent a fugitive from being arrested,
if possible, or to furnish legal aid, and raise every obstacle to
his rendition. The vigilance committees," he says, "were also the
employees of the U. G. R. R. and effectively disposed of many a
_casus belli_ by transferring the disputed chattel to Canada. Money,
time, wariness, devotedness for months and years, that cannot be
computed, and will never be recorded, except, perhaps, in connection
with cases whose details had peculiar interest, was nobly rendered
by the true anti-slavery men."[180] Such committees of vigilance
were organized in Syracuse, New York, Boston, Springfield and some
of the smaller towns of Massachusetts, in Philadelphia and other
places. New York City, like Philadelphia, had a Vigilance Committee
as early as 1838. About this association of the metropolis there is
scarcely any information.[181] We must be content then to confine
our attention to the committees called into existence by the
Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.
[180] Weiss, _Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker_, Vol.
II, pp. 92, 93.
[181] Frederick Douglass relates that when he escaped from
Maryland to New York, in 1838, he was befriended by David
Ruggles, the secretary of the New York Vigilance Committee; _Life
of Frederick Douglass_, 1881, p. 205.
Eight days after the enactment of this law citizens of Syracuse, New
York, issued a call through the newspapers for a public meeting, and
on October 4 members of all parties crowded the city-hall to express
their censure of the law. The meeting recommended "the appointment
of a Vigilance Commitee of thirteen citizens, whose duty it shall
be to see that no person is deprived of his liberty without 'due
process of law.' And all good citizens are earnestly requested to
aid and sustain them in all needed efforts for the security of
every person claiming the protection of our laws." This committee
was appointed and an address and resolutions adopted.[182] At an
adjourned meeting held on October 12 the assemblage voted to form
an association, "pledged to stand by its members in opposing this
law, and to share with any of them the pecuniary losses they may
incur under the operation of this law." The determination shown
in the organization of these two bodies was well sustained a year
later when the attempt was made by officers of the law to seize
Jerry McHenry as a fugitive slave. The Vigilance Committee decided
to storm the court-house, where the colored man was confined under
guard, and rescue the prisoner. This daring piece of work was
successfully accomplished, and the government never again attempted
to recover any slaves in central New York.[183]
[182] The Rev. J. W. Loguen gives the names of the committee in
his autobiography, p. 396.
[183] Samuel J. May, _Recollections of the Anti-Slavery
Conflict_, pp. 349-364; Wilson, _Rise and Fall of the Slave Power
in the United States_, Vol. II, pp. 305, 306.
The organization of the Vigilance Committee of Syracuse was closely
followed by the organization of a similar committee in Boston.
At a meeting in Faneuil Hall, October 14, 1850, resolutions were
adopted expressing the conviction that no citizen would take part
in reënslaving a fugitive, and pledging protection to the colored
residents of the city. To make good this pledge a Vigilance
Committee of fifty was appointed.[184] This body organized by
choosing a president, treasurer, and secretary, a committee of
finance, an executive committee, a legal committee and a committee
of special vigilance and alarm. An appeal was then issued to the
citizens of Boston calling their attention to the arrival of
many destitute fugitives in Boston, and to the establishment of
an agency for the purpose of securing employment for fugitive
applicants. Gifts of money and clothing were asked for. In response
to a circular sent out by the finance committee to all the churches
in 1851, a sum of about sixteen hundred dollars was raised. That
there might be coöperation throughout the state notices were sent
to all the towns in Massachusetts urging the formation of local
vigilance committees; and as a result such committees were organized
in some towns.[185]
[184] _Ibid._, p. 308. The list of members of the Committee
of Vigilance given by Austin Bearse, the doorkeeper of the
Committee, contains two hundred and nine names. Among these are
A. Bronson Alcott, Edward Atkinson, Henry I. Bowditch, Richard
H. Dana, Jr., Lewis Hayden, William Lloyd Garrison, Samuel G.
Howe, Francis Jackson, Ellis Gray Loring, James Russell Lowell,
Theodore Parker, Edmund Quincy and others of distinction. See pp.
3, 4, 5, 6, in Mr. Bearse's _Reminiscences of Fugitive-Slave-Law
Days in Boston_.
[185] For much valuable material relating to the Vigilance
Committee of Boston, see Theodore Parker's _Scrap-Book_, in the
Boston Public Library.
The meeting-place of the Boston Committee was Meionaon Hall in
Tremont Temple. Members were notified of an intended meeting
personally, if possible, by the doorkeeper of the committee, Captain
Austin Bearse.[186] The proceedings of the committee were secret,
and comparatively little is now known about their work. It is,
however, known that for ten years the organization was active, and
that although it was not successful in rescuing Sims and Burns from
a hard fate, it nevertheless secured the liberty of more than a
hundred others.[187]
[186] Mr. Bearse says: "There were printed tickets of notice
which I delivered to each member in person, if possible, of which
the following copies are specimens:
'BOSTON, June 7, 1854.
There will be a meeting of the Vigilance Committee at the
Meionaon (Tremont Temple), on _Thursday evening_, June 8, at
half-past seven.
Pass in by the _Office Entrance_, and through the _Meionaon
Ante-Room_.
THEODORE PARKER, _Chairman of Executive Committees_.'
'VIGILANCE COMMITTEE! The members of the Vigilance Committee are
hereby notified to meet at ---- ----
By order of the Committee,
A. BEARSE, _Doorkeeper_.'"
--_Reminiscences of Fugitive-Slave-Law Days in Boston_, pp. 15,
16.
[187] _Ibid._, p. 14.
Soon after the Fugitive Slave Law was passed John Brown visited
Springfield, Massachusetts, where he had formerly lived. The valley
of the Connecticut had long been a line of underground travel, and
citizens of Springfield, colored and white, had become identified
with operations on this line. Brown at once decided that the new
law made organization necessary, and he formed, therefore, the
League of Gileadites to resist systematically the enforcement of the
law. The name of this order was significant in that it contained a
warning to those of its members that should show themselves cowards.
"Whosoever is fearful or afraid let him return and depart early from
Mount Gilead."[188] In the "Agreement and Rules" that Brown drafted
for the order, adopted January 15, 1851, the following directions
for action were laid down: "Should one of your number be arrested,
you must collect together as quickly as possible, so as to outnumber
your adversaries.... Let no able-bodied man appear on the ground
unequipped, or with his weapons exposed to view.... Your plans must
be known only to yourselves and with the understanding that all
traitors must die, wherever caught and proven to be guilty.... Let
the first blow be the signal for all to engage, ... make clean work
with your enemies, and be sure you meddle not with any others....
After effecting a rescue, if you are assailed, go into the houses of
your most prominent and influential white friends with your wives,
and that will effectually fasten upon them the suspicion of being
connected with you, and will compel them to make a common cause with
you.... You may make a tumult in the court-room where a trial is
going on by burning gunpowder freely in paper packages.... But in
such case the prisoner will need to take the hint at once and bestir
himself; and so should his friends improve the opportunity for a
general rush.... Stand by one another, and by your friends, while a
drop of blood remains; and be hanged, if you must, but tell no tales
out of school. Make no confession." By adopting the Agreement and
Rules forty-four colored persons constituted themselves "a branch
of the United States League of Gileadites," and agreed "to have no
officers except a treasurer and secretary pro tem., until after some
trial of courage," when they could choose officers on the basis of
"courage, efficiency, and general good conduct."[189] Doubtless the
Gileadites of Springfield did efficient service, for it appears
that the importance of the town as a way-station on the Underground
Road increased after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill.[190]
[188] Judg. vii. 3; Deut. xx. 8; referred to by Brown in his
"Agreement and Rules."
[189] F. B. Sanborn, in his _Life and Letters of John Brown_, pp.
125, 126, gives the agreement, rules, and signatures. See also R.
J. Hinton's John _Brown and His Men_, Appendix, pp. 585, 588.
[190] Mason A. Green, _History of Springfield_, Massachusetts,
1636-1886, p. 506.
[Illustration: WILLIAM STILL,
CHAIRMAN OF THE ACTING VIGILANCE COMMITTEE IN PHILADELPHIA,
PENNSYLVANIA, 1852-1860.]
We have already learned that Philadelphia had a Vigilance Committee
before 1840. In a speech made before the meeting that organized
the new committee, December 2, 1852, Mr. J. Miller McKim, the
secretary of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, gave the
reasons for establishing a new committee. He said that the old
committee "had become disorganized and scattered, and that for
the last two or three years the duties of this department had
been performed by individuals on their own responsibility, and
sometimes in a very irregular manner." It was accordingly decided
to form a new committee, called the General Vigilance Committee,
with a chairman and treasurer; and within this body an Acting
Committee of four persons, "who should have the responsibility of
attending to every case that might require their aid, as well as
the exclusive authority to raise the funds necessary for their
purpose." The General Committee comprised nineteen members, and
had as its head Mr. Robert Purvis, one of the signers of the
Declaration of Sentiments of the American Anti-Slavery Society,
and the first president of the old committee. The Acting Committee
had as its chairman William Still, a colored clerk in the office
of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society and a most energetic
underground helper. The Philadelphia Vigilance Committee, thus
constituted, continued intact until Lincoln issued the Emancipation
Proclamation.[191] Some insight into the work accomplished by the
Acting Committee can be obtained by an examination of the book
compiled by William Still under the title _Underground Railroad
Records_. The Acting Committee was required to keep a record of
all its doings. Mr. Still's volume was evidently amassed by the
transcription of many of the incidents that found their way under
this order into the archives of the committee. The work was limited
to the assistance of such needy fugitives as came to Philadelphia;
and was not extended, except in rare cases, to inciting slaves to
run away from their masters, or to aiding them in so doing.[192]
[191] Article, "Meeting to Form a Vigilance Committee," in the
_Pennsylvania Freeman_, Dec. 9, 1852; quoted in _Underground
Railroad Records_, by William Still, pp. 610-612.
[192] Still's _Underground Railroad Records_, p. 177. References
to the action of the committee of which Mr. Still was chairman
will be found scattered through the Records. See, for example,
pp. 70, 98, 102, 131, 150, 162, 173, 176, 204, 224, 274, 275,
303, 325, 335, 388, 412, 449, 493, 500.
The relief of the destitution existing among the wayworn travellers
was a matter requiring considerable outlay of time and money on
the part of abolitionists. There was occasionally a fugitive or
family of fugitives, that, having better opportunity or possessing
greater foresight than others, made provision for the journey
and escaped to Canada with little or no dependence on the aid of
underground operators. Asbury Parker, of Ironton, Ohio, fled from
Greenup County, Kentucky, in 1857, clad in a suit of broadcloth,
alone befitting, as he thought, the dignity of a free man.[193] The
brother of Anthony Bingey, of Windsor, Ontario, came unexpectedly
into the possession of five hundred dollars. With this money he
instructed a friend in Cincinnati to procure a team and wagon to
convey the family of Bingey to Canada. The company arrived at
Sandusky after being only three days on the road.[194]
[193] Conversation with Asbury Parker, Ironton, O., Sept. 30,
1894.
[194] Conversation with Anthony Bingey, Windsor, Ont., July 3,
1895.
But the mass of fugitives were thinly clad, and had only such food
as they could forage until they reached the Underground Railroad.
The arrival of a company at a station would be at once followed by
the preparation, often at midnight, of a meal for the pilgrims and
their guides. It was a common thing for a station to entertain a
company of five or six; and companies of twenty-eight or thirty are
not unheard of. Levi Coffin says, "The largest company of slaves
ever seated at our table, at one time, numbered seventeen."[195]
During one month in the year 1854 or 1855 there were sixty runaways
at the house of Aaron L. Benedict, a station in the Alum Creek
Quaker Settlement in central Ohio. On one occasion twenty sat down
to dinner in Mr. Benedict's house.[196] It will thus be seen that
the supply of provisions alone was for the average station-keeper no
inconsiderable item of expense, and that it was one involving much
labor.
[195] _Reminiscences_, p. 178.
[196] Conversation with M. J. Benedict, Alum Creek Settlement,
Dec. 2, 1893. See also _Underground Railroad_, Smedley, pp. 56,
136, 142, 174.
The arrangements for furnishing fugitives with clothing, like much
of the underground work done at the stations, came within the
province of the women of the stations. While the noted fugitive,
William Wells Brown, lay sick at the house of his benefactor,
Mr. Wells Brown, in southwestern Ohio, the family made him some
clothing, and Mr. Brown purchased him a pair of boots.[197] Women's
anti-slavery societies in many places conducted sewing-circles, as
a branch of their work, for the purpose of supplying clothes and
other necessities to fugitives. The Woman's Anti-Slavery Society of
Ellington, Chautauqua County, New York, sent a letter to William
Still, November 21, 1859, saying: "Every year we have sent a box of
clothing, bedding, etc., to the aid of the fugitive, and wishing to
send it where it would be of the most service, we have it suggested
to us, to send to you the box we have at present. You would confer
a favor ... by writing us, ... whether or not it would be more
advantageous to you than some nearer station...."[198]
[197] _Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave_, written
by himself, 2d ed., 1848, p. 102.
[198] The letter is printed in full, together with other letters,
in Still's _Underground Railroad Records_, pp. 590, 591.
The Women's Anti-Slavery Sewing Society of Cincinnati maintained
an active interest in underground work going on in their city by
supplying clothing to needy travellers.[199] The Female Anti-Slavery
Association of Henry County, Indiana, organized a Committee of
Vigilance in 1841 "to seek out such colored females as are not
suitably provided for, who may now be, or who shall hereafter
come, within our limits, and assist them in any way they may deem
expedient, either by advice or pecuniary means...."[200]
[199] Levi Coffin, _Reminiscences_, p. 316.
[200] _Protectionist_, Arnold Buffum, Editor, New Garden, Ind.,
7th mo., 1st, 1841.
In some of the large centres, money as well as clothing and food
was constantly needed for the proper performance of the underground
work. Thus, for example, at Cincinnati, Ohio, it was frequently
necessary to hire carriages in which to convey fugitives out of the
city to some neighboring station. From time to time as the occasion
arose Levi Coffin collected the funds needed for such purposes from
business acquaintances. He called these contributors "stock-holders"
in the Underground Railroad.[201] After steam railroads became
incorporated in the underground system money was required at
different points to purchase tickets for fugitives. The Vigilance
Committee of Philadelphia defrayed the travelling expenses of many
refugees in sending some to New York City, some to Elmira and a few
to Canada.[202] Frederick Douglass, who kept a station at Rochester,
New York, received contributions of money to pay the railroad fares
of the fugitives he forwarded to Canada and to give them a little
more for pressing necessities.[203]
[201] _Reminiscences_, pp. 317, 321.
[202] Still's _Underground Railroad Records_, p. 613.
[203] _Ibid._, p. 598. In the fragment of a letter from which
Mr. Still quotes, Mr. Douglass says, "They [the fugitives]
usually tarry with us only during the night, and are forwarded to
Canada by the morning train. We give them supper, lodging, and
breakfast, pay their expenses, and give them a half-dollar over."
The use of steam railroads as a means of transportation of
this class of passengers began with the completion of lines of
road to the lakes. This did not take place till about 1850. It
was, therefore, during the last decade of the history of the
Underground Road that surface lines, as they were sometimes called
by abolitionists, became a part of the secret system. There were
probably more surface lines in Ohio than in any other state. The old
Mad River Railroad, or Sandusky, Dayton and Cincinnati Railroad, of
western Ohio, (now a part of the "Big Four" system), began to be
used at least as early as 1852 by instructed fugitives.[204] The
Sandusky, Mansfield and Newark Railroad (now the Baltimore and Ohio)
from Utica, Licking County, Ohio, to Sandusky, was sometimes used
by the same class of persons.[205] After the construction of the
Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati Railroad[206] as far as Greenwich
in northern Ohio, fugitives often came to that point concealed in
freight-cars. In eastern Ohio there were two additional routes by
rail sometimes employed in underground traffic: one of these appears
to have been the Cleveland and Canton from Zanesville north,[207]
and the other was the Cleveland and Western between Alliance and
Cleveland.[208] In Indiana the Louisville, New Albany and Chicago
Railroad from Crawfordsville northward was patronized by underground
travellers until the activity of slave-hunters caused it to be
abandoned.[209] Fugitives were sometimes transported across the
State of Michigan by the Michigan Central Railroad. In Illinois
there seems to have been not less than three railroads that carried
fugitives: these were the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy,[210] the
Chicago and Rock Island[211] and the Illinois Central.[212] When
John Brown made his famous journey through Iowa in the winter of
1858-1859 he shipped his company of twelve fugitives in a stock
car from West Liberty, Iowa, to Chicago, by way of the Chicago and
Rock Island route.[213] In Pennsylvania and New York there were
several lines over which runaways were sent when circumstances
permitted. At Harrisburg, Reading and other points along the
Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, fugitives were put aboard the
cars for Philadelphia.[214] From Pennsylvania they were forwarded
by the Vigilance Committee over different lines, sometimes by way
of the Pennsylvania Railroad to New York City; sometimes by way of
the Philadelphia and Reading and the Northern Central to Elmira,
New York, whence they were sent on by the same line to Niagara
Falls. Fugitives put aboard the cars at Elmira were furnished with
money from a fund provided by the anti-slavery society. As a matter
of precaution they were sent out of town at four o'clock in the
morning, and were always placed by the train officials, who knew
their destination, in the baggage-car.[215] The New York Central
Railroad from Rochester west was an outlet made use of by Frederick
Douglass in passing slaves to Canada. At Syracuse, during several
years before the beginning of the War, one of the directors of
this road, Mr. Horace White, the father of Dr. Andrew D. White,
distributed passes to fugitives. This fact did not come to the
knowledge of Dr. White until after his father's demise. He relates:
"Some years after ... I met an old 'abolitionist' of Syracuse, who
said to me that he had often come to my father's house, rattled at
the windows, informed my father of the passes he needed for fugitive
slaves, received them through the window, and then departed, nobody
else being the wiser. On my asking my mother, who survived my father
several years, about it, she said: 'Yes, such things frequently
occurred, and your father, if he was satisfied of the genuineness of
the request, always wrote off the passes and handed them out, asking
no questions."[216]
[204] The _Firelands Pioneer_, July, 1888, p. 21.
[205] _Ibid._, pp. 23, 57, 79.
[206] _Ibid._, p. 74. The "Three C's" is now the Cleveland,
Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad, or "Big Four" Route.
[207] Conversation with Thomas Williams, of Pennsville, O.;
letter of H. C. Harvey, Manchester, Kan., Jan. 16, 1893.
[208] Letter of I. Newton Peirce, Folcroft, Pa., Feb. 1, 1893.
[209] Letter of Sidney Speed, Crawfordsville, Ind., March 6,
1896. Mr. Speed and his father were both connected with the
Crawfordsville centre.
[210] _Life and Poems of John Howard Bryant_, p. 30; letter of
William H. Collins, Quincy, Ill., Jan. 13, 1896; _History of Knox
County, Illinois_, p. 211.
[211] Letter of George L. Burroughes, Cairo, Ill., Jan. 6, 1896.
[212] _Ibid._; conversation with the Rev. R. G. Ramsey, Cadiz,
O., Aug. 18, 1892.
[213] J. B. Grinnell, _Men and Events of Forty Years_, p. 216.
[214] Smedley, _Underground Railroad_, pp. 174, 176, 177, 365.
The following letter is in point:--
"SCHUYLKILL, 11th Mo., 7th, 1857.
WILLIAM STILL, _Respected Friend_:--There are three colored
friends at my house now, who will reach the city by the
Philadelphia and Reading train this evening. Please meet them.
Thine, etc.,
E. F. PENNYPACKER."
[215] Letter of John W. Jones, Elmira, N.Y., Jan. 18, 1897.
[216] Letter of the Hon. Andrew D. White, Ithaca, N.Y., April 10,
1897.
In the New England states fugitives travelled, under the instruction
of friends, by way of the Providence and Worcester Railroad from
Valley Falls, Rhode Island, to Worcester, Massachusetts, where
by arrangement they were transferred to the Vermont Road.[217]
The Boston and Worcester Railroad between Newton and Worcester,
Massachusetts, as also between Boston and Worcester, seems to
have been used to some extent in this way.[218] The Grand Trunk,
extending from Portland, Maine, through the northern parts of New
Hampshire and Vermont into Canada, occasionally gave passes to
fugitives, and would always take reduced fares for this class of
passengers.[219]
[217] Mrs. Elizabeth Buffum Chace, _Anti-Slavery Reminiscences_,
pp. 28, 38.
[218] Letter of William I. Bowditch, Boston, April 5, 1893. Mr.
Bowditch says: "Generally I passed them (the fugitives) on to
William Jackson, at Newton. His house being on the Worcester
Railroad, he could easily forward any one." Captain Austin
Bearse, _Reminiscences of Fugitive-Slave Law Days in Boston_, p.
37.
[219] Letter of Brown Thurston, Portland, Me., Oct. 21, 1895.
The advantages of escape by boat were early discerned by slaves
living near the coast or along inland rivers. Vessels engaged in
our coastwise trade became more or less involved in transporting
fugitives from Southern ports to Northern soil. Small trading
vessels, returning from their voyages to Norfolk and Portsmouth,
Virginia, landed slaves on the New England coast.[220] In July,
1853, the brig _Florence_ (Captain Amos Hopkins, of Hallowell,
Maine) from Wilmington, North Carolina, was required, while lying
in Boston harbor, to surrender a fugitive found on board. In
September, 1854, the schooner _Sally Ann_ (of Belfast, Maine), from
the same Southern port, was induced to give up a slave known to be
on board. In October of the same year the brig _Cameo_ (of Augusta,
Maine) brought a stowaway from Jacksonville, Florida, into Boston
harbor, and, as in the two preceding cases, the slave was rescued
from the danger of return to the South through the activity and
shrewdness of Captain Austin Bearse, the agent of the Vigilance
Committee of Boston.[221] The son of a slaveholder living at
Newberne, North Carolina, forwarded slaves from that point to the
Vigilance Committee of Philadelphia on vessels engaged in the lumber
trade.[222] In November, 1855, Captain Fountain brought twenty-one
fugitives concealed on his vessel in a cargo of grain from Norfolk,
Virginia, to Philadelphia.[223]
[220] Mrs. Elizabeth Buffum Chace, _Anti-Slavery Reminiscences_,
pp. 27, 30.
[221] Austin Bearse, _Reminiscences of Fugitive-Slave Law Days in
Boston_, 1880, pp. 34-39.
[222] Smedley, _Underground Railroad_, letter of Robert Purvis,
of Philadelphia, p. 335.
[223] Still, _Underground Railroad Records_, pp. 165-172. For
other cases, see pp. 211, 379-381, 437, 558, 559-565.
The tributaries flowing into the Ohio River from Virginia and
Kentucky furnished convenient channels of escape for many slaves.
The concurrent testimony of abolitionists living along the Ohio
is to the effect that streams like the Kanawha River bore many a
boat-load of fugitives to the southern boundary of the free states.
It is not a mere coincidence that a large number of the most
important centres of activity lie along the southern line of the
Western free states at points near or opposite the mouths of rivers
and creeks. On the Mississippi, Ohio and Illinois rivers north-bound
steamboats not infrequently provided the means of escape. Jefferson
Davis declared in the Senate that many slaves escaped from his state
into Ohio by taking passage on the boats of the Mississippi.[224]
[224] See p. 312, Chapter X.
Abolitionists found it desirable to have waterway extensions of
their secret lines. Boats, the captains of which were favorable,
were therefore drafted into the service when running on convenient
routes. Boats plying between Portland, Maine, and St. John, New
Brunswick, or other Canadian ports, often took these passengers free
of charge.[225] Thomas Garrett, of Wilmington, Delaware, sometimes
sent negroes by steamboat to Philadelphia to be cared for by the
Vigilance Committee.[226] It happened on several occasions that
fugitives at Portland and Boston were put aboard ocean steamers
bound for England.[227] William and Ellen Craft were sent to England
after having narrowly escaped capture in Boston.[228]
[225] Letters of Brown Thurston, Portland, Me., Jan. 13, 1893,
and Oct. 21, 1895.
[226] For letters from Mr. Garrett to William Still, of the
Acting Committee of Vigilance of Philadelphia, notifying him
that fugitives had been sent by boat, see Still's _Underground
Railroad Records_, pp. 380, 387.
[227] Letter of S. T. Pickard, Portland, Me., Nov. 18, 1893.
[228] Still, _Underground Railroad Records_, p. 368; Wilson,
_Rise and Fall of the Slave Power_, Vol. II, p. 325; _New England
Magazine_, January, 1890, p. 580.
On the great lakes the boat service was extensive. The boats of
General Reed touching at Racine, Wisconsin, received fugitives
without fare. Among these were the _Sultana_ (Captain Appleby), the
_Madison_, the _Missouri_, the _Niagara_ and the _Keystone State_.
Captain Steele of the propeller _Galena_ was a friend of fugitives,
as was also Captain Kelsey of the _Chesapeake_. Mr. A. P. Dutton
was familiar with these vessels and their officers, and for twenty
years or more shipped runaway slaves as well as cargoes of grain
from his dock in Racine.[229] The _Illinois_ (Captain Blake),
running between Chicago and Detroit, was a safe boat on which to
place passengers whose destination was Canada.[230] John G. Weiblen
navigated the lakes in 1855 and 1856, and took many refugees from
Chicago to Collingwood, Ontario.[231] The _Arrow_,[232] the _United
States_,[233] the _Bay City_ and the _Mayflower_ plying between
Sandusky and Detroit, were boats the officers of which were always
willing to help negroes reach Canadian ports. The _Forest Queen_,
the _Morning Star_ and the _May Queen_, running between Cleveland
and Detroit, the _Phœbus_, a little boat plying between Toledo and
Detroit, and, finally, some scows and sail-boats, are among the old
craft of the great lakes that carried many slaves to their land of
promise.[234] A clue to the number of refugees thus transported
to Canada is perhaps given by the record of the boat upon which
the fugitive, William Wells Brown, found employment. This boat ran
from Cleveland to Buffalo and to Detroit. It quickly became known
at Cleveland that Mr. Brown would take escaped slaves under his
protection without charge, hence he rarely failed to find a little
company ready to sail when he started out from Cleveland. "In the
year 1842," he says, "I conveyed, from the first of May to the first
of December, sixty-nine fugitives over Lake Erie to Canada."[235]
[229] Letter of A. P. Dutton, of Racine, Wis., April 7, 1896.
As a shipper of grain and an abolitionist for twenty years in
Racine, Mr. Dutton was able to turn his dock into a place of
deportation for runaway slaves.
[230] A. J. Andreas, _History of Chicago_, Vol. I, p. 606.
[231] Letter of Mr. Weiblen, Fairview, Erie Co., Pa., Nov. 26,
1895.
[232] The _Firelands Pioneer_, July, 1888, p. 46.
[233] _Ibid._, p. 50.
[234] The names of the last six boats given, as well as several
of the others, were obtained from freedmen in Canada, who keep
them in grateful remembrance.
[235] _Narrative of William W. Brown_, by himself, 1848, pp. 107,
108.
The account of the method of the Underground Railroad could scarcely
be called complete without some notice of the rescue of fugitives
under arrest. The first rescue occurred at the intended trial of
the first fugitive slave case in Boston in 1793. Mr. Josiah Quincy,
counsel for the fugitive, "heard a noise, and, turning around,
saw the constables lying sprawling on the floor, and a passage
opening through the crowd, through which the fugitive was taking his
departure without stopping to hear the opinion of the court."[236]
[236] Mr. Quincy's report of the case, quoted by M. G. McDougall,
_Fugitive Slaves_, p. 35.
The prototype of deliverances thus established was, it is true,
more or less deviated from in later instances, but the general
characteristics of these cases are such that they naturally fall
into one class. They are cases in which the execution of the law
was interfered with by friends of the prisoner, who was spirited
away as quickly as possible. The deliverance in 1812 of a supposed
runaway from the hands of his captor by the New England settlers
of Worthington, Ohio, has already been referred to in general
terms.[237] But some details of the incident are necessary to bring
out more clearly the propriety of its being included in the category
of instances of violation of the constitutional provision for the
rendition of escaped slaves. It appears that word was brought
to the village of Worthington of the capture of the fugitive at
a neighboring town, and that the villagers under the direction
of Colonel James Kilbourne took immediate steps to release the
negro, who, it was said, was tied with ropes, and being afoot, was
compelled to keep up as best he could with his master's horse. On
the arrival of the slave-owner and his chattel, the latter was
freed from his bonds by the use of a butcher-knife in the hands
of an active villager, and the forms of a legal dismissal were
gone through before a court and an audience whose convictions were
ruinous to any representations the claimant was able to make. The
dispossessed master was permitted to continue his journey southward,
while the negro was directed to get aboard a government wagon on
its way northward to Sandusky. The return of the slave-hunter a day
or two later with a process obtained in Franklinton, authorizing
the retaking of his property, secured him a second hearing,
but did not change the result. A fugitive, Basil Dorsey, from
Liberty, Frederick County, Maryland, was seized in Bucks County,
Pennsylvania, in 1836, and carried away. Overtaken by Mr. Robert
Purvis at Doylestown, he was brought into court, and the hearing of
the case was postponed for two weeks. When the day of trial came the
counsel for the slave succeeded in getting the case dismissed on the
ground of certain objections. Thereupon the claimants of the slave
hastened to a magistrate for a new warrant, but just as they were
returning to rearrest the fugitive, he was hustled into the buggy of
Mr. Purvis and driven rapidly out of the reach of the pursuers.[238]
In October, 1853, the case of Louis, a fugitive from Kentucky on
trial in Cincinnati, was brought to a conclusion in an unexpected
way. The United States commissioner was about to pronounce judgment
when the prisoner, taking advantage of a favorable opportunity,
slipped from his chair, had a good hat placed upon his head by
some friend, passed out of the court-room among a crowd of colored
visitors and made his way cautiously to Avondale. A few minutes
after the disappearance of the fugitive his absence was discovered
by the marshal that had him in charge; and although careful search
was made for him, he escaped to Canada by means of the Underground
Railroad.[239] In April, 1859, Charles Nalle, a slave from Culpeper
County, Virginia, was discovered in Troy, New York, and taken before
the United States commissioner, who remanded him back to slavery.
As the news of this decision spread, a crowd gathered about the
commissioner's office. In the meantime, a writ of habeas corpus was
served upon the marshal that had arrested Nalle, commanding that
officer to bring the prisoner before a judge of the Supreme Court.
When the marshal and his deputies appeared with the slave, the crowd
made a charge upon them, and a hand-to-hand melée resulted. Inch by
inch the progress of the officers was resisted until they were worn
out, and the slave escaped. In haste the fugitive was ferried across
the river to West Troy, only to fall into the hands of a constable
and be again taken into custody. The mob had followed, however, and
now stormed the door behind which the prisoner rested under guard.
In the attack the door was forced open, and over the body of a
negro assailant, struck down in the fray, the slave was torn from
his guards, and sent on his way to Canada.[240] Well-known cases
of rescue, such as the Shadrach case, which occurred in Boston in
January, 1851, and the Jerry rescue, which occurred in Syracuse nine
months later, may be omitted here. They, like many others that have
been less often chronicled, show clearly the temper of resolute men
in the communities where they occurred. It was felt by these persons
that the slave, who had already paid too high a penalty for his
color, could not expect justice at the hands of the law, that his
liberty must be preserved to him, and a base statute be thwarted at
any cost.
[237] See p. 38.
[238] Smedley, _Underground Railroad_, pp. 356-361.
[239] Levi Coffin, _Reminiscences_, pp. 548-554.
[240] This account is condensed from a report given in the _Troy
Whig_, April 28, 1859, and printed in the book entitled, _Harriet
the Moses of Her People_, pp. 143-149.
[Illustration: THE REPUTED PRESIDENT OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD.
Mr. Coffin and his wife aided more than 3000 slaves in their
flight.]
CHAPTER IV
UNDERGROUND AGENTS, STATION-KEEPERS, OR CONDUCTORS
Persons opposed to slavery were, naturally, the friends of the
fugitive slave, and were ever ready to respond to his appeals
for help. Shelter and food were readily supplied him, and he was
directed or conveyed, generally in the night, to sympathizing
neighbors, until finally, without any forethought or management on
his own part, he found himself in Canada a free man. These helpers,
in the course of time, came to be called agents, station-keepers, or
conductors on the Underground Railroad. Of the names of those that
belonged to this class of practical emancipationists, 3,211 have
been catalogued;[241] change of residence and death have made it
impossible to obtain the names of many more. Considering the kind
of labor performed and the danger involved, one is impressed with
the unselfish devotion to principle of these emancipators. There was
for them, of course, no outward honor, no material recompense, but
instead such contumely and seeming disgrace as can now be scarcely
comprehended.
[241] See Appendix E, pp. 403-439.
Nevertheless, they were rich in courage, and their hospitality
was equal to all emergencies. They gladly gave aid and comfort
to every negro seeking freedom; and the numbers befriended by
many helpers despite penalties and abuse show with what moral
determination the work was carried on. It has been said that the
Hopkins, Salsbury, Snediger, Dickey and Kirkpatrick families,
of southern Ohio, forwarded more than 1,000 fugitives to Canada
before the year 1817.[242] Daniel Gibbons, of Lancaster County,
Pennsylvania, was engaged in helping fugitive slaves during a period
of fifty-six years. "He did not keep a record of the number he
passed until 1824. But prior to that time, it was supposed to have
been over 200, and up to the time of his death (in 1853) he had
aided about 1,000."[243] It has been estimated that Dr. Nathan M.
Thomas, of Schoolcraft, Michigan, forwarded between 1,000 and 1,500
fugitives.[244] John Fairfield, the abductor, "piloted not only
hundreds, but thousands."[245] The Rev. Charles T. Torrey went to
Maryland and "from there sent--as he wrote previous to 1844--some
400 slaves over different routes to Canada."[246] Philo Carpenter,
of Chicago, is reported to have escorted 200 fugitives to vessels
bound for Canada.[247] In a letter to William Still, in November,
1857, Elijah F. Pennypacker, of Chester County, Pennsylvania,
writes, "we have within the past two months passed forty-three
through our hands."[248] H. B. Leeper, of Princeton, Illinois,
says that the most successful business he ever accomplished in
this line was the helping on of thirty-one men and women in six
weeks' time.[249] Leverett B. Hill, of Wakeman, Ohio, assisted 103
on their way to Canada during the year 1852.[250] Mr. Van Dorn, of
Quincy, in a service of twenty-five years, assisted "some two or
three hundred fugitives."[251] W. D. Schooley, of Richmond, Indiana,
writes, "I think I must have assisted over 100 on their way to
liberty."[252] Jonathan H. Gray, Milton Hill and John H. Frazee were
conductors at Carthage, Indiana, and are said to have helped over
150 fugitives.[253] "Thousands of fugitives found rest" at Ripley,
Brown County, Ohio.[254] During the lifetime of General McIntire,
a Virginian, who settled in Adams County, Ohio, "more than 100
slaves found a safe retreat under his roof." Other helpers in the
same state rendered service deserving of mention. Ozem Gardner, of
Sharon Township, Franklin County, "assisted more than 200 fugitives
on their way in all weathers and at all times of the day and
night."[255] It is estimated by a friend of Dr. J. A. Bingham and
George J. Payne, two operators of Gallia County, that the line of
escape with which these men were connected was travelled by about
200 slaves every year from 1845 to 1856.[256] From 1844 to 1860
John H. Stewart, a colored station-keeper of the same county, kept
about 100 fugitives at his house.[257] Five hundred are said to have
passed through the hands of Thomas L. Gray, of Deavertown, in Morgan
County.[258] Ex-President Fairchild speaks of the "multitudes"
of fugitives that came to Oberlin, and says that "not one was
ever finally taken back to bondage."[259] Many other stations and
station-agents that were instrumental in helping large numbers of
slaves from bondage to freedom cannot be mentioned here.
[242] William Birney, _James G. Birney and His Times_, p. 435.
[243] Smedley, _Underground Railroad_, p. 56.
[244] Letter of Mrs. Pamela S. Thomas, Schoolcraft, Mich., March
25, 1896.
[245] Letter of Mrs. Laura S. Haviland, Englewood, Ill., June 5,
1893.
[246] Letter of M. M. Fisher, Medway, Mass., Oct. 23, 1893.
[247] E. G. Mason, _Early Chicago and Illinois_, 1890, p. 110.
[248] Letter of Sarah C. Pennypacker, Schuylkill, Pa., June 8,
1896.
[249] Letter of H. B. Leeper, Princeton, Ill., Dec. 19, 1895.
[250] Letter of E. S. Hill, Atlantic, Ia., Oct. 30, 1894.
[251] Wilson, _Rise and Fall of the Slave Power_, Vol. II, p. 67.
[252] Letter of W. D. Schooley, Nov. 15, 1893.
[253] Letter of James H. Frazee, Milton, Ind., Feb. 3, 1894.
[254] Henry Howe, _Historical Collections of Ohio_, Vol. I, p.
335. See also _History of Brown County, Ohio_, p. 443.
[255] _History of Franklin and Pickaway Counties, Ohio_, p. 424.
[256] Letter of Dr. N. B. Sisson, Porter, Gallia Co., O., Sept.
16, 1894.
[257] Letter of Gabe N. Johnson, Ironton, O., November, 1894.
[258] Article in the _New Lexington_ (O.) _Tribune_, signed "W.
A. D.," fall of 1885; exact date unknown.
[259] Henry Howe, _Historical Collections of Ohio_, Vol. II, p.
380.
Reticent as most underground operators were at the time in regard
to their unlawful acts, they did not attempt to conceal their
principles. On the contrary, they were zealous in their endeavors to
make converts to a doctrine that seemed to them to have the combined
warrant of Scripture and of their own conscience, and that agreed
with the convictions of the fathers of the Republic. The Golden
Rule and the preamble of the Declaration of Independence they often
recited in support of their position. When they had transgressed
the Fugitive Slave Law of Congress they were wont to find their
justification in what ex-President Fairchild of Oberlin has aptly
called the Fugitive Slave Law of the Mosaic institutions:[260] "Thou
shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which hath escaped
unto thee; he shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place
which he shall choose in one of thy gates where it liketh him best;
thou shalt not oppress him."[261] They refused to observe a law
that made it a felony in their opinion to give a cup of cold water
to famishing men and women fleeing from servitude. Their faith and
determination is clearly expressed in one of the old anti-slavery
songs:--
"'Tis the law of God in the human soul,
'Tis the law in the Word Divine;
It shall live while the earth in its course shall roll,
It shall live in this soul of mine.
Let the law of the land forge its bonds of wrong,
I shall help when the self-freed crave;
For the law in my soul, bright, beaming, and strong,
Bids me succor the fleeing slave."
Theodore Parker was but the mouthpiece of many abolitionists
throughout the Northern states when he said, at the conclusion of a
sermon in 1850: "It is known to you that the Fugitive Slave Bill has
become a law.... To law framed of such iniquity I owe no allegiance.
Humanity, Christianity, manhood revolts against it.... For myself
I say it solemnly, I will shelter, I will help, and I will defend
the fugitive with all my humble means and power. I will act with
any body of decent and serious men, as the head, or the foot, or
the hand, in any mode not involving the use of deadly weapons, to
nullify and defeat the operation of this law...."[262]
[260] Fairchild, _The Underground Railroad_, Vol. IV; _Tract No.
87_, Western Reserve Historical Society, p. 97.
[261] Deut. xxiii, 15, 16.
[262] Delivered in Melodeon Hall, Boston, Oct. 6, 1850.
The _Chronotype_, Oct. 7, 1850. See Vol. II, No. 2, of the
_Scrap-book_ relating to Theodore Parker, compiled by Miss C. C.
Thayer, Boston Public Library.
Sentiments of this kind were cherished in almost every Northern
community by a few persons at least. There were some New England
colonies in the West where anti-slavery sentiments predominated.
These, like some of the religious communities, as those of the
Quakers and Covenanters, became well-known centres of underground
activity. In general it is safe to say that the majority of helpers
in the North were of Anglo-American stock, descendants of the
Puritan and Quaker settlers of the Eastern states, or of Southerners
that had moved to the Northern states to be rid of slavery. The
many stations in the eastern and northern parts of Ohio and the
northern part of Illinois may be safely attributed to the large
proportion of New England settlers in those districts. Localities
where the work of befriending slaves was largely in the hands of
Quakers will be mentioned in another connection. Southern settlers
in Brown County and adjoining districts in Ohio are said to have
been regularly forwarding escaped slaves to Canada before 1817.[263]
The emigration of a number of these settlers to Bond County,
Illinois, about 1820, and the removal of a few families from that
region to Putnam County in the same state about a decade later,
helps to explain the early development of secret routes in the
southern and north central parts of Illinois.[264]
[263] William Birney, _James G. Birney and His Times_, p. 435.
[264] Letter of H. B. Leeper, Princeton, Ill., Dec. 19, 1895.
In the South much secret aid was rendered fugitives, no doubt,
by persons of their own race. Two colored market-women in
Baltimore were efficient agents for the Vigilance Committee of
Philadelphia.[265] Frederick Douglass's connection with the
Underground Railroad began long before he left the South.[266] In
the North, people of the African race were to be found in most
communities, and in many places they became energetic workers. Negro
settlements in the interior of the free states, as well as along
their southern frontier, soon came to form important links in the
chain of stations leading from the Southern states to Canada.
[265] Smedley, _Underground Railroad_, p. 355.
[266] Letter of Frederick Douglass, Cedar Hill, Anacostia, D.C.,
March 27, 1893. Mr. Douglass escaped from slavery in 1839.
In the early days running slaves sometimes sought and received
aid from Indians. This fact is evidenced by the introduction of
fugitive recovery clauses into a number of the treaties made between
the colonies and Indian tribes. Seven out of the eight treaties
made between 1784 and 1786 contained clauses for the return of
black prisoners, or of "negroes and other property."[267] A few of
the colonies offered rewards to induce Indians to apprehend and
restore runaways. In 1669 Maryland "ordered that any Indian who
shall apprehend a fugitive may have a 'match coate' or its value.
Virginia would give '20 armes length of Roanake,' or its value,
while in Connecticut 'two yards of cloth' was considered sufficient
inducement."[268] The inhabitants of the Ottawa village of Chief
Kinjeino in northwestern Ohio were kindly disposed towards the
fugitive;[269] and the people of Chief Brant, who held an estate on
the Grand River in Ontario west of Niagara Falls, were in the habit
of receiving colored refugees.[270]
[267] M. G. McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, pp. 13, 104, 105.
[268] M. G. McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, pp. 7, 8, and the
references there given.
[269] Letter of Colonel D. W. H. Howard, Wauseon, O., Aug. 22,
1894.
[270] See Chapter VII, p. 203.
The people of Scotch and Scotch-Irish descent were naturally liberty
loving, and seem to have given hearty support to the anti-slavery
cause in whatever form it presented itself to them. The small
number of Scotch communities in Morgan and Logan counties, Ohio,
and in Randolph and Washington counties, Illinois, were centres of
underground service.
The secret work of the English, Irish and German settlers cannot be
so readily localized. In various places a single German, Irishman,
or Englishman is known to have aided escaped slaves in coöperation
with a few other persons of different nationality, but so far as
known there were no groups made up of representatives of one or
another of these races engaged in such enterprises. At Toledo,
Ohio, the company of helpers comprised Congressman James M. Ashley,
a Pennsylvanian by birth; Richard Mott, a Quaker; James Conlisk,
an Irishman; William H. Merritt, a negro; and several others.[271]
Lyman Goodnow, an operator of Waukesha, Wisconsin, says he was told
that "in cases of emergency the Germans were next best to Quakers
for protection."[272] Two German companies from Massachusetts
enlisted for the War only when promised that they should not be
required to restore runaways to their owners.[273]
[271] Conversation with the Hon. James M. Ashley, Toledo, O.,
August, 1894.
[272] Narrative of Lyman Goodnow in _History of Waukesha County,
Wisconsin_, p. 462.
[273] See p. 355, Chapter XI.
Some religious communities and church societies were conservators
of abolition ideas. The Quakers deserve, in this work, to be placed
before all other denominations because of their general acceptance
and advocacy of anti-slavery doctrines when the system of slavery
had no other opponents. From the time of George Fox until the last
traces of the evil were swept from the English-speaking world many
Quakers bore a steadfast testimony against it.[274] Fox reminded
slaveholders that if they were in their slaves' places they would
consider it "very great bondage and cruelty," and he urged upon the
Friends in America to preach the gospel to the enslaved blacks. In
1688 German Friends at Germantown, Pennsylvania, made an official
protest "against the traffic in the bodies of men and the treatment
of men as cattle." By 1772 New England Friends began to disown
(expel) members for failing to manumit their slaves; and four years
later both the Philadelphia and the New York yearly meetings made
slaveholding a disownable offence. A similar step was taken by the
Baltimore Yearly Meeting in 1777; and meetings in Virginia were
directed, in 1784, to disown those that refused to emancipate their
slaves.[275] Owing to obstacles in the way of setting slaves free in
North Carolina, a committee of Quakers of that state was appointed
in 1822 to examine the laws of some of the free states respecting
the admission of people of color therein. In 1823 the committee
reported that there was "nothing in the laws of Ohio, Indiana, and
Illinois to prevent the introduction of people of color into those
states, and agents were instructed to remove slaves placed in their
care as fast as they were willing to go." These facts show the
sentiment that prevailed in the Society of Friends. Many Southern
Quakers moved to the North on account of their hatred of slavery,
and established such important centres of underground work as
Springboro and Salem, Ohio, and Spiceland and New Garden, Indiana.
Quakers in New Bedford and Lynn, Massachusetts, and Valley Falls,
Rhode Island, engaged in the service. The same class of people in
Maryland coöperated with members of their society in the vicinity of
Philadelphia. The existence of numerous Underground Railroad centres
in southeastern Pennsylvania and in eastern Indiana is explained by
the fact that a large number of Quakers dwelt in those regions.
[274] S. B. Weeks, _Southern Quakers and Slavery_, p. 198.
[275] _American Church History_, Vol. XII; see article on "The
Society of Friends," by Professor A. C. Thomas, pp. 242-248; also
Weeks, _Southern Quakers and Slavery_, pp. 198-219.
The Methodists began to take action against slavery in 1780. At an
informal conference held at Baltimore in that year the subject was
presented in the form of a "Question,--Ought not this conference
to require those travelling preachers who hold slaves to give
promises to set them free?" The answer given was in the affirmative.
Concerning the membership the language adopted was as follows: "We
pass our disapprobation on all our friends who keep slaves; and
advise their freedom." Under the influence of Wesleyan preachers, it
is said, not a few cases of emancipation occurred. At a conference
in 1785, however, it was decided to "suspend the execution of the
minute on slavery till the deliberations of a future conference...."
Four years later a clause appeared in the Discipline, by whose
authority is not known, prohibiting "The buying or selling the
bodies or souls of men, women, or children, with an intention to
enslave them." This provision evidently referred to the African
slave-trade. In 1816 the General Conference adopted a resolution
that "no slaveholder shall be eligible to any official station in
our Church hereafter, where the laws of the state in which he lives
will admit of emancipation, and permit the liberated slave to enjoy
freedom." Later there seems to have been a disposition on the part
of the church authorities to suppress the agitation of the slavery
question, but it can scarcely be doubted that the well-known views
of the Wesleys and of Whitfield remained for some at least the
standard of right opinion, and that their declarations formed for
these the rule of action. In 1842 a secession from the church took
place, chiefly if not altogether on account of the question of
slavery, and a number of abolitionist members of the uncompromising
type founded a new church organization, which they called the
"Wesleyan Methodist Connection of America." Slave-holders were
excluded from fellowship in this body. Within two or three years the
new organization had drawn away twenty thousand members from the
old.[276] In 1844 a much larger secession took place on the same
question, the occasion being the institution of proceedings before
the General Conference against the Rev. James O. Andrew, D.D., a
slave-holding bishop of the South. This so aggravated the Methodist
Episcopal societies in the slave states that they withdrew and
formed the Methodist Episcopal Church South. Among the members of
the Wesleyan Methodist Connection and of the older society of the
North there were a number of zealous underground operators. Indeed,
it came to be said of the Wesleyans, as of the Quakers, that almost
every neighborhood where a few of them lived was likely to be a
station of the secret Road to Canada. It is probable that some of
the Wesleyans at Wilmington, Ohio, coöperated with Quakers at that
point. In Urbana, Ohio, there were Methodists of the two divisions
engaged.[277] Service was also performed by Wesleyans at Tippecanoe,
Deersville and Rocky Fort in Tuscarawas County,[278] and at Piqua,
Miami County, Ohio.[279] In Iowa a number of Methodist ministers
were engaged in the work.[280]
[276] H. N. McTyeire, D.D., _History of Methodism_, 1887, pp.
375, 536, 601, 611.
[277] Conversation with Major J. C. Brand, Urbana, O., Aug. 13,
1894.
[278] Conversation with Thomas M. Hazlett, Freeport, Harrison
Co., O., Aug. 18, 1895.
[279] Conversation with Mrs. Mary B. Carson, Piqua, O., Aug. 30,
1895.
[280] Letter of Professor F. L. Parker, Grinnell, Ia., Sept. 30,
1894.
The third sect to which a considerable proportion of underground
operators belonged was Calvinistic in its creed. All the various
wings of Presbyterianism seem to have had representatives in
this class of anti-slavery people. The sinfulness of slavery
was a proposition that found uncompromising advocates among the
Presbyterian ministers of the South in the early part of this
century. In 1804 the Rev. James Gilliland removed from South
Carolina to Brown County, Ohio, because he had been enjoined by his
presbytery and synod "to be silent in the pulpit on the subject
of the emancipation of the African."[281] Other ministers of
prominence, like Thomas D. Baird, David Nelson and John Rankin,
left the South because they were not free to speak against slavery.
In 1818 the Presbyterian Church declared the system "inconsistent
with the law of God and totally irreconcilable with the gospel of
Christ." This teaching was afterwards departed from in 1845 when the
Assembly confined its protest to admitting rather mildly that there
was "evil connected with slavery," and declining to countenance
"the traffic in slaves for the sake of gain; the separation of
husbands and wives, parents and children, for the sake of filthy
lucre or the convenience of the master; or cruel treatment of
slaves in any respect." The dissatisfaction caused by this evident
compromise led to the formation of a new church in 1847 by the
"New School" Presbytery of Ripley, Ohio, and a part of the "Old
School" Presbytery of Mahoning, Pennsylvania. This organization
was called the Free Church, and by 1860 had extended as far west
as Iowa.[282] It is not strange that the region in Ohio where the
Free Presbyterian Church was founded was plentifully dotted with
stations of the Underground Railroad, and that the house of the
Rev. John Rankin, who was the leader of the movement, was known
far and wide as a place of refuge for the fugitive slave.[283] At
Savannah, Ashland County, Iberia, Morrow County, and a point near
Millersburgh, Holmes County, Ohio, the work is associated with Free
Presbyterian societies once existing in those neighborhoods.[284]
In the northern part of Adams County, as also in the northern part
of Logan County, Ohio, fugitives were received into the homes of
Covenanters. Galesburg, Illinois, with its college was founded in
1837 by Presbyterians and Congregationalists, who united to form
one religious society under the name of the "Presbyterian Church
of Galesburg." Opposition to slavery was one of the conditions of
membership in this organization from the beginning. This intense
anti-slavery feeling caused the church to withdraw from the
presbytery in 1855.[285] From the starting of the colony until the
time of the War fugitives from Missouri were conducted thither
with the certainty of obtaining protection. Thus Galesburg became,
probably, the principal underground station in Illinois.[286]
Joseph S. White, of New Castle, in western Pennsylvania, notes the
circumstance that all the men with whom he acted in underground
enterprises were Presbyterians.[287]
[281] Wm. B. Sprague, D.D., _Annals of the American Pulpit_,
Vol. IV, 1858, p. 137; Robert E. Thompson, D.D., _History of the
Presbyterian Churches in the United States_, 1895, p. 122.
[282] Robert E. Thompson, D.D., _History of the Presbyterian
Churches in the United States_, 1895, pp. 136, 137.
[283] Address by J. C. Leggett, in a pamphlet entitled _Rev. John
Rankin_, 1892, p. 9.
[284] Letter of Mrs. A. M. Buchanan, Savannah, O., 1893;
conversation with Thomas L. Smith, Fredericksburg, Wayne Co., O.,
Aug. 15, 1895.
[285] Professor George Churchill, in _The Republican Register_,
Galesburg, Ill., March 5, 1887.
[286] Charles C. Chapman & Co., _History of Knox County,
Illinois_, p. 210.
[287] Joseph S. White, Note-book containing "Some Reminiscences
of Slavery Times," New Castle, Pa., March 23, 1891.
The religious centre in Ohio most renowned for the aid of refugees
was the Congregational colony and college at Oberlin. The
acquisition of a large anti-slavery contingent from Lane Seminary in
1835 caused the college to be known from that time on as a "hotbed
of abolitionism." Fugitives were directed thither from points more
or less remote, and during the period from 1835 to 1860 Oberlin
was a busy station,[288] receiving passengers from at least five
converging lines.[289] So notorious did the place become that a
guide-board in the form of a fugitive running in the direction of
the town was set up by the authorities on the Middle Ridge road,
six miles north of Oberlin, and the sign of a tavern, four miles
away, "was ornamented on its Oberlin face with a representation
of a fugitive slave pursued by a tiger."[290] On account of the
persistent ignoring of the law against harboring slaves by those
connected with the institution, the existence of the college was
put in jeopardy. Ex-President Fairchild relates that, "A Democratic
legislature at different times agitated the question of repealing
the college charter. The fourth and last attempt was made in 1843,
when the bill for repeal was indefinitely postponed in the House
by a vote of thirty-six to twenty-nine."[291] The anti-slavery
influence of Oberlin went abroad with its students. Ex-President
W. M. Brooks, of Tabor College, Iowa, a graduate of Oberlin, says,
"The stations on the Underground Railroad in southwestern Iowa
were in the region of Civil Bend, where the colony from Oberlin,
Ohio, settled, which afterwards settled Tabor.... From this point
(Civil Bend, now Percival) fugitives were brought to Tabor after
1852; here the entire population was in sympathy with the escaped
fugitives; ... there was scarcely a man in the community who was
not ready to do anything that was needed to help fugitives on their
way to Canada."[292] The families that founded Tabor were "almost
all of them Congregationalists."[293] Professor L. F. Parker of
Grinnell, Iowa, names Oberlin students in connection with Quakers as
the chief groups in Iowa whose houses were open to fugitives.[294]
Grinnell itself was first settled by people that were mainly
Congregationalists.[295] From the time of its foundation (1854) it
was an anti-slavery centre, "well known and eagerly sought by the
few runaways who came from the meagre settlements southwest ... in
Missouri."[296]
[288] James H. Fairchild, D.D., _The Underground Railroad_, Vol.
IV of publications of the Western Reserve Historical Society,
Tract No. 87, p. 111.
[289] See the general map.
[290] James H. Fairchild, D.D., _Oberlin, the Colony and the
College_, p. 117.
[291] _Ibid._, p. 116. See also Henry Howe, _Historical
Collections of Ohio_, Vol. II, p. 383.
[292] Letter of President W. M. Brooks, Tabor, Ia., Oct. 11, 1894.
[293] I. B. Richman, _John Brown Among the Quakers, and Other
Sketches_, p. 15.
[294] Letter of Professor L. F. Parker, Grinnell, Iowa, Sept. 30,
1894.
[295] J. B. Grinnell, _Men and Events of Forty Years_, p. 87.
[296] Letter of Professor L. F. Parker, Grinnell, Iowa, Sept. 30,
1894.
There were, of course, members of other denominations that
befriended the slave; thus, it is known that the Unitarian Seminary
at Meadville, Pennsylvania, was a centre of underground work,[297]
but, in general, the lack of information concerning the church
connections of many of the company of persons with whom this chapter
deals prevents the drawing of any inference as to whether these
individuals acted independently or in conjunction with little bands
of persons of their own faith.
[297] Conversation with Professor Henry H. Barber, of Meadville,
Pa., in Cambridge, Mass., June, 1897.
There seems to have been no open appeal made to church organizations
for help in behalf of fugitives except in Massachusetts. In 1851,
and again in 1854, the Vigilance Committee of Boston deemed it
wise to send out circulars to the clergymen of the commonwealth,
requesting that contributions be taken by them to be applied in
mitigation of the misery caused by the enactment of the Fugitive
Slave Law. The boldness and originality of such an appeal, and
more especially the evident purpose of its framers to create
sentiment by this means among the religious societies, entitle it
to consideration. The first circular was sent out soon after the
enactment of the odious law, and the second soon after the passage
of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The results secured by the two circulars
will be seen in the following letter from Francis Jackson, of
Boston, to his fellow-townsmen and co-worker, the Rev. Theodore
Parker.
BOSTON, Aug. 27, 1854.
THEODORE PARKER:
_Dear Friend_,--The contributions of the churches in behalf of
the fugitive slaves I think have about all come in. I herewith
inclose you a schedule thereof, amounting in all to about $800,
being but _little more than half as much as they contributed in
1851_.
The Mass. Register published in January, 1854, states the number
of Religious Societies to be 1,547 (made up of 471 Orthodox, 270
Methodist, and all others 239). We sent circulars to the whole
1,547; only 78 of them have responded--say 1 in 20--from 130
Universalist societies, nothing, from 43 Episcopal $4, and 20
Friends $27--the Baptists--four times as many of these societies
have given now as gave in 1851, this may be because Brynes was a
Baptist minister.
* * * * *
The average amount contributed by 77 societies (deducting
Frothingham of Salem) is $10 each; the 28th Congregationalist
Church in this city did not take up a contribution,
nevertheless, individual members thereof subscribed upwards
of $300; they being infidel have not been reckoned with the
churches.
Of the cities and large towns scarce any have contributed. Of
the 90 and 9 in Boston all have gone astray but 2--I have not
heard of our circular being read in one of them; still it may
have been. Those societies who have contributed, I judge were
least able to do so.
FRANCIS JACKSON.[298]
[298] Theodore Parker's _Scrap-book_, Boston Public Library.
The political affiliations of underground helpers before 1840 were,
necessarily, with one or the other of the old parties--the Whig
or the Democratic. As the Whig party was predominantly Northern,
and as its sentiments were more distinctly anti-slavery than those
of its rival, it is fair to suppose that the small band of early
abolitionists were, most of them, allied with that party.[299]
The Missouri Compromise in 1820, one may surmise, enabled those
that were wavering in their position to ally themselves with the
party that was less likely to make demands in the interests of the
slave power. In 1840 opportunity was given abolitionists to take
independent political action by the nomination of a national Liberty
ticket. At that time, and again in 1844, many underground operators
voted for the candidates of the Liberty party, and subsequently for
the Free Soil nominees.[300]
[299] This view agrees with the testimony gathered by
correspondence from surviving abolitionists.
[300] This statement is based on a mass of correspondence.
But it is not to be supposed that all friends of the fugitive
joined the political movement against slavery. Many there were
that regarded party action with disfavor, preferring the method of
moral suasion. These persons belonged to the Quakers, or to the
Garrisonian abolitionists. The Friends or Quakers refused as far as
possible to countenance slavery, and when the political development
of the abolition cause came they regretted it, and their yearly
meetings withheld their official sanction, so far as known, from
every political organization. Nevertheless, there were some members
of the Society of Friends that were swept into the current, and
became active supporters of the Liberty party.[301] The most noted
and influential of these was the anti-slavery poet, Whittier.[302]
When, in 1860, the Republican party nominated Lincoln, "a large
majority of the Friends, at least in the North and West, voted for
him."[303]
[301] Professor A. C. Thomas on "The Society of Friends," in
_American Church History_, Vol. XII, 1894, pp. 284, 285.
[302] Oliver Johnson, _William Lloyd Garrison and His Times_,
1879, p. 322.
[303] Professor A. C. Thomas, in _American Church History_, Vol.
XII, p. 285.
The followers of Garrison that remained steadfast to the teachings
and the example of their leader shunned all connection with
the political abolitionist movement. Garrison never voted but
once,[304] and by 1854 had gone so far in his denunciation of
slavery that he burned the Constitution of the United States
at an open-air celebration of the abolitionists at Framingham,
Massachusetts.[305] To his dying day he seems to have believed "that
the cause would have triumphed sooner, in a political sense, if the
abolitionists had continued to act as one body, never yielding to
the temptation of forming a political party, but pressing forward in
the use of the same instrumentalities which were so potent from 1831
to 1840."[306]
[304] _Life of Garrison_, by his children, Vol. I, p. 455.
[305] _Ibid._, Vol. III, p. 412.
[306] Oliver Johnson, _William Lloyd Garrison and His Times_, p.
310.
The abolitionists were ill-judged by their contemporaries, and were
frequently subjected to harsh language and occasionally to violent
treatment by persons of supposed respectability. The weight of
opprobrium they were called upon to bear tested their great strength
of character. If the probity, integrity and moral courage of this
abused class had been made the criteria of their standing they would
have been held from the outset in high esteem by their neighbors.
However, they lived to see the days of their disgrace turned into
days of triumph. "The muse of history," says Rhodes, "has done full
justice to the abolitionists. Among them were literary men, who have
known how to present their cause with power, and the noble spirit
of truthfulness pervades the abolition literature. One may search
in vain for intentional misrepresentation. Abuse of opponents and
criticism of motives are common enough, but the historians of the
abolition movement have endeavored to relate a plain, honest tale;
and the country has accepted them and their work at their true
value. Moreover, a cause and its promoters that have been celebrated
in the vigorous lines of Lowell and sung in the impassioned verse of
Whittier will always be of perennial memory."[307]
[307] _History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850_,
Vol. I, p. 75.
Contempt was not the only hardship that the abolitionist had to
face when he admitted the fleeing black man within his door, but
he braved also the existing laws, and was sometimes compelled
to suffer the consequences for disregarding the slaveholder's
claim of ownership. In 1842 the prosecution of John Van Zandt, of
Hamilton County, Ohio, was begun for attempting to aid nine slaves
to escape. The case was tried first in the Circuit Court of the
United States, and then taken by appeal to the Supreme Court. The
suits were not concluded when the defendant died in May, 1847. The
death of the plaintiff soon after left the case to be settled by
administrators, who agreed that the costs, amounting to one thousand
dollars, should be paid from the possessions of the defendant.[308]
The judgments against Van Zandt under the Fugitive Slave Law
amounted to seventeen hundred dollars.[309] In 1847 several members
of a crowd that was instrumental in preventing the seizure of a
colored family by the name of Crosswhite, at Marshall, Michigan,
were indicted under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793. Two trials
followed, and at the second trial three persons were convicted,
the verdict against them amounting, with expenses and costs, to
six thousand dollars.[310] In 1848 Daniel Kauffman, of Cumberland
County, Pennsylvania, sheltered a family of thirteen slaves in his
barn, and gave them transportation northward. He was tried, and
sentenced to pay two thousand dollars in fine and costs. Although
this decision was reversed by the United States Supreme Court, a new
suit was instituted in the Circuit Court of the United States and a
judgment was rendered against Kauffman amounting with costs to more
than four thousand dollars. This sum was paid, in large part if not
altogether, by contributions.[311] In 1854 Rush R. Sloane, a lawyer
of Sandusky, Ohio, was tried for enabling seven fugitives to escape
after arrest by their pursuers. The two claimants of the slaves
instituted suit, but one only obtained a judgment, which amounted to
three thousand dollars and costs.[312] The arrest of the fugitive,
Anthony Burns, in Boston, in the same year, was the occasion for
indignation meetings at Faneuil and Meionaon Halls, which terminated
in an attempt to rescue the unfortunate negro. Theodore Parker,
Wendell Phillips and T. W. Higginson took a conspicuous part in
these proceedings, and were indicted with others for riot. When the
first case was taken up the counsel for the defence made a motion
that the indictment be quashed. This was sustained by the court, and
the affair ended by all the cases being dismissed.[313]
[308] Letter of N. L. Van Sandt, Clarinda, Iowa. (Mr. N. L. Van
Sandt is the son of John Van Zandt.) See also Wilson's _Rise
and Fall of the Slave Power_, Vol. I, pp. 475, 476; T. R. Cobb,
_Historical Sketches of Slavery_, p. 207; M. G. McDougall,
_Fugitive Slaves_, p. 42.
[309] See pp. 274, 275, Chapter IX.
[310] Pamphlet proposing a "Defensive League of Freedom," signed
by Ellis Gray Loring and others, of Boston, pp. 5, 6. See Chapter
IX, p. 275.
[311] _Ibid._
[312] 5 McLean's United States Reports, p. 64 _et seq._; see also
_The Firelands Pioneer_, July, 1888; account by Rush R. Sloane,
pp. 47-49; account by H. F. Paden, pp. 21, 22; Chapter IX, pp.
276, 277.
[313] _Commonwealth_, June 28, 1854; M. G. McDougall, _Fugitive
Slaves_, pp. 45, 46; Wilson, _Rise and Fall of the Slave Power_,
Vol. II, pp. 443, 444. See Chapter X, pp. 331-333.
These and other similar cases arising from the attempted enforcement
of the Fugitive Slave Act in various parts of the country led to
the proposal of a Defensive League of Freedom. A pamphlet, issued
soon after the rendition of Burns, by Ellis Gray Loring, Samuel
Cabot, Jr., Henry J. Prentiss, John A. Andrew and Samuel G. Howe,
of Boston, and James Freeman Clarke, of Roxbury, Massachusetts,
stated the object of the proposed league to be "to secure all
persons claimed as fugitives from slavery, and to all persons
accused of violating the Fugitive Slave Bill the fullest legal
protection; and also indemnify all such persons against costs,
fines, and expenses, whenever they shall seem to deserve such
indemnification." The league was to act as a "society of mutual
protection and every member was to assume his portion of such
penalties as would otherwise fall with crushing weight on a few
individuals." Subscriptions were to be made by the members of the
organization, and five per cent of these subscriptions was to be
called for any year when it was needed.[314] How much service this
association actually performed, or whether, indeed, it got beyond
the stage of being merely proposed is not known; in any event, the
fact is worth noting that men of marked ability, distinction and
social connection were forming societies, like the Defensive League
of Freedom, and the various vigilance committees, for the purpose of
defeating the Fugitive Slave Act.
[314] Pamphlet proposing a "Defensive League of Freedom," pp. 1,
3, 11 and 12.
Among the underground helpers there are a number of notable persons
that have admitted with seeming satisfaction their complicity
in disregarding the Fugitive Slave Law. A letter from Frederick
Douglass, the famous Maryland bondman and anti-slavery orator, says:
"My connection with the Underground Railroad began long before I
left the South, and was continued as long as slavery continued,
whether I lived in New Bedford, Lynn [both in Massachusetts],
or Rochester, N.Y. In the latter place I had as many as eleven
fugitives under my roof at one time."[315] In his autobiography Mr.
Douglass declares concerning his work in this connection: "My agency
was all the more exciting and interesting because not altogether
free from danger. I could take not a step in it without exposing
myself to fine and imprisonment, ... but in face of this fact,
I can say, I never did more congenial, attractive, fascinating,
and satisfactory work."[316] Dr. Alexander M. Ross, a Canadian
physician and naturalist, who has received the decorations of
knighthood from several of the monarchs of Europe in recognition of
his scientific discoveries, spent a considerable part of his time
from 1856 to 1862 in spreading a knowledge of the routes leading to
Canada among the slaves of the South.[317] Dr. Norton S. Townshend,
one of the organizers of the Ohio State University and for years
professor of agriculture in that institution, acted as a conductor
on the Underground Railroad while he was a student of medicine
in Cincinnati, Ohio.[318] Dr. Jared P. Kirtland, a distinguished
physician and scientist of Ohio, kept a station in Poland, Mahoning
County, where he resided from 1823 to 1837.[319]
[315] Letter of Frederick Douglass, Anacostia, D.C., March 27,
1893.
[316] _Life of Frederick Douglass_, 1881, p. 271.
[317] Ross, _Recollections and Experiences of an Abolitionist_,
pp. 30-44, 67-71, 121-132; also letters of Alexander M. Ross,
Toronto, Ont.
[318] Conversations with Professor N. S. Townshend, Columbus, O.
[319] Conversation with Miss Mary L. Morse, Poland, O., Aug. 11,
1892; letter of Mrs. Emma Kirtland Hine, Poland, O., Jan. 23,
1897.
Harriet Beecher Stowe gained the intimate knowledge of the
methods of the friends of the slave she displays in _Uncle Tom's
Cabin_ through her association with some of the most zealous
abolitionists of southern Ohio. Her own house on Walnut Hills,
Cincinnati, was a refuge whence persons whose types are portrayed
in George and Eliza, the boy Jim and his mother, were guided by
her husband and brother a portion of the way towards Canada.[320]
Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the essayist and author,
while stationed as the pastor of a free church in Worcester,
Massachusetts, from 1852 to 1858, often had fugitives directed to
his care. In a recent letter he writes of having received on one
occasion a "consignment of a young white slave woman with two white
children" from the Rev. Samuel J. May, who had put her "into the
hands, for escort, of one of the most pro-slavery men in Worcester."
The pro-slavery man, of course, did not have a suspicion that he was
acting as conductor on the Underground Railroad.[321]
[320] See Chapter X, pp.
[321] Letter of T. W. Higginson, Dublin, N.H., July 24, 1896.
[Illustration: FREDERICK DOUGLASS.]
Joshua R. Giddings, for twenty years in Congress an ardent advocate
of the abolition of slavery, kept a particular chamber in his house
at Jefferson, Ohio, for the use of refugees.[322] Sometimes when
passing through Alliance, Ohio, Mr. Giddings found opportunity to
call upon his friend, I. Newton Peirce, to whom he contributed money
for the transportation of runaway slaves by rail from that point to
Cleveland.[323] What his views were of the irritating law of 1850,
he declared on the floor of the House of Representatives, February
11, 1852, in the following words: "... Let me say to Southern men;
It is your privilege to catch your own slaves, if any one catches
them.... When you ask us to pay the expenses of arresting your
slaves, or to give the President authority to appoint officers
to do that dirty work, give them power to compel our people to
give chase to the panting bondman, you overstep the bounds of the
Constitution, and there we meet you, and there we stand and there
we shall remain. We shall protest against such indignity; we shall
proclaim our abhorrence of such a law. Nor can you seal or silence
our voices."[324]
[322] Conversation with J. Addison Giddings, Jefferson, O., Aug.
9, 1892.
[323] Letter of I. Newton Peirce, Folcroft, Sharon Hill P.O.,
Pa., Feb. 1, 1893.
[324] George W. Julian, _The Life of Joshua R. Giddings_, 1892,
p. 289.
Thaddeus Stevens, a leading lawyer of Pennsylvania, who rendered
the cause of abolition distinguished service in Congress, where he
gained the title of the "great commoner," entered upon the practice
of his profession at Gettysburg in 1816, and soon became known as
a friend of escaping slaves. His removal to Lancaster in 1842 did
not take him off the line of flight, and he continued to act as a
helper. The woman that "kept house for him for more than twenty
years, and nursed him at the close of his life, was one of the
slaves he helped to freedom."[325]
[325] Smedley, _Underground Railroad_, pp. 36, 38, 46.
James M. Ashley, member of Congress from Ohio for over nine years,
and his successor in the House, Richard Mott, a Quaker, were
confederates in their violation of the Slave Act at Toledo, Ohio.
Mr. Ashley began his service in behalf of the blacks early in life.
As a youth of seventeen in Kentucky, he helped two companies across
the Ohio River, one company of seven persons, and the other of
five.[326] Sidney Edgerton, who was elected to Congress from Ohio
on the Free Soil ticket in 1858, and four years after was appointed
governor of Montana Territory by President Lincoln, assisted his
father in the befriending of slaves at Tallmadge, Summit County,
Ohio.[327] Jacob M. Howard, afterwards United States senator from
Michigan, was one of the principal operators at Detroit.[328]
General Samuel Fessenden, of Maine, who received the nomination of
the Liberty party for the governorship of his state, and later for
Congress, and was during forty years the leading member of the bar
in Maine, gave escaped bondmen reaching Portland a hearty welcome
to his house on India Street.[329] In Vermont there were a number
of men prominent in public affairs that were actively engaged in
underground enterprises. Colonel Jonathan P. Miller, of Montpelier,
who went to Greece, and assisted that country in its uprising in the
twenties, served as a member of the Vermont legislature in 1833, and
took part in the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840, was among
the early helpers in New England. Lawrence Brainerd, for several
years candidate for governor of Vermont, and later chosen to the
United States Senate as a Free Soiler, gave shelter to the wanderers
at St. Albans, where they were almost within sight of "the Promised
Land."[330] Others were the Rev. Alvah Sabin, elected to Congress
in 1853, who kept a station at the town of Georgia, the Hon. Joseph
Poland of Montpelier, the Hon. William Sowles of Swanton, the Hon.
John West of Morristown and the Hon. A. J. Russell of Troy.[331]
[326] Conversation with the Hon. James M. Ashley, Toledo, O.,
July, 1894.
[327] Conversation with ex-Governor Sidney Edgerton, Akron, O.,
Aug. 16, 1895.
[328] Conversation with Judge J. W. Finney, Detroit, Mich., July
27, 1895.
[329] Letter of S. T. Pickard, Portland, Me., Nov. 18, 1893.
[330] Letter of Aldis O. Brainerd, St. Albans, Vt., Oct. 21, 1895.
[331] Letter of Joseph Poland, Montpelier, Vt., April 7, 1897.
Gerrit Smith, the famous philanthropist, kept open house for
fugitives in a fine old mansion at Peterboro, New York. He was one
of the prime movers in the organization of the Liberty party at
Arcade, New York, in 1840, and was its candidate for the presidency
in 1848 and in 1852. He was elected to Congress in 1853 and served
one term. It is said that during the decade 1850 to 1860 he "aided
habitually in the escape of fugitive slaves and paid the legal
expenses of persons accused of infractions of the Fugitive Slave
Law."[332] The Rev. Owen Lovejoy, brother of the martyr Elijah P.
Lovejoy, served four terms in the national House of Representatives.
On one occasion he was taunted by some pro-slavery members of the
House with being a "nigger-stealer." In a speech made February 21,
1859, Mr. Lovejoy, referring to these accusations, said: "Is it
desired to call attention to this fact--of my assisting fugitive
slaves?... Owen Lovejoy lives at Princeton, Illinois, three-quarters
of a mile east of the village, and he aids every fugitive that comes
to his door and asks it. Thou invisible demon of slavery, dost thou
think to cross my humble threshold, and forbid me to give bread to
the hungry and shelter to the houseless! I bid you defiance in the
name of my God!"[333] Josiah B. Grinnell, who represented a central
Iowa district in the Thirty-eighth and the Thirty-ninth congresses,
had a chamber in his house at Grinnell that came to be called the
"liberty room." John Brown, while on his way to Canada with a
band of Missouri slaves, in the winter of 1858-1859, stacked his
arms in this room, and his company of fugitives slept there.[334]
Mr. Grinnell relates of the members of this party, "They came at
night, and were the darkest, saddest specimens of humanity I have
ever seen, glad to camp on the floor, while the veteran was a
night guard, with his dog and a miniature arsenal ready for use on
alarm...."[335]
[332] O. B. Frothingham, _Life of Gerrit Smith; National
Cyclopedia of American Biography_, Vol. II, pp. 322, 323.
[333] Pamphlet of the Rev. D. Heagle, entitled _The Great
Anti-Slavery Agitator, Hon. Owen Lovejoy_, pp. 16, 17, 34, 35.
[334] J. B. Grinnell, _Men and Events of Forty Years_, p. 207.
[335] _Ibid._, pp. 217, 218.
Thurlow Weed, the distinguished journalist and political manager,
even in his busiest hours had time to afford relief to the
underground applicant. One who knew Mr. Weed intimately relates the
following incident: "On one occasion when several eminent gentlemen
were waiting [to see the journalist] they were surprised and at
first much vexed, by seeing a negro promptly admitted. The negro
soon reappeared, and hastily left the house, when it was learned
that he was a runaway slave, and had been aided in his flight for
liberty by the man who was too busy to attend to Cabinet officers,
but had time to say words of encouragement and present means of
support to a flying fugitive."[336] Sydney Howard Gay, for several
years managing editor of the _New York Tribune_, and subsequently
on the editorial staff of the _New York Post_ and the _Chicago
Tribune_, was an efficient agent of the Underground Railroad while
in charge of the _Anti-Slavery Standard_, which he conducted in New
York City from 1844 to 1857.[337]
[336] T. W. Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, 1884, Vol. II, p. 238.
[337] Wilson, _Rise and Fall of the Slave Power_, Vol. II, p. 52.
Among the clergymen that made it a part of their religious duty
to minister to the needs of the exiles from the South, were John
Rankin, Samuel J. May and Theodore Parker. Mr. Rankin, a native of
Tennessee, early developed his anti-slavery views in Kentucky, where
from 1817 to 1821 he served as pastor of two Presbyterian churches
at the town of Carlisle. During the next forty-four years he resided
at Ripley, Ohio, in a neighborhood frequented by runaways.[338]
Doubtless he became a patron of these midnight visitors at the
time of his location in Ripley. In 1828 he established himself in
a house situated upon the crest of a hill just back of the town
and overlooking the Ohio River. For many years the lights beaming
through the windows of this parsonage were hailed by slaves fleeing
from the soil of Kentucky as beacons to guide them to a haven of
safety.[339]
[338] William Birney, _James G. Birney and His Times_, p. 435.
[339] J. C. Leggett, in a pamphlet entitled _Rev. John Rankin_,
1892, pp. 8, 9; see also _History of Brown County, Ohio_, p. 443.
Samuel J. May, for many years a prominent minister in the Unitarian
Church, writes: "So long ago as 1834, when I was living in the
eastern part of Connecticut, I had fugitives addressed to my
care.... Even after I came to reside in Syracuse [New York] I had
much to do as a station-keeper or conductor on the Underground
Railroad, until slavery was abolished by the proclamation of
President Lincoln.... Fugitives came to me from Maryland, Virginia,
Kentucky, Tennessee and Louisiana. They came, too, at all hours
of day and night, sometimes comfortably, yes, and even handsomely
clad, but generally in clothes every way unfit to be worn, and in
some instances too unclean and loathsome to be admitted into my
house."[340]
[340] Recollections of the _Anti-Slavery Conflict_, p. 297.
Theodore Parker, the learned theologian and iconoclast of Boston,
often deserted his study that he might work in the cause of
humanity. In his Journal, under the date October 23, 1850, Mr.
Parker wrote: "... The first business of the anti-slavery men is to
help the fugitives; we, like Christ, are to seek and save that which
is lost."[341] In an unsigned note written in 1851 to his friend Dr.
Francis, Mr. Parker says:--
... I have got some nice books (old ones) coming across the
water. But, alas me! such is the state of the poor fugitive
slaves, that I must attend to living men, and not to dead books,
and all this winter my time has been occupied with these poor
souls. The Vigilance Committee appointed me spiritual counsellor
of all fugitive slaves in Massachusetts while in peril.... The
Fugitive Slave Law has cost me some months of time already. I
have refused about sixty invitations to lecture and delayed the
printing of my book--for that! Truly the land of the pilgrims is
in great disgrace!
Yours truly.[342]
[341] John Weiss, _Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker_,
1864, p. 95.
[342] John Weiss, _Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker_,
1864, p. 96.
Among the underground workers there were two whose principal object
in life seems to have been to assist fugitive slaves. These two
organizers of underground travel were Levi Coffin, of Cincinnati,
Ohio, and Thomas Garrett, of Wilmington, Delaware, both lifelong
members of the Society of Friends, both capable business men, both
able to number the unfortunates they had succored in terms of
thousands.
Thomas Garrett was born in Pennsylvania in 1789, and espoused the
cause of emancipation at the age of eighteen, when a colored woman
in the employ of his father's family was kidnapped. He succeeded in
rescuing the woman from the hands of her abductors, and from that
time on made it his special mission to aid negroes in their attempts
to gain freedom. In 1822 he removed to Wilmington, Delaware, and
during the next forty years his efforts in behalf of fugitives were
unremitting. He was not so fortunate as Levi Coffin in escaping the
penalties of the Fugitive Slave Law; an open violation of the law
got him into difficulty in 1848. He was tried on four counts before
Judge Taney, and his entire property was swallowed up in fines
amounting to eight thousand dollars. There is a tradition that the
presiding judge admonished Garrett to take his loss as a lesson and
in the future to desist from breaking the laws; whereupon the aged
Quaker stoutly replied: "Judge, thou hast not left me a dollar,
but I wish to say to thee, and to all in this court-room, that if
any one knows of a fugitive who wants a shelter and a friend, send
him to Thomas Garrett and he will befriend him."[343] Although
sixty years of age when misfortune befel him, Mr. Garrett was
successful in again acquiring a competence through the kindness of
fellow-townsmen in advancing him capital with which to make a fresh
start. Though satisfied, he was wont to think that his real work
in life was never finished. "The war came a little too soon for my
business. I wanted to help off three thousand slaves. I had only got
up to twenty-seven hundred!"
[343] Lillie B. C. Wyman, in _New England Magazine_, March,
1896, p. 112; William Still, _Underground Railroad Records_, pp.
623-641; R. C. Smedley, _Underground Railroad_, pp. 237-245; M.
G. McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, p. 60.
Mr. Coffin was a native of North Carolina. Born in 1798, he was
while still a boy moved to assist in the escape of slaves by
witnessing the cruel treatment the negroes were compelled to endure.
In 1826 he settled in Wayne County, Indiana, on the line of the
Underground Road, and such was his activity that his house at New
Garden (now Fountain City) soon became the converging point of
three principal routes from Kentucky. In 1847 Mr. Coffin removed to
Cincinnati for the purpose of opening a store where goods produced
by free labor only should be sold. His relations with the humane
work were maintained, and the genial but fearless Quaker came to
be known generally by the fictitious but happy title, President
of the Underground Railroad. It has been said of Mr. Coffin that
"for thirty-three years he received into his house more than one
hundred slaves every year."[344] In 1863 the Quaker philanthropist
assisted in the establishment of the Freedmen's Bureau. In the
following year and again in 1867, he visited Europe as agent for
the Western Freedmen's Aid Commission. When the adoption of the
Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution was celebrated in Cincinnati
by colored citizens and their friends, Mr. Coffin was one of those
called upon by the chairman to address the great meeting. In
response, the veteran station-keeper explained how he had obtained
the title of President of the Underground Road. He said, "The
title was given to me by slave-hunters, who could not find their
fugitive slaves after they got into my hands. I accepted the office
thus conferred upon me, and ... endeavored to perform my duty
faithfully. Government has now taken the work out of our hands.
The stock of the Underground Railroad has gone down in the market,
the business is spoiled, the road is now of no further use."[345]
He then amid much applause resigned his office, and declared the
operations of the Underground Railroad at an end.
[344] _Reminiscences of Levi Coffin_, 2d ed., p. 694.
[345] _Reminiscences of Levi Coffin_, p. 712.
[Illustration: MAP
showing the lines of the
UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
IN
Chester and the Neighboring Counties of Pennsylvania
_Based on R. C. Smedley's History of the Road in these Counties._]
[Illustration: "UNDERGROUND"
ROUTES TO CANADA
SHOWING THE LINES OF TRAVEL
OF FUGITIVE SLAVES
_W.H. Siebert, 1898]
CHAPTER V
STUDY OF THE MAP OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD SYSTEM
There are many features of the Underground Railroad that can best be
understood by means of a geographical representation of the system.
Such a representation it has been possible to make by piecing
together the scraps of information in regard to various routes and
parts of routes gathered from the reminiscences of a large number
of abolitionists. The more or less limited area in which each agent
operated was the field within which he was not only willing, but was
usually anxious, to confine his knowledge of underground activities.
Ignorance of one's accomplices beyond a few adjoining stations
was naturally felt to be a safeguard. The local character of the
information resulting from such precautions places the investigator
under the necessity of patiently studying his materials for what may
be called the cumulative evidence in regard to the geography of the
system. It is because the evidence gathered has been cumulative and
corroborative that a general map can be prepared. But a map thus
constructed cannot, of course, be considered complete, for it cannot
be supposed that after the lapse of a generation representatives
of all the important lines and branches could be discovered.
Nevertheless, however much the map may fall short of showing the
system in its completeness, it will be found to help the reader
materially in his attempt to realize the extent and importance of
this movement.
The underground system, in accordance with the statement of James
Freeman Clarke, is commonly understood to have extended from
Kentucky and Virginia across Ohio, and from Maryland through
Pennsylvania, New York and New England to Canada.[346] But this
description is inadequate, for it fails to include the states west
of Ohio. Henry Wilson extends the field westward by asserting that
the "territory embraced by the Middle States and all the Western
States east of the Mississippi ... was dotted over with 'stations,'"
and "covered with a network of imaginary routes, not found ... in
the railway guides or on the railway maps;"[347] and in another
place he quotes the Rev. Asa Turner, a home missionary, who went
to Illinois in 1830, who says: "Lines were formed through Iowa
and Illinois, and passengers were carried from station to station
... till they reached the Canada line."[348] The association of
Kansas with the two states just named as a channel for the escape
of runaways from the southwestern slave section, is made by Mr.
Richard J. Hinton.[349] The addition of one other state, New Jersey,
is necessary to complete the list of Northern states involved in
the Underground Railroad system.[350] This region, which forms
nearly one quarter of the present area of the Union, constituted the
irregular zone of free soil intervening between Southern slavery and
Canadian liberty.
[346] _Anti-Slavery Days_, p. 81; M. G. McDougall, _Fugitive
Slaves_, p. 61.
[347] _Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America_, Vol. II, p.
66.
[348] _Ibid._, p. 68.
[349] _John Brown and His Men_, p. 173.
[350] See pp. 123-125, this chapter.
The conditions that determined the number and distribution of
stations throughout this region are clearly discernible even in
the incomplete data with which we are forced to be content. It
is safe to assert that in Ohio the conditions favorable to the
development of a large number of stations, and the dissemination of
these throughout the state, existed in a measure and combination
not reproduced in the case of any other state. Ohio's geographical
boundary gave it a long line of contact with slave territory. It
bordered Kentucky with about one hundred and sixty miles of river
frontage; and Virginia with perhaps two hundred and twenty-five
miles or more, and crossings were made at almost any point. The
character of the early settlements of Ohio is a factor that must
not be overlooked. The northern and eastern parts of the state
were dotted over with many little communities where New England
ideas prevailed; the southern and southwestern parts came in
time to be well sprinkled with the homes of Quakers, Covenanters
and anti-slavery Southerners and some negroes; the central and
southeastern portions contained a number of Quaker settlements. The
remote position and sparse settlement of the northwestern section
of the state probably explain the failure to find many traces of
routes in that region. Family ties, church fellowship, an aggressive
anti-slavery leadership,--journalistic and political,--the leavening
influence of institutions like Oberlin College, Western Reserve
College and Geneva College, all contributed to propagate a sentiment
that was ready to support the fleeing slave; and thus Ohio became
netted over with a large number of interlacing lines of escape for
fugitive slaves. The western portions of Pennsylvania and New York,
and the eastern portion of Indiana shared with Ohio these favorable
conditions, and one is not surprised to find many stations in these
regions. The same is true of northern and west-central Illinois,
where many persons of New England descent settled. The few lines
known in southwestern Illinois were developed by a few Covenanter
communities. The geographical position of the most southern portions
of Illinois and Indiana determined the character of the population
settling there, and thus rendered underground enterprises in those
regions more than ordinarily dangerous. There may have been stations
scattered through those parts, but if so, one can scarcely hope
now to discover them. The great number of routes in southeastern
Pennsylvania, and the stream of slave emigration flowing through
New Jersey to New York are to be attributed largely to the untiring
activity of a host of Quakers, assisted by some negroes. The
coöperation of some zealous station-keepers in the neighboring slave
territory seems to account partly for the multitude of stations
that appear upon the map between the lower Susquehanna and Delaware
rivers. Whether there was any underground work done in the central
and northern parts of Pennsylvania is not known; the indications
are that there was not much; the stations said to have existed at
Milroy, Altoona, Work's Place and Smicksburg probably connected
with lines running in a northwesterly direction to Lake Erie. This
is known to have been true of the stations at Greensburg, Indiana,
Clearfield and intermediate points, which were linked in with
stations leading to Meadville and Erie. The remoteness of New York
and of the New England states from the slaveholding section explains
the comparatively small number of stations found in those states.
Iowa, which bordered on slave territory, had only a small number
of stations, for it was a new region, not long open to occupation;
and only the southern part of the state was in the direct line of
travel, which here was mostly eastward. There were a few places of
deportation in southeastern Wisconsin for fugitives that had avoided
Chicago, and followed the lakeshore or the Illinois River farther
northward. A rather narrow strip of Michigan, adjoining Indiana and
Ohio, was dotted with stations.
There were friends of the discontented slave in the South as well
as in the North, although it cannot be said, upon the basis of
the small amount of evidence at hand, that these were sufficient
in number or so situated as to maintain regular lines of escape
northward. Doubtless many acts of kindness to slaves were performed
by individual Southerners, but those were not, in most of the cases,
known as the acts of persons coöperating to help the slave from
point to point until freedom and safety should be reached. That
there were regular helpers in the South engaged in concerted action,
Samuel J. May, a station-keeper of wide information concerning
the Road, freely asserts. In 1869 he wrote, "There have always
been scattered throughout the slaveholding states individuals who
have abhorred slavery, and have pitied the victims of our American
despotism. These persons have known, or have taken pains to find
out, others at convenient distances northward from their abodes
who sympathized with them in commiserating the slaves. These
sympathizers have known or heard of others of like mind still
farther north, who again have had acquaintances in the free states
that they knew would help the fugitive on his way to liberty. Thus
lines of friends at longer or shorter distances were formed from
many parts of the South to the very borders of Canada...."[351] It
is not easy to substantiate this statement; and all that will be
attempted here is the presentation of such examples as have been
found of underground work on the part of persons living south of
Mason and Dixon's line. Mr. Stephen B. Weeks is authority for the
statement that "Vestal Coffin organized the Underground Railroad
near the present Guilford College in 1819," and that "Addison
Coffin, his son, entered its service as a conductor in early
youth...."[352] Levi Coffin, Vestal's cousin, helped many slaves
from this region to reach the North before he moved to Indiana in
1826.[353] In Delaware there seems to have been a well-defined
route upon which the houses of John Hunn, of Middletown,[354]
Ezekiel Hunn, of Camden, and Thomas Garrett, of Wilmington,[355]
were important stations. John Hunn speaks of himself as having been
"superintendent of the Underground Railroad from Wilmington down the
Peninsula."[356] Maryland also had its line--perhaps its lines--of
Road. One route ran overland from Washington, D.C., to Philadelphia.
Mr. W. B. Williams, of Charlotte, Michigan, throws some light on
this route. He says, "My uncle, Jacob Bigelow, was for several
years previous to the war a resident of Washington, D.C. He was an
abolitionist, and general manager of the Underground Railway from
Washington to Philadelphia...."[357] Mr. Robert Purvis tells of two
market-women that were agents of the Underground Road in Baltimore,
forwarding fugitives to the Vigilance Committee with which he
was connected in Philadelphia.[358] The Quaker City was also a
central station for points still farther south. Vessels engaged
in the lumber trade plying between Newberne, North Carolina, and
Philadelphia, were often supplied with slave passengers by the son
of a slaveholder living at Newberne.[359] A slave at Petersburg,
Virginia, was agent for that section of country, directing fugitives
to William Still in Philadelphia.[360] Eliza Bains, a slave-woman
of Portsmouth, Virginia, sent numbers of her people to Boston and
New Bedford by boat.[361] Frederick Douglass declared that his
connection with the Underground Railroad began long before he left
the South.[362] Harriet Tubman, the abductor, made use of stations
at Camden, Dover, Blackbird, Middleton and New Castle in the State
of Delaware on her way to Wilmington and Philadelphia.[363] The
testimony of these various witnesses seems to show that underground
routes existed in the South, but it is not sufficient in amount
to enable one to trace extended courses of travel through the
slaveholding states.
[351] _Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict_, pp. 296, 297.
[352] _Southern Quakers and Slavery_, p. 242.
[353] _Ibid._, p. 242. See also _Reminiscences of Levi Coffin_,
pp. 12-31.
[354] Smedley, _Underground Railroad_, pp. 238, 244.
[355] _Ibid._, p. 326.
[356] Letter of John Hunn, Wyoming, Del., Sept. 16, 1893.
[357] In the _Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin_ is the facsimile of a
letter addressed to him by a slave, pp. 171, 172.
[358] R. C. Smedley, _Underground Railroad_, p. 355, letter from
Robert Purvis printed therein.
[359] Chapter III, p. 68.
[360] Wm. Still, _Underground Railroad_, p. 41. "The Underground
Railroad brought away large numbers of passengers from
Richmond, Petersburg, and Norfolk, and not a few of them lived
comparatively within a hair's breadth of the auction block." Wm.
Still, _Underground Railroad Records_, p. 141.