THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY AND THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW
Pro-slavery and anti-slavery were at this time the names of two sets of
ideas and two states of mind that no longer admitted of compromise. The
words meant immeasurably more in 1850 than they had in 1830. If they had
ever been mere academic terms, they were fast becoming fighting
terms,—the standards of two hostile camps. In the minds of the people,
they stood, respectively, for irreconcilable principles. With every
fresh event affecting either one side or the other, new and more intense
animosities were engendered, and the two forces were driven farther and
farther apart. Those who believed in the institution, became more and
more firmly fixed in their determination not only to resist every attack
upon it, but to give it the widest possible extension. Those who stood
opposed to slavery were equally fixed in their determination that it
should be destroyed.
The anti-slavery movement was fast becoming something more than a
sentiment or an opinion with which one might try conclusions in the
forum. It was fast becoming a revolutionary movement which meant force,
more force, and, finally, the utmost force. All the time Frederick
Douglass, like William Lloyd Garrison, was in the forward ranks. The
tone of “no compromise” rang out with increasing insistence.
“Come what will,” said Douglass, “I hold it to be morally certain that
sooner or later, by fair means or foul means, in peace or in blood, in
judgment or in mercy, slavery is doomed to cease out of this otherwise
goodly land, and liberty is destined to become the settled law of the
republic.”
“I am in earnest,” said Garrison, “I will not equivocate, I will not
excuse, I will not retract a single inch, and I will be heard.”
These declarations by these two conspicuous Abolitionists are aptly
expressive of the growing intensity of the anti-slavery feeling. Such
words called more loudly for action than for argument. What was known in
the United States during the anti-slavery struggle as the “Underground
Railway,” best represents all that was aggressive and militant in that
contest. This so-called “railway system” was constituted and operated in
defiance of law by the Abolitionists. It was Abolition in action.
But if the Underground Railway was conducted in defiance of law, it
should be said that the law in its terms, spirit, and effects seemed to
them who were engaged in operating the road to be in defiance of those
principles of liberty and the rights of man, which they had been taught
to think were higher than any positive enactment of a legislature.
The Underground Railway had none of the features of the modern railway,
except the carrying of passengers, and these were limited in kind and in
the direction of the travel. No one could obtain passage on this road,
unless he or she were a slave, and wanted to be free. The trains ran in
but one direction, and that was Northward. There were no “Jim Crow”
cars, no sleepers and no smokers, and all passengers were carried free
of charge. It was a railroad without stockholders, but it had
innumerable directors. No dividends were paid except to passengers, and
such dividends were in the form of certificates of freedom from bondage.
To be more explicit, the Underground Railway was a system of clandestine
travel, extending from the borders of “Mason and Dixon’s Line” through
the North and West to Canada. The residence of Mr. Douglass was one of
the last stations on the line before reaching British soil. Much has
been written about this mysterious railway, but the details of its
activities have never been told. From September 26, 1850, to the
breaking out of the Civil War, the new and rigid Fugitive Slave Law was
in active operation, and it was in open violation of this measure that
the Underground Railway was conducted. A slave, and sometimes an entire
family or body of slaves, would make the dash for liberty, escaping
across the borders of Maryland into Pennsylvania. There they found
themselves in the hands of friendly Quakers, who piloted them by night
to other stations, where they were secreted until a favorable
opportunity presented itself to push them along farther north.
Mr. Douglass’s house in Rochester was a large three-story frame
structure, situated in the centre of four acres of land on South Avenue,
two miles from the business portion of the city. It stood out by itself,
the nearest residence being fully five hundred feet away to the north.
This was the objective point, before reaching Canada, for many slaves
fleeing from the South. The tales of privation and suffering told by
these men, women, and children who escaped half-clad, encountering in
the wintertime snow-drifts and zero weather, made a profound impression
on the people of the North through whose towns they passed and in whose
homes they constantly sought protection. Thus it was that many a
Northern farmer, convinced, it may be, of the right or expediency of
slavery, found himself compelled, from motives of common humanity, to
open his doors to these refugees, and grant their appeals for food and
shelter. Many a cold winter night has a knock come to Mr. Douglass’s
door, when a white-faced stranger, covered with frost and snow, would
announce in whispered tones that he had a sleigh full of runaway Negroes
_en route_ for Canada. Mr. Douglass, or Mrs. Douglass in her husband’s
absence, calling the boys, Lewis, Fred and Charles, would have fires
started in that part of the house where fugitives were hidden away, and
at an opportune time they were taken to Charlotte, seven miles from
Rochester, and placed aboard a Lake Ontario steamer for Canada. These
friendly white farmers had to hasten on for fear of detection, which
meant terrible penalties. Thus it will be seen that the risks which
their sympathy for the slave led them to take were very serious.
It required large sums of money to keep this Underground Railway system
in motion. The runaways must be fed, clothed, and their passage paid
across the lake to Canada. Mr. Douglass was in the lecture-field most of
the time to raise money to do his part. The Female Anti-Slavery Society,
with its branches throughout the North, solicited funds and clothing,
and, as these unfortunate fugitives were invariably destitute, means had
to be supplied them until they could secure employment under the British
flag.
Besides William Still of Philadelphia, among colored people, Mr.
Douglass had the active coöperation of Dr. James McCune Smith, of New
York; Stephen J. Myers, of Albany; William Rich, of Troy, and Rev. J. W.
Loguen, of Syracuse. Many others actively assisted in the work,
including Charles Lennox Remond, William Whipper, of Philadelphia;
Thomas L. Dorsey, Rev. Henry Highland Garnet, Anthony Barrier, of
Brockport, N. Y., and Thomas Downing, of New York. There were not a few
clashes with the law in efforts to capture and return escaping slaves,
but only two or three such attempts were successful.
Mr. Douglass’s home was always considered an asylum for runaways, and
was constantly under the surveillance of the United States marshals;
nevertheless, not a single fugitive, after reaching him, was ever
apprehended and carried back. The majority of the escapes were made in
winter, when the oversight on the plantation was less rigid than in the
working-season, and many who were given passes during the Christmas
holidays to visit neighboring towns or plantations, seized that
opportunity for a longer journey.
The western and southwestern branch of the Underground Railway was
operated from Cincinnati, O., and through Michigan to Canada. Fugitive
slaves from Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana
took this latter route. The whole number of slaves who successfully made
their escape through the system has never been ascertained.
The thousands of men, women, and children, white and black, who had a
hand in conducting this Underground Railway were less concerned about
the statistics of their dangerous work than they were with results. That
the number of slaves set free by the operation of the system ran up into
the thousands, was evident from the vast army of people in all parts of
the North engaged in the work, and the constantly increasing colored
population in the free-states and Canada. There was scarcely a day or
night when some black man or woman did not defy the perils of the
journey and elude the vigilance of the law to find free soil. So
persistent were these enslaved people in running away from bondage that
they excited not merely the sympathy but often the admiration of those
not otherwise interested in their cause. The perils and adventures of
these sombre fugitives stirred the blood and touched the heart. William
Still’s volume of nearly eight hundred pages, contains a carefully kept
record of the experiences of those runaways who came under the immediate
observation and direction of the “Vigilance Committee” of the
Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. Their resourcefulness, cleverness,
and daring revealed to the Northern people an unsuspected quality in the
Negro character.
The stories of these fugitives, told in their own simple-hearted way,
and attested by the hardships that they had undergone, were, to those
who heard them, a revelation of conditions in the South, of which they
had hitherto known only at secondhand. They might still doubt the
expediency of granting freedom to the slave but they could no longer
question the sincerity of his desire for liberty and with that desire
they were compelled to sympathize. As Douglass said: “Men were better
than their theology, and truer to humanity than their politics or their
offices.”
The manner of Douglass’s flight—riding out of Baltimore and Maryland in
daylight and in sight of those who knew that he was a slave—is a good
illustration of the boldness and ingenuity of some of the escapes. Among
the hundreds of interesting cases cited by Mr. Still is that of William
Crafts, who gained his liberty by acting the part of a valet or
body-servant of his wife. She was of light brown complexion, and for
this adventure wore men’s clothing. Another case is that of a
slave-woman who hitched up her master’s horse and carriage and, taking
her family of five children and several others, drove off to liberty.
Box Brown was the name of a slave, who permitted himself to be nailed up
in a box and sent by express to Baltimore. Two colored women dressed
themselves in deep mourning and rode Northward to freedom in the same
coach as their masters, who did not know them. In some cases slaves
secreted themselves for several months and, when search for them had
ceased, crept off unsuspected. In hundreds of instances, the parts were
as cleverly played as if the fugitives had had special training in the
drama of running away from their masters. In nearly all cases these
black men and women took desperate chances. The conductors of the
Underground Railway were everywhere, and at all times on the alert. They
knew every path, the byways and highways in which slaves might hide or
on which they might travel to reach freedom. The stations were always
ready and open to receive them. It was never too late, or too early, or
too difficult, or too perilous to be on the lookout to welcome, protect,
and pass on fugitives to the next place of safety. Clothing, food,
shoes, carriages, wagons, horses, and mules were always at hand. No
secret society has ever veiled its proceedings in deeper mystery than
this widely separated army of determined conspirators and emancipators.
The secret service men of the government tried to locate the stations
and the station-agents, but the more they searched, the less they found.
It is a curious fact that the United States secret service men seem to
have had just as little success in uncovering the systematic plans for
aiding slaves to escape to the Northern states as in preventing the
smuggling of slaves from Africa into the Southern states. The traffic of
the Underground Railroad continued to increase in volume and the slave
once off United States soil was beyond reach or recall.
Some of the men and women who were carrying on this clandestine work of
delivering fugitives were people of much prominence. Among them were
members of Congress, distinguished clergymen, editors, prominent
merchants, doctors, lawyers, farmers, and tradesmen. From the
slave-holders’ standpoint, the situation was not encouraging. They
rightly felt that unless something effective were done to stop this
increasing loss, slave-labor would cease to be profitable. This
condition of things required a remedy, a remedy more far-reaching than
any guaranteed the slave-holding system under the law then existing. To
meet these attempts of the Abolitionists to undermine the system, the
pro-slavery leaders deemed it just and necessary to extend the arm of
national power to reclaim and carry back to bondage every slave who
reached a free state in quest of liberty. The government that sanctioned
slavery as a national institution; that acquired new territory for the
extension of slavery; that derived a goodly part of its revenue from it,
was bound, they believed, to do what was necessary to make slavery more
secure. Until the Underground Railway began to do so large a business,
there was thought to be enough law in the Constitution of the United
States.[3]
Footnote 3:
As provided in Article IV, Section 2: “No person held to service in
one state, under the laws thereof, escaping to another state, in
consequence of any law or regulation therein, shall be discharged from
such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on the claim of the
party to whom such service or labor may be due,” supplemented by the
statute giving force to its provisions in 1793.
The constitutionality of this law had been fully upheld by the Supreme
Court in what was known as the “Prigg case,” wherein Justice Story
declared that it was self-executing, so that an owner could seize and
carry away his runaway slave wherever he found him, providing he could
do so without breach of the public peace. Those who desired and demanded
more legal provisions for the better protection of slavery were in
absolute power North and South. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts was as
much in favor of it as Henry Clay of Kentucky and Calhoun of South
Carolina; and in response to popular demand, the new Fugitive Slave Law
was passed on September 10, 1850, as a part of the great Compromise
Measures of that year.
The instrument was most carefully drawn, and covered ten sections. Those
who worked out its carefully-worded provisions had evidently studied the
Underground System with considerable care, and this law was framed to
meet the conditions that the railroad had created. Some of its main
features were as follows:—
A United States Commission and a United States court should have
concurrent jurisdiction in disposing of cases of fugitive slaves
brought before them.
Any postmaster or clerk could be appointed a commissioner to hear
cases under the law.
A United States marshal was under penalty of $1,000 for refusing or
neglecting to make an arrest when called upon to do so.
Fugitive slaves could be arrested, with or without warrant and taken
before a commissioner or judge, who was empowered to dispose of the
case forthwith.
If a fugitive escaped from a United States marshal, the latter could
be sued on his bond and the full value of the slave recovered.
There was a penalty of five years in prison or a fine of $5,000 for
aiding or abetting a slave’s escape.
The only proof needed was an affidavit by the alleged owner or some
one acting in his behalf alleging right of property, escape or service
due on escape, and a description of the person arrested, certified to
by the magistrate.
There were provisions for military aid for the United States marshal
in case of resistance.
The commissioner received a larger fee in case of extradition than he
would obtain in case of discharge.
The slave thus arrested could not testify in his own behalf and was
not allowed a jury trial.
The first effect of the law was to create a panic and stampede among the
colored people of the free-states. It looked for awhile as if every
Negro resident north of the Ohio had lost faith in the tenure of his own
title to himself. There was wholesale emigration to Canada of colored
people from every part of the United States. In his Life of Frederick
Douglass, Mr. Holland gives an account of forty Negroes of Boston, who
left home within three days after the Fugitive Slave Law was passed. The
pastor of a colored church and his entire membership of 112 persons fled
to British soil. A number of talented men who had done service in the
anti-slavery cause, went to England. Mr. Douglass, who was in close
touch with every movement, every fear, and every secret purpose of his
people, says:
“I was compelled to witness the terribly distressing effects of this
cruel enactment; fugitive slaves, who had lived for many years safely
and securely in western New York and elsewhere, some of whom by industry
and economy had saved some money and bought little homes for themselves
and their children, were suddenly alarmed and compelled to flee to
Canada. Even colored people who had been free all their lives felt very
insecure in their freedom, for under this law the oaths of any two
villains were sufficient to confine a free man to slavery for life....
Although I was now free myself, I was not without apprehension. My
pardon was of doubtful validity, having been bought when out of
possession of my owner, and when he must take what was given or not at
all.... From rumors that reached me, my house was guarded by my friends
several nights.”
A much more serious consequence of the Fugitive Slave Law was the
altogether unexpected feeling of resentment aroused in the North by its
enforcement. There was abundant willingness among the Northern people
that the slave-holders should have their slaves and that they should
have everything needed to protect and make secure their property rights
in them; but when it came to pressing unwilling citizens into the
service of men who were hunting slaves, there was a very natural
revulsion of sentiment. Just how intense was this feeling may best be
illustrated in the history of three different cases that created
wide-spread interest at the time. These were known respectively as the
Burns, Shadrach, and Thomas Sims cases.
Anthony Burns had made his escape from his master in Virginia and in
1854 was living in Boston. In the month of May he was arrested under the
provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law. At this particular time, Boston
was aroused because of the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill,
repealing the Missouri Compromise, and thereby permitting the extension
of slavery in the western territories. Burns was confined in the Boston
court-house under strong guard. The people were in a mood to become
profoundly interested in his case, which presented itself to them as an
illustration of the cruelties of slavery and of the Fugitive Slave Law.
Wendell Phillips, Theodore Parker, Richard A. Davis, Charles M. Ellis,
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and many others equally prominent, gave
practical effect to this interest by securing a postponement of the
hearing for a few days. In the meantime, a meeting was called in Faneuil
Hall in which feeling ran high. While it was in progress, Colonel
Higginson led in an attempt to rescue Burns. The door of the jail was
battered in, the deputy was killed, and the Colonel and others were
wounded. When the case came up for a hearing before Commissioner Loring,
Burns had the best counsel that Boston could afford, but like all cases
under the Fugitive Slave Law, there was no escape. After the formalities
were complied with, he was ordered back to his master. When this
decision became known, many houses were draped in black and so intense
was the public feeling against it, that the government directed that
Burns should be returned in a United States revenue cutter. He was
escorted to the wharf by a strong guard and the streets were thronged
with Boston citizens in a great state of excitement. There seemed to be
no possible escape from a bloody riot. When the water-side was reached
and an outbreak was imminent, a minister named Foster cried out, “Let us
pray,” and with this call for prayer silence fell upon the excited
throng; but the law had its way and Burns was sent back.
The case of Shadrach was less exciting, but is interesting as presenting
another and different view of the sentiment excited by the Fugitive
Slave Law. He was a fugitive and a resident of Boston. He had been
arrested in February, 1851, and during a postponement of his hearing
before the United States Commissioner, the Boston Abolitionists rescued
him and got him into Canada, the land of safety. The government
officials in Washington took serious notice of this rescue of a United
States prisoner and the uproar that followed seemed altogether out of
proportion to the incident. Commenting on the excitement at the capital
at this apparent determination of Boston to defy the national
government, Mr. Garrison wrote:
“The head and front of the offending in this instance—what is it? A
sudden rush of a score or two of unarmed friends of equal liberty—an
uninjurious deliverance of the oppressed out of the hands of the
oppressor—the quiet transportation of a slave out of this slavery-ruled
land to the free soil of Upper Canada ... a solitary slave in Boston is
plucked as a brand from the burning, and forthwith a Cabinet Council is
held and behold a menacing proclamation!”
Senator Henry Clay was “horrified” and proposed an inquiry as to the
expediency of passing an additional law making it a penal offense in the
nature of treason for any one to interfere with the smooth and peaceful
exercise of his pet measure in the Compromise Bill. Mr. Webster declared
that the rescue of Shadrach was “strictly speaking” treason.
Scarcely had the United States grand jury finished its examination of
the Shadrach case when Boston was again in the midst of an excitement
over the arrest and extradition of another fugitive slave, Thomas Sims.
Profiting by the failure to send Shadrach back to his master, the
officials had taken extraordinary precautions to prevent a rescue by mob
or otherwise. The court-house where Sims was imprisoned was surrounded
by chains and guarded by a large part of the city police force. As a
further precaution, the state militia was called out and kept in
readiness to quell a possible riot. A part of this soldiery furnished an
escort all the way to Savannah, where the prisoner-slave was delivered
safely.
The bloody resistance on the part of runaways at Christiana, Pa., did
more than anything else, in the opinion of Mr. Douglass, to put a check
on the execution of the law. At this place three colored men were
pursued by officers, and, when hard-pressed, turned about, shot, and
killed a Mr. Gorsuch, wounded his son, drove back the officers, and then
made their escape to Rochester, where they were rescued and given
shelter in Mr. Douglass’s house. The latter, with his assistants,
finally smuggled these fugitives to the Canadian shores, but in doing so
he imperiled his own safety to a greater extent than ever before,
because he was not only harboring fugitives from slavery, but fugitives
from justice. After this experience, the law became a dead letter. It
not only intended to put an end to the business of the Underground
Railroad, but to make every community in some degree responsible for the
return of runaway slaves, and it proved to be one of the most unpopular
and irritating pieces of legislation enacted by the Federal Government.
This act, more than any other one thing, increased opposition to
slavery. Thousands of people who were either indifferent or hostile to
the anti-slavery cause, flocked to the ranks of the Abolitionists when
they saw what it meant and whither it was leading the nation. The
language used by the leaders, both in their publications and on the
stump, became more bitter and defiant.
Mr. Douglass was always in the storm-centre of every movement to thwart
the execution of this measure. He was in Boston, and in continuous
conference with Theodore Parker, Higginson, Garrison, and others
belonging to the “vigilance” committees. It was in these meetings that
Douglass says he “got a peep into Parker’s soul.” He characterized him
as “a man who shrank from no opportunity to do his full duty when man’s
liberty was threatened.” Mr. Douglass’s thorough and comprehensive
understanding of each succeeding change in the development of the
slavery question was generally recognized by friend and foe. When he was
invited by the members of the New York state legislature to address them
on the subject, he was selected because no man then living could speak
with a fuller knowledge of the great issue.
Belonging to this period of increasing antagonism between pro-slavery
and anti-slavery parties was the decision in the Dred Scott case. This,
the Fugitive Slave Law, and the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, taken together,
represent the sum of the conservative forces in the nation opposed to
the Abolitionists and their cause. Douglass’s opinion of the situation,
as it concerned himself and his people, is voiced in the following
extract from an address delivered at New York in May, 1857:
“I am myself not insensible to the many difficulties that beset us on
every hand. They fling their broad and gloomy shadows across the pathway
of every thoughtful colored man in this country. For one, I see them
clearly and feel them sadly. Standing, as it were, barefoot, and
treading upon the sharp and flinty rocks of the present, and looking out
upon the boundless sea of the future, I have sought in my humble way to
penetrate the intervening mists and clouds, and, perchance, to descry in
the dim and shadowy distance the white flag of freedom.”