Wherever there are slaves there are fugitives if there is an available
place of refuge. The wilds of Florida were such a refuge during the
early part of last century. When the Northern States became free,
fugitive slaves began to escape thither, and Canada, when it could be
reached, was, of course, the goal of perfect security and liberty for
all.
A professed object of the early anti-slavery societies was to prevent
the enslavement of free negroes and in other ways to protect their
rights. During the process of emancipation in Northern States large
numbers of colored persons were spirited off to the South and sold into
slavery. At various places along the border there were those who made
it their duty to guard the rights of negroes and to prevent kidnapping.
These guardians of the border furnished a nucleus for the development of
what was later known as the Underground Railroad.
In 1796 President Washington wrote a letter to a friend in New Hampshire
with reference to obtaining the return of a negro servant. He was
careful to state that the servant should remain unmolested rather than
"excite a mob or riot or even uneasy sensations in the minds of well
disposed citizens." The result was that the servant remained free.
President Washington here assumed that "well disposed citizens" would
oppose her return to slavery. Three years earlier the President had
himself signed a bill to facilitate by legal process the return of
fugitives escaping into other States. He was certainly aware that such
an act was on the statute books when he wrote his request to his friend
in New Hampshire, yet he expected that, if an attempt were made to
remove the refugee by force, riot and resistance by a mob would be the
result.
Not until after the foreign slave-trade had been prohibited and the
domestic trade had been developed, and not until there was a pro-slavery
reaction in the South which banished from the slave States all
anti-slavery propaganda, did the systematic assistance rendered
to fugitive slaves assume any large proportions or arouse bitter
resentment. It began in the late twenties and early thirties of
the nineteenth century, extended with the spread of anti-slavery
organization, and was greatly encouraged and stimulated by the enactment
of the law of 1850.
The Underground Railroad was never coextensive with the abolition
movement. There were always abolitionists who disapproved the practice
of assisting fugitives, and others who took no part in it. Of those
who were active participants, the larger proportion confined their
activities to assisting those who had escaped and would take no part in
seeking to induce slaves to leave their masters. Efforts of that kind
were limited to a few individuals only.
Incidents drawn from the reminiscences of Levi Coffin, the reputed
president of the Underground Railroad, may serve to illustrate the
origin and growth of the system. He was seven years old when he first
saw near his home in North Carolina a coffle of slaves being driven to
the Southern market by a man on horseback with a long whip. "The driver
was some distance behind with the wagon. My father addressed the slaves
pleasantly and then asked, 'Well, boys, why do they chain you?' One
of the men whose countenance betrayed unusual intelligence and whose
expression denoted the deepest sadness replied: 'They have taken us from
our wives and children and they chain us lest we should make our escape
and go back to them."' When Coffin was fifteen, he rendered assistance
to a man in bondage. Having an opportunity to talk with the members of a
gang in the hands of a trader bound for the Southern market, he learned
that one of the company, named Stephen, was a freeman who had been
kidnapped and sold. Letters were written to Northern friends of Stephen
who confirmed his assertion. Money was raised in the Quaker meeting and
men were sent to recover the negro. Stephen was found in Georgia and
after six months was liberated.
During the year 1821 other incidents occurred in the Quaker community at
New Garden, near Greensboro, North Carolina, which illustrate different
phases of the subject. Jack Barnes was the slave of a bachelor who
became so greatly attached to his servant that he bequeathed to him
not only his freedom but also a large share of his property. Relatives
instituted measures to break the will, and Jack in alarm took refuge
among the Quakers at New Garden. The suit went against the negro, and
the newspapers contained advertisements offering a hundred dollars for
information which should result in his recovery. To prevent his return
to bondage, it was decided that Jack should join a family of Coffins who
were moving to Indiana.
At the same time a negro by the name of Sam had for several months been
abiding in the Quaker neighborhood. He belonged to a Mr. Osborne, a
prototype of Simon Legree, who was so notoriously cruel that other
slave-owners assisted in protecting his victims. After the Coffins, with
Jack, had been on the road for a few days, Osborne learned that a negro
was with them and, feeling sure that it was his Sam, he started in hot
haste after them. This becoming known to the Friends, young Levi Coffin
was sent after Osborne to forestall disaster. The descriptions given of
Jack and Sam were practically identical and it was surmised that when
Osborne should overtake the party and discover his mistake, he would
seize Jack for the sake of the offered reward. Coffin soon came up with
Osborne and decided to ride with him for a time to learn his plans.
In the course of their conversation, it was finally agreed that Coffin
should assist in the recovery of Sam. Osborne was also generous and
insisted that if it proved to be the other "nigger" who was with the
company, Coffin should have half the reward. How the young Quaker
outwitted the tyrant, gained his point, sent Jack on his way to liberty,
and at the same time retained the confidence of Osborne so that upon
their return home he was definitely engaged to assist Osborne in finding
Sam, is a fascinating story. The abolitionist won from the slaveholder
the doubtful compliment that "there was not a man in that neighborhood
worth a d--n to help him hunt his negro except young Levi Coffin."
Sam was perfectly safe so long as Levi Coffin was guide for the
hunting-party, but matters were becoming desperate. For the fugitive
something had to be done. Another family was planning to move to
Indiana, and in their wagon Sam was to be concealed and thus conveyed to
a free State. The business had now become serious. The laws of the State
affixed the death penalty for stealing a slave. At night when young
Coffin and his father, with Sam, were on their way to complete
arrangements for the departure, horsemen appeared in the road near by.
They had only time to throw themselves flat on the ground behind a
log. From the conversation overheard, they were assured that they had
narrowly escaped the night-riders on the lookout for stray negroes. The
next year, 1822, Coffin himself joined a party going to Indiana by the
southern route through Tennessee and Kentucky. In the latter State they
were at one time overtaken by men who professed to be looking for a pet
dog, but whose real purpose was to recover runaway slaves. They insisted
upon examining the contents of the wagons, for in this way only a short
time previous a fugitive had been captured.
These incidents show the origin of the system. The first case of
assistance rendered a negro was not in itself illegal, but was intended
merely to prevent the crime of kidnapping. The second was illegal in
form, but the aid was given to one who, having been set free by will,
was being reenslaved, it was believed, by an unjust decision of a court.
The third was a case of outrageous abuse on the part of the owner. The
negro Sam had himself gone to a trader begging that he would buy him and
preferring to take his chances on a Mississippi plantation rather than
return to his master. The trader offered the customary price and was
met with the reply that he could have the rascal if he would wait until
after the enraged owner had taken his revenge, otherwise the price
would be twice the amount offered. A large proportion of the fugitives
belonged to this maltreated class. Others were goaded to escape by the
prospect of deportation to the Gulf States. The fugitives generally
followed the beaten line of travel to the North and West.
In 1826 Levi Coffin became a merchant in Newport, Indiana, a town near
the Ohio line not far from Richmond. In the town and in its neighborhood
lived a large number of free negroes who were the descendants of former
slaves whom North Carolina Quakers had set free and had colonized in the
new country. Coffin found that these blacks were accustomed to assist
fugitives on their way to Canada. When he also learnt that some had been
captured and returned to bondage merely through lack of skill on the
part of the negroes, he assumed active operations as a conductor on the
Underground Railroad.
Coffin used the Underground Railroad as a means of making converts to
the cause. One who berated him for negro-stealing was adroitly induced
to meet a newly arrived passenger and listen to his pathetic story. At
the psychological moment the objector was skillfully led to hand the
fugitive a dollar to assist him in reaching a place of safety. Coffin
then explained to this benevolent non-abolitionist the nature of his
act, assuring him that he was liable to heavy damages therefor. The
reply was in this case more forcible than elegant: "Damn it! You've
got me!" This conversion he publicly proclaimed for the sake of its
influence upon others. Many were the instances in which those of
supposed pro-slavery convictions were brought face to face with an
actual case of the threatened reenslavement of a human being escaping
from bondage and were, to their own surprise, overcome by the natural,
humane sentiment which asserted itself. For example, a Cincinnati
merchant, who at the time was supposed to be assisting one of his
Southern customers to recover an escaped fugitive, was confronted at
his own home by the poor half-starved victim. Yielding to the impulse of
compassion, he gave the slave food and personal assistance and directed
the destitute creature to a place of refuge.
The division in the Quaker meeting in Indiana with which Levi Coffin was
intimately associated may serve to exemplify a corresponding attitude
in other churches on the question of slavery. The Quakers availed
themselves of the first great anti-slavery movement to rid themselves
completely of the burden. Their Society itself became an anti-slavery
organization. Yet even so the Friends had differences of opinion as to
fit methods of action. Not only did many of them disapprove of rendering
aid to fugitives but they also objected to the use of the meetinghouses
for anti-slavery lectures. The formation of the Liberty party served to
accentuate the division. The great body of the Friends were anti-slavery
Whigs.
A crisis in the affairs of the Society of Friends in the State of
Indiana was reached in 1843 when the radicals seceded and organized an
independent "Anti-Slavery Friends Society." Immediately there appeared
in numerous localities duplicate Friends' meeting-houses. In and around
one of these, distinguished as "Liberty Hall," were gathered those whose
supreme religious interest was directed against the sin of slavery.
Never was there a church division which involved less bad blood or sense
of injury or injustice. Members of the same family attended separate
churches without the least difference in their cordial relations. No
important principle was involved; there were apparently good reasons
for both lines of policy, and each party understood and respected the
other's position. After the adoption of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850
and the passing of the Whig party, these differences disappeared, the
separate organization was disbanded, and all Friends' meetinghouses
became "liberty halls."
The disposition to aid the fugitive was by no means confined to the
North nor to Quakers in the South. Richard Dillingham, a young Quaker
who had yielded to the solicitations of escaped fugitives in Cincinnati
and had undertaken a mission to Nashville, Tennessee, to rescue their
relatives from a "hard master," was arrested with three stolen slaves
on his hands. He made confession in open court and frankly explained
his motives. The Nashville Daily Gazette of April 13, 1849, has words of
commendation for the prisoner and his family and states that "he was not
without the sympathy of those who attended the trial." Though Dillingham
committed a crime to which the death penalty was attached in some of
the States, the jury affixed the minimum penalty of three years'
imprisonment for the offense. As Nashville was far removed from Quaker
influence or any sort of anti-slavery propaganda, Dillingham was himself
astonished and was profoundly grateful for the leniency shown him by
Court, jury, and prosecutors. This incident occurred in the year before
the adoption of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. It is well known that in
all times and places which were free from partizan bitterness there
was a general natural sympathy for those who imperiled their life and
liberty to free the slave. Throughout the South men of both races were
ready to give aid to slaves seeking to escape from dangers or burdens
which they regarded as intolerable. While such a man as Frederick
Douglass, when still a slave, was an agent of the Underground Railroad,
Southern anti-slavery people themselves were to a large extent the
original projectors of the movement. Even members of the families of
slaveholders have been known to assist fugitives in their escape to the
North.
The fugitives traveled in various ways which were determined partly by
geographical conditions and partly by the character of the inhabitants
of a region. On the Atlantic coast, from Florida to Delaware, slaves
were concealed in ships and were thus conveyed to free States. Thence
some made their way towards Canada by steamboat or railroad, though most
made the journey on foot or, less frequently, in private conveyances.
Stalwart slaves sometimes walked from the Gulf States to the free
States, traveling chiefly by night and guided by the North Star. Having
reached a free State, they found friends among those of their own race,
or were taken in hand by officers of the Underground Railroad and were
thus helped across the Canadian border.
From the seacoast the valley of the Connecticut River furnished a
convenient route for completing the journey northward, though the way of
the fugitives was often deflected to the Lake Champlain region. In later
years, when New England became generally sympathetic, numerous lines of
escape traversed that entire section. Other courses extended northward
from the vicinity of Philadelphia, Delaware, and Maryland. Here, through
the center of American Quakerdom, all conditions favored the escape
of fugitives, for slavery and freedom were at close quarters. The
activities of the Quakers, who were at first engaged merely in
preventing the reenslavement of those who had a legal right to freedom,
naturally expanded until aid was given without reservation to any
fugitive. From Philadelphia as a distributing point the route went by
way of New York and the Hudson River or up the river valleys of eastern
Pennsylvania through western New York.
In addition to the routes to freedom which the seacoast and river
valleys afforded, the Appalachian chain of mountains formed an
attractive highway of escape from slavery, though these mountain paths
lead us to another branch of our subject not immediately connected with
the Underground Railroad--the escape from bondage by the initiative of
the slaves themselves or by the aid of their own people. Mountains have
always been a refuge and a defense for the outlaw, and the few
dwellers in this almost unknown wilderness were not infrequently either
indifferent or friendly to the fugitives. The escaped slaves might, if
they chose, adopt for an indefinite time the free life of the hills;
but in most cases they naturally drifted northward for greater security
until they found themselves in a free State. Through the mountainous
regions of Virginia many thus escaped, and they were induced to remain
there by the example and advice of residents of their own color. The
negroes themselves excelled all others in furnishing places of refuge to
fugitives from slavery and in concealing their status. For this reason
John Brown and his associates were influenced to select this region for
their great venture in 1859.
But there were other than geographical conditions which helped to
determine the direction of the lines of the Underground Railroad. West
of the Alleghanies are the broad plains of the Mississippi Valley, and
in this great region human elements rather than physical characteristics
proved influential. Northern Ohio was occupied by settlers from the
East, many of whom were anti-slavery. Southern Ohio was populated
largely by Quakers and other people from the slave States who abhorred
slavery. On the east and south the State bordered on slave territory,
and every part of the region was traversed by lines of travel for the
slave. In eastern and northern Indiana a favorable attitude prevailed.
Southwestern Indiana, however, and southern Illinois were occupied by
those less friendly to the slave, so that in these sections there is
little evidence of systematic aid to fugitives. But with St. Louis,
Missouri, as a starting-point, northern Illinois became honeycombed with
refuges for patrons of the Underground Railroad. The negro also found
friends in all the settled portions of Iowa, and at the outbreak of the
Civil War a lively traffic was being developed, extending from Lawrence,
Kansas, to Keokuk, Iowa.
There is respectable authority for a variety of opinions as to the
requirements of the rendition clause in the Constitution and of the Act
of Congress of 1793 to facilitate the return of fugitives from service
or labor; but there is no respectable authority in support of the view
that neither the spirit nor the letter of the law was violated by
the supporters of the Underground Railroad. This was a source of real
weakness to anti-slavery leaders in politics. It was always true that
only a small minority of their numbers were actual violators of the law,
yet such was their relation to the organized anti-slavery movement that
responsibility attached to all. The platform of the Liberty party for
1844 declared that the provisions of the Constitution for reclaiming
fugitive slaves were dangerous to liberty and ought to be abrogated.
It further declared that the members of the party would treat these
provisions as void, because they involved an order to commit an immoral
act. The platform thus explicitly committed the party to the support
of the policy of rendering aid to fugitive slaves. Four years later
the platform of the Free-soil party contained no reference whatever to
fugitive slaves, but that of 1852 denounced the Fugitive Slave Act of
1850 as repugnant to the Constitution and the spirit of Christianity and
denied its binding force on the American people. The Republican platform
of 1856 made no reference to the subject.
The Underground Railroad filled an insignificant place in the general
plan for emancipation, even in the minds of the directors. It was a
lesser task preparatory to the great work. As to the numbers of slaves
who gained their freedom by means of it, there is a wide range of
opinion. Statements in Congress by Southern members that a hundred
thousand had escaped must be regarded as gross exaggerations. In any
event the loss was confined chiefly to the border States. Besides, it
has been stated with some show of reason that the danger of servile
insurrection was diminished by the escape of potential leaders.
From the standpoint of the great body of anti-slavery men who expected
to settle the slavery question by peaceable means, it was a calamity
of the first magnitude that, just at the time when conditions were
most favorable for transferring the active crusade from the general
Government to the separate States, public attention should be directed
to the one point at which the conflict was most acute and irrepressible.
Previous to 1850 there had been no general acrimonious debate in
Congress on the rendition of fugitive slaves. About half of those who
had previously escaped from bondage had not taken the trouble to go
as far as Canada, but were living at peace in the Northern States. Few
people at the North knew or cared anything about the details of a law
that had been on the statute books since 1793. Members of Congress were
duly warned of the dangers involved in any attempt to enforce a more
stringent law than the previous act which had proved a dead letter.
To those who understood the conditions, the new law also was doomed to
failure. So said Senator Butler of South Carolina. An attempt to enforce
it would be met by violence.
This prediction came true. The twenty thousand potential victims
residing in Northern States were thrown into panic. Some rushed off to
Canada; others organized means for protection. A father and son from
Baltimore came to a town in Pennsylvania to recover a fugitive. An alarm
was sounded; men, mostly colored, rushed to the protection of the one
whose liberty was threatened. Two Quakers appeared on the scene
and warned the slavehunters to desist and upon their refusal one
slave-hunter was instantly killed and the other wounded. The fugitive
was conveyed to a place of safety, and to the murderers no punishment
was meted out, though the general Government made strenuous efforts to
discover and punish them. In New York, though Gerrit Smith and a local
clergyman with a few assistants rescued a fugitive from the officers of
the law and sent him to Canada, openly proclaiming and justifying the
act, no attempt was made to punish the offenders.
After a dozen years of intense and ever-increasing excitement, when
other causes of friction between North and South had apparently been
removed and good citizens in the two sections were rejoicing at
the prospect of an era of peace and harmony, public attention was
concentrated upon the one problem of conduct which would not admit of
peaceable legal adjustment. Abolitionists had always been stigmatized as
lawbreakers whose aim was the destruction of slavery in utter disregard
of the rights of the States. This charge was absolutely false; their
settled program involved full recognition of state and municipal control
over slavery. Yet after public attention had become fixed upon conduct
on the part of the abolitionists which was illegal, it was difficult to
escape the implication that their whole course was illegal. This was the
tragic significance of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.