[1] The precise amount of organization in the Underground Railroad
cannot be definitely ascertained because of the exaggerated use of
the figure of railroading in the documents of the "presidents" of the
road, Robert Purvis and Levi Coffin, and of its many "conductors,"
and their discussion of the "packages" and "freight" shipped by them.
The system reached from Kentucky and Virginia across Ohio, and from
Maryland across Pennsylvania and New York, to New England and Canada,
and as early as 1817 a group of anti-slavery men in southern Ohio had
helped to Canada as many as 1000 slaves. The Quakers of Pennsylvania
possibly began the work of the mysterious Underground Railroad; the
best known of them was Thomas Garrett (1789-1871), a native of
Pennsylvania, who, in 1822, removed to Wilmington, Delaware, where he
was convicted in 1848 on four counts under the Fugitive Slave Law and
was fined $8000; he is said to have helped 2700 slaves to freedom.
The most picturesque figure of the Underground Railroad was Harriet
Tubman (c. 1820), called by her friend, John Brown, "General" Tubman,
and by her fellow negroes "Moses." She made about a score of trips
into the South, bringing out with her 300 negroes altogether. At one
time a reward of $40,000 was offered for her capture. She was a
mystic, with remarkable clairvoyant powers, and did great service as
a nurse, a spy and a scout in the Civil War. Levi Coffin (1798-1877),
a native of North Carolina (whose cousin, Vestal Coffin, had
established before 1819 a "station" of the Underground near what is
now Guilford College, North Carolina), in 1826 settled in Wayne
County, Ohio; his home at New Garden (now Fountain City) was the
meeting point of three "lines" from Kentucky; and in 1847 he removed
to Cincinnati, where his labours in bringing slaves out of the South
were even more successful. It has been argued that the Underground
Railroad delayed the final decision of the slavery question, inasmuch
as it was a "safety valve"; for, without it, the more intelligent and
capable of the negro slaves would, it is asserted, have become the
leaders of insurrections in the South, and would not have been
removed from the places where they could have done most damage.
Consult William Still, _The Underground Railroad_ (Philadelphia,
1872), a collection of anecdotes by a negro agent of the Pennsylvania
Anti-Slavery Society, and of the Philadelphia branch of the Railroad;
and the important and scholarly work of Wilbur H. Siebert, _The
Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom_ (New York, 1898).
FUGLEMAN (from the Ger. _Flugelmann_, the man on the _Flugel_ or wing),
properly a military term for a soldier who is selected to act as
"guide," and posted generally on the flanks with the duty of directing
the march in the required line, or of giving the time, &c., to the
remainder of the unit, which conforms to his movements, in any military
exercise. The word is then applied to a ringleader or one who takes the
lead in any movement or concerted movement.
FUGUE (Lat. _fuga_, flight), in music, the mutual "pursuit" of voices or
parts. It was, up to the end of the 16th century, if not later, the name
applied to two art-forms. (A) _Fuga ligata_ was the exact reproduction
by one or more voices of the statement of a leading part. The
reproducing voice (_comes_) was seldom if ever written out, for all
differences between it and the _dux_ were rigidly systematic; e.g. it
was an exact inversion, or exactly twice as slow, or to be sung
backwards, &c. &c. Hence, a rule or _canon_ was given, often in
enigmatic form, by which the _comes_ was deduced from the _dux_: and so
the term _canon_ became the appropriate name for the form itself, and is
still retained. (B) A composition in which the canonic style was
cultivated without canonic restriction was, in the 16th century, called
_fuga ricercata_ or simply a _ricercare_, a term which is still used by
Bach as a title for the fugues in _Das musikalische Opfer_.
The whole conception of fugue, rightly understood, is one of the most
important in music, and the reasons why some contrapuntal compositions
are called fugues, while others are not, are so trivial, technically as
well as aesthetically, that we have preferred to treat the subject
separately under the general heading of CONTRAPUNTAL FORMS, reserving
only technical terms for definition here.
(i.) If in the beginning or "exposition" the material with which the
opening voice accompanies the answer is faithfully reproduced as the
accompaniment to subsequent entries of the subject, it is called a
_countersubject_ (see COUNTERPOINT, under sub-heading _Double
Counterpoint_). Obviously the process may be carried further, the first
countersubject going on to a second when the subject enters in the third
part and so on. The term is also applied to new subjects appearing later
in the fugue in combination (immediate or destined) with the original
subject. Cherubini, holding the doctrine that a fugue cannot have more
than one subject, insists on applying the term to the less prominent of
the subjects of what are commonly called double fugues, i.e. fugues
which begin with two parts and two subjects simultaneously, and so also
with _triple_ and _quadruple fugues_.
(ii.) _Episodes_ are passages separating the entries of the subject.[1]
Episodes are usually developed from the material of the subject and
countersubjects; they are very rarely independent, but then
conspicuously so.
(iii.) _Stretto_, the overlapping of subject and answer, is a resource
the possibilities of which may be exemplified by the setting of the
words _omnes generationes_ in Bach's _Magnificat_ (see BACH).
(iv.) The distinction between _real_ and _tonal_ fugue, which is still
sometimes treated as a thing of great historical and technical
importance, is really a mere detail resulting from the fact that a
violent oscillation between the keys of tonic and dominant is no part of
the function of a fugal exposition, so that the answer is (especially in
its first notes and in points that tend to shift the key) not so much a
transposition of the subject to the key of the dominant as an adaptation
of it from the tonic part to the dominant part of the scale, or vice
versa; in short, the answer is as far as possible _on_ the dominant, not
_in_ the dominant. The modifications this principle produces in the
answer (which have been happily described as resembling
"fore-shortening") are the only distinctive marks of tonal fugue; and
the text-books are half filled with the attempt to reduce them from
matters of ear to rules of thumb, which rules, however, have the merit
(unusual in those of the academic fugue) of being founded on observation
of the practice of great masters. But the same principle as often as not
produces answers that are exact transpositions of the subject; and so
the only kind of real fugue (i.e. fugue with an exact answer) that could
rightly be contrasted with tonal fugue would be that in which the answer
ought to be tonal but is not. It must be admitted that tonal answers are
rare in the modal music of the 16th century, though their melodic
principles are of yet earlier date; still, though tonal fugue does not
become usual until well on in the 17th century, the idea that it is a
separate species is manifestly absurd, unless the term simply means
"fugue in modern tonality or key," whatever the answer may be.
The term "answer" is usually reserved for those entries of the subject
that are placed in what may be called the "complementary" position of
the scale, whether they are "tonally" modified or not. Thus the order of
entries in the exposition of the first fugue of the _Wohltemp_. _Klav_.
is subject, answer, answer, subject; a departure from the usual rule
according to which subject and answer are strictly alternate in the
exposition.
In conclusion we may remind the reader of the most accurate as well as
the most vivid description ever given of the essentials of a fugue, in
the famous lines in _Paradise Lost_, book xi.
"His volant touch,
Instinct through all proportions, low and high,
Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue."
It is hard to realize that this description of organ-music was written
in no classical period of instrumental polyphony, but just half-way
between the death of Frescobaldi and the birth of Bach. Every word is a
definition, both retrospective and prophetic; and in "transverse" we see
all that Sir Frederick Gore Ouseley expresses in his popular distinction
between the "perpendicular" or homophonic style in which harmony is
built up in chords, and the "horizontal" or polyphonic style in which it
is woven in threads of independent melody. (D. F. T.)