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.
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.
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.
[361] Conversation with Mrs. Elizabeth Cooley, a fugitive from Norfolk, Va., Boston, Mass., April 8, 1897.
[362] Letter of Frederick Douglass, Anacostia, D.C., March 27, 1893.
[363] Conversation with Mrs. Tubman, Boston, Mass., April 8, 1897.
It is apparent from the map that the numerous tributaries of the Ohio and the great valleys of the Appalachian range afforded many tempting paths of escape. These natural routes from slavery have been recognized and defined by a recent writer.[364] "One," he says, "was that of the coast south of the Potomac, whose almost continuous line of swamps from the vicinity of Norfolk, Va., to the northern border of Florida afforded a refuge for many who could not escape and became 'marooned' in their depths, while giving facility to the more enduring to work their way out to the north star land. The great Appalachian range and its abutting mountains were long a rugged, lonely, but comparatively safe route to freedom. It was used, too, for many years. Doubtless a knowledge of that fact, for John Brown was always an active railroad man, had very much to do, strategically considered, with the Captain's decision to begin operations therein. Harriet Tubman ... was a constant user of the Appalachian route in her efforts to aid escaping slaves.[365] ... Underground Railroad operations culminating chiefly at Cleveland, Sandusky, and Detroit, led by broad and defined routes through Ohio to the border of Kentucky. Through that State, into the heart of the Cumberland Mountains, northern Georgia, east Tennessee, and northern Alabama, the limestone caves of the region served a useful purpose.... The Ohio-Kentucky routes probably served more fugitives than others in the North. The valley of the Mississippi was the most westerly channel, until Kansas opened a bolder way of escape from the southwest slave section." These were the main channels of flight from the slave states; but it must be remembered that escapes were continually taking place along the entire frontier between the two sections of the Union, the drift of travel being constantly towards those points where the homes of abolitionists or where negro settlements indicated initial stations on lines running north to freedom. The border counties of the slave states were thus subject to a steady loss of their dissatisfied bondmen. This condition is well represented in the case of several counties of Maryland, concerning which Mr. Smedley obtained information. He says, "The counties of Frederick, Carroll, Washington, Hartford and Baltimore, Md., emptied their fugitives into York and Adams counties across the line in Pennsylvania. The latter two counties had settlements of Friends and abolitionists. The slaves learned who their friends were in that part of the Free State; and it was as natural for those aspiring to liberty to move in that direction as for the waters of brooks to move toward larger streams."[366]
[364] R. J. Hinton, John Brown and His Men, pp. 172, 173.
[365] Harriet Tubman has told the author that she did not travel by the mountain route. In his book entitled The Underground Railroad (p. 37), Mr. R. C. Smedley illustrates the value of the Alleghanies to the slaves of the regions through which they extend: "William and Phœbe Wright resided during their entire lives in a very old settlement of Friends, near the southern slope of South Mountain, a spur of the Alleghanies, which extends into Tennessee. This location placed them directly in the way to render great and valuable aid to fugitives, as hundreds, guided by that mountain range northward, came into Pennsylvania, and were directed to their home."
[366] Underground Railroad, p. 36.
Along the southern margin of the free states began those well-defined trails or channels that have lent themselves to representation upon the large map given herewith. In dealing with the tracings shown upon this map it will be best to consider the territory as divided into three regions, the first comprising the states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York; the second, the New England states; and the third, the five states created out of the Northwest Territory. This arrangement will, perhaps, admit of the introduction of some system into the discussion of what might otherwise prove a complicated subject.
In point of time underground work seems to have developed first in eastern Pennsylvania.[367] Regular routes of travel began to be formed in the vicinity of Philadelphia about the middle of the first decade of the present century. It is said that "some cases of kidnapping and shooting of fugitives who attempted to escape occurred in Columbia, Pa., in 1804. This incited the people of that town, who were chiefly Friends or their descendants, to throw around the colored people the arm of protection, and even to assist those who were endeavoring to escape from slavery.... This gave origin to that organized system of rendering aid to fugitives which was afterward known as the 'Underground Railroad.'" Thus begun, the service rapidly extended, being greatly favored by the character of the population in southeastern Pennsylvania, which was largely Quaker, with here and there some important settlements of manumitted slaves. It was on account of the large number of runaways early resorting to Columbia that it became necessary to have an understanding with regard to places of entertainment for them along lines leading to the Eastern states and to Canada, whither most of the fugitives were bound.[368] There seems to have been scarcely any limitation upon the number of persons in Lancaster, Chester and Delaware counties willing to assume agencies for the forwarding of slaves; hence this region became the field through which more routes were developed in proportion to its extent than any other area in the Northern states. It will be necessary to make use of a special map of the region in order to follow out the principal channels of escape and to discover the centres from which the Canada routes sprung.[369] West of the Susquehanna River Gettysburg and York were the stations chiefly sought by slaves escaping from the border counties of Maryland. Along the western shore of the Chesapeake runaways passed northward to Havre de Grace, where they usually crossed the Susquehanna, and with others from the Eastern Shore found their way to established stations in the southern part of Lancaster and Chester counties in Pennsylvania. From the territory adjacent to the Delaware the movement was to Wilmington, and thence north through Chester and Delaware counties. The routes developed in the three regions just indicated formed three systems of underground travel, the first of which may be called the western, the second, the middle, and the third, the eastern system. These systems comprised, besides the main roads indicated in heavy lines upon the map, numerous side-tracks and branches shown by the light lines. Their common goal was Phœnixville, the home of Elijah F. Pennypacker, and from here fugitives were sent to Philadelphia, Norristown, Quakertown, Reading and other stations as occasion required. While Phœnixville may be regarded as the central station for the three systems mentioned, it did not receive all the negroes escaping through this section, and Smedley says that "Hundreds were sent to the many branch stations along interlacing routes, and hundreds of others were sent from Wilmington, Columbia, and stations westward direct to the New England States and Canada. Many of these passed through the hands of the Vigilance Committee connected with the anti-slavery office in Philadelphia."[370] From this point one outlet led overland across New Jersey to Jersey City and New York; another outlet from Philadelphia, was the Reading Railroad, which also carried refugees from various stations along its course. How many steam railway extensions may have been connected with the underground tracks of southeastern Pennsylvania cannot be discovered. One such extension was the Northern Central Railroad from Harrisburg across the state to Elmira, New York.[371] Another trans-state route in eastern Pennsylvania appears to have had its origin at or near Sadsbury, Chester County, and to have run overland to Binghamton, New York.[372] The intermediate stations along this pathway are not known, although some disconnected places of resort in northeastern Pennsylvania[373] may have constituted a section of it. Lines of northern travel for fugitives also passed through Bucks County, but Dr. Edward H. Magill, formerly President of Swarthmore College, thinks these were "less clearly marked" than those running through Chester and Lancaster counties. He finds that friends of the slave in the middle section of Bucks County generally forwarded the negroes to Quakertown or even as far north, by stage or private conveyance, as Stroudsburg. From this point they sometimes went to Montrose or Friendsville, in Susquehanna County, near the southern boundary of the State of New York,[374] whence, together with fugitives from Wilkesbarre, and, perhaps, the Lehigh Valley, they were sent on to Gerrit Smith, at Peterboro in central New York, and thence to Canada.[375]
[367] See pp. 33 and 34, Chapter II.
[368] R. C. Smedley, Underground Railroad, pp. 26, 27, 28, 29, 30. For a description of the routes of this region, our dependence is almost wholly upon Mr. Smedley, whose intimate knowledge of them was obtained by conversation and correspondence with many of the operators. Ibid., Preface, p. x.
[369] The special map of these counties will be found in a corner of the general map.
[370] The Underground Railroad, p. 209. For a description of the secret paths in southeastern Pennsylvania, see Smedley's book, pp. 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 50, 53, 77, 85, 89, 90, 100, 132, 137, 142, 164, 172, 191, 192, 208, 217, 218, 219, etc.
[371] Letters of Mrs. Susan L. Crane, Elmira, N.Y., Aug. 27, and Sept. 14 and 23, 1896; letters of John W. Jones, Elmira, N.Y., Dec. 17, 1896, and Jan. 16, 1897.
[372] Smedley, Underground Railroad, p. 91.
[373] See the general map.
[374] Article by Dr. Magill, entitled "When Men were Sold. The Underground Railroad in Bucks County," in The Bucks County Intelligencer, Feb. 3, 1898. Same article in the Friends' Intelligencer, Feb. 26, 1898.
[375] Letter of Horace Brewster, Montrose, Pa., March 20, 1898.
At the other end of Pennsylvania several routes and sections of routes have been discovered. The most important of these seem to have been the roads resulting from the convergence of at least three well-defined lines of escape at Uniontown in southwestern Pennsylvania from the neighboring counties of Virginia and Maryland. A map drawn by Mr. Amos M. Jolliffe, of Uniontown, shows that there were two courses leading northward from his neighborhood, both of which terminated at Pittsburgh.[376] From this point fugitives seem to have been sent to Cleveland by rail, or to have been directed to follow the Alleghany or the Ohio and its tributaries north. Investigation proves that friends were not lacking at convenient points to help them along to the main terminals for this region, namely, Erie and Buffalo, or across the border of the state to the much-used routes of the Western Reserve.[377] East of the Alleghany River significant traces of underground work are found running in a northeasterly direction from Greensburg through Indiana County to Clearfield,[378] a distance of seventy-five miles, and from Cumberland, Maryland, through Bedford and Pleasantville to Altoona,[379] about the same distance. These fragmentary routes may have had connections with some of the fragmentary lines of western New York. From Clearfield an important branch is known to have run northwest to Shippenville and Franklin, and so to Erie, a place of deportation on the lake of the same name.[380]
[376] Letter of Mr. Jolliffe, Nov. 17, 1895.
[377] Letter of John F. Hogue, Greenville, Pa., Nov. 25, 1895; letter of S. P. Stewart, Clark, Mercer Co., Pa., Dec. 26, 1895; letter of W. W. Walker, Makanda, Jackson Co., Ill., March 14, 1896; note-book of Joseph S. White, of New Castle, Pa., containing "Some Reminiscences of Slavery Times."
[378] Letters of C. P. Rank, Cush Creek, Indiana Co., Pa., Dec. 25, 1896, and Jan. 4, 1897; letter of William Atcheson, DuBois, Pa., Jan. 11, 1897.
[379] Letter of Wyett Perry, Bedford, Pa., Dec. 23, 1895; letter of John W. Rouse, Bedford, Pa., Nov. 25, 1895; letter of William M. Hall, Bedford, Pa., Nov. 30, 1895.
[380] Conversation with William Edwards, Amherstburg, Ont., Aug. 3, 1895.
New Jersey was intimately associated with Philadelphia and the adjoining section in the underground system, and afforded at least three important outlets for runaways from the territory west of the Delaware River. Our knowledge of these outlets is derived solely from the testimony of the Rev. Thomas Clement Oliver, who, like his father, travelled the New Jersey routes many times as a guide or conductor.[381] Probably the most important of these routes was that leading from Philadelphia to Jersey City and New York. From Philadelphia the runaways were taken across the Delaware River to Camden, where Mr. Oliver lived, thence they were conveyed northeast following the course of the river to Burlington, and thence in the same direction to Bordentown. In Burlington, sometimes called Station A, a short stop was made for the purpose of changing horses after the rapid drive of twenty miles from Philadelphia. The Bordentown station was denominated Station B east. Here the road took a more northerly direction to Princeton, where horses were again changed and the journey continued to New Brunswick. Just east of New Brunswick the conductors sometimes met with opposition in attempting to cross the Raritan River on their way to Jersey City. To avoid such interruption the conductors arranged with Cornelius Cornell, who lived on the outskirts of New Brunswick, and, presumably, near the river, to notify them when there were slave-catchers or spies at the regular crossing. On receiving such information they took a by-road leading to Perth Amboy, whence their protégés could be safely forwarded to New York City. When the way was clear at the Raritan the company pursued its course to Rahway; here another relay of horses was obtained and the journey continued to Jersey City, where, under the care of John Everett, a Quaker, or his servants, they were taken to the Forty-second Street railroad station, now known as the Grand Central, provided with tickets, and placed on a through train for Syracuse, New York. The second route had its origin on the Delaware River forty miles below Philadelphia, at or near Salem. This line, like the others to be mentioned later, seems to have been tributary to the Philadelphia route traced above. Nevertheless, it had an independent course for sixty miles before it connected with the more northern route at Bordentown. This distance of sixty miles was ordinarily travelled in three stages, the first ending at Woodbury, twenty-five miles north of Salem, although the trip by wagon is said to have added ten miles to the estimated distance between the two places; the second stage ended at Evesham Mount; and the third, at Bordentown. The third route was called, from its initial station, the Greenwich line. This station is vividly described as having been made up of a circle of Quaker residences enclosing a swampy place that swarmed with blacks. One may surmise that it made a model station. Slaves were transported at night across the Delaware River from the vicinity of Dover, in boats marked by a yellow light hung below a blue one, and were met some distance out from the Jersey shore by boats showing the same lights. Landed at Greenwich, the fugitives were conducted north twenty-five miles to Swedesboro, and thence about the same distance to Evesham Mount. From this point they were taken to Mount Holly, and so into the northern or Philadelphia route. Still another branch of this Philadelphia line is known. It constitutes the fourth road, and is described by Mr. Robert Purvis[382] as an extension of a route through Bucks County, Pennsylvania, that entered Trenton, New Jersey, from Newtown, and ran directly to New Brunswick and so on to New York.
[381] Conversation with Mr. Oliver, Windsor, Ont., Aug. 2, 1895.
[382] Conversation with Mr. Purvis, Philadelphia, Dec. 23, 1895.
Mr. Eber M. Pettit, for many years a conductor of the Underground Railroad in western New York,[383] asserts that the Road had four main lines across his state, and scores of laterals,[384] but he nowhere attempts to identify these lines for the benefit of those less well informed than himself. Concerning what may be supposed to have been one of the lines, he speaks as follows: "The first well-established line of the U. G. R. R. had its southern terminus in Washington, D.C., and extended in a pretty direct route to Albany, N.Y., thence radiating in all directions to all the New England states, and to many parts of this state.... The General Superintendent resided in Albany.... He was once an active member of one of the churches in Fredonia. Mr. T., his agent in Washington City, was a very active and efficient man; the Superintendent at Albany was in daily communication by mail with him and other subordinate agents at all points along the line."[385] Frederick Douglass, who was familiar with this Albany route during the period of his residence in Rochester, describes it as running through Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Rochester, and thence to Canada; and he gives the name of the person at each station that was most closely associated in his mind with the work of the station. Thus, he says that the "fugitives were received in Philadelphia by William Still, by him sent to New York, where they were cared for by Mr. David Ruggles, and afterwards by Mr. Gibbs, ... thence to Stephen Myers at Albany; thence to J. W. Loguen, Syracuse; thence to Frederick Douglass, Rochester; and thence to Hiram Wilson, St. Catherines, Canada West."[386] Not all the negroes travelling by this route went as far as Rochester; some were turned north at Syracuse to the port of Oswego, where they took boat for Canada.[387] The Rev. Charles B. Ray, a member of the Vigilance Committee of New York City, and editor of The Colored American, has left some testimony which corroborates that just given. He knew of a regular route stretching from Washington, by way of Baltimore and Philadelphia, to New York, thence following the Hudson to Albany and Troy, whence a branch ran westward to Utica, Syracuse and Oswego, with an extension from Syracuse to Niagara Falls. New York was a kind of receiving point from which fugitives were assisted to Albany and Troy, or, as sometimes happened, to Boston and New Bedford, or, when considerations of safety warranted it, were permitted to pass to Long Island.[388] The lines that are said to have radiated from Albany are mentioned neither by Mr. Douglass nor by Mr. Ray, but we know from other witnesses that some of the fugitives sent to Troy found their way to places of refuge north and east. Mr. Martin I. Townsend, of Troy, writes that fugitives arriving at that city were supplied with money and forwarded either to Suspension Bridge, on the Niagara River, or by way of Vermont and Lake Champlain to Rouses Point.[389] It seems probable that another branch of the secret thoroughfare followed the valley of the Hudson from Troy to the farm of John Brown, near North Elba among the Adirondacks. Mr. Richard H. Dana visited this frontier home of Brown one summer, and was informed by his guide that the country about there belonged to Gerrit Smith; that it was settled for the most part by families of fugitive slaves, who were engaged in farming; and that Brown held the position of a sort of ruler among them. The view was therefore credited that this neighborhood was one of the termini of the Underground Railroad."[390]
[383] Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad, 1879, Preface, p. xvi.
[384] Ibid., p. xiv.
[385] Ibid., p. 34.
[386] Letter of Frederick Douglass, Cedar Hill, Anacostia, D.C., March 27, 1893.
[387] Letter of Joseph A. Allen, Medfield, Mass., Aug. 10, 1896.
[388] Letter of Florence and Cordelia H. Ray, Woodside, L.I., April 12, 1897. See Sketch of the Life of Rev. Chas. B. Ray, written by the Misses Ray.
[389] Letters of Martin I. Townsend, Troy, N.Y., Sept. 4 and 15, 1896.
[390] C. F. Adams, Life of Richard Henry Dana, Vol. I, p. 155; History of Madison County, New York, by Mrs. L. M. Hammond, p. 721.
Gerrit Smith, the friend and counsellor of Brown, lived at Peterboro, in central New York, where his house was an important station for runaway slaves. His open invitation to fugitives to come to Peterboro gave the post he maintained great publicity, and many negroes resorted thither. From Peterboro they were sent in Mr. Smith's wagon to Oswego.[391] A little to the east and north of this place of deportation there were what may perhaps be called emergency stations at or near Mexico, New Haven, Port Ontario[392] and Cape Vincent.[393] From the place last named, and perhaps also from Port Ontario, fugitives took boat for Kingston.[394] A route that came into operation much later than that with which the Peterboro station was connected was the Elmira route. In 1844, John W. Jones, an escaped slave from Virginia, settled in Elmira, and began, together with Mr. Jervis Langdon, a prominent citizen of the town, to receive fugitives. A few years later the Northern Central Railroad was constructed, and supplied a means of travel through western New York to Niagara Falls. Underground passengers forwarded by rail from Philadelphia, Harrisburg and Williamsport were sent on via the Northern Central to Canada.[395] In the counties of New York west and south of the Elmira route the map shows some disconnected stations and sections of Road. Not enough is known about these to suggest with certainty their connections. It is, however, evident that their trend is toward the short arm of the Province of Ontario, which is separated from the United States only by the Niagara River, with crossings favorable for fugitives at Buffalo, Black Rock, Suspension Bridge and Lewiston. In the angle of southwestern New York there were two routes, the objective point of which was Buffalo. One of these, by way of Westfield and Fredonia, hugged closely the shore of Lake Erie;[396] the other, issuing by way of the Alleghany River from Franklin, Pennsylvania, ran through Jamestown and Ellington to Leon, where it branched, one division going to Fredonia and so on northward, whilst the other seems to have followed a more direct course to Buffalo.[397]
[391] O. B. Frothingham, Life of Gerrit Smith, pp. 113, 114.
[392] Letter of O. J. Russell, Pulaski, N.Y., July 29, 1896.
[393] Mr. George C. Bragdon writes concerning the runaways harbored by his father, near Port Ontario: "I believe they usually went to Cape Vincent, near the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and were taken over to Canada from there.... I believe some of the slaves received by him were sent on from Peterboro by Gerrit Smith to Asa S. Wing or James C. Jackson (Mexico), and came from them to our house. They steered clear of the villages, as a rule. Our farm was favorably situated for concealing them and helping them on." Letter of George C. Bragdon, Rochester, N.Y., Aug. 11, 1896.
Mrs. Elizabeth Smith Miller, the daughter of Gerrit Smith, says that in October, 1839, the "White Slave, Harriet," was taken by Mr. Federal Dana from her father's house directly to Cape Vincent, and that Mr. Dana wrote from that point: "I saw her pass the ferry this morning into Canada." Letter received from Mrs. Miller, Peterboro, N.Y., Sept. 21, 1896.
[394] The fugitive Jerry McHenry, after his rescue in Syracuse, was hurried to Mexico, thence to Oswego, and from this point was transported across the lake to Kingston. May, Some Recollections of Our Anti-Slavery Conflict, pp. 378, 379.
[395] Letters of Mrs. Susan L. Crane, Elmira, N. Y., Sept. 14 and 23, 1896. Mrs. Crane is a daughter of Mr. Jervis Langdon mentioned in the text; letter of John W. Jones, Elmira, N. Y., Dec. 14, 1896.
[396] A number of the stations along the lake shore are named in the sketches called "Romances and Realities of the Underground Railroad," by H. U. Johnson, printed in the Lakeshore and Home Magazine, 1885-1887.
[397] E. M. Pettit, in Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad, pp. 30, 31, 32, gives an instance of the use of this route.
Notwithstanding the unfavorable position for this work of the New England states, a considerable number of fugitive slaves found their way through these states to Canada. A part of them came through Pennsylvania and New York. Smedley states, as already noted, that hundreds were sent from Wilmington, Columbia, and other points to the New England states and Canada.[398] Another part came by boat from Southern ports to the shores of New England, landing at various places, chief among which seem to have been New Haven, New Bedford, Boston and Portland. Such was the number of arrivals and consequent demand for transportation to a place of safety, that these four places became the beginnings of routes, which it has been possible to trace on the map with more or less completeness.
[398] See p. 120, this chapter.
The first of these may be called the Connecticut valley route. President E. B. Andrews, of Brown University, whose father was an active friend of slaves at Montague in western Massachusetts, describes this route as running from New York, New Haven, or New London up the Connecticut River valley to Canada.[399] This is corroborated by some writer in the History of Springfield, Massachusetts, where it is noted that there was a steady movement of parties of runaways up the valley on their way to the adjacent provinces.[400] Mr. Erastus F. Gunn, of Montague, Massachusetts, writes that the travel along this route was largely confined to the west side of the river, and was through Springfield, Northampton and Greenfield into the State of Vermont.[401] Fugitives disembarking at New Haven[402] went north through Kensington, New Britain and Farmington, and probably by way of Bloomfield or Hartford to Springfield. Sometimes they came up the river by steamboat to Hartford, the head of navigation, and continued their journey overland.[403] A trail probably much less used than the routes just mentioned, seems to have connected the southwestern part of Connecticut with the valley route.[404] In Massachusetts there were ramifications from the valley route,[405] which may have terminated among the hills in the western part of the state, for all that one can now discover.
[399] Letter of Mr. Andrews, Providence, R.I., April, 1895.
[400] Pp. 470, 471.
[401] Letter of Mr. Gunn, Montague, Mass., Nov. 23, 1895.
[402] Letter of Simeon E. Baldwin, New Haven, Conn., Jan. 27, 1896; letter of Simeon D. Gilbert, New Haven, Conn., Feb. 27, 1896.
[403] Letter of D. W. C. Pond, New Britain, Conn. Mr. Pond is one of the surviving agents of New Britain.
[404] Letters of George B. Wakeman, Montour Falls, N.Y., April 21 and Sept. 26, 1896. Letter of the Rev. Erastus Blakeslee, Boston, Mass., Aug. 28, 1896.
[405] The stations, as indicated on the map, are named in letters from L. S. Abell and Charles Parsons, Conway, Mass.; C. Barrus, Springfield, Mass.; Judge D. W. Bond, Cambridge, Mass.; and Arthur G. Hill, Boston, Mass. See also article on "The Underground Railway," by Joseph Marsh, in the _History of Florence, Massachusetts_, pp. 165-167.
A line of Road originating at New Bedford in southeastern Massachusetts is mentioned in connection with the line up the Connecticut valley by the Hon. M. M. Fisher, of Medway, Massachusetts, as one of the more common routes.[406] Mrs. Elizabeth Buffum Chace says that slaves landing on Cape Cod went to New Bedford, whence under the guidance of some abolitionist they were conveyed to the home of Nathaniel P. Borden at Fall River. Between this station and the one kept by Mr. and Mrs. Chace at Valley Falls, Robert Adams acted as conductor; and from Valley Falls Mr. Chace was in the habit of accompanying passengers a short distance over the Providence and Worcester Railroad until he had placed them in the care of some trusted employee of that road to be transferred at Worcester to the Vermont Railroad.[407] The Rev. Joshua Young was receiving agent at Burlington, Vermont, and testifies that during his residence there he and his friend and parishioner, L. H. Bigelow, did "considerable business."[408] South of Burlington there was a series of stations not connected with the Vermont Central Railroad extension of the New Bedford route. The names of these stations have been obtained from Mr. Rowland E. Robinson, whose father's house was a refuge for fugitives at Ferrisburg, Vermont, and from the Hon. Joseph Poland, the editor of the first anti-slavery newspaper in his state, who was himself an agent of the Underground Road at Montpelier. The names are those of nine towns, which form a line roughly parallel to the west boundary of the state, namely, North Ferrisburg, Ferrisburg, Vergennes, Middlebury, Brandon, Rutland, Wallingford, Manchester and Bennington.[409] They constituted what may be called the west Vermont route, Bennington being at the southern extremity, where escaped slaves were received from Troy, New York.[410] The terminal at the northern end of this route was St. Albans, whence runaways could be hastened across the Canadian frontier. The valley of the lower Connecticut seems to have yielded a sufficient supply of fugitive slaves to sustain a vigorous line of Road in eastern Vermont. It was over this line the travellers came that were placed in hiding in the office of Editor Poland at Montpelier, having made their way northward with the aid of friends at Brattleboro, Chester, Woodstock, Randolph and intermediate points. At Montpelier the single path divided into three branches, one extending westward and uniting with the west Vermont route at Burlington, another running northward into the Queen's dominions by way of Morristown and other stations, and the third zigzagging to New Port, where a pass through the mountains admitted the zealous pilgrims to the coveted possession of their own liberty.[411]
[406] Letter of Mr. Fisher, Oct. 23, 1893.
[407] Anti-Slavery Reminiscences, pp. 27, 28.
[408] Letter of Mr. Young, Groton, Mass., April 21, 1893.
[409] Letter of Mr. Robinson, Ferrisburg, Vt., Aug. 19, 1896; letter of Mr. Poland, Montpelier, Vt., April 12, 1897.
[410] Letter of Mr. Brainerd, St. Albans, Vt., Oct. 21, 1895.
[411] Letters of Mrs. Abijah Keith, Chicago, Ill., March 28, and April 4, 1897; letters of Mr. Poland, April 7 and 12, 1897.
Having thus sketched in the Vermont lines of Underground Railroad, it is necessary for us to return to the consideration of the New Bedford route, which had some accessory lines near its source. One of these had stations at Newport and Providence, managed by Quakers--Jethro and Anne Mitchell with others in the former, and Daniel Mitchell in the latter.[412] Another was a short line through Windham County, in the northeastern part of Connecticut, to Uxbridge, where it joined the main line.[413] The Rev. Samuel J. May, who was a resident of Brooklyn, Connecticut, in the early thirties, had fugitives addressed to his care at that time, and he helped them on to Effingham L. Capron while he lived in Uxbridge, and afterwards when he settled in Worcester.[414] From Boston[415] westward there were at least two paths to reach the New Bedford road, one of these was by way of Newton to Worcester, and the other through Concord to Leominster. Mr. William I. Bowditch generally passed on the fugitives received at his house to Mr. William Jackson, of Newton, thence they were sent by rail to Worcester.[416] Colonel T. W. Higginson writes that fugitives were sometimes sent from Boston to Worcester,[417] while he lived in the latter place, and that he has himself driven them at midnight to the farm of the veteran abolitionists, Stephen and Abby Kelley Foster, in the suburbs of the city.[418] All along the short route, from Boston to Leominster and Fitchburg, stations were systematically arranged, according to the statement of Mrs. Mary E. Crocker,[419] who was one of the helpers at Leominster.[420] This was the route taken by Shadrach, after his rescue in Boston.[421]
[412] Letter of James S. Rogers, Chicago, Ill., April 17, 1897.
[413] Letters of Joel Fox, Willimantic, Conn., July 30, 1896, and Aug. 3, 1896.
[414] Some Recollections of our Anti-Slavery Conflict, p. 297.
[415] "In Boston there were many places where fugitives were received and taken care of. Every anti-slavery man was ready to protect them, and among these were some families not known to be anti-slavery." James Freeman Clarke, Anti-Slavery Days, p. 86.
[416] Letter of Mr. Bowditch, Boston, April 5, 1893.
[417] Letter of Mr. Higginson, Glimpsewood, Dublin, N.H., July 24, 1896.
[418] T. W. Higginson, Atlantic Monthly, March, 1897.
[419] Article on "The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Workings," in Fitchburg Daily Sentinel, Oct. 31, 1893.
[420] Letter of Mr. F. B. Sanborn, Concord, Mass., Feb. 1, 1896, states that "Concord was a place of resort for fugitives." Letter of Mr. S. Shurtleff, South Paris, Me., May 25, 1896, states that "The direct line of the Underground Railroad was from Boston through Vermont, via St. Albans."
[421] Atlantic Monthly, March, 1897, p. 345; Fitchburg Daily Sentinel, Oct. 31, 1893; letter of Mr. Sanborn, Concord, Mass., Feb. 1, 1896.
Boston was the starting-point of longer lines running north along the coast; one, so far as can now be made out, turning and passing obliquely across New Hampshire; the other following the shore into Maine. Mr. Simeon Dodge, of Marblehead, Massachusetts, who had intimate knowledge of the first of these courses, gives, in an illustrative case, the names of Marblehead, Salem and Georgetown as stations;[422] and Mr. G. W. Putnam, of Lynn, gives the names of persons harboring slaves at two of these places.[423] A report of the Danvers Historical Society is authority for the statement that Mr. Dodge, together with some of the abolitionists of Salem, maintained a secret thoroughfare to Canada,[424] which passed through Danvers, and on through Concord, New Hampshire.[425] From Concord fugitives were sent north to Canterbury and Meredith Ridge[426] in two known instances, and more frequently, it appears, to Canaan and Lyme. James Furber, who lived in Canaan for several years, is said to have made trips to Lyme about once a fortnight with refugees received by him.[427] From Lyme they may have gone north by way of the Connecticut valley. At Salem the coast route parted company with the New Hampshire route, and ran on through Ipswich, Newburyport and Exeter[428] to Eliot, Maine, and perhaps farther.
[422] Letter of Mr. Dodge, March, 1893.
[423] Letter of Mr. Putnam, Lynn, Mass., Feb. 14, 1894.
[424] Old Anti-Slavery Days, p. 150.
[425] Letter of David Mead, Davenport, Mass., Nov. 3, 1893.
[426] Letter of Judge Mellen Chamberlain, Chelsea, Mass., Feb. 1, 1896.
[427] Letter of C. E. Lord, Franklin, Pa., July 6, 1896.
[428] Letter of D. L. Brigham, Manchester, Mass., Nov. 16, 1893; letter of Professor Marshall S. Snow, Washington University, St. Louis, Mo., April 28, 1896.
Slaves sometimes reached Portland, Maine, travelling as stowaways on vessels from Southern ports. Consequently Portland became the centre of several hidden routes to Canada. Mr. S. T. Pickard, who lived in the family of Mrs. Oliver Dennett in Portland, says that Mrs. Dennett harbored runaway slaves, as did also Nathan Winslow and General Samuel Fessenden. The fugitives that came to Portland, he says, were on their way to New Brunswick and Lower Canada, and some were shipped directly to England.[429] Mr. Brown Thurston, the veteran abolitionist of Portland, is authority for the statement that routes extended from Portland to the provinces, by water to St. John, New Brunswick, and by rail to Montreal,[430] the road used being the Grand Trunk.[431] An important overland route also had its origin at Portland. Its two branches encircled Sebago Lake, united at Bridgton, and formed a single pathway to the northwest, and did not separate again until the eastern border of Vermont was reached. There, at Lunenburg, one branch took its course up the Connecticut valley to Stratford, and thence, probably, ran to Stanstead, Quebec; while the other, passing more to the westward, joined the easternmost of the branches from Montpelier, Vermont, at Barton, and so entered Canada.[432] Besides, there were at least two subsidiary routes, which were probably feeders of the "through line" just described. One of them ran to South Paris and Lovell;[433] the other, according to ex-President O. B. Cheney, of Bates College, who was privy to its operations, ran to Effingham, North Parsonsfield and Porter.[434] Both Lovell and Porter are within a few miles of several of the stations that form a part of the Maine section of this line, and could witnesses be found it is likely that their testimony would sustain the view that external evidence suggests.
[429] Letter of Mr. Pickard, Portland, Me., Nov. 18, 1893.
[430] Letter of Mr. Thurston, Jan. 13, 1893.
[431] Letter of Mr. Thurston, Oct. 21, 1895; letter of Aaron Dunn, South Paris, Me., April 9, 1896.
[432] Letter of J. Milton Hall, April 30, 1897.
[433] Letter of S. Shurtleff, May 25, 1896.
[434] Letter of Mr. Cheney, Pawtuxet, R.I., April 8, 1896.
In the free states included between the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers the number of underground trails was much greater than in the states farther east. Bordering on the slave states, Missouri, Kentucky and Virginia, with a length of frontier greatly increased by the sinuosities of the rivers, the states of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois were the most favorably situated of all the Northern states to receive fugitive slaves. Not only the bounding rivers themselves, but also their numerous tributaries, became channels of escape into free territory, and connected directly with many lines of Underground Railroad. These lines of Road are shown on the map as starting from the Ohio or the Mississippi, but they cannot be supposed to have abruptly originated there, for in some instances there were points south of these streams that formed an essential part of the system. It is impossible to bring together here the numerous bits of testimony through the correlation of which the multitude of lines within the old Northwest Territory has been traced. Only a general survey, therefore, of the Underground Railroad system in the Western states will be undertaken, while several smaller maps of limited areas will give the details of the multiple and complex routes found therein.
Concerning the number of paths there were in Ohio it is almost impossible to obtain a definite and correct idea. The location of the state was favorable to the development of new lines with the steady increase in the number of slaves fleeing across its southern borders; and, in the process of development, it was natural that the various branches should intertwine and form a great network. To disentangle the strands of this web and say how many there were is a thing not easy to accomplish, although an anonymous writer in 1842 seems to have found little or no difficulty in arriving at a definite conclusion. His estimate appeared in the Experiment of December 7, and is as follows: "It is evident from the statements of the abolitionists themselves, that there exist some eighteen or nineteen thoroughly organized thoroughfares through the State of Ohio for the transportation of runaway and stolen slaves, one of which passes through Fitchville, and which to my certain knowledge has done a 'land office business.'"[435] If the number of important initial stations fringing the southern and eastern boundaries of Ohio be counted as the points of origin of separate routes, it would be correct to say that there were not less than twenty-two or twenty-three routes in Ohio, but in a count thus made one would fail to note the instances in which, as in the case of Cincinnati, several lines sprang from one locality.
[435] The Firelands Pioneer, July, 1888, p. 67.
In the remaining portion of the Northwest Territory, the number of lines was relatively not so great; and extended areas, as in the western and northern parts of Indiana or the southeastern part of Illinois, contained few or no lines so far as can now be discovered. In western and northern Illinois the conditions were more favorable, and the multiplicity of routes is such that on account of the fusion, division and subdivision of roads it is impossible to say how many lines crossed the state. In Michigan the case is not so complicated, and one can trace with some clearness six or seven paths leading to Detroit. Iowa, not a part, however, of the old Northwest Territory, was traversed by lines terminating in Illinois, and therefore deserves consideration here. In the southeastern part of the state there were several short routes with initial stations at Croton, Bloomfield, Lancaster and Cincinnati, all of which had terminals no doubt along the Mississippi, though it has been possible to complete but two of the routes. In southwestern Iowa, Percival and the three roads branching from it are said to have supplied means of egress for slaves from Missouri and Nebraska through three tiers of counties ranging across the state in lines parallel with the north boundary of Missouri. John Brown took the northernmost of these parallel roads in the winter of 1858 and 1859, when he led a company of twelve fugitives from Missouri through Kansas to Percival on their way to Chicago and Detroit.
Of the local maps, the first represents the lines passing through a portion of Morgan County, in the southeastern part of Ohio. It was drawn by Mr. Thomas Williams, whose services in behalf of runaways made him familiar with the location of operators in the western part of his county.[436] The area represented is twenty-five miles in length and sixteen in width at the widest part, and contains nineteen stations including the towns through which routes passed. The irregular distribution of these stations, and the way in which trips could be varied from one to another to suit the convenience of conductors or to elude pursuers is apparent. The fugitives that travelled over these routes crossed the Ohio River in the vicinity of Parkersburg and Point Pleasant, in what is now West Virginia, and proceeded north twenty or thirty miles by the help of abolitionists before reaching Morgan County. The southern part of this county was traversed by two parallel lines, one of which branched at Rosseau and ran on in parallels to the northern part of the county whence after sharp deflection to the west the branches converged at Deavertown; the other issued from its first station in three divergent lines, which rapidly converged at Pennsville and were united by a single course to the first route. In case of emergency a guide used his knowledge and discretion as to whether he should "cut across lots," skip stations, travel by the "longest way around," or go back on his track. The houses noted on the map as being off the regular routes appear to have been emergency stations and hence not so frequently used.
[436] Corroborative evidence as regards the routes of Morgan County is found in letters from the following persons: E. M. Stanberry, McConnellsville, O., Nov. 1, 1892; T. L. Gray, Deavertown, O., Dec. 2, 1892; Martha Millions, Pennsville, O., March 9, 1892; E. R. Brown, Sugar Grove, O.; H. C. Harvey, Manchester, Kan., Jan. 16, 1893.
A special map of exceeding interest and importance is that drawn by Mr. Lewis Falley, of La Fayette, Indiana, showing the underground lines of Indiana and Michigan about 1848. Mr. Falley's acquaintance with the Road came about through the work of his father in the interest of fugitives in La Fayette after 1841. Subsequently Mr. Falley learned of the lines traversing his state through an itinerant preacher who sometimes stopped as a guest at his father's house. When Mr. Falley's map was received in March, 1896, the author himself had already plotted from other testimony a number of routes in southern and eastern Indiana and in Michigan, and a comparison of maps was made. On Mr. Falley's map three main roads appear, the eastern, middle and western routes. The first of these ran parallel, roughly speaking, with the eastern boundary line of the state only a few miles from it, and took its rise from two lesser paths, which converged at Richmond from either side of the state line. The second or middle route sprang from three branches that crossed the Ohio at Madison, New Albany, and the neighborhood of Leavenworth, passed north through Indianapolis and Logansport, and entered Michigan a few miles east of Lake Michigan. The third or western route followed up the Wabash River to La Fayette, where it crossed the river, proceeded to Rensselaer, and thence northeasterly to the Michigan line, making its entrance to Michigan at the point where the middle route entered that state. From the two crossing-places on the Michigan border the northern extensions of the Indiana routes found their way to Battle Creek, from which station one trail led directly east to Detroit, and the other, by a more northerly course, to Port Huron. In southern Indiana the eastern route was connected with the middle route by a branch between Greensburg and Indianapolis, and the middle with the western by two branches, one between Salem and Evansville, and the other between Brownstown and Bloomingdale.
In the general map prepared by the author, the southern route through Michigan to Detroit, and the eastern, middle, and a portion of the western routes in Indiana on the map of Mr. Falley are duplicated with more or less completeness. The initial stations along the Ohio River correspond in the two maps almost exactly, and many of the way-stations seen on the one map are to be found on the other. It is not to be expected that the two maps would agree in all particulars, and some stations occur on each that are not to be found on the other. Such differences are due to the development of new or the obliteration of old lines and the insufficient knowledge of the draughtsmen. It is not known that a map similar to Mr. Falley's has been devised for any other state or states among the many through which well-defined underground routes extended.
From a drawing made by Mr. W. B. Fyffe, an old-time station-agent of Ottawa, Illinois, the accompanying chart of a line of escape through Livingston and La Salle counties in Illinois is reproduced. The portion of the trail represented is about forty miles in length, and is remarkable for the directness of its course and the absence of interlacing lines. At Ottawa, the northernmost station shown, the trail loses these two characteristics, for it makes there a sharp turn on its way to the terminus, Chicago, and at Ottawa also it makes a junction with several other lines from the western part of the state.[437]
[437] For these features see the general map.
A number of noteworthy features appear on the general map. The first deserving mention is the direction or trend of the underground lines. The region traversed by these lines may be described as an irregular crescent, the concavity of which is in part filled by a portion of Ontario, Canada, which by reason of its proximity became the goal of the great majority of runaways. In the New England states the direction of the underground paths was, with perhaps an exception or two, from southeast to northwest, their objective point being Montreal. The main lines of Pennsylvania and New York ran north until they reached the middle part of the latter state, and then veered off almost directly west to Canada. West of Pennsylvania the trend of the routes was in general to northeast, being in Ohio and Indiana to the shores of Lake Erie, and in Illinois and Iowa to the southern extremity of Lake Michigan. Through central Iowa, northern Illinois and southern Michigan, the course of the routes was almost directly east.
It is not surprising that the regions through which the simplest and most direct routes passed should have been those at the two extremities of the great irregular crescent of free soil, where the number of routes was few and the activity of the stations limited. In the states that formed the middle portion of the crescent, it was natural that multiple and intricate trails should have been developed. The fact that slave-owners and their agents often sallied into this region in search of missing chattels was a consideration given due weight by the shrewd operators, who early learned that one of their best safeguards lay in complex routes, made by several lines radiating from one centre, or branch connections between routes, by paths that zigzagged from station to station. These features were characteristic, and serve to show that the safety of fugitives was never sacrificed by the abolitionists to any thoughtless desire for rapid transit. From Cincinnati, Ohio, not less than four branches of the Road radiated. One of these led to Fountain City, Indiana, where it was joined by two other important lines. From this point four lines diverged to the north. At Oberlin as many as five lines converged from the south. Quincy, Illinois, was the starting-point of four or five lines, and Knoxville, Ottawa and Chicago in the same state each received fugitives from several routes. The region in which the devices of multiple routes and cross lines were most highly developed is, as far as known, in southeastern Pennsylvania.
Some broken lines and isolated place-names occur upon the map. For example, in Iowa, branches of the system have been traced to Quincy, Indianola, North English and Ottumwa, but beyond these points the connections cannot be made. Examples of such incomplete sections will be found also in northern and central Illinois, in central Indiana, in western New York, in central and eastern Pennsylvania and in other states. It is not to be supposed that the routes represented by these fragmentary lines terminated abruptly without reaching a haven of safety, but only that the witnesses whose testimony is essential to complete the lines have not been discovered. In the case of the isolated place-names, a few of which occur in the New England states, in New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois, the evidence at hand seemed to designate them as stations, without indicating in any definite way the neighboring stations with which they were probably allied.
On the general map may be noticed a few long stretches of Road that had apparently no way-stations. Such lines are usually identical with certain rivers, or canals, or railway systems. It has already been seen that the Connecticut River served to guide fugitives north on their way to Canada.[438] The Mississippi, Illinois, Ohio, Alleghany, and Hudson rivers united stations more or less widely separated.[439] The tow-paths of some of our western canals formed convenient highways to liberty for a considerable number of self-reliant fugitives, and were considered safer than public roads. A letter from E. C. H. Cavins, of Bloomfield, Indiana,[440] states that the Wabash and Erie Canal became a thoroughfare for slaves, who followed it from the vicinity of Evansville, Indiana, until they reached Ohio, probably in some instances going as far as Toledo, though usually, as the writer believes, striking off on one or another of several established lines of Underground Road in central and northern Indiana. James Bayliss,[441] of Massillon, in northeastern Ohio, states that fugitives sometimes came up the tow-path of the canal to Massillon, knowing that the canal led to Cleveland, whence a boat could be taken for Canada.[442]
[438] See p. 129, this chapter.
[439] See the language of Jefferson Davis, quoted on p. 312, Chapter X; letter of A. P. Dutton, Racine, Wis., April 7, 1896; E. M. Pettit, _Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad_, pp. 29, 30, 31; letter of Florence and Cordelia H. Ray, referred to on p. 126, this chapter.
[440] Letter of Mr. Cavins, Dec. 5, 1895.
[441] Conversation with James Bayliss, Massillon, O., Aug. 15, 1895.
[442] Letter of Brown Thurston, Portland, Me., Oct. 21, 1895.
The identity of a few of the tracings with steam railway lines signifies, of course, transportation by rail when the situation admitted of it. Sometimes, when there was not the usual eagerness of pursuit, and when the intelligence or the Caucasian cast of features of the fugitive warranted it, the traveller was provided with the necessary ticket and instructions, and put aboard the cars for his destination. The Providence and Worcester and the Vermont Central railroads furnished quick transportation from New Bedford, Massachusetts, to Canada.[443] In southeastern Pennsylvania the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad carried many slaves on their way to freedom, and according to Smedley, "All who took the trains at the Reading Railroad stations went directly through to Canada."[444] E. F. Pennypacker often forwarded negroes from Schuylkill to Philadelphia over this road, and William Still sent them on their northward journey.[445] Fugitives arriving at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, sometimes took passage over the Northern Central Railroad to Elmira, New York. Mr. Jervis Langdon and John W. Jones, of Elmira, took care that underground passengers secured transportation from Elmira to their destination. The fugitives were always put in the baggage-car at four o'clock in the morning,[446] and went through without change to the Niagara River. The old Mad River Railroad bore many dark-skinned passengers from Urbana, if not also from Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio, to Lake Erie.[447] In eastern Ohio the Cleveland and Western Railroad, from Alliance to Cleveland, was much patronized during several years by instructed runaways. Mr. I. Newton Peirce, then living in Alliance, had "an understanding with all the passenger-train conductors on the C. and W. R. R." that colored persons provided with tickets bearing the initials I. N. P. were to be admitted to the trains without question, unless slave-catchers were thought to be aboard the cars.[448] Indiana and Michigan are known to have had their steam railway lines in the secret service system: in the former state the Louisville, New Albany and Chicago Railroad was utilized by operators at Crawfordsville;[449] in the latter the Michigan Central supplied a convenient outlet to Detroit from stations along its course.[450] The Chicago and Rock Island Railroad from Peru, Lasalle County, Illinois, to Chicago was incorporated in the service, so also was the Illinois Central from Cairo and Centralia to the same terminus. The Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad sometimes conveyed fugitives from Quincy on the Mississippi River to Chicago. Two men of prominence connected with this road, who secured transportation over its rails for many Canada-bound passengers, were Dr. C. V. Dyer, of Chicago, and Colonel Berrien, chief engineer of the road.[451]
[443] See p. 80, Chapter III.
[444] Underground Railroad, p. 174. See also pp. 176, 177.
[445] Ibid., pp. 364, 365.
The following letter from Mr. Pennypacker to Mr. Still explains itself:
"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.
We have within the past two months passed forty-three through our hands, transported most of them to Norristown in our own conveyance. E. F. P."
[446] Letter of Mr. Jones, Elmira, N.Y., Jan. 16, 1897.
[447] See p. 78, Chapter III.
[448] Letter of Mr. Peirce, Folcroft, Delaware Co., Pa., Feb. 1, 1893.
[449] See p. 79, Chapter III.
[450] Ibid.
[451] Life and Poems of John Howard Bryant, p. 30. Mr. Bryant made a practice of receiving fugitives in his house in Princeton, Ill.
Along the portion of the Atlantic coast shown on the map will be seen long lines connecting Southern with Northern ports. These represent routes to liberty by sea. It is reported by a station-keeper of Valley Falls, Rhode Island, that "Slaves in Virginia would secure passage either secretly or with the consent of the captains, in small trading vessels, at Norfolk or Portsmouth, and thus be brought into some port in New England, where their fate depended on circumstances;"[452] and the reporter gives several instances coming within her knowledge of fugitives that escaped from Virginia to Massachusetts as stowaways on vessels.[453] Boats engaged in the lumber trade sometimes brought refugees from Newberne, North Carolina, to Philadelphia.[454] Captain Austin Bearse, who was active in the rescue of stowaways from vessels arriving in Boston harbor from the South, cites two instances in which fugitives came by sea from Wilmington, North Carolina, and another from Jacksonville, Florida.[455] William Still gives a number of cases of escape by boat from Richmond and Norfolk, Virginia, and Wilmington, North Carolina, to the Vigilance Committee at Philadelphia.[456] Negroes arriving in New York City and coming within the horizon of Isaac T. Hopper's knowledge were often sent by water to Providence and Boston.[457]
[452] Mrs. Elizabeth Buffum Chace, Anti-Slavery Reminiscences, p. 27.
[453] Ibid., pp. 28, 30.
[454] R. C. Smedley, Underground Railroad, p. 355.
[455] Reminiscences of Fugitive-Slave Law Days in Boston, pp. 34, 36, 37.
[456] William Still, Underground Railroad Records, pp. 77, 142, 151, 163, 165, 211, etc.
[457] Letter of James S. Rogers, Chicago, Ill., April 17, 1897.
Of the terminal stations or places of deportation along our northeastern boundary, there are not less than twenty-four, and probably many more. Three of them, Boston, Portland and St. Albans, were located in the New England states. Fugitives were probably less often sent directly to English soil from Boston than from the two other points, and in the few instances of which we have any hint, with perhaps one exception, the passengers so sent were put aboard vessels sailing for England. The boats running between Portland and the Canadian provinces were freely made use of to help slaves to their freedom, especially as the emigrants were often provided with passes. Sailing-vessels also furnished free passage, and carried the majority of the passengers that went from Portland.[458] St. Albans was the terminal of the Vermont line. Many fugitives were received and cared for here, and were sent on by private conveyance across the Canada border before the Vermont Central Railroad was built. Afterwards they were sent by rail, through the intervention of the Hon. Lawrence Brainerd, of St. Albans, who was one of the projectors of the steam railroad and largely interested in it financially.[459]
[458] Letter of Brown Thurston, Portland, Me., Oct. 21, 1895.
[459] Letter of Aldis O. Brainerd, St. Albans, Vt., Oct. 21, 1895.
Along the northern boundary of New York and Pennsylvania there seem to have been not less than ten resorts facing the Canadian frontier. These were Ogdensburg,[460] Cape Vincent, Port Ontario, Oswego, some port near Rochester, Lewiston, Suspension Bridge, Black Rock, Buffalo, Dunkirk Harbor and Erie. Doubtless the most important of these crossing-places were the four along the Niagara River, for here the most travelled of the routes in New York terminated. The harbors along Lake Ontario and the one on the St. Lawrence River appear to have been the terminals of side-tracks and branches rather than of main lines of Road.
[460] "They crossed at Detroit and at Niagara and at Ogdensburg. Of those in New England, some went up through Vermont, some fled to Maine, and crossed over into New Brunswick." F. W. Seward, Seward at Washington as Senator and Secretary of State, Vol. I, p. 170.
Ohio may lay claim to eight terminal stations, all comparatively important. The best-known of these appear to have been Ashtabula Harbor, Painesville, Cleveland, Sandusky and Toledo, although the other three, Huron, Lorain and Conneaut, may be supposed, from their locations, to have done a thriving business. It is impossible to get now a measure of the efficiency of these various ports, for the period during which they were resorted to was a long one, and operators were obliged to work more or less independently, and obtained no adequate idea of the number emigrating from any one point. Custom-house methods were not followed in keeping account of the negroes exported across the Canada frontier. All that can be said in comparing these various ports is that Ashtabula Harbor, Cleveland and Sandusky, each seems to have been the terminus for four or five lines of Road, while perhaps only two or three lines ended at Toledo and Painesville, and one each at Huron, Lorain and Conneaut. Concerning the port at Huron we have a few observations, made by Mr. L. S. Stow, who lived a few miles from Lake Erie on the course of the Milan canal, and near one of the managers of the terminal, on whose premises fugitives often awaited the appearance of a Canada-bound boat. He says: "We used to see, occasionally, the fugitives, who ventured out for exercise while waiting for an opportunity to get on one of the vessels frequently passing down the canal and river from Milan, during the season of navigation. Many of these vessels passed through the Welland Canal on their way to the lower Lakes, and after leaving the harbor at Huron the fugitives were safe from the pursuit of their masters unless the vessels were compelled by stress of weather to return to harbor."[461]
[461] The Firelands Pioneer, July, 1888, pp. 80, 81.
Hundreds, nay, thousands of fugitives found crossing-places along the Detroit River, especially at the city of Detroit. The numerous routes of Indiana together with several of the chief routes of western Ohio poured their passengers into Detroit, thence to be transported by ferries and row-boats to the tongue of land pressing its shore-line for thirty miles from Lake Erie to Lake St. Clair upon the very borders of Michigan. The movement of slaves to this region was a fact of which Southerners early became apprised, and their efforts to recover their servants as these were about to enter the Canaan already within sight were occasionally successful, although the majority of the people of Detroit[462] and of the surrounding districts rejoiced to see the slave-catchers outwitted.
[462] Silas Farmer, History of Detroit and Michigan, p. 346.
The places of deportation remaining to be mentioned are four, along the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan, namely, Milwaukee, Racine, South Port and Chicago. Of these the last-named was, doubtless, the most important, since through it chiefly were drained off the fugitives that came from Missouri over the routes of Iowa and Illinois. A single operator of Chicago, Mr. Philo Carpenter, is said to have guided not less than two hundred negroes to Canada-bound vessels.[463]
[463] Edward G. Mason, Early Chicago and Illinois, p. 110.
The lines of boat-service to the Canadian termini require a few words of comment. The longest line of travel on the lakes was that connecting the ports of Wisconsin and Illinois with Detroit or Amherstburg,[464] and was only approached in length by the route from Chicago to Collingwood, Ontario.[465] Five hundred miles would be a minimum statement of the distance refugees were carried by the boats of abolitionist captains from these westernmost ports to their havens of refuge. On Lake Erie the routes were, of course, much shorter, and ran up and down the lake, as well as across it. Important routes joined Toledo, Sandusky and Cleveland to Amherstburg and Detroit at one end of the lake, and Dunkirk, Ashtabula Harbor, Painesville and Cleveland with Buffalo and Black Rock at the other end of the lake. Certain boats running on these routes came to be known as abolition boats, with ample accommodations for underground passengers. Thus, we are told, such passengers "depended on a vessel named the Arrow, which for many years plied between Sandusky and Detroit, but always touched first at Malden, Canada, where the fugitives were landed."[466] Frequent use was also made of scows, sail-boats and sharpies, with which refugees could be "set across" the lake, and landed at almost any point along the shore. Small vessels, a part of whose "freight" had been received from the Underground Railroad, were often despatched to Port Burwell in the night from the warehouse of Hubbard and Company, forwarding and commission merchants of Ashtabula Harbor.[467] Similar enterprises were carried on at various other points along the lake.[468] So far as known, Lake Ontario had only a few comparatively insignificant routes: at the upper end of the lake were two, one joining Rochester and St. Catherines, the other, St. Catherines and Toronto; at the lower end of the lake, Oswego, Port Ontario and Cape Vincent seem to have been connected by lines with Kingston.
[464] See Chapter III, pp. 82, 83.
[465] Letter of John G. Weiblen, Fairview, Erie Co., Pa., Nov. 26, 1895.
[466] The Firelands Pioneer, July, 1888, p. 77.
[467] Conversation with Nelson Watrous, Harbor, O., Aug. 8, 1892; conversation with J. D. Hulbert, Harbor, O., Aug. 7, 1892.
[468] The following incident given by Mr. Rush R. Sloane will serve as an illustration: "In the summer of 1853, four fugitives arrived at Sandusky. ... Mr. John Irvine ... had arranged for a 'sharpee,' a small sail-boat used by fishermen, with one George Sweigels, to sail the boat to Canada with this party, for which service Captain Sweigels was to receive thirty-five dollars. One man accompanied Captain Sweigels, and at eight o'clock in the evening this party in this small boat started to cross Lake Erie. The wind was favorable, and before morning Point au Pelee Island was reached, and the next day the four escaped fugitives were in Canada." The Firelands Pioneer, July, 1888, pp. 49, 50.
It is impossible to tell how many cities, towns and villages in Canada became terminals of the underground system. Outside of the interlake region of Ontario it is safe to name Kingston, Prescott, Montreal, Stanstead and St. John, New Brunswick. Within that region the terminals were numerous, being scattered from the southern shore of Georgian Bay to Lake Erie, and from the Detroit and Huron rivers to the Niagara. Owen Sound, Collingwood and Oro were the northernmost resorts, so far as now known. Toronto, Queen's Bush, Wellesley, Galt and Hamilton occupied territory south of these, and farther south still, in the marginal strip fronting directly on Lake Erie, there were not less than twenty more places of refuge. The most important of these were naturally those situated at either end of the strip, and along the shore-line, namely, Windsor, Sandwich and Amherstburg, New Canaan, Colchester and Kingsville, Gosfield and Buxton, Port Stanley, Port Burwell and Port Royal, Long Point, Fort Erie and St. Catherines. In the valley of the Thames also many refugees settled, especially at Chatham, Dresden and Dawn, and at Sydenham, London and Wilberforce. The names of two additional towns, Sarnia on the Huron River and Brantford on the Grand, complete the list of the known Canadian terminals. This enumeration of centres cannot be supposed to be exhaustive. A full record would take into account the localities in the outlying country districts as well as those adjoining or forming a part of the hamlets, towns and cities of the whites, whither the blacks had penetrated. The untrodden wilds of Canada, as well as her populous places, seemed hospitable to a people for whom the hardships of the new life were fully compensated by the consciousness of their possession of the rights of freemen, rights vouchsafed them by a government that exemplified the proud boast of the poet Cowper:--
"Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs Receive our air, that moment they are free! They touch our country and their shackles fall."
VI. ABDUCTION OF SLAVES FROM THE SOUTH
Most persons that engaged in the underground service were opposed either to enticing or to abducting slaves from the South. This was no less true along the southern border of the free states than in their interior. The principle generally acted upon by the friends of fugitives was that which they held to be voiced in the Scriptural injunction to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. The quaking negro at the door in the dead of night seeking relief from a condition, the miseries of which he found intolerable and for which he was in no proper sense responsible, was a figure to be pitied, and to be helped without delay. Under such circumstances there was no room for casuistry in the mind of the abolitionist. The response of his warm nature was as decisive as his favorite passage of Scripture was imperative. The fugitive was fed, clothed if necessary, and guided to another friend farther on. But abolitionists were unwilling, for the most part, to involve themselves more deeply in danger by abducting slaves from thraldom. The Rev. John B. Mahan, one of the early anti-slavery men of southern Ohio, expressed this fact when he said, "I am confident that few, if any, for various reasons, would invade the jurisdiction of another state to give aid and encouragement to slaves to escape from their owners...."[469] And in northern Ohio, in so radical a town as Oberlin, a famous station of the Underground Road, we are told that there was no sentiment in favor of enticing slaves away, and that this was never done except in one case--by Calvin Fairbank, a student.[470]
[469] History of Brown County, Ohio, p. 315.
[470] Conversation with ex-President James H. Fairchild, Oberlin, O., Aug. 3, 1892.
The general disinclination to induce escapes of slaves, either by secret invitation or by persons serving as guides, renders the few cases conspicuous, and gives them considerable interest. When instances of this kind became known to the slave-owners, as for example, by the arrest and imprisonment of some over-venturesome offender, the irritation resulting on both sides of Mason and Dixon's line was apt to be disproportionate to the magnitude of the cause. Nevertheless the aggravation of sectional feeling thus produced was real, and was valued by some Northern agitators as a means to a better understanding of the system of slavery.[471]
[471] See the Annual Reports of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.
The largest number of abduction cases occurred through the activities of those well-disposed towards fugitives by the attachments of race. There were many negroes, enslaved and free, along the southern boundaries of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, whose opportunities were numerous for conveying fugitives to free soil with slight risk to themselves. These persons sometimes did scarcely more than ferry runaways across a stream or direct them to the homes of friends residing near the line of a free state. In the vicinity of Martin's Ferry, Ohio, there lived a colored man who frequented the Virginia shore for the purpose of persuading slaves to run away. He was in the habit of imparting the necessary information, and then displaying himself in an intoxicated condition, feigned or real, to avoid suspicion. At last he was found out, but escaped by betaking himself to Canada.[472] In the neighborhood of Portsmouth, Ohio, slaves were conveyed across the river by one Poindexter, a barber of the town of Jackson.[473] In Baltimore, Maryland, two colored women, who engaged in selling vegetables, were efficient in starting fugitives on the way to Philadelphia.[474] At Louisville, Kentucky, Wash Spradley, a shrewd negro, was instrumental in helping many of his enslaved brethren out of bondage.[475] These few instances will suffice to illustrate the secret enterprises conducted by colored persons on both sides of the sectional line once dividing the North from the South.
[472] Conversation with Mrs. Joel Woods, at Martin's Ferry, Aug. 19, 1892.
[473] Conversation with Judge Jesse W. Laird, Jackson, O., June, 1895.
[474] Conversation with Mr. Robert Purvis, at Philadelphia, Dec. 23, 1895.
[475] Conversation with John Evans, at Windsor, Ont., C.W., Aug. 2, 1895; John Evans was a slave near Louisville, but was given his liberty in 1850, when his master became financially involved.
Another class of colored persons that undertook the work of delivering some of their race from the cruel uncertainties of slavery may be found among the refugees of Canada. Describing the early development of the movement of slaves to Canada, Dr. Samuel G. Howe says of these persons, "Some, not content with personal freedom and happiness, went secretly back to their old homes and brought away their wives and children at much peril and cost."[476] It has been stated that the number of these persons visiting the South annually was about five hundred.[477] Mr. D. B. Hodge, of Lloydsville, Ohio, gives the case of a negro that went to Canada by way of New Athens, and in the course of a year returned over the same route, went to Kentucky, and brought away his wife and two children, making his pilgrimage northward again after the lapse of about two months.[478] Another case, reported by Mr. N. C. Buswell, of Neponset, Illinois, is as follows: A slave, Charlie, belonging to a Missouri planter living near Quincy, Illinois, escaped to Canada by way of one of the underground routes. Ere long he decided to return and get his wife, but found she had been sold South. When making his second journey eastward he brought with him a family of slaves, who preferred freedom to remaining as the chattels of his old master. This was the first of a number of such trips made by the fugitive Charlie.[479] Mr. Seth Linton,[480] who was familiar with the work on a line of this Road running through Clinton County, Ohio, reports that a fugitive that had passed along the route returned after some months, saying he had come back to rescue his wife. His absence in the slave state continued so long that it was feared he had been captured, but after some weeks he reappeared, bringing his wife and her father with him. He told of having seen many slaves in the country and said they would be along as soon as they could escape. The following year the Clinton County line was unusually busy. A brave woman named Armstrong escaped with her husband and one child to Canada in 1842. Two years later she determined to rescue the remainder of her family from the Kentucky plantation where she had left them, and, disguised as a man, she went back to the old place. Hiding near a spring, where her children were accustomed to get water, she was able to give instructions to five of them, and the following night she departed with her flock to an underground station at Ripley, Ohio.[481]
[476] Howe, The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West, p. 11.
[477] Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown, p. 229.
[478] Letter from Mr. D. B. Hodge, Oct. 9, 1894.
[479] Letter from Colonel N. C. Buswell, March 13, 1896.
[480] Letter from Seth Linton.
[481] The Firelands Pioneer, July, 1888, p. 39.
Equally zealous in the slaves' behalf with the groups of persons mentioned in the last two paragraphs were certain individuals of Southern birth and white parentage, who found the opportunity to conduct slaves beyond the confines of the plantation states. Robert Purvis tells of the son of a planter, who sometimes travelled into the free states with a retinue of body-servants for the purpose of having them fall into the hands of vigilant abolitionists. The author has heard similar stories in regard to the sons of Kentucky slave-owners, but the names of the parties concerned were withheld for obvious reasons.
John Fairfield, a Virginian, devoted much time and thought to abducting slaves. Levi Coffin, who knew him intimately, describes him as a person full of contradictions, who, although a Southerner by birth, and living the greater part of the time in the South, yet hated slavery; a person lacking in moral quality, but devoted to the interests of the slave.[482] John Fairfield's ostensible business was, at times, that of a poultry and provision dealer; and his views, when he was among planters, were pro-slavery. Nevertheless his abiding interest seems to have been to despoil slaveholders of their human property. He made excursions into various parts of the South, and led many companies safely through to Canada. While Laura Haviland was serving as a mission teacher in Canada West (1852-1853), Fairfield arrived at Windsor, bringing with him twenty-seven slaves. Mrs. Haviland, who witnessed the happy conclusion of this adventure, testifies that it was but one of many, and that the abductor often made expeditions into the heart of the slaveholding states to secure his companies. On the occasion of the arrival of the Virginian with the twenty-seven a reception and dinner were given in his honor by appreciative friends in one of the churches of the colored people, and a sort of jubilee was celebrated. The ecstasies of some of the guests, among them an old negro woman over eighty years of age, touched the heart of their benefactor, who exclaimed, "This pays me for all dangers I have faced in bringing this company, just to see these friends meet."[483]
[482] Coffin, Reminiscences, pp. 304, 305; letter of Miss H. N. Wilson, College Hill, O., April 14, 1892.
[483] Laura S. Haviland, A Woman's Life Work, p. 199.
In a letter dated Lawrence, Kan., March 23, 1893, Mr. Fitch Reed gives some of the circumstances connected with the progress of this company through the last stages of its journey. He says: "In 1853, there came over the road twenty-eight in one gang, with a conductor by the name of Fairfield, from Virginia, who had aided in liberating all his father's and uncle's slaves, and there was a reward out for him of five hundred dollars, dead or alive. They had fifty-two rounds of arms, and were determined not to be taken alive. Four teams from my house [in Cambridge, Mich.] started at sunset, drove through Clinton after dark, got to Ypsilanti before daylight. Stayed at Bro. Ray's through the day. At noon, Bro. M. Coe, from our station, got on the cars and went to Detroit, and left Ray to drive his team. Coe informed the friends of the situation, and made arrangements for their reception. The friends came out to meet them ten miles before we came to Detroit, piloted us to a large boarding-house by the side of the river. Two hundred abolitionists took breakfast with them just before daylight. We procured boats enough for Fairfield and his crew. As they pushed off from shore, they all commenced singing the song, 'I am on my way to Canada, where colored men are free,' and continued firing off their arms till out of hearing. At eight o'clock, the ferry-boats started, and the station-keepers went over and spent most of the day with them."
Northern men residing or travelling in the South were sometimes tempted to encourage slaves to flee to Canada, or even to plan and execute abductions. Jacob Cummings, a slave belonging to a small planter, James Smith, of southeastern Tennessee, was befriended by a Mr. Leonard, of Chattanooga, who had become an abolitionist in Albany, New York, before his removal to the South. Cummings was occasionally sent on errands to Mr. Leonard's store. This gave the Northerner the desired opportunity to show his slave customer where Ohio and Indiana are on the map, and to advise him to go to Canada. As Cummings had a "hard master" he did not long delay his going.[484]
[484] Conversation with Jacob Cummings, Columbus, O., April, 1894.
The risks and costs of a long trip were not too great for the enthusiastic abolitionist who felt that immediate rescue must be attempted. One remarkable incident illustrates the determination sometimes displayed in freeing a slave. Two brothers from Connecticut settled in the District of Columbia about the year 1848. They became gardeners, and employed among their hands a colored woman, who was hired out to them by her master. Soon after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law (1850) she came weeping to her employers with the news that she was to be sold "down South." Stirred by her impending misfortune, one of the brothers had a large box made, within which he nailed the slave-woman and her young daughter. With the box in his market-wagon he set out on a long, arduous trip across Maryland and Pennsylvania into New York. After three weeks of travel he reached his journey's end at Warsaw. Here he delivered his charge to the care of friends, among whom they found a permanent home.[485]
[485] Conversation with the daughter mentioned, now the wife of William Burghardt, Warsaw, N.Y., June, 1894. Article on the Underground Railroad in the History of Warsaw, New York.
There were ardent abolitionists living almost within sight of slave territory that had no scruples about helping slaves across the line and passing them on to freedom. In 1836, Dr. David Nelson, a Virginian, who had freed his slaves and moved to Marion County, Missouri, and had there founded Marion College, was driven into Illinois on account of his anti-slavery views. He settled at Quincy, and soon established the Mission Institute, which was chiefly a school for the education of missionaries. Mr. N. A. Hunt, now eighty-five years old but apparently of clear mind, was a student in Mission Institute in its early years. He relates an incident showing the spirit existing in the school, a spirit that manifested itself a little later in the actions of Messrs Burr, Work and Thompson. His story is that Dr. Nelson came to him one day in the spring of 1839 or 1840, and asked him to go with another student across the Mississippi River and patrol the shore opposite Quincy. The students were to make signals at intervals by tapping stones together, and if their signals were answered they were to help such as needed help by conducting them to a place of safety, a station on the Underground Railroad, sixteen miles east of Quincy. The station could be easily recognized, for it was a red barn. The time chosen for crossing the river was always a Sunday night, a time known to be the best for the persons sometimes found waiting on the other side. This detailing of a watch from the school was regularly done, although with what results is not known.[486]
[486] Letter from N. A. Hunt, of Riverside, Cal., Feb. 12, 1891.
Among the students attending this Institute in 1841 were James E. Burr and George Thompson. These young men, together with a villager, Alanson Work, arranged with two slaves to convey them from bondage in Missouri. The abductors found themselves surrounded by a crowd of angry Missourians, and were speedily committed to jail in Palmyra. To insure the conviction of the prisoners three indictments were brought against them, one charging them with "stealing slaves, another with attempting to steal them, and the other with intending to make the attempt."[487] Conviction was a foregone conclusion. Work and his companions were pronounced guilty and sentenced to twelve years' imprisonment. These men were not required, however, to serve out their terms. Mr. Work was pardoned after three and a half years on the unjust condition that he return with his wife and children to the State of Connecticut, his former residence. Mr. Burr was released at the end of a little more than four years and six months, and Mr. Thompson after nearly five years' imprisonment. The anti-slavery character of Mission Institute at length brought down upon it the wrath of the Missourians. One winter night a party from Marion County crossed the Mississippi River on the ice, stealthily marched to the Institute, and set it on fire.[488]
[487] Quoted by Wilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Vol. II, p. 71.
[488] Asbury, History of Quincy, p. 74. The account of the Burr, Work and Thompson case occupies pp. 72, 73 and 74 of Asbury's volume.
In southern Indiana operations similar to those of the students of the Mission Institute were carried on by a supposedly inoffensive pedler of notions, Joseph Sider. With his large convenient wagon Sider traversed some of the border counties of Kentucky, supplying goods to his customers; one of his boxes was reserved for disguises for negroes that wished to cast off the garments of slavery. Sider's method involved the use of his vehicle for long trips to the Ohio River, where the passengers were conveyed by boat to a place of safety, and told to remain concealed until the wagon and team could be transported by ferry the following morning. So simple a plan did not excite suspicion, and served to carry fugitives rapidly forward to some line of underground traffic.[489]
[489] E. Hicks Trueblood, "Reminiscences of the Underground Railroad," in the Republican Leader, Salem, Ind., March 16, 1894.
Among those invasions of the South that caused considerable excitement at the time of their occurrence, the cases of Calvin Fairbank, Seth Concklin and John Brown are notable; and accounts of them cannot well be omitted from these pages, even though they may be more or less familiar to the reader. Mr. Calvin Fairbank came of English stock, and was born in Wyoming County, New York, in 1816. His home training as well as his attendance at Oberlin College furnished him with anti-slavery views, but the circumstance to which he traced his hearty hatred of the Southern institution arose by chance, when as a boy he was attending quarterly meeting with his parents. "It happened that my family was assigned," he relates, "to the good, clean home of a pair of escaped slaves. One night after service I sat on the hearthstone before the fire, and listened to the woman's story of sorrow.... My heart wept, my anger was kindled, and antagonism to slavery was fixed upon me."[490] In the spring of 1837 young Fairbank was sent by his father down the Ohio River in charge of a raft of lumber. A little below Wheeling he saw a large, active-looking, black man on the Virginia shore, going to the woods with his axe. He found the woodsman to be a slave, soon gained his confidence, and set him across the river on the raft. A few days later Mr. Fairbank moored his rude craft, and landed on the Kentucky shore opposite the mouth of the Little Miami River. Here he was approached by an old slave-woman, who sought the liberation of her seven children. The matter was easily arranged, and after dark the seven were speedily conveyed across the river.[491]
[490] Rev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times, or How the Way was Prepared. Edited from his manuscript. Pp. 1-7.
[491] Rev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times, pp. 12-14.
The rescue of Lewis Hayden and his family was the means of bringing Mr. Fairbank to the penitentiary, while it opened to his friend Hayden an honorable career in New England. Mr. Hayden became a respected citizen of Boston, and helped to organize the Vigilance Committee for the purpose of protecting the refugees that were settling in the city; in course of time he came to serve in the legislature of the State of Massachusetts. His wife, who survived him, made a bequest of an estate of about five thousand dollars to Harvard University to found a scholarship for the benefit of deserving colored students.[492] The story of Hayden's delivery and of his own imprisonment is best told in Mr. Fairbank's words: "Lewis Hayden ... was, when a young man, ... the property of Baxter and Grant, owners of the Brennan House, in Lexington. Hayden's wife, Harriet, and his son, a lad of ten years when I first knew them, were the slaves of Patrick Baine. On a September evening in 1844, accompanied by Miss D. A. Webster, a young Vermont lady, who was associated with me in teaching, I left Lexington with the Haydens, in a hack, crossed the Ohio River on a ferry at nine the next morning, changed horses, and drove to an Underground Railroad depot at Hopkins, Ohio, where we left Hayden and his family.... When Miss Webster and I returned to Lexington, after two days' absence, we were both arrested, charged by their master with helping Hayden's wife and son to escape. We were jointly indicted, but Miss Webster was tried first and sentenced to two years' imprisonment in the penitentiary at Frankfort.... While my case was still pending I learned that the governor was inclined to pardon Miss Webster, but first insisted that I should be tried. When called up for trial in February, 1845, I pleaded guilty, and received a sentence of fifteen years. I served four years and eleven months, and then, August 23, 1849, was released by Governor John J. Crittenden, the able and patriotic man who afterwards saved Kentucky to the Union."[493]
[492] Boston Weekly Transcript, Dec. 29, 1893.
[493] The Chicago Tribune, Sunday, Jan. 29, 1893.
In spite of his incarceration for aiding slaves to escape, and in the face of the heavier penalties laid by the new Fugitive Slave Law, passed shortly after his release from prison, Calvin Fairbank was soon engaged in similar enterprises. He declares, "I resisted its [the law's] execution whenever and wherever possible."[494] A little more than two years after his pardon Mr. Fairbank was again arrested, this time in Indiana, for carrying off Tamar, a young mulatto woman, who was claimed as property by A. L. Shotwell, of Louisville, Kentucky. Without process of law Mr. Fairbank was taken from the State of Indiana to Louisville, where he was tried in February, 1853. He was again sentenced to the state prison for a term of fifteen years, and while there was frequently subjected to the most brutal treatment. Altogether Mr. Fairbank spent seventeen years and four months of his life in prison for abducting slaves; he says that during his second term he received at the hands of prison officials thirty-five thousand stripes.[495] Having served more than twelve years of his second sentence, he was pardoned by acting Governor Richard T. Jacob. It was a singular occurrence that finally enabled Mr. Fairbank to regain his liberty. Among the friends upon whose favor he could rely was the lieutenant-governor of Kentucky, Richard T. Jacob, the son-in-law of Thomas H. Benton, of Missouri. Mr. Jacob was a man of strong anti-slavery tendencies, notwithstanding his political prominence and his private interests as a wealthy planter. The governor, Thomas E. Bramlette, was opposed to extending the executive clemency to so notorious an offender as Mr. Fairbank. Early in 1864 General Speed S. Fry was detailed by President Lincoln to enroll all the negroes of Kentucky, but he came into collision with Governor Bramlette, who sought to prevent General Fry from carrying out his orders. Upon receiving information to this effect the President summoned the executive of Kentucky to Washington to answer to charges; and thereupon Mr. Jacob became acting governor. On his first day in office the new executive of Kentucky was accosted by General Fry with the remark, "Governor, the President thinks it would be well to make this Fairbank's day." On the morning following, the prisoner received a full and free pardon.[496]
[494] Ibid.
[495] Rev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times, pp. 138, 144.
[496] Rev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times, pp. 11, 104-143. See also the Chicago Tribune, Sunday, Jan. 29, 1893, p. 33.
Mr. Fairbank gives many interesting devices that he employed in his work to throw off pursuit. "Forty-seven slaves I guided toward the north star, in violation of the state codes of Virginia and Kentucky. I piloted them through the forests, mostly by night; girls, fair and white, dressed as ladies; men and boys, as gentlemen, or servants; men in women's clothes, and women in men's clothes; boys dressed as girls, and girls as boys; on foot or on horseback, in buggies, carriages, common wagons, in and under loads of hay, straw, old furniture, boxes and bags; crossing the Jordan of the slave, swimming or wading chin deep; or in boats, or skiffs; on rafts, and often on a pine log. And I never suffered one to be recaptured."[497]
[497] Rev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times, pp. 10 and 11.
About 1850, Seth Concklin, a resident of Philadelphia, learned of the remarkable escape of Peter Still from Alabama to the Quaker City. Here the runaway was most happily favored in finding friends. William Still, his brother, from whom he had been separated by kidnappers long years before, was discovered almost immediately in the office of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society; and Seth Concklin soon proffered himself as an agent to go into the South and bring away Peter Still's family. The fugitive himself first visited Alabama to see what could be done for his wife and children; but failing to accomplish anything he gratefully accepted the offer of the daring Philadelphian. Mr. Concklin expected to assume the character of a slave-owner and bring the Stills away as his servants; he found, however, that the steamboats on the Tennessee River were too irregular to be depended on. He therefore returned north to Indiana, and arranged for the escape of the slave family across that state to Canada. The story of his second attempt at the South has a tragic ending, notwithstanding its favorable beginning. Having made a safe start and a long journey of seven days and nights in a rowboat the whole party was captured in southwestern Indiana. A letter from the Rev. N. R. Johnston to William Still, written soon after the catastrophe, gives the following account of the affair: "On last Tuesday I mailed a letter to you, written by Seth Concklin. I presume you have received that letter. It gave an account of the rescue of the family of your brother. If that is the last news you have had from them I have very painful intelligence for you. They passed on (north) from near Princeton, where I saw them.... I think twenty-three miles above Vincennes, Ind., they were seized by a party of men, and lodged in jail. Telegraphic despatches were sent all through the South. I have since learned that the marshal of Evansville received a despatch from Tuscumbia to look out for them. By some means, he and the master, so says report, went to Vincennes and claimed the fugitives, chained Mr. Concklin, and hurried all off...."[498] In a postscript, the same letter gave the rumor of Seth Concklin's escape from the boat on which he was being carried South; but the newspapers brought reports of a different nature. Their statements represented that the man "Miller"--that is, Concklin--"was found drowned, with his hands and feet in chains and his skull fractured."[499] The version of the tragedy given by the claimant of the fugitives, McKiernon, was as follows: "Some time last march a white man by the name of Miller appeared in the nabourhood and abducted the above negroes, was caught at vincanes, Indi. with said negroes and was thare convicted of steling and remanded back to Ala. to Abide the penalty of the law and on his return met his Just reward by getting drowned at the mouth of cumberland River on the Ohio in attempting to make his escape."[500] Just how Concklin met his death will probably always remain a mystery. McKiernon's letter offered terms for the purchase of the poor slaves, but they were so exorbitant that they could not be accepted. Besides, it was not deemed proper to jeopardize the life of another agent on a mission so dangerous.
[498] Letter dated Evansville, Ind., March 31, 1851. Printed in Still's Underground Railroad Records, pp. 30, 31.
[499] Still, Underground Railroad Records, p. 31.
[500] Still, Underground Railroad Records, p. 35. Letter dated South Florence, Ala., Aug. 6, 1851.
It is well known that John Brown aided fugitive slaves whenever the opportunity occurred, as did his Puritan-bred father before him. We have no record, however, of his abducting slaves from the South except in the case of his famous raid into Missouri in 1858. This exploit has a peculiar interest for us, not only as one of the most notable abductions, but as being, in a special way, the prelude of that great plan in behalf of the enslaved that he sought to carry out at Harper's Ferry. After Captain Brown's return from the Eastern states to Kansas in 1858, he and his men encamped for a few days at Bain's Fort. While here, Brown was appealed to by a slave, Jim Daniels, the chattel of one James Lawrence, of Missouri. Daniels had heard of Captain Brown, and, securing a permit to go about and sell brooms, had used it in making his way to Brown's camp.[501] His prayer was "For help to get away," because he was soon to be sold, together with his wife, two children and a negro man.[502] Such a supplication could not be made in vain to John Brown. On the following night (December 20) Brown's raid into Missouri was made. Brown himself gives the account of it:[503] "Two small companies were made up to go to Missouri and forcibly liberate the five slaves, together with other slaves. One of these companies I assumed to direct. We proceeded to the place, surrounded the buildings, liberated the slaves, and also took certain property supposed to belong to the estate.
[501] Conversation with Samuel Harper and his wife, Jane Harper, the two surviving members of the company of slaves escorted to Canada by Brown in March, 1859. Their home since has been in or about Windsor. I found them there in the early part of August, 1895.
[502] Halloway, History of Kansas. Quoted from John Brown's letters, January, 1859 (pp. 539-545).
[503] In a letter written by Brown, January, 1859, to the New York Tribune, in which paper it was published. It was also published in the Lawrence (Kansas) Republican. See Sanborn's Life and Letters of John Brown, p. 481.
"We, however, learned before leaving that a portion of the articles we had taken belonged to a man living on the plantation as a tenant, and who was supposed to have no interest in the estate. We promptly returned to him all we had taken. We then went to another plantation, where we found five more slaves; took some property and two white men. We moved all slowly away into the territory for some distance and then sent the white men back, telling them to follow us as soon as they chose to do so. The other company freed one female slave, took some property, and, as I am informed, killed one white man (the master) who fought against liberation...."[504]
[504] Sanborn, Life and Letters of John Brown, pp. 482, 483; also Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown, pp. 219, 220.
The company responsible for the shooting of the slave-owner, David Cruse, was in charge of Kagi and Charles Stephens, also known as Whipple. When this party came to the house of Mr. Cruse the family had retired. There was no hesitation, however, on the part of the strangers in requesting quarters for the night. Mrs. Cruse, her suspicions fully aroused, handed her husband his pistol. Jean Harper, the slave-woman that was taken from this house, asserts that her master would certainly have fired upon the intruders had not Whipple used his revolver first, with deadly effect. When the two squads came together the march back to Bain's Fort was begun. On the way thither Brown asked the slaves if they wanted to be free, and then promised to take them to a free country. Thus was Brown led to undertake one of his boldest adventures, one of the boldest indeed in the history of the Underground Road. With a mere handful of men he purposed to escort his band of freedmen on a journey of twenty-five hundred miles to Canada, in the dead of winter, and surrounded by the dangers that the publicity of his foray and the announcement of a reward of three thousand dollars for his arrest were likely to bring upon him. Brown and his company tarried only one day at Bain's Fort; then proceeded northward by way of Topeka to the place of his friend, Dr. Doyle, five miles beyond, and then by way of Osawattomie, Holton and the house of Major J. B. Abbot near Lawrence, into Nebraska. Lawrence was reached January 24, 1859. At Holton a party of pursuers, two or three times as large as Brown's company, was dispersed in instant and ridiculous flight, and four prisoners and five horses were taken. The trip, after leaving Holton, was made amidst great perils. Under an escort of seventeen "Topeka boys" Brown pressed rapidly on to Nebraska City. At this point the passage of the Missouri was made on the ice, and the liberators with their charges arrived at Tabor in the first week of February. Here, Brown met with rebuff, "contrary to his expectation, and contrary to the whole former attitude of the people," we are told, "he was not welcomed, but, at a public meeting called for the purpose, was severely reprimanded as a disturber of the peace and safety of the village. Effecting a hasty departure from Tabor, and taking advantage of the protection offered by a few friendly families on the way, he and his party of fugitives came, on February 20, 1859, to Grinnell, Iowa, where they were cordially received by the Hon. J. B. Grinnell, who entertained them in his house. Brown's next stop was made at Springdale, which place he reached on February 25. Here the fugitives were distributed among the Quaker families for safety and rest before continuing the journey to Canada. But soon rumors were afloat of the coming of the United States marshal, and it became necessary to secure for the negroes railroad transportation to Chicago. Kagi and Stephens, disguised as sportsmen, walked to Iowa City, enlisted the services of Mr. William Penn Clark, an influential anti-slavery citizen of that place, and by his efforts, supplemented by those of Hon. J. B. Grinnell, a freight car was got and held in readiness at West Liberty. The negroes were then brought down from Springdale (distant but six miles) and, after spending a night in a grist-mill near the railway station, were ready to embark."[505] They were stowed away in the freight-car by Brown, Kagi and Stephens, and the car was made fast to a train from the West on the Chicago and Rock Island Road. "On reaching Chicago, Brown and his party were taken into friendly charge by Allen Pinkerton, the famous detective, and started for Detroit. On March 10 they were in Detroit and practically at their journey's end."[506] On the twelfth the freedmen were, under Brown's direction, ferried across the Detroit River to Windsor, Canada.
[505] Irving B. Richman, John Brown among the Quakers, and Other Sketches, pp. 46, 47, 48.
[506] Irving B. Richman, John Brown among the Quakers, and Other Sketches, pp. 46, 47, 48.
The trip from southern Kansas to the Canadian destination had consumed three weeks. The restoration of twelve persons to "their natural and inalienable rights with but one man killed"[507] was a result which Brown seems to have regarded as justifiable, but one the tragedy of which he certainly deplored.[508] The manner in which this result had been accomplished was highly dramatic, and created great excitement throughout the country, especially in Missouri. Brown's biographer, James Redpath, writing in 1860, speaks thus of the consternation in the invaded state: "When the news of the invasion of Missouri spread, a wild panic went with it, which in a few days resulted in clearing Bates and Vernon counties of their slaves. Large numbers were sold south; many ran into the Territory and escaped; others were removed farther inland. When John Brown made his invasion there were five hundred slaves in that district where there are not fifty negroes now."[509] The success of the expedition just narrated was well fitted to increase confidence in John Brown's determination, and to arouse enthusiasm among his numerous refugee friends in Canada. The story of the adventure was not unlikely to penetrate the remote regions of the South, and perhaps find lodgment in the retentive memories of many slaves. The publication in the New York Tribune of his letter defending his abduction of the Missouri chattels just as he was beginning his journey east shows that Brown was not unwilling to have his act widely known. It was almost the middle of March when Brown arrived in Canada; his letter had been made public in January; it had had ample time for circulation. Before he left Kansas he said significantly, "He would soon remove the seat of the trouble elsewhere,"[510] and it was but six months after his arrival in Canada that the attack on Harper's Ferry was made.
[507] Sanborn, The Life and Letters of John Brown, p. 483. See the letter of "The Parallels."
[508] Hinton, John Brown and His Men, p. 221.
[509] Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown, p. 221.
[510] Hinton, John Brown and His Men, p. 222, note.
For more than ten years John Brown had cherished a plan for the liberation of the slaves, in which abduction was to be in a measure employed. This plan he had revealed to Frederick Douglass as early as 1847. It is given in Douglass' words: "'The true object to be sought,' said Brown, 'is first of all to destroy the money value of slave property; and that can only be done by rendering such property insecure. My plan then is to take at first about twenty-five picked men, and begin on a small scale; supply them arms and ammunition; post them in squads of five on a line of twenty-five miles, the most persuasive and judicious of whom shall go down to the fields from time to time, as opportunity offers, and induce the slaves to join them, seeking and selecting the most restless and daring.'... With care and enterprise he thought he could soon gather a force of one hundred hardy men.... When these were properly drilled, ... they would run off the slaves in larger numbers, retain the brave and strong ones in the mountains, and send the weak and timid to the North by the Underground Railroad: his operations would be enlarged with increasing numbers, and would not be confined to one locality.... 'If,' said Brown, 'we could drive slavery out of one county, ... it would weaken the system throughout the state.' The enemy's country would afford subsistence, the fastnesses of the Alleghanies abundant protection, and a series of stations through Pennsylvania to the Canadian border a means of egress for timid slaves."[511]
[511] Life of Frederick Douglass, 1881, pp. 280, 281 and 318, 319. Also Hinton, John Brown and His Men, pp. 30, 31, 32.
The plot, as disclosed eleven years later to Richard J. Hinton (September, 1858) by Brown's lieutenant, Kagi, contains some additional details of interest. Hinton says: "The mountains of Virginia were named as the place of refuge, and as a country admirably adapted in which to carry on a guerilla warfare. In the course of the conversation, Harper's Ferry was mentioned as a point to be seized--but not held--on account of the arsenal. The white members of the company were to act as officers of different guerilla bands, which, under the general command of John Brown, were to be composed of Canadian refugees, and the Virginian slaves who would join them.... They anticipated, after the first blow had been struck, that, by the aid of the free and Canadian negroes who would join them, they could inspire confidence in the slaves, and induce them to rally. No intention was expressed of gathering a large body of slaves, and removing them to Canada. On the contrary, Kagi clearly stated, in answer to my inquiries, that the design was to make the fight in the mountains of Virginia, extending it to North Carolina and Tennessee, and also to the swamps of South Carolina, if possible. Their purpose was not the expatriation of one or a thousand slaves, but their liberation in the states wherein they were born, and were now held in bondage.... Kagi spoke of having marked out a chain of counties extending continuously through South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. He had traveled over a large portion of the region indicated, and from his own personal knowledge and with the assistance of the Canadian negroes who had escaped from those States, they had arranged a general plan of attack.... They expected to be speedily and constantly reinforced; first, by the arrival of those men who, in Canada, were anxiously looking and praying for the time of deliverance, and then by the slaves themselves.... The constitution adopted at Chatham [in the spring of 1858] was intended as the framework of organization among the emancipationists, to enable the leaders to effect a more complete control of their forces...."[512] A comparison of these two versions of Brown's plan of liberation leads to the conclusion that the abduction of slaves to the North was a measure to which the liberator never attached more importance than as a means of ridding his men of the care of helpless slaves; the brave he would use in organizing an insurrection amid the mountains of the Southern states that should wipe away the curse of slavery from the country.
[512] Hinton, John Brown and His Men, Appendix, pp. 673, 674, 675. Also Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown, pp. 203, 204, 206.
It will be remembered that the occasion, if not the cause, of John Brown's raid into Missouri was the solicitation of aid by a slave for himself and companions. Such prayers for succor were not infrequently addressed to abolitionists by those in bonds or by their refugee friends. In the anti-slavery host there were many whose principles wavered not under any test applied to them, and whose impulses urged them upon humanitarian missions, however hemmed in by difficulties and dangers. Among those who heard and answered the cry of the slave were the Rev. Charles T. Torrey, Captain Jonathan Walker, Mrs. Laura S. Haviland, Captain Daniel Drayton, Richard Dillingham, William L. Chaplin and Josiah Henson.
The variety of persons represented in this short, incomplete list is interesting: Mr. Torrey was a Congregational clergyman of New England stock, and had been educated at Yale College; Messrs. Walker and Drayton were masters of sailing vessels, and came from the states of Massachusetts and New Jersey respectively; Mrs. Haviland was a Wesleyan Methodist, who founded a school or institute in southeastern Michigan for both white and colored persons; Richard Dillingham was a Quaker school-teacher in Cincinnati, Ohio; William L. Chaplin began his professional life as a lawyer in eastern Massachusetts, but soon became the editor of an anti-slavery newspaper; and Josiah Henson was a fugitive slave, one of the founders of the Dawn Institute in Canada West. With the exception of the last named they were white persons, whose sense of the injustice of slavery caused them to take a stand that shut them out of that conventionally respectable society to which their birth, education and talents would have admitted them.
In 1838 Charles T. Torrey resigned from the pastorate of a Congregational church in Providence, Rhode Island, and relinquished ease and quiet to engage in the anti-slavery struggle then agitating the country. He became a lecturer and a newspaper correspondent, and, early in the forties, the editor of a paper called The Patriot, at Albany, New York. While acting as Washington correspondent for several Northern papers he attended a convention of slave-owners at Annapolis, Maryland, in 1842, and was thrust into jail on the score of being an abolitionist. He was released after several days, having been placed under bonds to keep the peace. While in prison he solemnly reconsecrated himself to the work of freeing the slaves. Within a year from this time a refugee entreated Mr. Torrey to help him bring his wife and children from Virginia. The errand was undertaken, but came to a most mournful end. Arrested and imprisoned, Mr. Torrey with others attempted to break jail; he was betrayed, however, and at length, December 30, 1843, sentenced to the penitentiary for six years. Under the severities of prison life Mr. Torrey's health gave way. His pardon was sought by friends, but mercy was withheld from a man the depth of whose conviction made recantation impossible. In December, 1844, he wrote: "I cannot afford to concede any truth or principle to get out of prison. I am not rich enough." While his trial was pending he wrote his friend, Henry B. Stanton: "If I am a guilty man, I am a very guilty one; for I have aided nearly four hundred slaves to escape to freedom, the greater part of whom would probably, but for my exertions, have died in slavery." Concerning this confession Henry Wilson writes: "This statement was corroborated by the testimony of Jacob Gibbs, a colored man, who was Mr. Torrey's chief assistant in his efforts."[513] On May 9, 1846, Mr. Torrey died in prison. In death as in life, the lesson of the clergyman's career proclaimed but one truth, the injustice of slavery. When the remains of Mr. Torrey were conveyed to Boston for interment in the beautiful cemetery at Mt. Auburn, the use of Park Street Church, at first granted, was later refused to the brother-in-law of the dead minister, although as a worshipper he was entitled to Christian courtesy. Tremont Temple was procured for the funeral services, and was thronged by a multitude eager to do honor to a life of self-sacrifice, and show disapproval of the affront to the dead. A large meeting in Faneuil Hall on the evening of the funeral day paid tribute to the memory of the liberator. The occasion was made memorable by a poem by James Russell Lowell, and addresses by General Fessenden of Maine, Henry B. Stanton and Dr. Walter Channing. Whittier wrote: "His work for the poor and helpless was well and nobly done. In the wild woods of Canada, around many a happy fireside and holy family altar, his name is on the lips of God's poor. He put his soul in their soul's stead; he gave his life for those who had no claim on his love save that of human brotherhood."[514]
[513] Wilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Vol. II, p. 80.
[514] Quoted by Wilson, in his History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Vol. II, p. 80.
In 1844, the year after Mr. Torrey's disastrous attempt to abduct a slave-family, Captain Jonathan Walker was made a victim of the law on account of friendly offices undertaken in behalf of some trusting negroes. Once, while on the coast of Florida, Mr. Walker consented to ferry seven slaves from Pensacola to one of the neighboring Bahama Islands, where they might enjoy the freedom vouchsafed by English law. In the open boat used for the purpose Captain Walker suffered sunstroke, and on this account his craft was overhauled, and the escaping party was taken into custody. After two trials Captain Walker was condemned to punishments that remind one strongly of the barbarous penalties inflicted upon offenders in the reign of Charles the First of England: he was sentenced to stand in the pillory; to be branded on the hand with the letters S. S. (slave-stealer); to pay a fine and serve a term of imprisonment for each slave assisted; to pay the costs of prosecution; and to stand committed until his fines should be paid. His treatment in prison was brutal, but he was not obliged to endure it long, for, by the intervention of friends, his fines were paid, and he was released in the summer of 1848. Subjected to indignities and disgrace in the South, Captain Walker was the recipient of many demonstrations of approval on his return to the North. Whittier blazoned his stigmas into a prophecy of deliverance for the slave. In a poem of welcome the distinguished Quaker wrote:
"Then lift that manly right hand, bold ploughman of the wave, Its branded palm shall prophesy 'Salvation to the Slave.' Hold up its fire-wrought language that whoso reads may feel His heart swell strong within him, his sinews change to steel."[515]
These words were set to music by Mr. George W. Clark, and sung by him with thrilling effect at many anti-slavery gatherings throughout New England. Mr. Walker became at once a conspicuous witness against the slave power in the great trial that was then going forward at the bar of public opinion. At Providence, Rhode Island, his return from the Florida prison was heralded, and a large reception was given him, attended by the Hon. Owen Lovejoy, brother of the martyr Lovejoy, Milton Clark, the white slave, and Lewis, his brother. It is said that three thousand people crowded the seats, aisles and doorways of the reception hall. In company with Mr. George W. Clark, Captain Walker was drafted into the work of arousing the masses, and the two agitators received a cordial hearing at many New England meetings. Doubtless the recital of the Captain's experiences intensified anti-slavery feeling throughout the Northern states.[516]
[515] Liberator, Aug. 15, 1845, "The Branded Hand," quoted in part by Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Vol. II, p. 83; Whittier's Poetical Works, Vol. III, Riverside edition, 1896, p. 114.
[516] Reminiscences written by George W. Clark, by request, have been used to secure an intimate acquaintance with some of the men engaged in the underground service.
About 1847, Mrs. Laura S. Haviland accepted a mission to find the family of one John White, a slave, who had escaped from the South and was serving as a farm-hand in the neighborhood of Mrs. Haviland's school in southeastern Michigan. Mrs. Haviland went to Cincinnati where she consulted with the Vigilance Committee, and thence to Rising Sun, Indiana, to secure the services of several of John White's colored friends. Here a plan was formed for Mrs. Haviland to go into Kentucky to the plantation where the family lived, and, disguised as a berry picker, see the wife, inform her of her husband's whereabouts, and offer to assist in her rescue. Accomplishing this errand and returning across the border into Indiana, Mrs. Haviland awaited the slave-woman's appearance; but her escape had been prevented by the vigilance evoked on account of the operations of counterfeiters in Kentucky. Then John White started South intent on saving his wife and children from slavery, but his efforts also were unsuccessful, and he was thrown into a Kentucky jail. However, he was soon released by Laura Haviland, who purchased him for three hundred and fifty dollars.[517]
[517] Laura S. Haviland, A Woman's Life Work, pp. 91-110.
In the summer of 1847, Captain Daniel Drayton sailed to Washington with a cargo of oysters, and while his boat was lying at the wharf he was cautiously approached by a negro, who wanted to get passage North for a woman and five children. The negro said the woman was a slave but that she had, under an agreement with her master, more than paid for her liberty, and when she asked for her "free papers" the master only answered by threatening to sell her South.[518] Captain Drayton allowed the woman and her children and a niece to stow themselves on board his vessel, and he soon landed them at Frenchtown, to the great joy of the woman's husband, who was awaiting them there.
[518] Personal Memoir of Daniel Drayton, 1853, p. 23.
It was by the suggestion of these fugitives that Captain Drayton undertook his important expedition with the schooner Pearl in 1848. On the evening of April 18 his boat was made fast at one of the Washington docks ready to receive a company of fugitives. The time seemed auspicious. The establishment of the new French Republic was being celebrated in the city by a grand torchlight procession, and slaves were left for the most part to their own devices. Thus favored, a large number escaped to the small craft of Captain Drayton and were carefully stowed away. The start was made without incident, and the vessel continued quietly on her course to the mouth of the Potomac; there, contrary winds were encountered, and the Pearl was brought to shelter in Cornfield Harbor, one hundred and forty miles from Washington. The disappearance of seventy-six slaves at one time caused great excitement at the Capitol. The method of their departure was revealed by a colored hackman, who had driven two of the fugitives to the wharf. An armed steamer was sent in pursuit, and the Pearl was obliged to surrender. Her arrival under guard at Washington was the occasion for rejoicing to an infuriated mob of several thousand persons. The slaves were committed to jail as runaways; their helpers were with difficulty protected from murderous violence, and were escorted to the city prison. Under instructions from the district attorney twenty-four indictments were found against both Captain Drayton and his mate, Mr. Sayres. When the trial began in July, the list of indictments presented comprised forty-one counts against each of these prisoners. Three persons were prosecuted; and the aggregate amount of their bail was two hundred and twenty-eight thousand dollars. After two trials the accused were heavily sentenced, and remanded to jail until their fines should be paid. The sentence passed upon Captain Drayton required the payment of fines and costs together amounting to ten thousand and sixty dollars, and until paid the prisoner must remain in jail indefinitely.[519] His accomplices were treated with equal severity. Such penalties were accounted monstrous by the friends of the convicted, and efforts were constantly made to have the sentences mitigated or revoked. In 1852 Senator Sumner interested himself in behalf of the imprisoned liberators; and President Fillmore was induced to grant them an unconditional pardon.
[519] Personal Memoir of Daniel Drayton, p. 102.
The occurrence of these events at the national capital during a session of Congress, gave them a significance they would not otherwise have had. That they would become the subject of much fierce debate was assured by the presence in Congress of such champions as Messrs. Giddings and Hale for the anti-slavery party, and Messrs. Foote, Toombs, Calhoun and Davis for the pro-slavery party. Mr. Calhoun expressed the view of the South when, speaking upon a resolution brought before the Senate by Mr. Hale, April 20, he recorded himself as being in favor of an act making penal "these atrocities, these piratical attempts, these wholesale captures, these robberies of seventy odd of our slaves at a single grasp." In this and in similar utterances made at the time, he foreshadowed the determination of the South to have a law that would restrain if possible from all temptations to aid or abet the escape of slaves. The result of this determination is seen in the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.
This notable voyage of the Pearl, which caused so great an excitement at the time, has been frequently chronicled, while the experiences of the young Quaker, Richard Dillingham, have been seldom recounted, though marked by the same elements of daring and resignation. In December, 1848, the close of the year of the Pearl's adventure, Mr. Dillingham was solicited by some colored people in Cincinnati, Ohio, to go to Tennessee and bring away their relatives, who were slaves under a "hard master" at Nashville. He entered upon the project, made his way into the very heart of the South and arranged with the slaves for their escape. At the time appointed his three protégés were placed in a closed carriage and driven rapidly away, Mr. Dillingham following on horseback. The party got as far as Cumberland bridge, where they were betrayed by a colored man in whom confidence had been placed, and the fugitives and their benefactor were arrested. Mr. Dillingham was committed to jail, and his bail was fixed at seven thousand dollars. At his trial, which occurred April 12, 1849, Dillingham confessed, and asked for clemency, urging by way of explanation the dependence of his aged parents upon him as a stay and protection. As to the crime for which he was held he said frankly: "I have violated your laws.... But I was prompted to it by feelings of humanity. It has been suspected ... that I was leagued with a fraternity who are combined for the purpose of committing such offences as the one with which I am charged. But ... the impression is false, I alone am guilty, I alone committed the offence, and I alone must suffer the penalty...." Yielding to his plea for clemency the jury returned a verdict for three years in the penitentiary, the mildest sentence allowed by the law for the offence. The Nashville Daily Gazette of April 13 did not conceal the fact that Mr. Dillingham belonged to a respectable family, and stated that he was not without the sympathy of those who attended the trial.[520] The prisoner himself was most grateful for the consideration shown him, and, in a letter to his betrothed written two days after his trial, he spoke of his short sentence with the deepest gratitude and thankfulness toward the court and jury and the prosecutors themselves. "My sentence," he added, "is far more lenient than my most sanguine hopes have ever anticipated."[521] The termination of the imprisonment of Dillingham was most melancholy. Separated from his aged parents, to whom he was devoted, and from the woman that was to have become his wife, his health soon proved unequal to the severe experiences of prison life; his keepers after nine months gave him respite from heavy work about the prison, and assigned him the place of steward in the hospital. He had not long been in his new station when cholera broke out among the convicts, and his services were in constant demand. His strength was soon exhausted, and about the first of August, 1850, he succumbed to the dread epidemic raging in the prison.[522]
[520] A. L. Benedict, Memoir of Richard Dillingham, 1852, p. 18. Also Harriet Beecher Stowe, A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, pp. 58, 59.
[521] A. L. Benedict, Memoir of Richard Dillingham, p. 18.
[522] This account of Richard Dillingham is based on the Memoir written by his friend, A. L. Benedict, a Quaker, and published in 1852. Abridged versions of this memoir will be found in the Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, Appendix, pp. 713-718; and Howe's Historical Collections of Ohio, Vol. II, p. 590.
It was the year in which young Dillingham came to his melancholy end that Mr. William L. Chaplin was found guilty of an offence similar to that for which Dillingham suffered.[523] When Mr. Charles T. Torrey, editor of the Albany Patriot, was sent to the Maryland penitentiary for aiding slaves to escape, Mr. Chaplin assumed control of Mr. Torrey's paper. Like his predecessor, Mr. Chaplin spent part of his time in the city of Washington reporting congressional proceedings for the Patriot, and like him could not be deaf to an entreaty in behalf of slaves. In 1850 Mr. Chaplin was prevailed upon to attempt the release from bondage of two negroes, one the property of Robert Toombs, the other, of Alexander H. Stephens. The sequel to this enterprise is thus recounted by Mr. George W. Clark, an intimate friend of General Chaplin's: "Suspicion was somehow awakened and watch set; the General was intercepted, arrested and imprisoned, and the attempt failed. The General gave bail, Secretary Seward being on his bond for five thousand dollars. While passing through Baltimore on his return home he was rearrested and put into ... prison there, on a charge of aiding slaves to escape from that state. The bonds required were twenty thousand dollars.... It was arranged that William R. Smith, a noble and generous-hearted Quaker, and George W. Clark should traverse the State and appeal to the friends of humanity for contributions to save the General from the fate we feared awaited him, for if his case went to trial he would probably be sentenced to fifteen years in their State Prison, which would no doubt amount to a death sentence. William R. Smith and I went to work in live earnest. An abolition merchant, Mr. Chittenden of New York, gave us three thousand dollars, the always giving Gerrit Smith gave us five thousand, other friends gave us two thousand, but we still lacked ten thousand.... We were in great distress and anxiety over the extreme situation when the generous Gerrit Smith voluntarily came again to the rescue and advanced the other ten thousand dollars." It was in this way, through the most open-handed generosity of his friends, that Mr. Chaplin was enabled to go free after being in jail only five months. Prudence dictated the sacrificing of the excessive bail rather than the braving of fortune through a trial certain to end in conviction.
[523] Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Vol. II, pp. 80-82.
We have thus far considered the recorded efforts toward the abduction of slaves made by six persons in response to the entreaty of the slaves concerned or of some of their friends. It is noteworthy that in the case of five of these persons their efforts, first or last, were calamitous, and that all were white persons. We come now to the case of Josiah Henson, exceptional in the series, by reason of the uniform success of his endeavors, and because of his race connections. Born and bred a slave, Henson at length resolved to extricate himself and family from the abjectness of their situation. "With a degree of prudence, courage and address," says Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, "which can scarcely find a parallel in any history, he managed with his wife and two children to escape to Canada. Here he learned to read, and, by his superior talent and capacity for management, laid the foundation for the fugitive settlement of Dawn...."[524] The possession of the qualities indicated in this characterization of Mr. Henson rendered him equal to such emergencies as arose in his missions to the South in search of friends and relatives of Canadian refugees.
[524] A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1853, Boston edition of 1896, pp. 274, 275; also Father Henson's Story of His Own Life, 1858, chaps. xii, xiii.
Mr. Henson has left us the record of two journeys to the Southern states, made at the instance of James Lightfoot, a refugee of Fort Erie, Ontario.[525] Lightfoot had a number of relatives in slavery near Maysville, Kentucky, and was ready to use the little property he had accumulated during the short period of his freedom in securing the liberation of his family. Beginning the journey alone, Mr. Henson travelled on foot about four hundred miles through New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, to his destination. The fact that the Lightfoots decided it to be unsafe to make their escape at this time did not prevent their visitor from agreeing to come a year later for them, nor did it prevent him from returning to Canada with companions. He went nearly fifty miles into the interior of Kentucky, where, as he learned, there was a large party eager to set out for a land of freedom, but waiting until an experienced leader should appear. In Bourbon County he found about thirty fugitives collected from different states, and with these he started northward. Mr. Henson gives his itinerary in the following words: "We succeeded in crossing the Ohio River in safety, and arrived in Cincinnati the third night after our departure. Here we procured assistance; and, after stopping a short time to rest, we started for Richmond, Indiana. This is a town which had been settled by Quakers, and there we found friends indeed, who at once helped us on our way, without loss of time; and after a difficult journey of two weeks through the wilderness, reached Toledo, Ohio, ... and there we took passage for Canada."[526] In the autumn of the year following this abduction Mr. Henson again visited Kentucky. This time several of the Lightfoots were willing to go North with him, and a Saturday night after dark was chosen as the time for setting out. In spite of some untoward happenings during the early part of the journey, and of pursuit even to Lake Erie, the daring guide and his party of four or five were put aboard a sailing-vessel and safely landed on Canadian soil. "Words cannot describe," writes Mr. Henson, "the feelings experienced by my companions as they neared the shore; their bosoms were swelling with inexpressible joy as they mounted the seats of the boat, ready eagerly to spring forward, that they might touch the soil of the freeman. And when they reached the shore they danced and wept for joy, and kissed the earth on which they first stepped, no longer the Slave, but the Free." Mr. Henson asserts, that "by similar means to those above narrated," he was "instrumental in delivering one hundred and eighteen human beings" from bondage.[527]
[525] Father Henson's Story of His Own Life, chaps. xvi, xvii.
[526] Father Henson's Story of His Own Life, pp. 149, 150.
[527] Ibid., pp. 162, 163.
Important and interesting among the abductors are the few individuals that we must call, for want of a better designation, the devotees of abduction. We have already considered a person of this type in the odd character, John Fairfield, the Virginian. There are several other persons known to have been not less zealous than he in their violation of what were held in the South to be legitimate property rights. The names of these adventurous liberators are Rial Cheadle, Alexander M. Ross, Elijah Anderson, John Mason and Harriet Tubman.
Rial Cheadle appears to have been a familiar figure among the abolitionists of southeastern Ohio. Mr. Thomas L. Gray, a reputable citizen of Deavertown, Ohio, for many years engaged in underground operations in Morgan County, vouches for the extended and aggressive work of Cheadle, who frequently stopped at Mr. Gray's house for rest and refreshment on his midnight trips to Zanesville and stations farther on.[528] Cheadle seems to have been a man of eccentricities, if not of actual aberration of mind; or his oddities may have been assumed to prevent himself being taken seriously by those he wanted to despoil. He is said to have lived in Windsor Township, Morgan County, Ohio, on the site of the present village of Stockport, and to have engaged in teaching and other occupations for a time; finally, however, he devoted himself to the work of the Underground Road. He indulged himself in old-time minstrelsy, composing songs, which he sang for the entertainment of himself and others, and he thereby increased, doubtless, the reputation for harmless imbecility, which he seems to have borne among those ignorant of his purpose. He paid occasional visits to Virginia. "As a result it is said the slaves were frequently missing, but as his arrangements were carefully made the object of his visit was usually successful.... His habits were so well known to those who gave food and shelter to the negro that they were seldom unprepared for a nocturnal visit from him.... After the Emancipation, he said he was like Simeon of old, 'ready to depart.' He died in 1867."[529]
[528] The New Lexington (Ohio) Tribune, winter of 1885-1886. Some information in regard to Cheadle appears in a series of articles on the Underground Railroad contributed to this paper by Mr. Gray.
[529] History of Morgan County, Ohio, 1886, published by Charles Robertson, M.D., article on the Underground Railroad.
A man differing greatly from Rial Cheadle in all respects, save the intensity of his compassion for the slave, was the abductor Alexander M. Ross. Born in 1832 in the Province of Ontario, Canada, Mr. Ross sought, when a young man, to inform himself upon the question of American slavery, not only from the teachings of some of the foremost anti-slavery leaders of England and the United States, but also from the recital of their experiences by a number of fugitive slaves that had found an asylum in the province of his birth. While he was engaged in making inquiries among the refugees, Uncle Tom's Cabin was published, and brought conviction to many minds. "To me," writes Mr. Ross, "it was a command. A deep and settled conviction impressed me that it was my duty to help the oppressed to freedom.... My resolution was taken to devote all my energies to let the oppressed go free."[530] In accordance with this resolution young Ross left Canada in November, 1856. He visited Gerrit Smith, at Peterboro, New York, who was ever ready to encourage the liberation of the slave, and who went with him to Boston, New York and Philadelphia, and westward into the states of Ohio and Indiana. The purpose of these travels was, evidently, to acquaint the intending liberator with the means to be employed by him in his new work, and with the persons in connection with whom he was to operate. Indeed, Mr. Ross distinctly says, in speaking of these visits, "I was initiated into a knowledge of the relief societies, and the methods adopted to circulate information among the slaves of the South; the routes to be taken by the slaves, after reaching the so-called free states; and the relief posts, where shelter and aid for transportation could be obtained."[531] His chief supporters, besides Gerrit Smith, were Theodore Parker and Lewis Tappan.[532]
[530] Dr. Alexander Milton Ross, Recollections and Experiences of an Abolitionist; from 1855 to 1865, 2d ed., 1876, p. 3. The first edition of this book was issued in 1867. For this and other works of Mr. Ross see Prominent Men of Canada, pp. 118, 119, 120.
[531] Ross, Recollections and Experiences of an Abolitionist, p. 5.
[532] Ibid., p. 8.
During his expeditions Mr. Ross spread the knowledge of Canada among the slaves in the neighborhood of a number of Southern cities, such as Richmond, Virginia, Nashville, Tennessee, Columbus and Vicksburg, Mississippi, Selma and Huntsville, Alabama, Augusta, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina. His method of procedure was fixed in its details only after his arrival upon the scene of action; an ostensible interest or purpose was kept to the fore, and the real business of spreading the gospel of escape was reserved for clandestine conferences with slaves chosen on the score of intelligence and trustworthiness. These persons were informed how Canada could be best reached, and were told to spread with care the information among their fellows. If any decided within a few days that they would act upon the advice given them, explicit instructions were repeated to them, and they were supplied with compasses, knives, pistols, money and such provisions as they needed. Thus equipped, they were started on their long and dangerous journey. Occasionally, when circumstances seemed to require it, Mr. Ross would personally guide the party to a station of the Underground Road, or even accompany it to Canada; otherwise he betook himself in haste to some new field of labor. The unimpeachable character of Mr. Ross, and the early appearance of the first edition of his Recollections make his reminiscences especially valuable and worth quoting. Mr. Ross began his work at Richmond early in the year 1857. His narrative of his first venture is as follows: "On my arrival in Richmond, I went to the house of a gentleman to whom I had been directed, and who was known at the North to be a friend of freedom. I spent a few weeks in quietly determining upon the best plans to adopt. Having finally decided upon my course, I invited a number of the most intelligent, active and reliable slaves to meet me at the house of a colored preacher, on a Sunday evening. On the night appointed for this meeting, forty-two slaves came to hear what prospect there was for an escape from bondage.... I explained to them my ... purpose in visiting the slave states, the various routes from Virginia to Ohio and Pennsylvania, and the names of friends in border towns who would help them on to Canada. I requested them to circulate this information discreetly among all upon whom they could rely.... I requested as many as were ready to accept my offer, to come to the same house on the following Sunday evening, prepared to take the 'Underground Railroad' to Canada.
"On the evening appointed nine stout, intelligent young men declared their determination to gain their freedom, or die in the attempt. To each I gave a few dollars in money, a pocket compass, knife, pistol, and as much cold meat and bread as each could carry with ease. I again explained to them the route.... I never met more apt students than these poor fellows.... They were to travel only by night, resting in some secure spot during the day. Their route was to be through Pennsylvania, to Erie on Lake Erie, and from thence to Canada.... I learned, many months after, that they all had arrived safely in Canada. (In 1863 I enlisted three of these brave fellows in a colored regiment in Philadelphia, for service in the war that gave freedom to their race.)"[533]
[533] Ross, Recollections and Experiences of an Abolitionist, pp. 10, 11, 12.
Mr. Ross was a naturalist, and his tastes in this direction furnished him many good pretexts for excursions. A journey into the far South was made in the guise of an ornithologist. Describing his trip to the cotton states Mr. Ross says: "Finally my preparations were completed, and, supplied with a shot-gun and materials for preserving bird-skins, I began my journey into the interior of the country.... Soon after my arrival at Vicksburg I was busily engaged in collecting ornithological specimens. I made frequent visits to the surrounding plantations, seizing every favorable opportunity to converse with the more intelligent slaves. Many of these negroes had heard of Canada from the negroes brought from Virginia and the border slave states; but the impression they had was, that Canada being so far away, it would be useless to try and reach it. On these excursions I was usually accompanied by one or two smart, intelligent slaves, to whom I felt I could trust the secret of my visit. In this way I succeeded in circulating a knowledge of Canada, and the best means of reaching that country, to all the plantations for many miles around Vicksburg.... I continued my labors in the vicinity of Vicksburg for several weeks and then went to Selma, Alabama."[534]
[534] Ibid., pp. 37, 38, 39.
"In the ways described in these selections Mr. Ross induced companies of slaves to exchange bondage for freedom. How many he thus liberated we have, of course, no means of knowing. The risks he ran were such as to put his life in danger almost constantly. Betrayal would have ended, probably, in a lynching; and the disappearance simultaneously of a band of fugitives and the unknown naturalist was a coincidence not only sure to be noticed, but also widely published, thus increasing the dangers many fold. It is unnecessary to recount the occasions upon which the scientist found himself in danger of falling a victim to his zeal in befriending slaves. Suffice it to say, his adventures all had a fortunate termination. Mr. Ross is best known by his numerous works relating to the flora and fauna of Canada, for which he received recognition among learned men, and decoration at the hands of European princes."[535]
[535] Mr. Richard J. Hinton in his book entitled John Brown and His Men, p. 171, while writing of Captain Brown's convention at Chatham, Canada West, mentions Mr. Ross in the following words: "Dr. Alexander M. Ross of Toronto, Canada, physician and ornithologist, who is still living, honored by all who know him, then a young (white) man who devoted himself for years to aiding the American slave, was a frequent visitor to this section (Chatham). He was a faithful friend of John Brown, efficient as an ally, seeking to serve under all conditions of need and peril."
More or less extended notices of Dr. Ross and his work have appeared during the past few years; for example, in the _Toronto Globe_, Dec. 3 and 10, 1892; in the _Canadian Magazine of Politics, Science, Art and Literature_, May, 1896; and in the Chicago Daily Inter-Ocean, March 18, 1896.
Elijah Anderson, a negro, has been described by Mr. Rush R. Sloane, an underground veteran of northwestern Ohio, as the "general superintendent" of the underground system in this section of Ohio. Mr. Anderson's work began before the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, and continued until the time of his incarceration in the state prison at Frankfort, Kentucky, where he died in 1857. During this period his activity must have been unceasing, for he is quoted as having said in 1855 that he had conducted in all more than a thousand fugitives from slavery to freedom, having brought eight hundred away after the passage of the act of 1850. Not all of these persons were piloted to Sandusky, although that city was the point to which Anderson usually conveyed his passengers. After the opening of the Cleveland and Cincinnati Railroad he took many to Cleveland.[536]
[536] The Firelands Pioneer, July, 1888, p. 44.
The last two of the devotees of abduction to be considered in this chapter are persons that were themselves fugitive slaves, John Mason and Harriet Tubman.
Our only source of information about John Mason is an account printed in 1860, by the Rev. W. M. Mitchell, a colored missionary sent to minister to the refugees of Toronto by the American Baptist Free Mission Society.[537] This may be accepted as a credible source. The author has printed in the little book in which the account appears testimonials that serve to identify him, but better than these are the references found in the body of the book to underground matters pertaining to southern Ohio that have been made familiar through other channels of information. The statements of Mr. Mitchell, thus supported, lend the color of probability to other statements of his not corroborated by any information now to be obtained, especially since these are in keeping with known manifestations of liberating zeal. We may therefore use the narrative relating to John Mason with a certain degree of assurance as to its accuracy.
[537] See p. 3, Chapter I.
While engaged in Underground Railroad operations in Ohio Mr. Mitchell became acquainted with John Mason, a fugitive slave from Kentucky. He had obtained his liberty but was not content to see his fellows go without theirs, and "was willing," wrote Mr. Mitchell, "to risk the forfeiture of his own freedom, that he might, peradventure, secure the liberty of some. He commenced the perilous business of going into the State from whence he had escaped and especially into his old neighborhood, decoying off his brethren to Canada.... This slave brought to my house in nineteen months 265 human beings whom he had been instrumental in redeeming from slavery; all of whom I had the privilege of forwarding to Canada by the Underground Railroad.... He kept no record as to the number he had assisted in this way. I have only been able, from conversations with him on the subject, to ascertain about 1,300, whom he delivered to abolitionists to be forwarded to Canada. Poor man! he was finally captured and sold. He had been towards the interior of Kentucky, about fifty miles; it was while returning with four slaves that he was captured.... Daylight came on them, they concealed themselves under stacks of corn, which served them for food, as well as protection from the weather and passers-by.... Late in the afternoon of that day, in the distance was heard the baying of negro-hounds on their track; escape was impossible.... When the four slaves saw their masters they said, 'J. M., we can't fight.' He endeavored to rally their courage ... but to no purpose.... Their leader resisted, but both his arms were broken, and his body otherwise abused.... Though he had changed his name, as most slaves do on running away, he told his master's name and to him he was delivered. He was eventually sold and was taken to New Orleans.... Yet in one year, five months, and twenty days, I received a letter from this man, John Mason, from Hamilton, Canada West. Let a man walk abroad on Freedom's Sunny Plains, and having once drunk of its celestial 'stream whereof maketh glad the city of our God,' afterward reduce this man to slavery, it is next to an impossibility to retain him in slavery."[538]
[538] Mitchell, The Underground Railroad, p. 20 et seq.
Harriet Tubman, like John Mason, did not reckon the value of her own liberty in comparison with the liberty of others who had not tasted its sweets. Like him, she saw in the oppression of her race the sufferings of the enslaved Israelites, and was not slow to demand that the Pharaoh of the South should let her people go. She was known to many of the anti-slavery leaders of her generation; her personality and her power were such that none of them ever forgot the high virtues of this simple black woman. Governor William H. Seward, of New York, wrote of her: "I have known Harriet long, and a nobler, higher spirit or a truer, seldom dwells in human form."[539] Gerrit Smith declared: "I am convinced that she is not only truthful, but that she has a rare discernment, and a deep and sublime philanthropy."[540] John Brown introduced her to Wendell Phillips in Boston, saying, "I bring you one of the best and bravest persons on this continent--General Tubman as we call her."[541] Frederick Douglass testified: "Excepting John Brown, of sacred memory, I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people than you have. Much that you have done would seem improbable to those who do not know you as I know you...."[542] Mr. F. B. Sanborn said: "She has often been in Concord, where she resided at the houses of Emerson, Alcott, the Whitneys, the Brooks family, Mrs. Horace Mann, and other well-known persons. They all admired and respected her, and nobody doubted the reality of her adventures...."[543] The Rev. S. J. May knew Harriet personally, and speaks with admiration, not only of the work she did in emancipating numbers of her own people, but also of the important services she rendered the nation during the Civil War both as a nurse and as "the leader of soldiers in scouting-parties and raids. She seemed to know no fear and scarcely ever fatigue. They called her their Moses."[544]
[539] Sarah H. Bradford, Harriet the Moses of Her People, p. 76. See also Appendix, p. 137. These testimonials were given in 1868 and were printed in connection with a short biography of Harriet in the year mentioned. The first edition of this biography has not been accessible to me, but it is mentioned by the Rev. Samuel J. May in his Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict, published the following year. The second edition of the book appeared in 1886.
[540] Ibid., p. 139.
[541] Hinton, John Brown and His Men, p. 173.
[542] Mrs. Bradford, Harriet the Moses of Her People, p. 135.
[543] Ibid., pp. 136, 137.
[544] Ibid., p. 406.
The name, Moses, was that by which this woman was commonly known. She earned it by the qualities of leadership displayed in conducting bands of slaves through devious ways and manifold perils out of their "land of Egypt." She first learned what liberty was for herself about the year 1849. She made her way from Maryland, her home as a slave, to Philadelphia, and there by industry gathered together a sum of money with which to begin her humane and self-imposed labors. In December, 1850, she went to Baltimore and abducted her sister and two children. A few months later she brought away another company of three persons, one of whom was her brother. From this time on till the outbreak of the War of the Rebellion her excursions were frequent. She is said to have accomplished nineteen such trips, and emancipated over three hundred slaves.[545] As may be surmised, she had encouragement in her undertakings; but her main dependence was upon her own efforts. All her wages were laid aside for the purpose of emancipating her people. Whenever she had secured a sufficient sum, she would disappear from her Northern home, work her passage South, and meet the band of expectant slaves, whom she had forewarned of her coming in some mysterious way.
[545] James Freeman Clarke, Anti-Slavery Days, pp. 81, 82. Also M. G. McDougall, Fugitive Slaves, p. 62.
Her sagacity was one of her most marked traits; it was displayed constantly in her management of her little caravans. Thus she would take the precaution to start with her pilgrims on Saturday night so that they could be well along on their journey before they were advertised. Posters giving descriptions of the runaways and offering a considerable reward for their arrest were a common means of making public the loss of slave property. Harriet often paid a negro to follow the man who posted the descriptions of her companions and tear them down. When there were babies in the party she sometimes drugged them with paregoric and had them carried in baskets. She knew where friends could be found that would give shelter to her weary freedmen. If at any stage of the journey she were compelled to leave her companions and forage for supplies she would disclose herself on her return through the strains of a favorite song:--
Dark and thorny is de pathway, Where de pilgrim makes his ways; But beyond dis vale of sorrow, Lie de fields of endless days.
Sometimes when hard pressed by pursuers she would take a train southward with her companions; she knew that no one would suspect fugitives travelling in that direction. Harriet was a well-known visitor at the offices of the anti-slavery societies in Philadelphia and New York, and at first she seems to have been content if her protégés arrived safely among friends in either of these cities; but after she comprehended the Fugitive Slave Law she preferred to accompany them all the way to Canada. "I wouldn't," she said, "trust Uncle Sam wid my people no longer."[546] She knew the need of discipline in effecting her rough, overland marches, and she therefore required strict obedience of her followers. The discouragement of an individual could not be permitted to endanger the liberty, and safety of the whole party; accordingly she sometimes strengthened the fainting heart by threatening to use her revolver, and declaring, "Dead niggers tell no tales, you go on or die." She was not less lenient with herself. The safety of her companions was her chief concern; she would not allow her labors to be lightened by any course likely to increase the chances of their discovery. On one occasion, while leading a company, she experienced a feeling that danger was near; unhesitatingly she decided to ford a river near by, because she must do so to be safe. Her followers were afraid to cross, but Harriet, despite the severity of the weather (the month was March), and her ignorance of the depth of the stream, walked resolutely into the water and led the way to the opposite shore. It was found that officers were lying in wait for the party on the route first intended.
[546] Mrs. Bradford, Harriet the Moses of Her People, p. 39.
Like many of her race Harriet was a thorough-going mystic. The Quaker, Thomas Garrett, said of her: "... I never met with any person, of any color, who had more confidence in the voice of God, as spoken to her soul. She has frequently told me that she talked with God, and he talked with her, every day of her life, and she has declared to me that she felt no more fear of being arrested by her former master, or any other person, when in his immediate neighborhood, than she did in the State of New York, or Canada, for she said she never ventured only where God sent her. Her faith in the Supreme Power truly was great."[547] This faith never deserted her in her times of peril. She explained her many deliverances as Harriet Beecher Stowe accounted for the power and effect of Uncle Tom's Cabin. She insisted it was all God's doing. "Jes so long as he wanted to use me," said Mrs. Tubman, "he would take keer of me, an' when he didn't want me no longer, I was ready to go. I always tole him, I'm gwine to hole stiddy on to you, an' you've got to see me trou."[548]
[547] Mrs. Bradford, Harriet the Moses of Her People, pp. 83, 84.
[548] Ibid., p. 61.
In 1857, Mrs. Tubman made what has been called her most venturesome journey. She had brought several of her brothers and sisters from slavery, but had not hit upon a method to release her aged parents. The chief difficulty lay in the fact that they were unable to walk long distances. At length she devised a plan and carried it through. A homemade conveyance was patched together, and an old horse brought into use. Mr. Garrett describes the vehicle as consisting of a pair of old chaise-wheels, with a board on the axle to sit on and another board swinging by ropes from the axle on which to rest their feet. This rude contrivance Harriet used in conveying her parents to the railroad, where they were put aboard the cars for Wilmington; and she followed them in her novel vehicle. At Wilmington, Friend Garrett was sought out by the bold abductor, and he furnished her with money to take all of them to Canada. He afterwards sold their horse and sent them the money. Harriet and her family did not long remain in Canada; Auburn, New York, was deemed a preferable place; and here a small property was bought on easy terms of Governor Seward, to provide a home for the enfranchised mother and father.
Before Harriet had finished paying for her bit of real estate, the Civil War broke out. Governor Andrew of Massachusetts, appreciating the sagacity, bravery and kindliness of the woman, soon summoned her to go into the South to serve as a scout, and when necessary as a hospital nurse. That her services were valuable was the testimony of officers under whom she served; thus General Rufus Saxton wrote in March, 1868: "I can bear witness to the value of her services in South Carolina and Florida. She was employed in the hospitals and as a spy. She made many a raid inside the enemies' lines, displaying remarkable courage, zeal and fidelity."[549]
[549] Mrs. Bradford, Harriet the Moses of Her People, Appendix, p. 142.
At the conclusion of the great struggle Harriet returned to Auburn, where she has lived ever since. Her devotion to her people has never ceased. Although she is very poor and is subject to the infirmities of old age, infirmities increased in her case by the effects of ill treatment received in slavery, she has managed to transform her house into a hospital, where she provides and cares for some of the helpless and deserving of her own race.[550]
[550] Lillie B. C. Wyman, in the New England Magazine, March, 1876, pp. 117, 118. Conversation with Harriet Tubman, Cambridge, Mass., April 8, 1897.