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THE
UNDERGROUND RAILRO
FROM
SLAVERY TO FREEDOM
BY
WILBUR H. SIEBERT
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN HISTORY IN OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
ALBERT BUSHNELL HART
PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1898
All rights reserved
BRiSHAM YCUis'G LIBRARY P&QYO, UTAH
Copyright, 1898, By the MACMILLAN COiMPANY.
NorfajoDtJ 5PrfSS
J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
Eo fis Wtfe
INTRODUCTION
BY ALBERT BUSHNELL HART
Of all the questions which have interested and divided the people of the United States, none since the foundation of the Federal Union has been so important, so far-reaching, and so long contested as slavery. During the first half of the nineteenth century the other great national questions were nearly all economic — taxation, currency, banks, trans- portation, lands, — and they had a strong material basis, a flavor of self-interest ; but though slavery had also an economic side, the reasons for the onslaught upon it were chiefly moral. The first objection brought by the slave- power against the anti-slavery propaganda was the cry of the sacredness of vested and property rights against attack by sentimentalists ; but what dignified the whole contest was the very fact that the sentiment for human rights was at the bottom of it, and that the abolitionists felt a moral responsibility even though property owners suffered. The slavery question, which in origin was sectional, became national as the moral issues grew clearer ; and finally loomed up as the dominant question through the determina- tion of both sides to use the power and prestige of the national government. From the moral agitation came also the personal element in the struggle, the development of strong characters, like Calhoun, Toombs, Stephens and Jefferson Davis on one side ; Mke Lundy, Love joy, Garrison, Giddings, Sumner, Chase, John Brown and Lincoln on the other.
Among the many weak spots in the system of slavery none gave such opportunities to Northern abolitionists as the loco-
vii
viii INTRODUCTION
motive powers of the slaves ; a " thing " which could hear its owner talking about freedom, a " thing " which could steer itself Northward and avoid the " patterollers," was a thing of i^ impaired value as a machine, however intelligent as a human JF being. From earliest colonial times fugitive slaves helped to make slavery inconvenient and expensive. So long as slavery- was general, every slaveholder in every colony was a member of an automatic association for stopping and returning fugi- tives ; but, from the Revolution on, the fugitives performed the important function of keeping continually before the people of the states in which slavery had ceased, the fact that it continued in other parts of the Union. Nevertheless, though between 1777 and 1804 all the states north of Mary-
y land threw off slavery, the free states covenanted in the Federal Constitution of 1787 to interpose no obstacle to the recapture of fugitives who might come across their borders ; and thus continued to be partners in the system of slavery. From the first there was reluctance and positive opposition to this obligation ; and every successful capture was an object lesson to communities out of hearing of the whip- ping-post and out of sight of the auction-block.
In aiding fugitive slaves the abolitionist was making the most effective protest against the continuance of slavery; but he was also doing something more tangible ; he was helping the oppressed, he was eluding the oppressor ; and at the same time he was enjoying the most romantic and excit- ing amusement open to men who had high moral standards. He was taking risks, defying the laws, and making himself liable to punishment, and yet could glow with the healthful pleasure of duty done.
To this element of the personal and romantic side of the slavery contest Professor Siebert has devoted himself in this
/ book. The Underground Railroad was simply a form of combined defiance of national laws, on the ground that those laws were unjust and oppressive. It was the unconstitu- tional but logical refusal of several thousand people to
INTRODUCTION ix
acknowledge that they owed any regard to slavery or were bound to look on fleeing bondmen as the property of the slaveholders, no matter how the laws read. It was also a practical means of bringing anti-slavery principles to the 2^ attention of the lukewarm or pro-slavery people in free -2 states; and of convincing the South that the abolitionist movement was sincere and effective. Above all, the Under- ^ ground Railroad was the opportunity for the bold and / adventurous ; it had the excitement of piracy, the secrecy of burglary, the daring of insurrection ; to the pleasure of relieving the poor negro's sufferings it added the triumph of snapping one's fingers at the slave-catcher ; it developed coolness, indifference to danger, and quickness of resource.
The first task of the historian of the Underground Railroad is to gather his material, and the characteristic of this book is to consider the whole question' on a basis of established facts. The effort is timely; for there are still living, or were living when the work began, many hundreds of persons who knew the intimate history of parts of the former secret system of transportation ; the book is most timely, for these invalu- able details are now fast disappearing with the death of the actors in the drama. Professor Siebert has rescued and put on record events which in a few years will have ceased to be in the memory of living men. He has done for the history of slavery what the students of ballad and folk-lore have done for literature ; he has collected perishing materials.
Reminiscence is of course, standing alone, an insufficient basis for historical generalization. On that point Professor Siebert has been careful to explain his principle : he does not attempt to generalize from single memories not otherwise substantiated, but to use reminiscences which confirm each other, to search out telling illustrations, and to discover what the tendencies were from numerous contrasted testi- monies. Actual contemporary records are scanty; a few are here preserved, such as David Putnam's memorandum, and Campbell's letter ; and the crispness which they give to the
X INTRODUCTION
narrative makes us wish for more. The few available biog- raphies, autobiographies, and contemporary memoirs have been diligently sought out and used; and no variety of sources has been ignored which seemed likely to throw light on the subject. The ground has been carefully traversed ; and it is not likely that much will ever be added to the body of information collected by Professor Siebert. His list of sources, described in the introductory chapter and enumer- ated in the Appendices, is really a carefully winnowed bibliog- raphy of the contemporary materials on slavery.
The book is practically divided into four parts ; the Rail- road itself (Chapters ii, v); the railroad hands (Chapters iii, iv, vi); the freight (Chapters vii, viii); and political relations and effects (Chapters ix, x, xi). Perhaps one of the most interesting contributions to our knowledge of the subject is the account of the beginnings of the system of secret and systematic aid to fugitives. The evidence goes to show that there was organization in Pennsylvania before 1800 ; and in Ohio soon after 1815. The book thus becomes a much-needed guide to information about the obscure anti-slavery movement which preceded William Lloyd Gar- rison, and to some degree prepared the way for him ; and it will prove a source for the historian of the influence of the West in national development. As yet we know too little of the anti-slavery movement which so profoundly stirred the Western states, including Kentucky and Missouri, and which came closely into contact with the actual conditions of slavery. As Professor Siebert points out, most of the early abolitionists in the West were former slaveholders or sons of slaveholders.
Professor Siebert has applied to the whole subject a graphic form of illustration which is at the same time a test of his conclusions. How can the scattered reminiscences and records of escapes in widely separated states be shown to refer to the results of one organized method? Plainly by applying them to the actual face of the country, so as to see
INTRODUCTION XI
whether the alleged centres of activity have a geographical connection. The painstaking map of the lines of the Under- ground Railroad " system " is an historical contribution of a novel kind ; and it is impossible to gainsay its evidence, which is expounded in detail in one of the chapters of the book. The result is a gratifying proof of the usefulness of scientific methods in historical investigation ; one who lived in an anti-slavery community before the Civil War is fasci- nated by tracing the hitherto unknown stretches north and south from the centre which he knew. The map bears testi- mony not only to the wide-spread practice of aiding fugitives, but to the devotion of the conductors on the Underground Railroad. How useful a section of Mr. Siebert's map would have been to the slave-catcher in the 50's, when so many strange negroes were appearing and disappearing in the free states I The facts presented in the brief compass of the map would have been of immense value also to the leaders of the Southern Confederacy in 1861, as a confirmation of their argument that the North would not perform its constitutional duty of returning the fugitives ; yet there is no record in this book of the betraying of the secrets of the U. G. R. R. by any person in the service. The moral bond of opposition to the whole slave power kept men at work forwarding fugi- tives by a road of which they themselves knew but a small portion. The political philosophers who think that the Civil War might have been averted by timely concessions would do well to study this picture of the wide distribution of persons who saw no peace in slavery.
Amid all the varieties of anti-slavery men, from the Garrisonian abolitionist to faint-hearted slaveholders like James G. Birney, it is interesting to see how many had a share in the Underground Railroad ; and how many earned a reputation as heroes. Professor Siebert has gathered the names of about 3,200 persons known to have been engaged y in this work — a roll of honor for many American families. •! Everybody knew that the fugitives were aided by Fred
xii INTRODUCTION
Douglass, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Gerrit Smith, Joshua Giddings, John Brown, Levi Coffin, Thomas Garrett and Theodore Parker ; but this book gives us some account of the interest of men like Thaddeus Stevens, not commonly- counted among the sons of the prophets ; and performs a special service to the student of history and the lover of heroic deeds, by the brief account of the services of obscure persons who deserve a place in the hearts of their country- men. Men like Rev. George Bourne, Rev. James Duncan and Rev. John Rankin, years before Garrison's propaganda, had begun to speak and publish against slavery, and to prepare men's minds for a righteous disregard of Fugitive Slave Acts. Joseph Sider, with his carefully subdivided peddler's wagon, deserves a place alongside the better known Henry Box Brown. The thirty-five thousand stripes of Calvin Fairbank, seventeen years a convict in the Kentucky penitentiary, range him with Love joy as an anti-slavery martyr. Rev. Charles Torrey had in the work of rousing slaves to escape, the same devotion to a fatal duty as that which animated John Brown. And no one who has ever heard Harriet Tubman describe her part as " Moses " of the fugitives can ever forget that African prophetess, whose intense vigor is relieved by a shrewd and kindly humanity. The quiet recital of the facts has all the charm of romance to the passengers on the Underground Railroad : whether travelling by night in a procession of covered wagons, or boldly by day in disguises; whether boxed up as so much freight, or riding on passes unhesitatingly given by abolitionist directors of railroads ; the fugitives in these pages rejoice in their prospect of liberty. The road sign near Oberlin, of a tiger chasing a negro, was a white man's joke; but it was a negro who said, apropos of his master's discouraging account of Canada: "They put some extract onto it to keep us from comin' "; and neither Whittier in his poems, nor Harriet Beecher Stowe in her novels, imagined a more picturesque incident than the crossing of
^ CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
Sources of the History op the Underground Railroad
The Underground Road as a subject for research
Obscurity of the subject
Books dealing with the subject .... Magazine articles on the Underground Railroad Newspaper articles on the subject Scarcity of contemporaneous documents . Reminiscences the chief source .... The value of reminiscences illustrated
PAGE
1 2 2
6
7
11
12
CHAPTER II
Origin and Growth of the Underground Road
''^Conditions under which the Underground Road originated
The disappearance of slavery from the Northern states .
Early provisions for the return of fugitive slaves
The fugitive slave clause in the Ordinance of 1787 .
'The fugitive slave clause in the United States Constitution
The Fugitive Slave Law of 1793
The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 .....
Desire for freedom among the slaves
^Knowledge of Canada among the slaves .... —9 Some local factors in the origin of the underground movement
The development of the movement in eastern Pennsylvania, in New Jersey, and in New York
The development of the movement in the New England states
The development of the movement in the West V. The naming of the Road
17 17 19 20 20 21 22
30
33 36 37 44
XV
XVI
CONTENTS
CHAPTER III
the kidnapping of
The Methods of the Underground Railroad
Penalties for aiding fugitive slaves . Social contempt suffered by abolitionists Espionage practised upon abolitionists Rewards for the capture of fugitives and
tionists Devices to secure secrecy Service at night . Methods of communication Methods of conveyance Zigzag and variable routes Places of concealment Disguises
Informality of management Colored and white agents City vigilance committees Supplies for fugitives Transportation of fugitives by rail Transportation of fugitives by water Rescue of fugitives under arrest
aboli
PAGK
47 48 50
52 54 54 56 59 61 62 64 67 69 70 76 78 81 83
CHAPTER IV
Underground Agents, Station-Keepers, or Conductors
Underground agents, station-keepers, or conductors
Their hospitality
Their principles .
Their nationality
Their church connections
Their party affinities .
Their local standing .
Prosecutions of underground operators
Defensive League of Freedom proposed
Persons of prominence among underground helpers
87
87
89
90
93
99
101
101
103
104
CONTENTS
XVll
CHAPTER V Study of the Map of the Underground Railroad System
PACK
Geographical extent of underground lines 113
Location and distribution of stations 114
Southern routes . . 116
Lines of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York . . . .120
Routes of the New England states 128
Lines within the old Northwest Territory 134
Noteworthy features of the general map .139
Complex routes 141
Broken lines and isolated place names 141
River routes 142
Routes by rail 142
Routes by sea 144
Terminal stations 145
Lines of lake travel 147
Canadian ports 148
CHAPTER VI
Abduction of Slaves from the South
Aversion among underground helpers to abduction of slaves . Abductions by negroes living along the northern border of the slave
states
Abductions by Canadian refugees Abductions by white persons in the South Abductions by white persons of the NTorth The Missouri raid of John Brown John Brown's great plan .... Abductions attempted in response to appeals Devotees of abduction ....
150
151 152 153 154 162 166 168 178
CHAPTER Vn Life of the Colored Refugees in Canada
Slavery question in Canada
Flight of slaves to Canada
Refugees representative of the slave class
190 192 195
XVlll
CONTENTS
Misinformation about Canada among slaves Hardships borne by Canadian refugees Efforts toward immediate relief for fugitives . Attitude of the Canadian government Conditions favorable to their settlement in Canada
Sparseness of population
Uncleared lands
Encouragement of agricultural colonies among refugees
Dawn Settlement ....
Elgin Settlement ....
Refugees' Home Settlement
Alleged disadvantages of the colonies
Their advantages ....
Refugee settlers in Canadian towns .
Census of Canadian refugees
Occupations of Canadian refugees
Progress made by Canadian refugees
Domestic life of the refugees
School privileges ....
Organizations for self-improvement .
Churches ....
Rescue of friends from slavery
Ownership of property
Rights of citizenship .
Character as citizens .
PAGE
197 198 199 201 203 203 204 205 205 207 209 211 212 217 220 223 224 227 228 230 231 231 232 233 233
CHAPTER Vni
Fugitive Settlers in the Northern States
Number of fugitive settlers in the North .... The Northern states an unsafe refuge for runaway slaves Reclamation of fugitives in the free states Protection of fugitives in the free states ....
Object of the personal liberty laws
Effect of the law of 1 850 on fugitive settlers Underground operators among fugitives of the free states
235 237 239 242 245 246 251
INTRODUCTION xiii
the Detroit River by Fairfield's "gang" of twenty-eight rescued souls singing, " I'm on my way to Canada, where colored men are free," to the joyful accompaniment of their firearms.
To the settlements of fugitives in Canada Professor Siebert has given more labor than appears in his book; for his own visits supplement the accounts of earlier investigators ; and we have here the first complete account of the reception of the negroes in Canada and their progress in civilization.
Upon the general question of the political effects of the Underground Railroad, the book adds much to our informa- tion, by its discussion of the probable numbers of fugitives, and of the alarm caused in the slave states by their depart- ure. The census figures of 1850 and 1860 are shown to be wilfully false ; and the escape of thousands of persons seems established beyond cavil. Into the constitutional question of the right to take fugitives, the book goes with less minuteness, since it is intended to be a contribution to knowledge, and not an addition to the abundant literature on the legal side of slavery.
It has been the effort of Professor Siebert to furnish the means for settling the following questions : the origin of the system of aid to the fugitives, popularly called the Under- ground Railroad ; the degree of formal organization ; methods of procedure ; geographical extent and relations ; the leaders and heroes of the movement; the behavior of the fugitives on their way ; the effectiveness of the settlement in Canada ; the numbers of fugitives; and the attitude of courts and communities. On all these questions he furnishes new light ; and he appears to prove his concluding statement that " the Underground Railroad was one of the greatest forces which brought on the Civil War and thus destroyed slavery."
CONTENTS xix
CHAPTER IX Prosecutions of Underground Railroad Men
PAQB
Enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 254
Grounds on which the constitutionality of the measure was ques- tioned 254
Denial of trial by jury to the fugitive slave 255
Summary mode of arrest 257
The question of concurrent jurisdiction between the federal and
state governments in fugitive slave cases 259
The law of 1793 versus the Ordinance of 1787 261
Power of Congress to legislate concerning the extradition of fugitive
slaves denied 263
State officers relieved of the execution of the law by the Prigg de- cision, 1842 264
Amendment of the law of 1793 by the law of 1850 . . . . 265
Constitutionality of the law of 1850 questioned .... 267
First case under the law of 1850 268
Authority of a United States commissioner 269
Penalties imposed for aiding and abetting the escape of fugitives . 273
Trial on the charge of treason in the Christiana case, 1854 . . 279
Counsel for fugitive slaves 281
Last case under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 .... 285
Attempted revision of the law 2^5
Destructive attacks upon the measure in Congress .... 286
Lincoln's Proclamation of Emancipation 287
Repeal of the Fugitive Slave Acts 288
CHAPTER X
The Underground Railroad in Politics
Valuation of the Underground Railroad in its political aspect . 290
The question of the extradition of fugitive slaves in colonial times . 290
Importance of the question in the constitutional conventions . . 293
Failure of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 294
Agitation for a more efficient measure 295
Diplomatic negotiations for the extradition of colored refugees from
Canada, 1826-1828 299
The fugitive slave a missionary in the cause of freedom . . . 300
XX
CONTENTS
1850
th
Slave-hunting in the free states
Preparation for the abolition movement of 1830
The Underground Railroad and the Fugitive Slave Law of
The law in Congress
The enforcement of the law of 1850 . ^*i4ie Underground Road and Uncle Tom's Cahin Political importance of the novel Sumner on the influence of escaped slaves in the InToj The spirit of nullification in the North The Glover rescue, Wisconsin, 1854 . The rendition of Burns, Boston, 1854 The rescue of Addison White, Mechanicsburg, Ohio, 185' The Oberlin-Wellington rescue, 1858 Obstruction of the Fugitive Slave Law by means of the personal
liberty acts
John Brown's attempt to free the slaves .
PAGE
302 303 308 310 316 321 323 324 327 327 331 334 335
337
338
CHAPTER XI
Effect of the Underground Railroad
The Underground Road the means of relieving the South of many
despairing slaves 340
340 342 346 346
"Loss sustained by slave-owners through underground channels The United States census reports on fugitive slaves .... ' Estimate of the number of slaves escaping into Ohio, 1830-1860
Similar estimate for Philadelphia, 1830-1860
Drain on the resources of the depot at Lawrence, Kansas, described
in a letter of Col. J. Bowles, April 4, 1859
vTork of the Underground Railroad as compared with that of the
American Colonization Society
^"^he violation of the Fugitive Slave Law a chief complaint of Southern states at the beginning of the Civil War . Refusal of the Canadian government to yield up the fugitive Ander- son, 1860 352
Secession of the Southern states begun
Conclusion of the fugitive slave controversy .... ^*^eneral effect and significance of the controversy .
347
350
351
353 355 356
ILLUSTRATIONS, PORTRAITS, FACSIMILES
AND MAPS
The Underground Railroad : Levi Coffin receiving a company of
fugitives in the outskirts of Cincinnati, Ohio . . Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
Isaac T. Hopper 17
The Runaway: a stereotype cut used on handbills advertising
escaped slaves 27
Crossing-place on the Ohio River at Steubenville, Ohio ... 47
The Rankin House, Ripley, Ohio 47
Facsimile of an Underground Message . . . .On page 57
Barn of Seymour Finney, Detroit, Michigan ..... 65
The Old First Church, Galesburg, Illinois 65
William Still 75
Levi Coffin 87
Frederick Douglass 104
Caves in Salem Township, Washington County, Ohio . . . 130
House of Mrs. Elizabeth Buffum Chace, Valley Falls, Rhode Island 130
The Detroit River at Detroit, Michigan 147
Ashtabula Harbor, Ohio 147
Ellen Craft as she escaped from Slavery 163
Samuel Harper and Wife 163
Dr. Alexander M. Ross .180
Harriet Tubman 180
Group of Refugee Settlers at Windsor, Ontario, C.W. . . . 190
Theodore Parker 205
Thomas Wentworth Higginson 205
Dr. Samuel G. Howe 205
Benjamin Drew 205
Church of the Fugitive Slaves, Boston, Massachusetts . . . 235
Salmon P. Chase .......... 254
XXll
ILLUSTRATIONS, ETC.
Thomas Garrett .
Rush R. Sloane .
Thaddeus Stevens
J. R. Ware .
Rutherford B. Hayes
Gerrit Smith
Joshua R. Giddings
Charles Sumner .
Richard H. Dana
Bust of Rev. John Rankin
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Captain John Brown .
Facsimile of a Leaf from the Diary of Daniel Osborn 0
FACING PAGE
. 254
. 282
. 282
. 282
. 282
. 290
. 290
. 290
. 290
. 307
. 321
. 338 n pages 344, 345
MAPS
Map of the Underground Railroad System . . Facing page Map of Underground Lines in Southeastern Pennsylvania " Map of Underground Lines in Morgan County, Ohio . On page Lewis Falley's Map of the Underground Routes of Indiana and
Michigan On page
Map of an Underground Line through Livingston and La Salle
Counties, Illinois On page
Map of Underground Lines through Greene, Warren and Clinton
Counties, Ohio . . On page
APPENDICES
113 113 136
138
139
140
PAGES
Appendix A : Constitutional Provisions and National Acts rela- tive to Fugitive Slaves, 1787-1850 359-366
Appendix B : List of Important Fugitive Slave Cases . . 367-377 Appendix C : Figures from the United States Census Reports
relating to Fugitive Slaves 378, 379
Appendix D : Bibliography 380-402
Appendix E : Directory of the names of Underground Railroad
Operators and Members of Vigilance Committees . . 403-439
PREFACE
This volume is the outgrowth of an investigation begun in 1892-1893, when the writer was giving a portion of his time to the teaching of United States history in the Ohio State University. The search for materials was carried on at intervals during several years until the mass of informa- tion, written and printed, was deemed sufficient to be sub- jected to the processes of analysis and generalization.
Patience and care have been required to overcome the difficulties attaching to a subject that was in an extraordi- nary sense a hidden one ; and the author has constantly tried to observe those well-known dicta of the historian ; namely, to be content with the materials discovered without making additions of his own, and to let his conclusions be defined by the facts, rather than seek to cast these " in the mould of his hypothesis."
Starting without preconceptions, the writer has been con- strained to the views set forth in Chapters X and XI in regard to the real meaning and importance of the under- ground movement. And if it be found by the reader that these views are in any measure novel, it is hoped that the pages of this book contain evidence sufficient for their justi- fication. There is something mysterious and inexplicable about the whole anti-slavery movement in the United States, as its history is generally recounted. According to the accepted view the anti-slavery movement of the thirties and the later decades has been considered as altogether distinct from the earlier abolition period in our history, both in prin- ciple and external features, and as separated from it by a
xxiii
xxiv PKEFACE
considerable interval of time. The earlier movement is sup- posed to have died a natural death, and the later to have sprung into full life and vigor with the appearance of Gar- rison and the Liberator. Issue is made with this view in the following pages, where Macaulay's rational account of revolutions in general may, perhaps, be thought to find illustration. Macaulay says in one of his essays : " As the history of states is generally written, the greatest and most momentous revolutions seem to come upon them like super- natural inflictions, without warning or cause. But the fact is, that such revolutions are almost always the consequences of moral changes, which have gradually passed on the mass of the community, and which ordinarily proceed far before their progress is indicated by any public measure. An inti- mate knowledge of the domestic history of nations is there- fore absolutely necessary to the prognosis of political events." Or, the essayist might have added, to a subsequent under- standing of them.
It is impossible for the author to make acknowledgments to all who have contributed, directly and indirectly, to the promotion of his research. A liberal use of foot-notes suf- fices to reduce his obligations in part only. But, although the great balance of his indebtedness must stand against him, his special acknowledgments are due in certain quarters. The writer has to thank Professor J. Franklin Jameson of Brown University for calling his attention to a rare and im- portant little book, which otherwise would almost certainly have escaped his notice. To Professor Eugene Wambaugh of the Harvard Law School he is indebted for the critical perusal of Chapter IX, on the Prosecutions of Underground Railroad Men, — a chapter based largely on reports of cases, and involving legal points about which the layman may easily go astray. The frequent citations of the monograph on Fugitive Slaves by Mrs. Marion G. McDougall attest the general usefulness of that book in the preparation of the present work. For personal encouragement in the under-
PREFACE XXV
taking after the collection of materials had begun, and for assistance while the study was being put in manuscript, the author is most deeply indebted to Professor Albert Bushnell Hart, and the Seminary of American History in Harvard University, over which he and his colleague. Professor Ed- ward Channing, preside. The proof-sheets of this book have been read by Mr. F. B. Sanborn, of Concord, Massachusetts, and, it is hardly necessary to add, have profited thereby in a way that would have been impossible had they passed under the eye of one less widely acquainted with anti-slavery times and anti-slavery people. More than to all others the author's gratitude is due to the members of his own household, with- out whose abiding interest and ready assistance in many ways this work could not have been carried to completion. It should be said that no responsibility for the use made of data or the conclusions drawn from them can justly be imposed upon those whose generous offices have kept these pages freer from discrepancies than they could have been otherwise.
It is a fortunate circumstance that, by the kindness of the artist, Mr. C. T. Webber, the reproduction of his painting entitled "The Underground Railroad" can appear as the frontispiece of this book. Mr. Webber was fitted by his intimate acquaintance with the Coffin family of Cincinnati, Ohio, and their remarkable record in the work of secret emancipation, to give a sympathetic delineation of the Un- derground Railroad in operation.
Ohio State University, October, 1898.
%
THE
UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
FROM
SLAVERY TO FREEDOM
CHAPTER I
SOURCES OF THE HISTORY OF THE UNDERGROUND
RAILROAD
Historians who deal with the rise and culmination of the anti-slavery movement in the United States have compara- tively little to say of one phase of it that cannot be neglected if the movement is to be fully understood. This is the so- called Underground Railroad, which, during fifty years or_i/ more, was secretly engaged in helping fugitive slaves to reach places of security in the free states and in Canada?) Henry Wilson speaks of the romantic interest attaching to the subject, and illustrates the cooperative efforts made by abolitionists in behalf of colored refugees in two short chap- ters of the second volume of his Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America.^ Yon Hoist makes several references to the work of the Road in his well-known History of the United States^ and predicts that ''QQie time will yet come, even in the South, when due recognition will be given to the touch- ing unselfishness, simple magnanimity and glowing love of freedom of these law-breakers on principle, who were for the most, part people without name, money, or higher educa- tion.y/^ Rhodes in his great work, the History of the United
1 Chapters VI and Vll, pp.'-61-86. ^ Vol. Ill, p. 552, foot-note.
2 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
States from the Compromise of 1850^ mentions the system, but considers it only as a manifestation of popular sentiment.^ Other writers give less space to an account of this enterprise, although it was one that extended throughout many Northern states, and in itself supplied the reason for the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, one of the most remarkable measures issuing from Congress during the whole anti-slavery struggle.
The explanation of the failure to give to this " institution " the prominence which it deserves, is to be found in the secrecy in which it was enshrouded. Continuous through a period of two generations, the Road spread to be a great sys- tem by being kept in an oblivion that its operators aptly des- ignated by the figurative use of the word "underground." Then, too,(it was a movement in which but few of those per- sons were involved whose names have been most closely asso- ciated in history with the public agitation of the question of slavery, or with those political developments that resulted in the destruction of slavery. In general the participants in underground operations were quiet persons, little known out- side of the localities where they lived^and were therefore members of a class that historians find it exceedingly diffi- cult to bring within their field of view.
Before attempting to prepare a new account of the Under- ground Railroad, from new materials, something should be said of previous works upon it, and especially of the seven books which deal specifically with the subject : The Under- ground Railroad^ by the Rev. W. M. Mitchell ; Underground Railroad Records^ by William Still ; The Underground Rail- road in Chester and the Neighboring Counties of Pennsylvania^ by R. C. Smedley ; The Reminiscences of Levi Coffin; Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad^ by Eber M. Pet- tit ; From Dixie to Canada^ by H. U. Johnson ; and Heroes in Homespun^ by Ascott R. Hope (a nom de plume for Robert Hope Moncrieff).
While several of these volumes are sources of original material, their value is chiefly that of collections of incidents, affording one an insight into the workings of the Under-
1 History of the United States^ Vol. II, pp. 74-77, 361, 362.
PRINTED SOURCES 3
ground Railroad in certain localities, and presenting types of character among the helpers and the helped. In composi- tion they are what one would expect of persons who lived simple, strenuous lives, who with sincerity record what they kn^w and experienced. They have not only the characteris- tics of a deep-seated, moral movement, they have also an undeniable value for historical purposes.
Mitchell's small volume of 172 pages was published in England in 1860. Its author was a free negro, who served as a slave-driver in the South for several years, then became a preacher in Ohio, and for twelve years engaged in under- ground work ; finally, about 1855, he went to Toronto, Can- ada, to minister to colored refugees as a missionary in the service of the American Free Baptist Mission Society. ^ It was while soliciting money in England for the purpose of building a chapel and schoolhouse for his people in Toronto that he was induced to write his book. The range of expe- rience of the author enabled him to relate at first hand many incidents illustrative of the various phases of underground procedure, and to give an account of the condition of the fugitive slaves in Canada. ^
Still's Underground Railroad Records^ a large volume of 780 pages, appeared in 1872, and a second edition in 1883. For some years before the War Mr. Still was a clerk in the office of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society in Philadel- phia ; and from 1852 to 1860 he served as chairman of the Acting Vigilance Committee of Philadelphia, a body whose special business it was to harbor fugitives and help them towards Canada. About 1850 Mr. Still began to keep records of the stories he heard from runaways, and his book is mainly a compilation of these stories, together with some Under- ground Railroad correspondence. At the end there are some biographical sketches of persons more or less prominent in the anti-slavery cause. The book is a mine of material relating to the work of the Vigilance Committee of Philadelphia.
^ Mitchell, Underground Bailroad, Preface, p. vi ; p. 17.
2 Mr. Mitchell divides his little book into two chapters, one on the '* Under- ground Railroad," occupying 124 pages, the other on the "Condition of Fugitive Slaves in Canada," occupying 48 pages.
4 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
Operations carried on in an extended field of six or seven counties in southeastern Pennsylvania, over routes many of which led to the Quaker City, are recounted in Smedley's volume of 395 pages, published in 1883. The abundant reminiscences and short biographies were patiently gathered by the author from many aged participants in underground enterprises.
In his Reminiscences^ a book of 732 pages, Levi Coffin, the reputed president of the Underground Railroad, relates his experiences from the time when he began, as a youth in North Carolina, to direct slaves northward on the path to liberty, till the time when, after twenty years of service in eastern Indiana and fifteen in Cincinnati, Ohio, he and his coworkers were relieved by the admission of slaves within the lines of the Union forces in the South. Mr. Coffin was a Quaker of the gentle but firm type depicted by Harriet Beecher Stowe in the character Simeon Halliday, of which he may have been the original. It need scarcely be said, there- fore, that his autobiography is characterized by simplicity and candor, and supplies a fund of information in regard to those branches of the Road with which its author was connected.
Pettit's Sketches comprise a series of articles printed in the Fredonia (New York) Censor^ during the fall of 1868, and collected in 1879 into a book of 174 pages. The author was for many years a "conductor" in southwestern New York, and most of the adventures narrated occurred within his personal knowledge.
Johnson's From Dixie to Canada is a little volume of 194 pages, in which are reprinted some of the many stories first published by him in the Lalce Shore Home Magazine during the years 1883 to 1889 under the heading, " Romances and Realities of the Underground Railroad." The data that most of these tales embody were accumulated by research, and while the names of operators, towns and so forth are authentic, the writer allows himself the license of the story- teller instead of restricting himself to the simple recording of the information secured. His investigations have given him an acquaintance with the routes of northeastern Ohio and the adjacent portions of Pennsylvania and New York.
ARTICLES IN PERIODICALS 5
Hope's volume, published in 1894, does not increase the number of our sources of information, inasmuch as its materials are derived from Still's Underground Railroad Records and Coffin's Reminiscences, It was written by an Englishman apparently as a popular exposition of the hidden methods of the abolitionists.
To these books should be added a pamphlet of thirty pages, entitled The Underground Railroad^ by James H. Fairchild, D.D., ex-President of Oberlin College, published in 1895 by the Western Reserve Historical Society.^ The author had personal knowledge of many of the events he narrates and recounts several underground cases of notoriety; he thus affords a clear insight into the conditions under which secret aid came to be rendered to runaways.
It is surprising that a subject, the mysterious and romantic character of which might be supposed to appeal to a wide circle of readers, has not been duly treated in any of the modern popular magazines. During the last ten years a few articles about the Underground Railroad have appeared in The Magazine of Western History^ The Firelands Pioneer,^ The Midland Monthly,'^ The Canadian Magazine of Politics^ Science, Art and Literature^ and The American Histoy^ical Review.^ Three of these publications, the first two and the last, are of a special character ; the other two, although they appeal to the general reader, cannot be said to have attempted more than the presentation of a few incidents out of the experience of certain underground helpers. From time to time the New England Magazine has given its readers glimpses of the Underground Road by its articles dealing with several well-known fugitive slave cases, and a bio-
1 Tract No. 87, in Vol. IV, pp. 91-121, of the publications of the Society.
2 March, 1887, pp. 672-682.
3 July, 1888, pp. 19-88. This periodical is issued by the Firelands His- torical Society of Ohio. The bulk of the number mentioned is made up of contributions in regard to the Underground Road in northwestern Ohio.
* February, 1895, pp. 173-180. s May, 1895, pp. 9-16.
® April, 1896, pp. 455-463. This article is a preliminary study prepared by the author.
6 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
graphical sketch of the abductor Harriet Tubman.^ But it would be quite impossible for any one to gain an adequate idea of the movement from the meagre accounts that have appeared in any of these magazines.
In contrast with the magazines, the newspapers have fre- quently published some of the stirring recollections of sur- viving abolitionists, but the result for the reader is usually that he learns only some anecdotes concerning a small section of the Road, without securing an insight into the real signifi- cance of the underground movement. Without undertaking here to print a full list of articles on the subject, it is worth while to notice a few newspapers in which series of sketches have appeared of more or less value in extending our geo- graphical knowledge of the system, or in illustrating some important phase of its working. The New Lexington (Ohio) Tribune^ from October, 1885, to February, 1886, contains a series of reminiscences, written by Mr. Thomas L. Gray, that supply interesting information about the work in southeastern Ohio. The Pontiac (Illinois) Sentinel^ in 1890 and 1891, published fifteen chapters of " A History of Anti-Slavery Days " contributed by Mr. W. B. Fyffe, recording some epi- sodes in the development of this Road in northeastern Illinois. The Sentinel^ of Mt. Gilead, Ohio, in a series of articles, one of which appeared every week from July 13 to August 17, 1893, under the name of Aaron Benedict, affords a knowledge of the way in which the secret work was carried on in a typi- cal Quaker community. In The Republican Leader^ of Salem, Indiana, at various dates from Nov. 17, 1893, to April, 1894, E. Hicks Trueblood printed the results of some investiga- tions begun at the instance of the author, which disclose the principal routes of south central Indiana. An account of the peculiar methods of the pedler Joseph Sider, an ab- ductor of slaves, is also given by Mr. Trueblood. The Rev.
1 Lillie B. C. Wyman : "Black and White," in Neio England Magazine, N.S., Vol. V, pp. 476-481 ; " Harriet Tubman," ibid., March, 1896, pp. 110- 118. Nina M. Tiffany: "The Escape of William and Ellen Craft," ibid., January, 1890, p. 524 et seq. ; " Shadrach," ibid., May, 1890, pp. 280-283 ; " Sims," ibid., June, 1890, pp. 385-388; " Anthony Burns," ibid., July, 1890, pp. 569-576. A. H. Grimk6 : "Anti-Slavery Boston," ibid., December, 1890, pp. 441-459.
CONTEMPORANEOUS DOCUMENTS 7
John Todd has preserved in the columns of the Tabor (Towa) Beacon^ in 1890 and 1891, some valuable reminiscences, running through more than twenty numbers of the paper, under the title, " The Early Settlement and Growth of West- ern Iowa"; several of these are devoted to fugitive slave cases.^
It is not surprising, in view of the unlawful nature of Underground Railroad service, that extremely little in the way of contemporaneous documents has descended to us even across the short span of a generation or two, and that there are few written data for the history of a movement that gave liberty to thousands of slaves. The legal restraints upon the rendering of aid to slaves bent on flight to Canada were, of course, ever present in the minds of those that pitied the bondman, whether a well-informed lawyer, like Joshua R. Giddings, or an illiterate negro, who, notwithstanding his fellow-feeling, was yet sufficiently sagacious to avoid th^open violation of what others might call the law of the land. ^There- fore, written evidence of complicity was for the most part carefully avoided ; and little information concerning any part of the work of the Underground Road was allowed to get into print. It is known that records and diaries were kept by certain helpers ; and a few of the letters and messages that passed between station-keepers have been preserved. These sources of information are as valuable as they are rare: they would doubtless be more plentiful if the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 had not created such consternation as to lead to the destruction of most of the telltale documents.
The great collection of contemporaneous material is that of William Still, relating mainly to the work of the Vigilance Committee of Philadelphia. The motives and the methods of Mr. Still in keeping his register are given in the following words : " Thousands of escapes, harrowing separations, dread- ful longings, dark gropings after lost parents, brothers, sisters, and identities, seemed ever to be pressing on my mind. While I knew the danger of keeping strict records, and while I did not then dream that in my day slavery would be blotted out,
1 Other newspapers in which materials have been found are mentioned in the Appendix, pp. 395-398. '
8 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
or that the time would come when I could publish these rec- ords, it used to afford me great satisfaction to take them down fresh from the lips of fugitives on the way to freedom, and to preserve them as they had given them. . . ." ^ When in 1852 Mr. Still became the chairman of the Acting Committee of Vigilance his opportunities were doubtless increased for obtaining histories of cases ; and he was then directed as head of the committee " to keep a record of all their doings, . . . especially of the money received and expended on behalf of every case claiming their interposition." ^ During the period of the War, Chairman Still concealed the records and docu- ments he had collected in the loft of Lebanon Cemetery building, and although their publication became practicable when the Proclamation of Emancipation was issued, the Underground Railroad Records did not appear until 1872.^
Theodore Parker, the distinguished Unitarian clergyman of Boston, and one of the most active members of the Vigi- lance Committee of that city, kept memoranda of occurrences growing out of the attempted enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law in his neighborhood. He was outspoken in his opposition to the law, and was not less bold in gathering into a journal, along with newspaper clippings and handbills referring to the troubles of the time, manuscripts of his own bearing on the unlawful procedure of the Committee. This journal or scrap- book, given to the Boston Public Library in 1874 by Mrs. Parker,* was compiled day by day from March 15, 1851, to February 19, 1856, and throws much light on the rendition of the fugitives Burns and Sims.
John Brown, of Osawattomie, left a few notes of his mem- orable journey through Kansas and Iowa, on his way to Canada in the winter of 1868 and 1859, with a company of slaves res- cued by him from bondage in western Missouri. On the back of the original draft of a letter written by Brown for the New York Tribune soon after the slaves had been taken from their
^ Underground Bailroad Becords, pp. xxxiii, xxxiv.
2 Ibid., p. 611, where is printed an article from the Pennsylvania Freeman, December 9, 1852, giving an account of the formation of the Committee.
8 See pp. xxxiv, xxxv, xxxvi.
* The title Mr. Parker gave to this scrap-book is as follows : " Memoranda of the Troubles in Boston occasioned by the infamous Fugitive Slave Law."
CONTEMPORANEOUS DOCUMENTS
masters, appear the names of station-keepers of the Under- ground Railroad in eastern Kansas, and a record of certain expenditures forming, doubtless, a part of the cost of his trip.^ When the fearless abductor arrived at Springdale, Iowa, late in February, he wrote to a friend in Tabor a statement con- cerning the " Reception of Brown and Party at Grinnell, Iowa, compared with Proceedings at Tabor," in which he set down in the form of items the substantial attentions he had received at the hands of citizens of Grinnell.^ These meagre records, together with the letter written to the Tribune mentioned above, are all that Brown wrote, so far as known, giving ex- plicit information in regard to an exploit that created a stir throughout the country.
Mr. Jirch Piatt, of the vicinity of Mendon, Illinois, recorded his experiences as a station-keeper in a "sort of diary and farm record," and in a "blue-book," and appears to have been the only one of the underground helpers of Illinois that ventured to chronicle matters of this kind. The diary is still extant, and shows entries covering a period of more than ten years, closing with October, 1859; the following items will illustrate sufficiently the character of the record : —
''^May 19, 1848. Hannah Coger arrived on the U. G. Rail- road, the last $100.00 for freedom she was to pay to Thomas Anderson, Palmyra, Mo. The track is kept bright, it being the 3rd time occupied since the first of April." . . .
" Nov, 9, '54. Negro hoax stories have been very high in the market for a week past."
^^ 9(C 7|C T^v 7|v ^l* *f* 7p
" Oct, 1859. U. G. R. R. Conductor reported the passage of five, who were considered very valuable pieces of Ebony, all designated by names, such as John Brooks, Daniel Brooks, Mason Bushrod, Sylvester Bucket and Hanson G-ause. Have understood also that three others were ticketed about mid- summer."
In Ohio, Daniel Osborn, of the Alum Creek Quaker Settlement, in the central part of the state, kept a diary, of
1 Sanborn, Life and Letters of John Brown, p. 482.
2 Ihid., pp. 488, 489.
10 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
which to-day only a leaf remains. This bit of paper gives a record of the number of negroes passing through the Alum Creek neighborhood during an interval of five months, from April 14 to September 10, 1844, and is of considerable impor- tance, because it supplies data that furnish, when taken in connection with other terms, the elements for an interesting computation of the number of slaves that escaped into Ohio.^ In the correspondence of Mr. David Putnam, of Point Hamar, near Marietta, Ohio, there were found a few letters relating to the journeys of fugitives. That even these few letters remain is doubtless due to neglect or oversight on the part of the recipient. It is noticeable that some of them bear unmistakable signs of intended secrecy, the proper names having been blotted out, or covered with bits of paper.
Underground managers who were so indiscreet as to keep a diary or letters- for a season, were induced to part with such condemning evidence under the stress of a special danger. Mr. Robert Purvis, of Philadelphia, states that he kept a record of the fugitives that passed through his hands and those of his coworkers in the Quaker City for a long period, till the trepidation of his family after the passage of the Fugi- tive Slave Bill in 1850 caused him to destroy it.^ Daniel Gibbons, a Friend, who lived near Columbia in southeastern Pennsylvania, began in 1824 to keep a record of the number of fugitives he aided. He was in the habit of entering in his book the name of the master of each fugitive, the fugitive's own name and his age, and the new name given him. The data thus gathered came in time to form a large volume, but after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law Mr. Gibbons burned this book.^ William Parker, the colored leader in the famous Christiana case, was found by a friend to have a large number of letters from escaped slaves hidden about his house at the time of the Christiana affair, September 11, 1851, and these fateful documents were quickly destroyed. Had they been discovered by the officers that visited Parker's
1 See Chap. XI, p. 346.
2 Conversation with Robert Purvis, Philadelphia, Pa., December 24, 1896. * Smedley, Underground Bailroad, pp. 66, 67.
COLLECTION OF KEMINISCENCES 11
house, they might have brought disaster upon many persons. ^ Thus, the need of secrecy constantly served to prevent the making of records, or to bring about their early destruction. The written and printed records do give a multitude of unquestioned facts about the Underground Railroad; but when wishing to find out the details of rational management, the methods of business, and the total amount of traffic, we are thrown back on the recollections of living abolitionists as the main source of information ; from them the gaps in the real history of the Underground Railroad must be filled, if filled at all.
It is with the aid of such memorials that the present vol- ume has been written. Reminiscences have been gathered by correspondence and by travel from many surviving aboli- tionists or their families ; and recollections of fugitive slave days have been culled from books, newspapers, letters and diaries. During three years of the five years of preparation the author's residence in Ohio afforded him opportunity to visit many places in that state where former employees of the Underground Railroad could be found, and to extend these explorations to southern Michigan, and among the sur- viving fugitives along the Detroit River in the Province of Ontario. Residence in Massachusetts during the years 1895- 1897 has enabled him to secure some interesting information in regard to underground lines in New England. The mate- rials thus collected relate to the following states : Iowa, Wis- consin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Vermont, besides a few items con- cerning North Carolina, Maryland and Delaware.
Underground operations practically ceased with the begin- ning of the Civil War. In view of the lapse of time, the reasons for trusting the credibility of the evidence upon which our knowledge of the Underground Road rests should be stated. Some of the testimony dealt with in this chapter was put in writing during the period of the Road's operation, or at the close of its activity, and, therefore, cannot be easily questioned. But it may be said that a large part of the
1 Smedley, Underground Bailroad^ pp. 120, 121.
12 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
materials for this history were drawn from written and oral accounts obtained at a much later date ; and that these mate- rials, even though the honesty and fidelity of the narrators be granted, are worthy of little credit for historical purposes. Such a criticism would doubtless be just as applied to remin- iscences purporting to represent particular events with great detail of narration, but clearly it would lose much of its force when directed against recollections of occurrences that came within the range of the narrator's experience, not once nor twice, but many times with little variation in their main features. It would be difficult to imagine an "old-time" abolitionist, whose faculties are in a fair state of preservation, forgetting that he received fugitives from a certain neighbor or community a few miles away, that he usually stowed them in his garret or his haymow, and that he was in the habit of taking them at night in all kinds of weather to one of several different stations, the managers of which he knew intimately and trusted implicitly. Not only did repetition serve to deepen the general recollections of the average opera- tor, but the strange and romantic character of his unlawful business helped to fix them in his mind. Some special occur- rences he is apt to remember with vividness, because they were in some way extraordinary. If it be argued that the surviving abolitionists are now old persons, it should not be forgotten that it is a fact of common observation that old per- sons ordinarily remember the occurrences of their youth and prime better than events of recent date. The abolitionists, as a class, were people whose remembrances of the ante-bel- lum days were deepened by the clear definition of their gov- erning principles, the abiding sense of their religious convic- tions, and the extraordinary conditions, legal and social, under which their acts were performed. The risks these persons ran, the few and scattered friends they had, the con- centration of their interests into small compass, because of the disdain of the communities where they lived, have se- cured to us a source of knowledge, the value of which cannot be lightly questioned. If there be doubt on this point, it must give way before the manner in which statements gatli- ered from different localities during the last five years articu-
VALUE OF REMINISCENCES 13
late together, the testimony of different and sometimes widely- separated witnesses combining to support one another.^
The elucidation by new light of some obscure matter already reported, the verification by a fresh witness of some fact already discovered, gives at once the rule and test of an investigation such as this. Out of many illustrations that might be given, the following are offered. Mr. J. M. Forsyth, of Northwood, Logan County, Ohio, writes under date Sep- tember 22, 1894: "In Northwood there is a denomination known as Covenanters ; among them the runaways were safe. Isaac Patterson has a cave on his place where the fugitives were secreted and fed two or three weeks at a time until the hunt for them was over. Then friends, as hunters, in covered wagons would take them to Sandusky. The highest number taken at one time was seven. The conductors were mostly students from Northwood. All I did was to help get up the team. ..."
The Rev. J. S. T. Milligan, of Esther, Pennsylvania, Decem- ber 5, 1896, writes entirely independently: "In 1849 my brother . . . and I went ... to Logan Co., Ohio, to conduct a grammar school ... at a place called Northwood. The school developed into a college under the title of Geneva Hall. J. R. W. Sloane^ . . . was elected President and moved to Northwood in 1851. . . . The region was settled by Covenanters and Seceders, and every house was a home for the wanderers. But there was a cave on the farm of a man by the name of Patterson, absolutely safe and fairly
1 The value of reminiscences and memoirs is considered in an article on "Recollections as a Source of History," by the Hon. Edward L. Pierce, in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, March and April, 1896, pp. 473-490. This, with the remarks of Professor H. Morse Stephens in his article entitled " Recent Memoirs of the French Directory," American Historical Review, April, 1896, pp. 475, 476, 489, should be read as a cor- rective by the student that finds himself constrained to have recourse to recollections for information.
2 The Rev. J. R. W. Sloane, D.D., was the father of Professor William M. Sloane, of Columbia University, New York City. Professor Sloane, in a letter recently received, says: "The first clear, conscious memory I have is of seeing slaves taken from our garret near midnight, and forwarded towards Sandusky. I also remember the formal, but rather friendly, visitation of the house by the sheriff's posse." Date of letter, Paris, November 19, 189ft
14 UNDKBISMIDHD KAILROAD
oomfcm'r'.r for fogiUT^. In one instmnce tfaiiteen fngitiTes,
after : t ~ r in the caYe for some dajs, were taken by ih&
stode: 3 ooT^ed wagons to Sandnskj, some 90 miles,
wbeitt I ^ rone to engage passage for tiiran on iJie Bay
Ci^s: ros lite laketo Mai ien — -f Isawtliem
:'-' : re soil, tolherii:: r Indeed,
I , . —iTi wonld haTe v^r^ : _ r.idness
; _^ _T : „ r ^ife in freedom. I —;::_: „ „ Belle
C~-'Zr 7 : - :_ ~ : ~ by rail, and did not go with the'
- 1 7 : — : i: — — : ihej told me of tiielr expe-
nenee, it was c : _ i- zr ^nd sometimes thrilling. Tbej
—-zr OBtaBHlily i Ls^zLzz P'^i^ of 10 OT 12 aimed men. . . .
r_i TWO coreiT — ir i? ~ere a ^sanctum sanctomm' into
— 1 h no e»:'t: . — - . - ' "o peep. . - . The word of
: _i:i:!d, • .^.^ j ^avs respected by Ihose who
~T 7 doly iLTri: ii::i 77 ^ the thirteen deer . . .
:_1: :: : :_ : t ~:«odsof Lri- -1 Hardin counties and
beii^ *^^^*«* to Sandosl^.**
In t!ie s^ame letter Mr. MDligan eoRbboralBS mmm iador- =:.-:- - ^ : :-=^ from the Kev. R- G- Bamsey, of Cadiz, Ohio, A^-^: 1: LS92. in r^;ard to an undeigronnd ronte in flontfaan LL:i .: . Mr. Ramsey related that his father, Robert ffimiii jf z: : ^igaged in Undeigronnd Railroad work at Eden, E ?ounty, Illinois, in 1S14, and that he carried
it on at :l 7 tQ the War. ^The fogitiTes," he said,
''eaaie n -7 7: to Chester, Illinois, and there they started i^ 7 : - ';tate road, which foUowed an old
IfniiMi i: _ 7 - .3 were each in a community of
CoYenanteis. . . .^ and existed, according to his account, at Chester. Zlr.. Oakdale, NashyiDe and Centralia. "^Be- sides 71 53;! i !Mr. Ramsey, ** John Hood and two hco&r: ~ 'TTias McClnitin, lived in Oakdale, whestt i_ . i^:_c. ^ ' :- ^le last thirty-five years of his life- Helivedin El Js time. . . -"^ The Rev. ^Ir. Milligan writes as fellows: ^My fether removed to Bandcdph Co., DL. in 1S47, and with Rev. Wm. Sloane . . . and tiie Covenanter congregations imder their ministrr kept a viray laige depot wide open iar slaves escapng from Mis- he Ber. B. G. JLaaaatj, Cadiz, (Ndo, Angnrt 18, IML
VALUE OF BMilllBWaMClg 15
soniL Semes at a time came to Sparta [tie 7 ::>:~:^ of tlie Eden aetiiement mentiaiied above} — mv fi . 1 r : : r r. : 1. were harbored thexe, - . - and finallv rs: : 7- : Z.^ : — [afaolIt tin> miles frofm Oakdale], tLr : r r : _ :: 7 : r. ^ iir. where thej were slieltered and eaeiMted ... to soine frirz is in the region of NaBhyiUe, IlL, and flienee nostili on tiie ^^z^- lar tzafl which I am not aUe fnrfiier to locate. At Sp^iz;^ Conltersrille and KlJchorn tiiere was an almost emmza^z sapplr of fugitiTes. . . . Bnt . . . ir— — tTt otct gonci. from the aegis of the Hajres and M : : r r and Todds and McLnikins amd Hoods and Sloanes i-i M/^riis :_i: region."
The eTidenee above quoted has ihe wz'l-zz. —z. ~.\ir :i rwo witnesses, examined apart, who com :::i:t t :_ :: tt; and it also iUnstzates tiie wa^ inidiidi tli 7 r ts _::i r- gronnd routes may be joined togefiier. Ti-fir ItTTtTv : rr:irr withsriif : '..'. jnal testimnny, laiaUe i» to :: r :z -.lz zli- a se:: 11. :: 1 si-Trt line of tniTd. in sonlliem Hlmis-
Ai. :_t: tX zi .t :!:rows light cm a channel :: rs.i-r i:: nonlfi : :r. ZzL^c^ While LctI Coma, li^ei - ^'-t n (nowF -i: 1 Tirr), Indiana, he sometimp^ Sir: s .fs l :::!- ward 7 — : -2 :hecalled*'the Missiioiiir— i :: i:t uzi the Mlss:55:i.T~i River, near which undnnlitedly i: rii. ::: 2. c<msider f.T iisTiie. This road see zis :: 'l:.-^ "ttZ. ::Lii also the Gr.-n: Cm.:™ r :::f In the n r: r zirC wav ohIt do these des :: ; :: us Tr.. r, :"i !zg abou: :J:r : : i:e- Howerer, correspondence -^^zh sevf: ' jr pie of Ii v;r:. lii? bgoniglitit to light. One letter* izims ms .1. rr : i : : jitltes de- parting fran Newport: "I: :_fj : zzlz : : -l : : z : zi" :irv were sent to Grant Co. . . -" Now, so far as ^^z;— n. .' neriioto* was the next 1: rality to which they were nsnallj f : : — irded, and ihe lizf :bis point nor&wazd is gi^cn .15 - tie
Hon. John ?. : ~. of ^f arion, Indiana, who had befi. ~rrit with passc: cr:? He sa3?s that liie first station z:r:2i of Jonesboro' ~..s X:rth Manchester, where -Morris" Placv
Z::z:-T
16 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
was agent; the next station, Goshen, where Dr. Matchett harbored fugitives ; and thence the line ran to Young's Prairie,^ which is in Cass County, Michigan. The same sec- tion of Road, but with a few additional stations, is marked out by William Hayward. The additional stations may not have existed at the time when Mr. Ratliff served as a guide, or he may have forgotten to mention them. Mr. Hayward writes : " My cousin, Maurice Place, often brought carriage loads of colored people from North Manchester, Wabash Co., to my father's house, six miles west of Manchester on the Rochester road. . . . We would keep them . . . until sometime in the night ; then my father would go with them to Avery Brace's . . . three miles . . . north, through the woods. He took them . . . seven miles farther ... to Chauncey Hurlburt's in Kosciusko Co. . . . They (the Hurlburts) took them twelve miles farther ... to Warsaw, to a man by the name of Gordon, and he took them to Dr. Matchett's in Elkhart Co., not far from Goshen. There were friends there to help them to Michigan." ^
In weighing the testimony amassed, the author has had the advantage of personal acquaintance with many of those furnishing information ; and the internal evidence of letters has been considered in estimating the worth of written testi- mony. Doubtless the work could have been more thoroughly executed, if the collection of materials had been systemati- cally undertaken by some one a decade or two earlier. It is certain that it could not have been postponed to a later period. Since the inception of this research the ravages of time have greatly thinned the company of witnesses, who count it among their chiefest joys that they were permitted to live to see their country rid of slavery, and the negro race a free people.
1 Letter from Charles W. Osborn, Economy, Indiana, March 4, 1896. Mr. Osborn obtained the names of stations in conversation with Mr. Ratliff.
2 Letter of William Hayward.
ONE OF THE PIONEERS IN THE UNDERGROUND MOVEMENT IN PHILADELPHIA AND NEW YORK.
Mr. Hopper is supposed to have resorted to underground methods as early as 1787.
CHAPTER II
OBIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE UNDERGROUND ROAD
( The Underground Road developed in a section of country rid of slavery, and situated between two regions, from one of which slaves were continually escaping with the prospect of J- becoming indisputably free on crossing the borders of the other. Not a few persons living within the intervening ter- ritory were deeply opposed to slavery, and although they were bound by law to discountenance slaves seeking free- dom, they felt themselves to be more strongly bound by con* science to give them help. Thus it happened that in the course of the sixty years before the outbreak of the War of the Rebellion the Northern states became traversed by numerous secret pathways leading from Southern bondage to Canadian liberty.) (Slavery was put m process of extinction at an early period A^ in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and the New Eng- land states. From the five and a fraction states created out of the Northwestern Territory slavery was excluded by the Ordinance of 178T. It is interesting to note how rapid was the progress of emancipation in the Northeastern states, where the conditions of climate, industry and public opinion were unfavorable to the continuance of slavery. In 1777 emancipation was begun by the action of Vermont, which upon its separation from New York adopted a constitution in which slavery was prohibited. Pennsylvania and Massa- chusetts took action three years later. Pennsylvania pro- vided by statute for gradual abolition, and its example was followed by Rhode Island and Connecticut in 1784, by New York in 1799, and by New Jersey in 1804. Massachusetts was less direct, but not less effective, in securing the extinc- tion of slavery ; happily it had inserted in the declaration of c 17
18 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
rights prefixed to its constitution: "All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential and inalien- able rights." ^ This clause received at a later time strict interpretation at the bar of the state supreme court, and slavery was held to have ceased with the year 1780.
There is little to be said about the remaining group of states with which we are here concerned. Their territorial organizations were effected under the provisions of the Ordi- nance of 1787. One of the most important of these pro- visions is as follows : " There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said Territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." ^ It was this feature, introduced into the great Ordinance by New England men, that rendered futile the many attempts subsequently made by Indiana Ter- ritory to have slavery admitted within its own boundaries by congressional enactment. " It is probable," says Rhodes, " that had it not been for the prohibitory clause, slavery would have gained such a foothold in Indiana and Illinois that the two would have been organized as slaveholding states." ^ The five states, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin were therefore admitted to the Union as free states. West of the Mississippi River there is one state, at least, that must be added to the group just indicated, namely, Iowa. Slaveholding was prevented within its domain by the Act of Congress of 1820, prohibiting slavery in the territory acquired under the Louisiana purchase north of latitude 36° 30', and several years before this law was abrogated Iowa had entered statehood with a constitution that fixed her place among the free commonwealths. The enfranchisement of this extended region was thus accom- plished by state and national action. The ominous result was the establishment of a sweeping line of frontier between the slaveholding South and the non-slaveholding North, and thereby the propounding to the nation of a new question,
1 Constitution of Massachusetts, Part I, Art. 1 ; quoted by Du Bois, 8up' pression of the Slave Trade, p. 225.
2 See Appendix A, p. 359.
* History of the United States^ Vol. I, p. 16.
RENDITION OF FUGITIVES IN THE COLONIES 19
that of the status of fugitives in free regions. The elements were in the proper condition for the crystallization of this question.
---The colonies generally had found it necessary to provide regulations in regard to fugitives and the restoration of them to their masters. Such provisions, it is probable, were reason- ably well observed as long as runaways did not escape beyond the borders of the colonies to which their owners belonged ; but escapes from the territory of one colony into that of an- other were at first left to be settled as the state of feeling- existing between the two peoples concerned should dictate. In 1643 the New England Confederation of Plymouth, Massa- chusetts, Connecticut and New Haven, unwilling to leave the subject of the delivery of fugitives longer to intercolonial comity, incorporated a clause in their Articles of Confedera- tion providing : " If any servant runn away from his master into any other of these confederated Jurisdiccons, That in such case vpon the Certyficate of one Majistrate in the Juris- diccon out of which the said servant fled, or upon other due proofs, the said servant shall be deliuered either to his Mas- ter or any other that pursues and brings such Certificate or proofe." About the same time an agreement was entered into between the Dutch at New Netherlands and the English at New Haven for the mutual surrender of fugitives, a step that was preceded by a complaint from the commissioners of the United Colonies to Governor Stuy vesant of New Netherlands, to the effect that the Dutch agent at Hartford was harboring one of their Indian slaves, and by the refusal to return some of Stuyvesant's runaway servants from New Haven until the redress of the grievance. It was only when some of the fugi- tives had been restored to New Netherlands, and a proclama- tion, issued in a spirit of retaliation by the Lords of the West India Company, forbidding the rendition of fugitive slaves to New Haven, had been annulled, that the agreement for the mutual surrender of runaways was made by the two parties. Negotiations in regard to fugitives early took place between Maryland and New Netherlands ; at one time on account of the flight of some slaves from the Southern colony into the Northern colony, and later on account of the reversal of the
20 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
conditions. The temper of the Dutch when calling for their servants in 1659 was not conciliatory, for they threatened, if their demand should be refused, " to publish free liberty, access and recess to all planters, servants, negroes, fugitives, and runaways which may go into New Netherland." The escape of fugitives from the Eastern colonies northward to Canada was also a constant source of trouble between the French and the Dutch, and between the French and English.^
When, therefore, emancipation acts were passed by Ver- mont and four other states the new question came into exist- ence. It presented itself also in the Western territories. The framers of the Northwest Ordinance found themselves confronted by the question, and they dealt with it in the spirit of compromise. They enacted a stipulation for the territory, "that any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original states, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to th^ person claiming his or her labor or service aforesaid." ^
Meanwhile the Federal Convention in Philadelphia had the same question to consider. The result of its deliberations on the point was not different from that of Congress expressed in the Ordinance. Among the concessions to slavery that the Federal Convention felt constrained to make, this provi- sion found place in the Constitution : " No person held to service or labor in one state under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." ^ .Neither of these clauses appears to have been subjected to much debate, and they were adopted by votes that testify to their acceptableness ; the former re- ceived the support of all naembers^present but.pne, the latter passed unanimously. "
In the sentiment of the time there seems to have been no
1 M. G. McDougall, Fugitive Slaves, pp. 2-11.
2 Journals of Congress, XII, 84, 92.
3 Constitution of the United States, Art. IV, § 2. See Bevised Statutes of the United States, I, 18. See also Appendix A, p. 359.
FUGITIVE SLAVE CLAUSE IN THE CONSTITUTION 21
sense of humiliation on the part of the North over the con^ elusions reached concerning the rendition of escaped slaves. It had been seen by Northern men that the subject was one requiring conciliatory treatment, if it were not to become a block in the way of certain Southern states entering the Union; and, besides, the opinion generally prevailed that slavery would gradually disappear from all the states, and the riddle would thus solve itself.^ The Sojath was pleased, but apparently not exultant, over the supposed security gained for its slave property. General C. C. Pinckney, of South Carolina, probably expressed the view of most South- erners when he said that the terms for the security of slave property gained by his section were not bad, although they were not the best from the slaveholders' standpoint, and that they permitted the recapture of runawa3^s in any part of America — a right the South had never before enjoyed.^ In abstract law the rights of the slave-owner had in truth been well provided for. Especially deserving of note is the fact that a constitutional basis had been furnished for claims which, in case slavery did not disappear from the country — a contingency not anticipated by the fathers — might be in- sisted upon as having the fundamental and positive sanction of the government. But what would be the fate of the run- ning slave was a matter with which, after all, private princi- ples and sympathies, and not merely constitutional provisions, would have a good deal to do in each case.
For several years the stipulations for the rendition of fugi- tive slaves remained inoperative. At length, in 1791, a case of kidnapping occurred at Washington, Pennsylvania, and this served to bring the subject once more to the public mind. Early in 1793 Congress passed the first Fugitive Slave Law.^" This law provided for the reclamation of fugitives from justice and fugitives from labor. We are concerned, of course, with the latter class only. The sections of the act dealing with this division are too long to be here quoted:
1 Elliot's Debates. See also George Livermore's Historical Besearch Bespecting the Opinions of the Founders of the Bepuhlic on Negroes^ as Citi- zens and as Soldiers^ 1862, p. 51 et seq.
2 Elliot's Debates, III, 277. » Appendix A, pp. 359-361.
22 tTNDERGROUNI) KAILROAD
they empowered the owner, his agent or attorney, to seize the fugitive and take him before a United States circuit or dis- trict judge within the state where the arrest was made, or before any local magistrate within the county in which the seizure occurred. The oral testimony of the claimant, or an affidavit from a magistrate in the state from which he came, must certify that the fugitive owed service as claimed. Upon such showing the claimant secured his warrant for removing the runaway to the state or territory from which he had fled. "Five hundred dollars fine constituted the penalty for hinder- ing arrest, or for rescuing or harboring the fugitive after notice that he or she was a fugitive from labor. -^.
All the evidence goes to show that this law was ineffec- tual ; Mrs. McDougall points out that two cases of resistance to the principle of the act occurred before the close of 1793.^ Attempts at amendment were made in Congress as early as the winter of 1796, and were repeated at irregular intervals down to 1850. (^Secret or "underground " methods of rescue were already well understood in and around Philadelphia by 1804.} Ohio and Pennsylvania, and perhaps other states, heeded the complaints of neighboring slave states, and gave what force they might to the law of 1793 by enacting laws for the recovery of fugitives within their borders. The law of Pennsylvania for this purpose was passed the same year in which Mr. Clay, then Secretary of State, began negotiations with England looking toward the extradition of slaves from Canada (1826) ; but it was quashed by the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the Prigg case in 1842.^ : By 1850 the Northern states were traversed by numerous lines of Underground Railroad, and the South was declaring its losses of slave property to be enormous-f>- "-^The result of the frequent transgressions of the Fugitive Slave Law on the one hand and of the clamorous demand for a measure adequate to the needs of the South on the other, was the passage of a new Fugitive Recovery Bill in 1850.^ r The
1 Fugitive Slaves, p. 19.
2 See Chap. IX, pp. 259-267 ; also Stroud, Sketch of the Laws Belating to Slavery in the Several States, 2d ed. , pp. 220-222.
» Appendix A, pp. 361-366.
FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW OF 1850 23
increased rigor of the provisions of this act was ill adapted to generate the respect that a good law secures, and, indeed, must have in order to be enforced. The law contained feat- ures sufficiently objectionable to make many converts to the cause of the abolitionists ; and a systematic evasion of the law was regarded as an imperative duty by thousands. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was based on the earlier law, but was fitted out with a number of clauses, dictated by a self- interest on the part of the South that ignored the rights of every party save those of the master. Under the regulations of the act the certificate authorizing the arrest and removal of a fugitive slave was to be granted to the claimant by the United States commissioner, the courts, or the judge of the proper circuit, district, or county. If the arrest were made without process, the claimant was to take the fugitive forth- with before the commissioner or other official, and there the case was to be determined in a summary manner. j.The refusal of a United States marshal or his deputies to execute a commissioner's certificate, properly directed, involved a fine of one thousand dollars ; and failure to prevent the es- cape of the negro after arrest, made the marshal liable, on his official bond, for the value of the slave^-l^ When necessary to insure a faithful observance of the fugitive slave clause in the Constitution, the commissioners, or persons appointed by them, had the authority to summon the posse comitatus of the county, and " all good citizens " were " commanded to aid and assist in the prompt and efficient execution " of the law.,;- The testimony of the alleged fugitive could not be re« ceived in evidence. -Ownership was determined by the sim- ple affidavit of the person claiming the slave ; and when determined it was shielded by the certificate of the commis- sioner from " all molestation ... by an}^ process issued by any court, judge, magistrate, or other person whomsoever." Any act meant to obstruct the claimant in his arrest of the fugitive, or any attempt to rescue, harbor, or conceal the fugi- tive, laid the person interfering liable " to a fine not exceed- ing one thousand dollars, and imprisonment not exceeding six months," also liable for " civil damages to the party in- jured in the sum of one thousand dollars for each fugitive so
24 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
lost." In all cases where the proceedings took place before a commissioner he was " entitled to a fee of ten dollars in full for his services," provided that a warrant for the fugi- tive's arrest was issued ; if, however, the fugitive was dis- charged, the commissioner was entitled to five dollars only.^
By the abolitionists, at whom it was directed, this law was detested. A government, whose first national manifesto con- tained the exalted principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, stooping to the task of slave-catching, violated all their ideas of national dignity, decency and consistency. Many persons, indeed, justified their opposition to the law in the familiar words: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The scriptural injunction "not to deliver unto his master the servant that hath escaped," ^ was also frequently quoted by men whose religious convictions admitted of no compromise. They pointed out that the law virtually made all Northern citizens accomplices in what they denominated the crime of slave-catching ; that it denied the right of trial by jury, rest- ing the question of lifelong liberty on ex-parte evidence ; made ineffective the writ of habeas corpus; and offered a bribe to the commissioner for a decision against the negro.^ The penalties of fine and imprisonment for offenders against the law were severe, but they had no deterrent effect upon those engaged in helping slaves to Canada. On the contrary, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 stimulated the work of secret emancipation. " The passage of the new law," says a recent investigator, " probably increased the number of anti-slavery people more than anything else that had occurred dui'ing the whole agitation. Many of those formerly indifferent were roused to active opposition by a sense of the injustice of the Fugitive Slave Act as they saw it executed in Boston and
1 Statutes at Large, IX, 462-465.
2 Deut. xxiii, 15, 16.
8 See Some Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict, by S. J. May, p. 346 et seq. ; Stroud's Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery in the Several States, 2d ed., 1856, pp. 271-280 ; Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Fower, Vol. II, pp. 304-322.
DESIRE FOR FREEDOM AMONG SLAVES 25
elsewhere. ... As Mr. James Freeman Clarke has said, * It was impossible to convince the people that it was right to send back to slavery men who were so desirous of freedom as to run such risks. All education from boyhood up to manhood had taught us to believe that it was the duty of all men to struggle for freedom.' " ^
The desire for freedom was in the mind of nearly every en- slaved negro. Liberty was the subject of the dreams and visions of slave preachers and sibyls ; it was the object of their prayers. The plaintive songs of the enslaved race were full of the thought of freedom. It has been well said that " one of the tinest touches in Uncle Tom's Cabin is the joyful expression of Uncle Tom when told by his good and indul- gent master that he should be set free and sent back to his old home in Kentucky. In attributing the common desire of humanity to the negro the author was as true as she was effective."^ To slaves living in the vicinity, Mexico and Florida early afforded a welcome refuge. Forests, islands and swamps within the Southern states were favorite places of resort for runaways. The Great Dismal Swamp became the abode of a large colony of these refugees, whose lives were spent in its dark recesses, and whose families were reared and buried there. Even in this retreat, however, the negroes were not beyond molestation, for they were systemat- ically hunted by men with dogs and guns.^ Scraps of in- formation about Canada and the Northern states were gleaned and treasured by minds recognizing their own degradation, but scarcely knowing how to take the first step towards the 4_betterment of their condition.
There can be no doubt that the form in which slavery ex- isted in the South during the opening decade of the present century was comparatively mild ; but it is quite clear that it soon exchanged this character for one from which the amen-
1 M. G. McDougall, Fugitive Slaves, p. 43 ; J. F. Clarke, Anti- Slavery Days, p. 92.
2 Rhodes, History of the United States, Vol. I, p. 377.
^ F. L. Olmsted, Journey in the Back Country, p. 155 ; Rev. W. M. Mitchell, The Underground Bailroad, pp. 72, 73 ; M. G. McDougall, Fugi- tive Slaves, p. 57.
26 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
ities of the patriarchal type had practically disappeared. With the rapid expansion of the industries peculiar to the South after the opening up of the Louisiana purchase, the invention of the cotton gin, and the removal of the Indians from the Gulf states, came the era of the slave's dismay. The auction block and the brutal overseer became his dread while awake, his nightmare when asleep. That his fears were not ill founded is proved by the activity of the slave-marts of Baltimore, Richmond, New Orleans and Washington from the time of the migrations to the Mississippi territory until the War. Alabama is said to have bought millions of dollars worth of slaves from the border states up to 1849. Dew es- timated that six thousand slaves were carried from Virginia, though not all of these were sold to other states.^
The fear of sale to the far South must have stimulated slaves to flight. That the number of escapes did increase is deduced from the consensus of abolitionist testimony. Our sole reliance is upon this testimony until the appearance of the United States census reports for 1850 and 1860 ; ^ and the exhibits on fugitive slaves in these compendiums we are constrained by various considerations to regard as inadequate. However, the flight of slaves from the South was not what the new conditions would readily account for. We must conclude, therefore, that the deterring effect of ignorance and the sense of the difficulties in the way were re enforced after 1840 by increased vigilance on the part of the slave- owning class, owing to the rise in value of slave property. " Since 1840," says a careful observer, " the high price of slaves may be supposed ... to have increased the vigilance and energy with which the recapture of fugitives is followed up, and to have augmented the number of free negroes re- duced to slavery by kidnappers. Indeed it has led to a proposition being quite seriously entertained in Virginia, of enslaving the whole body of the free negroes in that state by legislative enactment." ^ Then, too, the negro's attachment
1 Edward Ingle, Southern Side-Lights, p. 293.
2 These reports will be dealt with in another connection. See Chap. XI, pp. 342, 343.
8 G. M. Weston, Progress of Slavery in the United States, Washington, D.C., 1858, pp. 22, 23.
INCENTIVES TO FLIGHT 27
to the land of his birth, and to his kindred, when these were not torn from him, must be allowed to have hindered flight in many instances ; when, however, the appearance of the dreaded slave-dealer, or the brutality of the overseer or the master, spread dismay among the hands of a plantation, flights were likely to follow. This was sometimes the case, too, when by the death of a planter the division of his property among his heirs was made necessary. William Johnson, of Windsor, Ontario, ran away from his Kentucky master because he was threatened with being sent South to the cotton and rice fields.^ Horace Washington, of Windsor, after working nearly two years for a man that had a claim on him for one hundred and twenty -five dollars, reminded his employer that the original agreement required but one year's labor, and asked for release. Getting no satisfaction, and fearing sale, he fled to Canada.^ Lewis Richardson, one of the slaves of Henry Clay, sought relief in flight after receiv- ing a hundred and fifty stripes from Mr. Clay's overseer.^ William Edwards, of Amherstburg, Ontario, left his master on account of a severe flogging.* Oneof_ihe_^taj;ion-ke£pers of an underground line in MorganCounty, Ohio, recalls an iiTStairee of a famly of seven fugitives giving as the cause of their flight the death of their master, and the expected scat- tering of their number when the division of the estate should occur.^
"Tt has already been remarked that slaves began to find their way to Canada before the opening of the present century, but information in regard to that country as a place of refuge can scarcely be said to have come into circulation before the War of 1812. The hostile relations existing between the two nations at that time caused negroes of sagacious minds to seek their liberty among the enemies of the United States.^ Then, too, soldiers returning from the War to their homes in Kentucky
1 Conversation with William Johnson, Windsor, Ontario, July, 1895.
2 Conversation with Horace Washington, Windsor, Ontario, Aug. 2, 1895. 8 The Liberator, April 10, 1846.
* Conversation with William Edwards, Amherstburg, Ontario, Aug. .3, 1895.
fi Letter of H. C. Harvey, Manchester, Kan., Jan. 16, 1893.
* S. G. Howe, The Befugees from Slavery in Canada West^ pp. 11, 12.
28 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
and Virginia brought the news of the disposition of the Cana- dian government to defend the rights of the self-emancipated slaves under its jurisdiction. Rumors of this sort gave hope and courage to the blacks that heard it, and, doubtless, the welcome reports were spread by these among trusted compan- ions and friends. By 1815 fugitives were crossing the West- ern Reserve in Ohio, and regular stations of the Underground Railroad were lending them assistance in that and other por- tions of the state.^
After the discovery of Canada by colored refugees from the Southern states, it was, presumably, not long before some of them, returning for their families and friends, gave circulation in a limited way to reports more substantial than the vague rumors hitherto afloat. Among the escaped slaves that carried the promise of Canadian liberty across Mason and Dixon's line were such successful abductors as Josiah Henson and Harriet Tubman. In 1860 it was estimated that the number of ne- groes that journeyed annually from Canada to the slave states to rescue their fellows was about five hundred. It was said that these persons " carried the Underground Railroad and the Underground Telegraph into nearly every Southern state." ^ The work done by these fugitives was supplemented by the cautious dissemination of news by white persons that went into the South to abduct slaves or encourage them to escape, or while engaged there in legitimate occupations used their opportunities to pass the helpful word or to afford more sub- stantial aid. The Rev. Calvin Fairbank, the Rev. Charles T. Torrey and Dr. Alexander M. Ross may be cited as notable examples of this class. The latter, a citizen of Canada, made extensive tours through various slave states for the express purpose of spreading information about Canada and the routes by which that country could be reached. He made trips into Maryland, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee, and did not think it too great a risk to make excursions into the more southern states. He went to New Orleans, and from that point set out on a journey, in the course of which he visited
1 Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Poioer, Vol. II, p. 63. * Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown^ p. 229.
KNOWLEDGE OF CANADA AMONG SLAVES 29
Vicksburg, Selma and Columbus, Mississippi, Augusta, Geor- gia, and Charleston, South Carolina.^
Considering the comparative freedom of movement between the slave and the free states along the border, it is easy to understand how slaves in Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri might pick up information about the "Land of Promise " to the northward. Isaac White, a slave of Kanawha County, Virginia, was shown a map and instructed how to get to Canada by a man from Cleveland, Ohio. Allen Sidney, a negro who ran a steamboat on the Tennessee River for his master, first learned of Canada from an abolitionist at Florence, Alabama.^ Until the contest over the peculiar institution had become heated, it was not an uncommon thing for slaves to be sent on errands, or even hired out to residents of the border counties of the free states. Notwithstanding Ohio's political antagonism to slavery from the beginning, there was a " tacit tolerance " of slavery by the people of the state down to about 1835; and " numbers of slaves, as many as two thousand it was sometimes supposed, were hired . . . from Virginia and Ken- tucky, chiefly by farmers." Doubtless such persons heard more or less about Canada, and when the agitation against slavery became vehement, they were approached by friends, and many were induced to accept transportation to the Queen's dominions.^
/ Depredations of this sort caused alarm among slaveholders. nThey sought to deter their chattels from flight by talking freely before them about the rigors of the climate and the poverty of the soil of Canada. Such talk was wasted on the slaves, who were shrewd enough to discern the real meaning of their masters. They were alert to gather all that was said, and interpret it in the light of rumors from other sources. Thus, masters themselves became disseminators of information
1 Dr. A. M. Ross, Recollections and Experiences of an Abolitionist^ 2d ed., 1876, pp. 10, 11, 15, 39.
2 Conversation with White and Sidney in Canada "West, August, 1895.
8 Rufus King, Ohio, in American Commonwealths^ pp. 364, 365, relates that some of these slaves were discharged'from servitude "by writs of habeas corpus procured in their names," and that "numbers were abducted from the slave states and concealed, or smuggled by the ♦ Underground Rail- road' into Canada."
30 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
they meant to withhold. In this and other ways the slaves of the border states heard of Canada. The sale of some of these slaves to the South helps to explain the knowledge of Canada possessed by many blacks in those distant parts. When Mr. Ross visited Vicksburg, Mississippi, he found that " 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 to reach it." ^ Notwithstanding the distance, the number of successful escapes from the interior as well as from the border slave states seems to have been sufficient to arouse the suspicion in the minds of Southerners that a secret organization of abolitionists had agents at work in the South running off slaves. This suspicion was brought to light dur- ing the trial of Richard Dillingham in Tennessee in 1849.^ The labors of Mr. Ross several years later gave color to the same notion. These facts help to explain the insistence of the lower Southern states on the passage and strict enforce- ment of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850.
With the growth of a thing so unfavored as was the Un- derground Road, local conditions must have a great deal to do. The characteristics of small and scattered localities, and even of isolated families, are of the first importance in the consideration of a movement such as this. These little communities were in general the elements out of which the underground system built itself up. The sources of the con- victions and confidences that knitted these communities together in defiance of what they considered unjust law can only be learned by the study of local conditions. The in- corporation in the Constitution of the compromises concern- ing slavery doubtless quieted the consciences of many of the early friends of universal liberty. It was only natural, how- ever, that there should be some that would hold such con- cessions to be sinful, and in violation of the principles asserted in the Declaration of Independence and in the very Preamble of the Constitution itself. These persons would cling tena-
1 Dr. A. M. Ross, The Recollections and Experiences of an AholitionisU p. 38.
2 A. L. Benedict, Memoir of Bichard Dillingham^ p. 17.
FAVORABLE LOCAL CONDITIONS 31
ciously to their views, and would aid a fugitive slave when- ever one would ask protection and help. It is not strange that representatives of this class should be found more fre- quently among the Quakers than any other sect. In south- eastern Pennsylvania and in New Jersey the work of helping slaves to escape was, for the most part, in the hands of Quakers from the beginning. This was true also of Wil- mington, Delaware, New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Valley Falls, Rhode Island, as of a number of important centres in western Pennsylvania, and eastern, central and southwestern Ohio, in eastern Indiana, in southern Michigan and in eastern Iowa.
Anti-slavery views prevailed against the first attempts at enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 in Massa- chusetts, and spread to other localities in the New England states. When the tide of emigration to the Western states set in, settlers from New England were given more frequent occasions to put their principles into practice in their new homes than they had known in the seaboard region. The western portions of New York and Pennsylvania, as well as the neighboring section of Ohio, called the Western Reserve, are dotted over with communities where negroes learned the meaning of Yankee hospitality. Like Joshua R. Giddings, the people of these communities claimed to have borrowed their abolition sentiments from the writings of Jefferson, whose " abolition tract," Giddings said, " was called the Dec- laration of Independence." ^ In northern Illinois there were many centres of the New England type, though, of course, not all the underground stations in that region were kept by New Englanders.
In a few neighborhoods settlers from the Southern states were helpers. These persons had left the South on account of slavery ; they preferred to raise their families away from influences they felt to be harmful ; and they pitied the slave. It was easy for them to give shelter to the self-freed negro. In south central Ohio, in a district of four or five counties locally known as the old Chillicothe Presbytery, a number of the early preachers were anti-slavery men from the Southern
1 George W. Julian, Life of Joshua B. Giddings^ p. 157.
32 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
states. Among the number were John Rankin, of Ripley, James Gilliland, of Red Oak, Jesse Lockhart, of Russell ville, Robert B. Dobbins, of Sardinia, Samuel Crothers, of Green- field, Hugh S. Fullerton, of Chillicothe, and William Dickey, of Ross or Fayette County. The Presbyterian churches over which these men presided became centres of opposition to slavery, and fugitives finding their way into the vicinity of any one of them were likely to receive the needed help.^ The stations in Bond, Putnam and Bureau counties, Illinois, were kept in part by anti-slavery settlers from the South.
It is a fact worthy of record in this connection that the teachings of the two sects, the Scotch Covenanters and the Wesleyan Methodists, did not exclude the negro from the bonds of Christian brotherhood, and where churches of either de- nomination existed the Road was likely to be found in active operation. Within the borders of Logan County, Ohio, there were a number bf Covenanter homes that received fugitives ; and in southern Illinois, between the towns of Cliester and Centralia, there was a series of such hospitable places. There were several Wesleyan Methodist stations in Harrison County, Ohio, and with these were intermixed a few of the Covenanter denomination.
It was natural that negro settlements in the free states should be resorted to by fugitive slaves. The colored people of Greenwich, New Jersey, the Stewart Settlement of Jack- son County, Ohio, the Upper and Lower Camps, Brown County, Ohio, and the Colored Settlement, Hamilton County, Indiana, were active. The list of towns and cities in which negroes became coworkers with white persons in harboring and concealing runaways is a long one. Oberlin, Ports- mouth and Cincinnati, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, Philadel- phia, Pennsylvania, and Boston, Massachusetts, will suffice as examples.
The principles and experience gained by a number of stu-
1 History of Brown County^ Ohio^ p. 313 et seq. Also letter of Dr. Isaac M. Beck, Sardinia, O., Dec. 26, 1892. Mr. Beck was born in 1807, and knew personally the clergymen named. He joined the abolition movement in 1835. His excellent letter is verified in various points by other corre- spondents.
OKIGIN OF THE UNDERGROUND MOVEMENT 33
dents while attending college in Oberlin did not come amiss later when these young men established themselves in Iowa. Professor L. F. Parker, after describing what was probably the longest line of travel through Iowa for escaped slaves, says : " Along this line Quakers and Oberlin students were the chief namable groups whose houses were open to such travellers more certainly than to white men," ^ and the Rev. William M. Brooks, a graduate of Oberlin, until recently President of Tabor College, writes: "The stations ... in southwestern Iowa were in the region of Civil Bend, where the colony from Oberlin, Ohio, settled which afterwards settled Tabor." 2 '^ ^ The origin of the Underground Road dates farther back than is generally known ; though, to be sure, the different divisions of the Road were not contemporary in development. Two letters of George Washington, written in 1786, give the first reports, as yet known, of systematic efforts for the aid and protection of fugitive slaves. One of these letters bears the date May 12, and the other, November 20. In the former, Washington speaks of the slave of a certain Mr. Dalby residing at Alexandria, who has escaped to Philadel- phia, and " whom a society of Quakers in the city, formed for such purposes, have attempted to liberate."^ In the latter he writes of a slave whom he sent " under the care of a trusty overseer" to the Hon. William Drayton, but who afterwards escaped. He says : " The gentleman to whose care I sent him has promised every endeavor to apprehend him, but it is not easy to do this, when there are numbers who would rather facilitate the escape of slaves than appre- hend them when runaways." * The difficulties attending the pursuit of the Drayton slave, like those in the other case mentioned, seem to have been associated in Washington's mind with the procedure of certain citizens of Pennsylvania ; it is quite possible that he was again referring to the Quaker
1 Letter from Professor L. F. Parker, Grinnell, Iowa, Aug. 30, 1894.
2 Letter from President W. M. Brooks, Tabor, Iowa, Oct. 11, 1894.
8 Sparks's Washington, IX, 158, quoted in Quakers of Pennsylvania, by Dr. A. C. Applegartli, Johns Hopkins Studies, X,p. 463. * Lunt, Origin of the Late War, Vol. I, p. 20.
34 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
society in Philadelphia. However that may be, it appears probable that the record of Philadelphia as a centre of active sympathy with the fugitive slave was continuous from the time of Washington's letters. In 1787 Isaac T. Hopper, who soon became known as a friend of slaves, settled in Philadelphia, and, although only sixteen or seventeen years old, had already taken a resolution to befriend the oppressed Africans.^ Some cases of kidnapping that occurred in Co- lumbia, Pennsylvania, in 1804, stirred the citizens of that town to intervention in the runaways' behalf; and the move- ment seems to have spread rapidly among the Quakers of Chester, Lancaster, York, Montgomery, Berks and Bucks counties.^ New Jersey was probably not behind southeast- ern Pennsylvania in point of time in Underground Railroad work. This is to be inferred from the fact that the adjacent parts of the two states were largely settled by people of a sect distinctly opposed to slavery, and were knitted together by those ties of blood that are known to have been favorable in other quarters to the development of underground routes. That protection was given to fugitives early in the present century by the Quakers of southwestern New Jersey can scarcely be doubted ; and we are told that negroes were being transported through New Jersey before 1818.^ New York was closely allied with the New Jersey and Philadel- phia centres as far back as our meagre records will permit us to go. Isaac T. Hopper, who had grown familiar with un- derground methods of procedure in Philadelphia, moved to New York in 1829. No doubt his philanthropic arts were soon made use of there, for in 1835 we find him accused,
1 L. Maria Child, Life of Isaac T. Hopper, 1854, p. 35.
2 History of Chester County, Pennsylvania, R. C. Smedley's article on the "Underground Railroad," p. 426; also Smedley, Underground Bailroad, p. 26.
3 The Rev. Thomas C. Oliver, born and raised in Salem, N.J., says that the work of the Underground Railroad was going on before he was bom, (1818) and continued until the time of the War. Mr. Oliver was raised in the family of Thomas Clement, a member of the Society of Friends. He graduated from the Princeton Theological Seminary in 18o6. As a youth he began to take part in rescues. Although seventy-five years old when visited by the author, he was vigorous in body and mind, and seemed to have a remarkably clear memory.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNDERGI^OUND SYSTEM 35
though falsely this time, of harboring a runaway at his store in Pearl Street.^ Frederick Douglass mentions the assistance rendered by Mr. Hopper to fugitives in New York ; and says that he himself received aid from David Ruggles, a colored man and coworker with the venerable Quaker.^ After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, New York City became more active than ever in receiving and forwarding refugees.^ This city at the mouth of the Hud- son was the entrepot for a line of travel by way of Albany, Syracuse and Rochester to Canada, and for anotlier line di- verging at Albany, and extending by the way of Troy to the New England states and Canada ; and these routes appear to have been used at an early date. The Elmira route, which connected Philadelphia with Niagara Falls by way of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was made use of from about 1850 to 1860. Its comparatively late development is explained by the fact that one of its principal agents was a fugitive slave, John W. Jones, who did not settle in Elmira until 1844, and that the line of the Northern Central Railroad was not completed until about 1850.^ In western New York fugitives began to arrive from the neighboring parts of Penn- sylvania and Ohio between 1835 and 1840, if not earlier. Professor Edward Orton recalls that in 1838, soon after his father moved to Buffalo, two sleigh-loads of negroes from the Western Reserve were brought to the house in the night-time ; ^ and Mr. Frederick Nicholson, of Warsaw, New York, states that the underground work in his vicinity began in 1840. From this time on there was apparently no cessa-
1 L. Maria Child, Life of Isaac T. Hopper, p. 316.
'^ History of Florence, Mass., p. 181, Charles A. Sheffeld, Editor.
3 The Underground Road was active in New York City at a much earlier date certainly than Lossing gives. He says, " After the Fugitive Slave Law, the Underground Railroad was established, and the city of New York became one of the most important stations on the road." History of New York, Vol. II, p. 655.
* Letter of Mrs. Susan L. Crane, Elmira, Sept. 14, 1896. Mrs. Crane's father, Mr. Jervis Langdon, was active in underground work at Elmira, and had a trusted co-laborer in John W. Jones, who still lives in Elmira.
^ Conversation with Professor Orton, Ohio State University, Columbus, O., 1893.
36 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
tion of migrations of fugitives into Canada at Black Rock, Buffalo and other points.^ V The remoteness of New England from the slave states did not prevent its sharing in the business of helping blacks to Canada. In Vermont, which seems to have received fugitives from the Troy line of eastern New York, the period of activ- ity began " in the latter part of the twenties of this century, and lasted till the time of the Rebellion." ^ In New Hamp- shire there was a station at Canaan after 1830, and probably before that time.^ The Hon. Mellen Chamberlain, of Chelsea, Massachusetts, personally conducted a fugitive on two occa- sions from Concord, New Hampshire, to his uncle's at Canter- bury, in the same state " most probably in 1838 or 1839." * This thing once begun in New Hampshire seems to have con- tinued steadily during the decades until the War of the Re- bellion.^ As regards Connecticut the Rev. Samuel J. May states that as long ago as 1834 slaves were addressed to his care while he was living in the eastern part of the state.^ In Massachusetts the town of Fall River became an important station in 1839.''' New Bedford, Boston, Marblehead, Concord, Springfield, Florence and other places in Massachusetts are known to have given shelter to fugitives as they travelled northward. Mr. Simeon Dodge, of Marblehead, who had per-
1 For cases of arrivals of escaped slaves over some of the western New York branches, see Sketches in the History of the Underground Bailroad, by Eber M. Pettit, 1879. These sketches were first published in the Fredonia Censor^ the series closing Nov. 18, 1868.
2 Letter of Mr. Aldis O. Brainerd, St. Albans, Vt., Oct. 21, 1895.
3 Letter of Mr. Charles E. Lord, Franklin, Pa., July 6, 1896 : "My ma- ternal grandfather, James Furber, lived for several years in Canaan, N. H., where his house was one of the stations of the Underground Railway. His father-in-law, James Harris, who lived in the same house, had been engaged in helping fugitive negroes on toward Canada ever since 1830, and probably before that time."
* Letter of Judge Mellen Chamberlain, Chelsea, Mass., Feb. 1, 1896.
6 Letter of Mr. Thomas P. Cheney, Ashland, N.H., March 30, 1896.
^ Jiecollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict, p. 297.
■^ Elizabeth Buffum Chace, Anti-Slavery lieminiscences, p. 27. Mrs. Chace says: "From the time of the arrival of James Curry at Fall River, and his departure for Canada, in 1839, that town became an important station on the so-called Underground Railroad." The residence of Mrs. Chace was a place of refuge from the year named.
ITS SPREAD IN OHIO 37
sonal knowledge of what was going on, recollects that the Underground Road was active between 1840 and 1860, and his testimony is substantiated by that of a number of other persons.^ Doubtless there was underground work going on in Massachusetts before this period, but it was probably of a less vsystematic character. In Maine fugitives frequently ob- tained help in the early forties. The Rev. O. B. Cheney, later President of Bates College, was concerned in a branch of the Road running from Portland to Effingham, New Hamp- shire, and northward, during the years 1813 to 1845.^ That later conditions probably increased the labors of the Maine abolitionists appears from the statement of Mr. Brown Thurston, of Portland, that he had at one time after the pas- sage of the second Fugitive Slave Law the care of thirty fugitives.^
Considering the geographical situation of Ohio and western Pennsylvania, the period of their settlement, and the character of many of their pioneers, it is not strange that this work should have become established in this region earlier than in the other free states along the Ohio River. The years 1815 to 1817 witnessed, so far as we now know, the origin of under- ground lines in both the eastern and western parts of this section. Henry Wilson explains this by saying that soldiers from Virginia and Kentucky, returning home after the War of 1812, carried back the news that there was a land of free- dom beyond the lakes. John Sloane, of Ravenna, David Hud- son, the founder of the town of Hudson, and Owen Brown, the father of John Brown of Osawattomie, were among the first of those known to have harbored slaves in the eastern part.* Edward Howard, the father of Colonel D. W. H. Howard, of Wauseon, and the Ottawa Indians of the village of Chief Kinjeino were among the earliest friends of fugitives
1 Concerning Springfield, Mass. see Mason A. Green's History of Spring- field, pp. 470, 471. For the sentiment of New Bedford, see Ellis's History of New Bedford, pp. 306, 307.
2 Letter of the Rev. O. B. Cheney, Pawtuxet, R.I., Apr. 8, 1898. 8 Letter of Mr. Brown Thurston, Portland, Me., Oct. 21, 1895.
* Wilson, Bise and Fall of the Slave Power, Vol. II, p. 63 ; Alexander Black, The Story of Ohio, see account of the Underground Railroad.
38 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
in the western part.^ At least one case of underground pro- cedure is reported to have occurred in central Ohio as early as 1812. The report is but one remove from its original source, and was given to Mr. Robert McCrory, of Marys ville, Ohio, by Richard Dixon, an eye-witness. The alleged run- away, seized at Delaware, was unceremoniously taken from the custody of his mounted captor when the two reached Worthington, and was brought before Colonel James Kil- bourne, who served as an official of all work in the village he had founded but a few years before. By Mr. Kilbourne's decision, the negro was released, and was then sent north aboard one of the government wagons engaged at the time in carrying military supplies to Sandusky.^ That such action was not inconsistent with the character of Colonel Kilbourne and his New England associates is evidenced by the fact that as an agent for " The Scioto Company," formed in Granby, Connecticut, in the winter of 1801-1802, he had delayed the purchase of a township in Ohio for settlement until a state constitution forbidding slavery should be adopted.^ If now the testimony of the oldest surviving abolitionists from the different regions of the state be compared, some interest- ing results may be found. Job Mullin, a Quaker of War- ren County, in his eighty-ninth year when his statement was given, says : " The most active time to my knowledge was from 1816 to 1830. ., . ." In 1829 Mr. Mullin moved off the line with which he had been connected and took no further part in the work.* Mr. Eliakim H. Moore, for a number of years the treasurer of Ohio University at Athens, says that the work began near Athens during 1823 and 1824. " In those years not so many attempted to escape as later, from 1845 to 1860." ^ Dr. Thomas Cowgill, an aged Quaker of Kennard, Champaign County, recollects that the work of the Underofround Railroad beo^an in his
1 Letter of Col. D. W. H. Howard, Wcauseon, O., Aug. 22, 1894.
2 Conversation with Robert McCrory, Marysville, O., Sept. 30, 1898. Mr. McCrory was educated at Oberlin College, and has an excellent memory.
3 Plowe's Historical Collections of Ohio, Vol. I, p. C14.
* Letter from Job Mullin, dictated to liis son-in-law, W. H. Newport, at Springboro, O., Sept. 9, 1895.
^ Conversation with Mr. Eliakim H. Moore, Athens, O.
ITS SPREAD IN OHIO 39
neighborhood about 1824. The time between 1840 and the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law he regards as the period of greatest activity within his experience. Joseph Skillgess, a colored citizen of Urbana, now seventy-six years old, says that it is among his earliest recollections that runaways were en- tertained at Dry Run Church, in Ross County .^ William A. Johnston, an old resident of Coshocton, testifies : " We had such a road here as early as the twenties, I know from tradi- tion and personal observation." ^ / Mahlon Pickrell, a promi- nent Quaker of Logan County, writes : " There was some travel on the Underground Railroad as early as 1820, but the period of greatest activity in this vicinity was between 1840 and 1850."^ Finally, Mr. R. C. Corwin, of Lebanon, writes : " My first recol- lection of the business dates back to about 1820, when I remem- ber seeing fugitives at my father's house, though I dare say it had been going on long before that time. From that time until 1840 there was a gradual increase of business. From 1840 to 1860 might be called the period of greatest activitjjjli Among these aged witnesses, those have been quoted whose experience, character and clearness of mind gave weight to their words. Mr. Rush R. Sloane, of Sandusky, who made some local investigations in northwestern Ohio and published the results in 1888, produces some evidence that agrees with the testimony just given. He found that, " The first runaway slave known as such at Sandusky was there in the fall of the year 1820. . . . Judge Jabez Wright, one of the three associate judges who held the first term of court in Huron County in 1815, was among the first white men upon the Firelands to aid fugitive slaves ; he never failed when opportunity offered to lend a helping hand to the fugitives, secreting them when necessary, feeding them when they were hungry, clothing and employing them." ^ After reciting a number of instances of rescues occurring between 1820 and 1850, Mr. Sloane remarks
1 Conversation with Joseph Skillgess, Urbana, O., Aug. 14, 1894.
2 Letter of W^m. A. Johnston, Coshocton, O., Aug. 23, 1894.
3 Letter of Hannah W. Blackburn, for her father, Mahlon Pickrell, Zanes- field, O., March 25, 1893.
* Letter of R. C. Corwin, Lebanon, 0., Sept. 11, 1895. 6 The Firelands Pioneer, July, 1888, p. 34.
40 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
that one of the immediate results of the passage of the second Fugitive Slave Law was the increased travel of fugitives through the State of Ohio.^ The foregoing items have been brought together to show that there was no break in the busi- ness of the Road from the beginning to the end. The death or the change of residence of abolitionists may have interrupted travel on one or another route, and may even have broken a line permanently, but the history of the Underground Railroad system in Ohio is continuous.
In North Carolina underground methods are known to have been employed by white persons of respectability as early as 1819. We are informed that " Vestal Coffin organ- ized the Underground Railroad near the present Guilford College in 1819. Addison Coffin, his son, entered its service as a conductor in early youth and still survives in hale old age. . . . Vestal's cousin, Levi Coffin, became an anti- slavery apostle in early youth and continued unflinching to the end. His early years were spent in North Carolina, whence he helped many slaves to reach the West."^ Levi Coffin removed to Indiana in 1826. Of his own and his cousin's activities in behalf of slaves while still a resident of North Carolina, Mr. Coffin writes: "Runaway slaves used frequently to conceal themselves in the woods and thickets of New Garden, waiting opportunities to make their escape to the North, and I generally learned their places of conceal- ment and rendered them all the service in my power. . . . These outlying slaves knew where I lived, and, when re- duced to extremity of want or danger, often came to my room, in the silence and darkness of the night, to obtain food or assistance. In my efforts to aid these fugitives I had a zealous coworker in my friend and cousin Vestal Coffin, who was then, and continued to the time of his death — a few years later — a staunch friend to the slave." ^ When Levi Coffin emigrated in 1826 to southeastern Indiana, he did not give up his active interest in the fleeing slave, and his house at Newport (now Fountain City) became a centre
1 The Firelands Pioneer, July, 1888, p. 34 et seq.
2 Stephen B. Weeks, Southern Quakers and Slavery, p. 242. 8 Beminiscences of Levi Coffin, 2d ed., pp. 20, 21.
EAKLY ACTIVITIES IN ILLINOIS 41
at which three distinct lines of Underground Road con- verged. It is probable, however, that wayfarers from bond- age found aid from pioneer settlers in Indiana before Friend Coffin's arrival. John F. Williams, of Economy, Indiana, says that fugitives " commenced coming in 1820," and he denominated himself " an agent since 1820," although he "never kept a depot till 1852." ^ It is scarcely necessary to make a showing of testimony to prove that an expansion of routes like that taking place in Ohio and states farther east occurred also in Indiana.
It is doubtful at what time stations first came to exist in Illinois. Mr. H. B. Leeper, an old resident of that state, assigns their origin to the years 1819 and 1820, at which time a small colony of anti-slavery people from Brown County, Ohio, settled in Bond County, southern Illinois. Emigrations from this locality to Putnam County, about 1830, led, he thinks, to the establishment there of a new centre for this work. These settlers were persons that had left South Carolina on account of slavery, and during their residence in Brown County, Ohio, had accepted the aboli- tionist views of the Rev. James Gilliland, a Presbyterian preacher of Red Oak; and in Illinois they did not shrink from putting their principles into practice. This account is plausible, and as it is substantiated in certain parts by facts from the history of Brown County, Ohio, it may be con- sidered probable in those parts that are and must remain without corroboration. Concerning his father Mr. Leeper writes : " John Leeper moved f rpm Marshall County, Ten- nessee, to Bond County, Illineis, in 1816. Was a hater of slavery. . . . Remained in B(jnd County until 1823, then moved to Jacksonville, Morgan County, and in 1831 to Put- nam County, and in 1833 to Bureau County, Illinois. . . . My father's house was always a hiding-place for the fugitive
1 Letter from John F. Williams, Economy, Ind., March 21, 1893. When this letter was written, Mr. Williams was eighty-one years old. He was, he says, born in 1812. In 1820 he would have been eight years old. Children were sometimes sent to carry food to refugees in hiding, or to do other little services with which they could be safely trusted. Such experiences were apt to make deep impressions on their young memories.
42 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
from slavery." ^ On the basis of this testimony, and the probability in the case, we may believe that the underground movement in Illinois dates back, at least, to the time of the admission of Illinois into the Union, that is, to 1818. Soon after 1835, the movement seems to have become well estab- lished, and to have increased in importance with considerable rapidity till the War.
It is a fact worthy of note that the years that witnessed the beginnings in Ohio, Indiana, North Carolina and Illinois of this curious method of assailing the slave power, precede but slightly those that witnessed the formulation of three several bills in Congress designed to strengthen the first Fugitive Slave Law. The three measures were drafted dur- ing the interval from 1818 to 1822.
The abolitionist enterprises of the more western states, Iowa and Kansas, came too late to be in any way connected with the proposal of these bills. The settlement of these territories was, of course, considerably behind that of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, but the nearness of the new regions to a slaveholding section insured the opportunity for Under- ground Railroad work as soon as settlement should begin. Professor L. F. Parker, of Tabor College, Iowa, has sketched briefly the successive steps in the opening of his state to occupancy. "The Black-Hawk Purchase opened the eastern edge of Iowa to the depth of 40 or 60 miles to the whites in 1833. The strip . . . west of that which included what is now Grinnell was not opened to white occupancy till 1843, and it was ten years later before the white residents in this county numbered 500. Grinnell was settled in 1854, when central and western Iowa was merely dotted by a few hamlets of white men, and seamed by winding paths along prairie ridges and through bridgeless streams." ^ One of the early settlers in southeastern Iowa was J. H. B. Armstrong, who had been familiar with the midnight appeals of escaping
1 Letter from H. B. Leeper, Princeton, 111., received Dec. 19, 1895. Mr. Leeper is seventy-five years of age. His letter shows a knowledge of the localities of which he writes, Bond County in southwestern Illinois, and Bureau and Putnam Counties in the central part of the state.
2 Letter from Professor L. F. Parker, Grinnell, Iowa, Aug. 30, 1894.
OPEKATIONS IN IOWA 43
slaves in Fayette County, Ohio. Mr. Armstrong removed to the West in 1839, and settled in Lee County, Iowa. His proximity to the northeastern boundary of Missouri seems to have involved him in Underground Railroad work from the start, on the route running to Salem and Denmark. When in 1852 Mr. Armstrong moved to Appanoose County, and located within four miles of the Missouri line, among a number of abolitionists, he found himself even more con- cerned with secret projects to help slaves to Canada. The lines of travel of fugitive slaves that extended east through- out the entire length of Iowa were more or less associated with Kansas men and Kansas movements, and their develop- ment is, therefore, to be assigned to the time of the outbreak of the struggle over Kansas (1854). Residents of Tabor in southwestern Iowa, and of Grinnell in central Iowa, agree in designating 1854 as the year in which their Underground Railroad labors began. The Rev. John Todd, one of the founders of the college colony of Tabor, is authority for the statement that the first fugitives arrived in the summer of 1854.1 Professor Parker states that Grinnell was a stopping- place for the hunted slave from the time of its founding in 185^
(AVe may summarize our findings in regard to the expansion of the Underground Railroad, then, by saying that it had grown into a wide-spread " institution " before the year 1840, and in several states it had existed in previous decades. This statement coincides with the findings of Dr. Samuel G. Howe in Canada, while on a tour of investigation in 1863. He re- ports that the arrivals of runaway slaves in the provinces, at first rare, increased early in the century ; that some of the fugitives, rejoicing in the personal freedom they had gained and banishing all fear of the perils they must endure, went stealthily back to their former homes and brought away their wives and children. The Underground Road was of great assistance to these and other escaping slaves, and " hundreds,"
1 Letter from Professor James E. Todd, Vermillion, South Dakota, Nov. 6, 1894. Professor Todd is the son of the Rev. John Todd.
The Tabor Beacon, 1890, 1891, contains a series of reminiscences from the pen of the Rev. John Todd. The first of these recounts the first arrival of fugitives in July, 1854.
44 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
says Dr. Howe, " trod this path every year, but they did not attract much public attention." ^ It does not escape Dr. Howe's consideration, however, that the fugitive slaves in Canada were soon brought to public notice by the diplomatic negotiations between England and the United States during the years 1826-1828, the object being, as Mr. Clay, the Secre- tary of State, himself declared, "to provide for a growing evil." The evidence gathered from surviving abolitionists in the states adjacent to the lakes shows an increased activity of the Underground Road during the period 1830-1810. The reason for flight given by the slave was, in the great majority of cases, the same, namely, fear of being sold to the far South. It is certainly significant in this connection that the decade above mentioned witnessed the removal of the Indians from the Gulf states, and, in the words of another contemporary observer and reporter, " the consequent opening of new and vast cotton fields." ^ The swelling emphasis laid upon the value of their escaped slaves by the Southern representatives in Congress, and by the South generally, resounded with terrific force at length in the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. That act did not, as it appears, check or diminish in any way the number of underground rescues. In spite of the exhibit on fugitive slaves made in the United States census report of 1860, which purports to show that the number of escapes was about a thousand a year, it is difficult to doubt the con- sensus of testimony of many underground agents, to the effect that the decade from 1850 to 1860 was the period of the Koad's greatest activity in all sections of the North.^ -^ It is not known when the name " Underground Railroad " came to be applied to these secret trails, nor where it was first applied to them. According to Mr. Smedley the designa- tion came into use among slave-hunters in the neighborhood of Columbia soon after the Quakers in southeastern Penn-
1 S. G. Howe, The Befugees from Slavery in Canada West, 1864, pages 11, 12.
2 G. M. Weston, Progress of Slavery in the United States, Washington, D.C., 1858, p. 22.
2 Some conclusions presented in the American Historical Beview, April, 1896, pp. 460-462, are here repeated.
NAMING OF THE EOAD 45
sylvania began their concerted action in harboring and for- warding fugitives. The pursuers seem to have had little difficulty in tracking slaves as far as Columbia, but beyond that point all trace of them was generally lost. All the various methods of detection customary in such cases were resorted to, but failed to bring the runaways to view. The mystery enshrouding these disappearances completely bewil- dered and baffled the slave-owners and their agents, who are said to have declared, " there must be an Underground Rail- road somewhere." ^ As this work reached considerable de- velopment in the district indicated during the first decade of this century the account quoted is seen to contain an anachronism. Railroads were not known either in England or the United States until about 1830, so that the word " railroad " could scarcely have received its figurative appli- cation as early as Mr. Smedley implies.
The Hon. Rush R. Sloane, of Sandusky, Ohio, gives the following account of the naming of the Road: "In the year 1831, a fugitive named Tice Davids came over the line and lived just back of Sandusky. He had come direct from Ripley, Ohio, where he crossed the Ohio River. . . .
" When he was running away, his master, a Kentuckian, was in close pursuit and pressing him so hard that when the Ohio River was reached he had no alternative but to jump in and swim across. It took his master some time to secure a skiff, in which he and his aid followed the swimming fugitive, keeping him in sight until he had landed. Once on shore, however, the master could not find him. No one had seen him ; and after a long . . . search the disappointed slave-master went into Ripley, and when inquired of as to what had be- come of his slave, said ... he thought ' the nigger must have gone off on an underground road.' / The story was repeated with a good deal of amusement, and this incident gave the name to the line. First the 'Underground Road,' after- wards ' Underground Railroad.' " ^ A colored man, the Rev. W. M. Mitchell, who was for several years a resident of
^ R. C. Smedley, Underground Bailroad, pp. 34, 35. 2 The Firelands Pioneer, July, 1888, p. 35,
46 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
southern Ohio, and a friend of fugitives, gives what appears to be a version of Mr. Sloane's story.^ These anecdotes are hardly more than traditions, affording a fair general explana- tion of the way in which the Underground Railroad got its name; but they cannot be trusted in the details of time, place and occasion. Whatever the manner and date of its suggestion, the designation was generally accepted as an apt title for a mysterious means of transporting fugitive slaves to Canada.
1 The Underground Bailroad, pp. 4, 5. .
CHAPTER III
THE METHODS OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
/ By the enactment of the first Fugitive Slave Law, February 12, 1793, the aiding of fugitive slaves became a^£enal^d^ence*_ This measure laid a fine of five hundred dollars upon any one harboring escaped slaves, or preventing their arrest. The pro- visions of the law were of a character to stimulate resistance to its enforcement. The master or his agent was authorized to arrest the runaway, wherever found ; to bring him before a judge of the circuit or the district court of the United States, or before a local magistrate where the capture was made; and to receive, on the display of satisfactory proof, a certifi- cate operating as a full warrant for taking the prisoner back to the state from which he had fled. This summary method of disposing of cases involving the high question of human liberty was regarded by many persons as unjust ; they freely denounced it, and, despite the penalty attached, many violated the law. Secrecy was the only safeguard of these persons, as it was of those they were attempting to succor; hence arose the numerous artifices employed.
The uniform success of the attempts to evade this first Fugitive 'Slave Law, an^-^oubtless, also, the general indisposi- tion of Northern people to take part in the return of refugees to their Southern owners, led, as early as in 1823, to negotia- tions between Kentucky and the three adjoining states across the Ohio. It is unnecessary to trace the history of these negotiations, or to point out the statutes in which the legis- lative results are recorded. It is notable that sixteen years elapsed before the legislature of Ohio passed a law to secure the recovery of slave property, and that the new enactment remained on the statute books only four years. The pen- alties imposed by this law for advising or for enticing a slave
47
48 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
to leave his master, or for harboring a fugitive, were a fine, not to exceed five hundred dollars, and, at the discretion of the court, imprisonment not to exceed sixty days. In addi- tion, the offender was to be liable in an action at the suit of the party injured.^ It can scarcely be supposed that a state Fugitive Slave Law like this would otherwise affect persons that were already engaged in aiding runaways than to make them more certain than ever that their cause was just.
The loss of slave property sustained by Southern planters was not diminished, and the outcry of the South for a more rigorous national law on the subject was by no means hushed. In 1850 Congress met the case by substituting for the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 the measure called the second Fugitive Slave Law. The penalties provided by this law were, of course, more severe than those of the act of 1793. Anypei'son hin- dering the claimant from arresting the fugitive, or attempting the rescue or concealment of the fugitive, became " subject to a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, or imprisonment not exceeding six months," and was liable for " civil damages to the party injured by such illegal conduct in the sum of one thousand dollars for each fugitive so lost." These provisions of the new law only added fresh fuel to the fire. The deter- mination to prevent the recovery of escaped slaves by their owners spread rapidly among the inhabitants of the free states. Many of these persons, who had hitherto refrained from acting for or against the fugitive, were provoked into helping defeat the action of a law commanding them " to aid and assist in the prompt and efficient execution " of a measure that would have set them at the miserable business of slave-catching. Clay only expressed a wish instead of a fact, when he main- tained in 1851 that the law was being executed in Indiana, Ohio and other states. Another Southern senator was much nearer the truth when he complained of the small number of recaptures under the recent act.
The risk of suffering severe penalties by violating the Fugi- tive Slave laws was less wearing, probably, on abolitionists than was the social disdain they brought upon themselves by acknowledging their principles. During a generation or more
1 The date of the act is February 26, 1839.
ABUSE SUFFEEED BY ABOLITIONISTS 49
they were in a minority in many communities, and were forced to submit to the taunts and insults of persons that did not distinguish between abolition of slavery and fusion of the white and the black races. " Black abolitionist," " niggerite," " amalgamationist " and " nigger thief " were convenient epi- thets in the mouths of pro-slavery champions in many North- ern neighborhoods. The statement was not uncommonly made about those suspected of harboring slaves, that they did so from motives of thrift and gain. It was said that some underground helpers made use of the labor of runaways, espe- cially in harvest-time, as long as it suited their convenience, then on the pretext of danger hurried the negroes off without pay. Unreasoning malice alone could concoct so absurd an explanation of a philanthropy involving so much cost and risk.^ Abolitionists were often made uncomfortable in their church relations by the uncomplimentary attentions they re- ceived, or by the discovery that they were regarded as unwel- come disturbers of the household of faith.^ Even the Society of Friends is not above the charge of having lost sight, in some quarters, of the precepts of Anthony Benezet and John Woolman. Uxbridge monthly meeting is known to have dis- owned Abby Kelly because she gave anti-slavery lectures. ^ The church certificate given to Mrs. Elizabeth Bulf um Chace when she transferred her membership from Swanzey monthly meeting to Providence (Rhode Island) monthly meeting was without the acknowledgment usually contained in such certi- ficates that the bearer " was of orderly life and conversation." * A popular Hicksite minister of New York City, in commend- ing the fugitive Thomas Hughes for consenting to return South with his master, said, " I had a thousand times rather be a slave, and spend my days with slaveholders, than to dwell in companionship with abolitionists." ^ In the Methodist Church
1 See an article entitled "An Underground Railway," by Robert W. Carroll, of Cincinnati, O., in the Cincinnati Times-Star, Aug. 19, 1890; also Sraedley, Underground Bailroad, p. 182 ; and J. B. Robinson, Pictures of Slavery and Anti-Slavery, pp. 293, 294.
2 History of Henry Comity, Indiana, p. 126 et seq.
8 Elizabeth Buffum Chace, Anti-Slavery Beminiscences, p. 19.
4 Ibid. , p. 18.
6 Lydia Maria Child, Life of Isaac T. Hopper, pp. 388, 389.
50 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
there came to be such stress of feeling between the abolition- ists and the other members, that in many places the former withdrew and organized little congregations apart, under the denominational name, Wesleyan Methodist. The truth is, the mass of the people of the free states were by no means abolitionists ; they cherished an intense prejudice against the negro, and permitted it to extend to all anti-slavery advocates. They were willing to let slavery alone, and desired that others should let it alone. In the Western states the character of public sentiment is evidenced by the fact that generally the political party considered to be most favorable to slavery could command a majority, and " black laws " were framed at the behest of Southern politicians for the purpose of making residence in the Northern states a disagreeable thing for the negro. ^
Abolitionists were frequently subjected to espionage ; the arrival of a party of colored people at a house after daybreak would arouse suspicion and cause the place to be closely watched ; a chance meeting with a neighbor in the highway would perhaps be the means by which some abolitionists' secrets would become known. In such cases it did not always follow that the discovery brought ruin upon the head of the offender, even when the discoverer was a person of pro-slavery views. Nevertheless, accidents of the kind described served to fasten the suspicions of a locality upon the offender. Grav- ner and Hannah Marsh, Quakers, living near Downington, in Chester County, Pennsylvania, became known to their pro- slavery neighbors as agents on the Underground Road. These neighbors were not disposed to inform against them, although one woman, intent on finding out how many slaves they aided in a year, with much watching counted sixty .^ The Rev. John Cross, a Presbyterian minister living in Elba Township, Knox County, Illinois, about the year 1840, had neighbors that insisted on his answering to the law for the help he gave to some fugitives. Mr. Cross made no secret of his princi- ples and accordingly became game for his enemies. One of these was Jacob Kightlinger, who observed a wagon-load of
1 See President Fairchild's pamphlet, The Underground Bailroad.
2 Smedley, Underground Bailroad^ p. 139.
ABOLITIONISTS UNDER SURVEILLANCE 51
negroes being taken in the direction of Mr. Cross's house. In- vestigation by Mr. Kightlinger and several of his friends proved their suspicions to be true, and by their action Mr. Cross was indicted for harboring fugitive slaves.^
Parties in pursuit of fugitives were compelled to make care- ful and often long-continued search to find traces of their way- faring chattels. During such missions they were, of course, inquisitive and vigilant, and when circumstances seemed to warrant it, they set men to watch the premises of the persons most suspicioned, and to report any mysterious actions occur- ring within the district patrolled. The houses of many noted abolitionists along the Ohio River were frequently under the surveillance of slave-hunters. It was not a rare thing that towns and villages in regions adjacent to the Southern states were terrorized by crowds of roughs eager to find the hiding- places of slaves, recently missed by masters bent on their re- covery. The following extracts from a letter written by Mr. William Steel to Mr. David Putnam, Jr., of Point Harmar, Ohio, will show the methods practised by slave-hunters when in eager pursuit of fugitives : —
WooDSFiELD, Monroe Co., 0. Sept. 5, 1843. Mr. David Putnam, Jr. :
Dear Sir, — I received yours of the 26th ult. and was very glad to hear from it that Stephen Quixot had such good luck in getting his family from Virginia, but we began to be very uneasy about them as we did not hear from them again until last Saturday, . . . we then heard they were on the route leading through Summer- field, but that the route from there to Somerton was so closely watched both day and night for some time past on account of the human cattle that have lately escaped from Virginia, that they could not proceed farther on that route. So we made an arrange- ment with the Summerfield friends to meet them on Sunday even- ing about ten miles west of this and bring them on to this route . . . the abolitionists of the west part of this county have had very difficult work in getting them all off without being caught, as the whole of that part of the country has been filled with Southern blood hounds upon their track, and some of the aboli-
^ History of Knox County, BL, pp. 213, 214. Mr. Kightlinger's account of this affair is published under his own name.
52 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
tionists* houses have been watched day and night for several days in succession. This evening a company of eight Virginia hounds passed through this place north on the hunt of some of their two- legged chattels. . . . Since writing the above I have understood that something near twenty Virginians including the eight above mentioned have just passed through town on their way to the Somerton neighborhood, but I do not think they will get much in- formation about their lost chattels there. . . .
Yours for the Slave,
William Steel.^
A case that well illustrates the method of search employed by pursuing parties is that of the escape of the Nuckolls slaves through Iowa, the incidents of which are still vivid in the memories of some that witnessed them. Mr. Nuckolls, of Nebraska City, Nebraska, lost two slave-girls in December, 1858. He instituted search for them in Tabor, an abolition- ist centre, and did not neglect to guard the crossings of two streams in the vicinity. Silver Creek and the Nishnabotna River. As the slaves had been promptly despatched to Chi- cago, this search availed him nothing. A second and more thorough hunt was decided on, and the aid of a score or more fellows was secured. These men made entrance into houses by force and violence, when bravado failed to gain them admission.2 At one house where the remonstrance against intrusion was unusually strong the person remonstrat- ing was struck over the head and injured for life. The out- come of the whole affair was that Mr. Nuckolls had some ten thousand dollars to pay in damages and costs, and, after all, failed to recover his slaves.^
Many were the inducements to practise espionage on aboli- tionists. Large sums were offered for the capture of fugi- tives, and rewards were offered also for the arrest and delivery
1 The original letter is in the possession of the author of this book.
2 The Tahor Beacon, 1890, 1891, Chapter XXI of a series of articles by the Rev. John Todd, on "The Early Settlement and Growth of Western Iowa." Mr. Todd was one of the early settlers of western Iowa. The letters were received from his son, Professor James E. Todd, of the Uni- versity of South Dakota, Vermillion, S. Dak.
» Letter of Mr. Sturgis Williams, Percival, la., 1894. Mr. Williams was also one of the pioneers of western Iowa.
REWARDS FOR ABDUCTION OF ABOLITIONISTS 53
south of Mason and Dixon's line of certain abolitionists, who were well-enough known to have the hatred of many Southerners. " At an anti-slavery meeting of the citizens of Sardinia and vicinity, held on November 21, 1838, a committee of respectable citizens presented a report, accompanied with affidavits in support of its declarations, stating that for more than a year past there had been an unusual degree of hatred manifested by the slave-hunters and slaveholders towards the abolitionists of Brown County, and that rewards varying from $500 to $2,500 had been repeatedly offered by different per- sons for the abduction or assassination of the Rev. John B. Mahan ; and rewards had also been offered for Amos Petti- john, William A. Frazier and Dr. Isaac M. Beck, of Sardinia, the Rev. John Rankin and Dr. Alexander Campbell, of Rip- ley, William McCoy, of Russellville, and citizens of Adams County." ^ A resolution was offered in the Maryland Legis- lature, in January, 1860, proposing a reward for the arrest of Thomas Garrett, of Wilmington, for "stealing" slaves.^ It is perhaps an evidence of the extraordinary caution and shrewd- ness employed by managers of the Road generally that so many of them escaped without suffering the penalties of the law or the inflictions of private vengeance. / Slave-owners occasionally tried to find out the secrets of an underground station or of a route by visiting various localities in disguise. A Kentucky slaveholder clad in the Friends' peculiar garb went to the house of John Charles, a Quaker of Richmond, Indiana, and meeting a son of Mr. Charles, accosted him with the words, " Well, sir, my little mannie, hasn't thee father gone to Canada with some niggers?" Young Charles quickly perceived the disguise, and pointing his finger at the man declared him to be a " wolf in sheep's clothing." 3 About the year 1840 there came into Cass County, Indiana, a man from Kentucky by the name of Carpenter, who professed to be an anti-slavery lecturer and an agent for
^ History of Brown County, Ohio, p. 314.
2 The New Beign of Terror in the Slaveholding States, for 1859-1860 {Anti-Slavery Tracts, No. 4, New Series), pp. 49, 50.
3 Letter of Mrs. Mary C. Thorne, Selma, Clark Co., O., March 3, 1892. John Charles was an uncle of Mrs. Thorne.
54 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
certa'r anti-slavery papers. He visited the abolitionists and seemed zealous in the cause. In this way he learned the whereabouts of seven fugitives that had arrived in the neigh- borhood from Kentucky a few weeks before. He sent word to their masters, and in due time they were all seized, but had not been taken far before the neighborhood was aroused, masters and victims were overtaken and carried to the county- seat, a trial was procured, and the slaves were again set free.
Thus the penalties of the law, the contempt of neighbors, and the espionage of persons interested in returning fugitives to bondage made secrecy necessary in the service of the Underground Railroad.
Night was the only time, of course, in which the fugitive and his helpers could feel themselves even partially secure. Probably most slaves that started for Canada had learned to know the north star, and to many of these superstitious per- sons its light seemed the enduring witness of the divine inter- est in their deliverance. When clouds obscured the stars they had recourse, perhaps, to such bits of homely knowledge as, that in forests the trunks of trees are commonly moss- grown on their north sides. In Kentucky and western Vir- ginia many fugitives were guided to free soil by the tributaries of the Ohio ; while in central and eastern Virginia the ranges of the Appalachian chain marked the direction to be taken. After reaching the initial station of some line of Underground Road the fugitive found himself provided with such accom- modations for rest and refreshment as circumstances would allow ; and after an interval of a day or more he was con- veyed, usually in the night, to the house of the next friend. Sometimes, however, when a guide was thought to be un- necessary the fugitive was sent on foot to the next station, full and minute instructions for finding it having been given him. The faltering step, and the light, uncertain rapping of the fugitive at the door, was quickly recognized by the family within, and the stranger was admitted with a welcome at once sincere and subdued. There was a suppressed stir in the house while the fire was building and food preparing ; and after the hunger and chill of the wayfarer had been dispelled, he was provided with a bed in some out-of-the-way part of the
MIDNIGHT SERVICE 55
house, or under the hay in the barn loft, according to the degree of danger. Often a household was awakened to find a company of five or more negroes at the door. The arrival of such a company was sometimes announced beforehand by special messenger.
That the amount of time taken from the hours of sleep by underground service was no small item may be seen from the following record covering the last half of August, 1843. The record or memorandum is that of Mr. David Putnam, Jr., of Point Harmar, Ohio, and is given with all the abbreviations :
|
Aug. |
13/43 Sunday Morn. |
2 o'clock arrived |
||
|
Sunday Eve. |
81 " |
departed for B. |
||
|
16 |
Wednesday Morn. 2 " |
arrived |
||
|
20 |
Sunday eve. |
10 " |
departed for N. |
|
|
Wife&childrei] |
L 21 |
Monday morn. |
2 " |
arrived from B. |
|
eve. |
10 " |
left for Mr. H. |
||
|
22 |
Tuesday " |
11 " |
left for W. |
|
|
A. L. & S. J. |
28 |
Monday morn. |
1 " |
arrived left 2 o'clock.^ |
This is plainly a schedule of arriving and departing " trains " on the Underground Road. It is noticeable that the schedule contains no description, numerical or otherwise, of the parties coming and going ; nor does it indicate, except by initial, to what places or persons the parties were despatched ; further, it does not indicate whether Mr. Putnam accompanied them or not. It does, however, give us a clue to the amount of night service that was done at a station of average activity on the Ohio River as early as the year 1843. The demands upon operators increased, we know, from this time on till 1860. The memorandum also shows the variation in the length of time during which different companies of fugitives were detained at a station ; thus, the first fugitive, or com- pany of fugitives, as the case may have been, departed on the evening of the day of arrival ; the second party was kept in concealment from Wednesday morning until the Sunday night next following before it was sent on its way ; the third
1 The original memorandum is written in pencil on a letter received by Mr. Putnam from Mr. John Stone, of Belpre, O., in Aug., 1843. The con- tents of this letter, or message, is given on page 57. The original is in posses- sion of the author.
56 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
par^' -^'ems to have been divided, one section being forwarded the j'ht of the day of arrival, the other the next night fol- io- • : in the case of the last company there seems to have ; some especial reason for haste, and we find it hurried
a^. «y at two o'clock in the morning, after only an hour's intermission for rest and refreshment. The memorandum of night service at the Putnam station may be regarded as fairly representative of the night service at many other posts or stations throughout Ohio and the adjoining states.
Much of the communication relating to fugitive slaves was had in guarded language. Special signals, whispered conver- sations, passwords, messages couched in figurative phrases, were the common modes of conveying information about underground passengers, or about parties in pursuit of fugi- tives. These modes of communication constituted what abo- litionists knew as the "grape-vine telegraph." ^ The signals employed were of various kinds, and were local in usage. Fugitives crossing the Ohio River in the vicinity of Parkers- burg, in western Virginia, were sometimes announced at sta- tions near the river by their guides by a shrill tremolo-call like that of the owl. Colonel John Stone and Mr. David Putnam, Jr., of Marietta, Ohio, made frequent use of this sig- nal.2 Different neighborhoods had their peculiar combina- tions of knocks or raps to be made upon the door or window of a station when fugitives were awaiting admission. In Harrison County, Ohio, around Cadiz, one of the recognized signals was three distinct but subdued knocks. To the in-
1 The Firelands Pioneer, July, 1888, p. 20 ; also letter of S. J. Wright, Rushville, 0., Aug. 29, 1894, and letter of Ira Thomas, Springboro, 0., Oct. 29, 1895.
2 This owl signal was mentioned in conversation with several residents of Marietta. Miss Martha Putnam says she has heard her father make the "hoot-owl" call hundreds of times. General R. R. Dawes designates this call the "river signal." "When I was a boy of eight," he says, "I was visiting my grandfather. Judge Ephraira Cutler. The place was called Con- stitution. Somehow, in the night I was wakened up, and a wagon came down over the hill to the river. Then a call was given, a hoot-owl call, and this was answered by a similar one from the other side ; then a boat went out and brought over the crowd. My mother got out of bed and kneeled down and prayed for them, and had me kneel with her." Conversation with General Dawes, Marietta, O., Aug. 21, 1892.
MESSAGES
57
-S
^
^
->.
quiry, " Who's there ? " the reply- was, " A friend with friends." ^ Pass- words were used on some sections of the Road. The agents at York in southeastern Pennsylvania made use of them, and William Yokum, a con- stable of the town, who was kindly disposed towards runaways, was able to be most helpful in times of emer- gency by his knowledge of the watch- words, one of which was "William Penn." ^ Messages couched in figura- tive language were often sent. The following note, written by Mr. John Stone, of Belpre, Ohio, in August, 1843, is a good example : —
Belpre Friday Morning David Putn^am
Business is aranged for Saturday night be on the lookout and if practi- cable let a cariage come & meet the cara- wan J S^
Mr. I. Newton Peirce forwarded a number of fugitives from Alliance, Ohio, to Cleveland, over the Cleve- land and Western Railroad. He sent with each company a note to a Cleve- land merchant, Mr. Joseph Garretson, saying : " Please forward immediately the U. G. baggage this day sent to you. Yours truly, I. N. P."* Mr.
1 Letter of the Rev. J. B. Lee, Franklinville, N.Y., Oct. 21, 1895.
2 Smedley, Underground Bailroad, p. 46. 8 See the facsimile.
* Letter of I. Newton Peirce, Folcroft, Sharon Hill T.O., Delaware Co., Pa., Feb. 1, 1893.
58 XJNDERGROUND RAILROAD
G. W. Weston, of Low Moor, Iowa, was the author of similar communications addressed to a friend, Mr. C. B. Campbell, of Clinton.
Low Moor, May 6, 1859. Mr. C. B. C,
Dear Sir : — By to-morrow evening's mail, you will receive two volumes of the " Irrepressible Conflict " bound in black. After perusal, please forward, and oblige,
Yours truly,
G. W. W.^
The Hon. Thomas Mitchell, founder of Mitchellville, near Des Moines, Iowa, forwarded fugitives to Mr. J. B. Grinnell, after whom the town of Grinnell was named. The latter gives the following note as a sample of the messages that passed between them : —
Dear Grinnell : — Uncle Tom says if the roads are not too bad you can look for those fleeces of wool by to-morrow. Send them on to test the market and price, no back charges.
Yours,
Hub.*
There were many persons engaged in underground work that did not always take the precaution to veil their commu- nications. Judge Thomas Lee, of the Western Reserve, was one of this class, as the following letter to Mr. Putnam, of Point Harmar, will show : —
Cadiz, Ohio, March 17th, 1847. Mr. David Putnam,
Dear Sir: — I understand you are a friend to the poor and are willing to obey the heavenly mandate, " Hide the outcasts, betray not him that wander eth." Believing this, and at the request of Stephen Fairfax (who has been permitted in divine providence to enjoy for a few days the kind of liberty which Ohio gives to the man of colour), I would be glad if you could find out and let me know by letter what are the prospects if any
^History of Clinton County, Iowa, article on the "Underground Kail- road," pp. 41.3-410.
2 J. B. Grinnell, 3fen and Events of Forty Years, p. 217.
CONVEYANCE OF FUGITIVES 59
and the probable time when, the balance of the family will make the same effort to obtain their inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Their friends who have gone north are very anxious to have them follow, as they think it much better to work for eight or ten dollars per month than to work for nothing.
Yours in behalf of the millions of poor, opprest and down- trodden in our land.
Thomas Lee.
In the conveyance of fugitives from station to station there existed all the variety of method one would expect to find. In the early days of the Underground Road the fugi- tives were generally men. It was scarcely thought neces- sary to send a guide with them unless some special reason for so doing existed. They were, therefore, commonly given such directions as they needed and left to their own devices. As the number of refugees increased, and women and chil- dren were more frequently seen upon the Road, and pursuit was more common, the practice of transporting fugitives on horseback, or by vehicle, was introduced. The steam rail- road was a new means furnished to abolitionists by the progress of the times, and used by them with greater or less frequency as circumstances required, and when the safety of passengers would not be sacrificed.
/ When fugitive travellers afoot or on horseback found themselves pursued, safety lay in flight, unless indeed the company was large enough, courageous enough, and suffi- ciently well armed to give battle. The safety of fugitives while travelling by conveyance lay mainly in their conceal- ment, and many were the stratagems employed. Character- istic of the service of the Underground Railroad were the covered wagons, closed carriages and deep-bedded farm- wagons that hid the passengers. There are those living who remember special day-coaches of more peculiar con- struction. Abram Allen, a Quaker of Oakland, Clinton County, Ohio, had a large three-seated wagon, made for the purpose of carrying fugitives. He called it the Liberator. It was curtained all around, would hold eight or ten persons, and had a mechanism with a bell, invented by Mr. Allen, to
60 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
record the number of miles travelled.^ A citizen of Troy, Ohio, a bookbinder by trade, had a large wagon, built about with drawers in such a way as to leave a large hiding-place in the centre of the wagon-bed. As the bookbinder drove through the country he found opportunity to help many a fugitive on his way to Canada.^ Horace Holt, of Rutland, Meigs County, Ohio, sold reeds to his neighbors in southern Ohio. He had a box-bed wagon with a lid that fastened with a padlock. In this he hauled his supply of reeds ; it was well understood by a few that he also hauled fugitive slaves.^ Joseph Sider, of southern Indiana, found his pedler wagon well adapted to the transportation of slaves from Kentucky plantations.^ William Still gives instances of negroes being placed in boxes, and shipped as freight by boat, and also by rail, to friends in the North. William Box Peel Jones was boxed in Baltimore and sent to Philadelphia by way of the Ericsson line of steamers, being seventeen hours on the way.^ Henry Box Brown had the same thrilling and perilous experience. His trip consumed twenty-four hours, during which time he was in the care of the Adams Express Company in transit from Richmond, Virginia, to Phila- delphia.^
Abolitionists that drove wagons or carriages containing refugees, " conductors " as they came to be called in the terminology of the Railroad service, generally took the pre- caution to have ostensible reasons for their journeys. They sought to divest their excursions of the air of mystery by seeming to be about legitimate business. Hannah Marsh, of Chester County, Pennsylvania, was in the habit of taking
1 Judge R. B. Harlan and others, History of Clinton County, Ohio, pp. 380-383 ; letter of Seth Linton, Oakland, Clinton County, 0., Sept. 4, 1892 ; Smedley, Underground Bailroad, p. 187.
2 The Miami Union, April 10, 1895, article entitled "A Reminiscence of Slave Times."
3 Letter of Mrs. C. Grant, Pomeroy, Meigs Co., O.
4 The Bepublican Leader, March 16, 1894, article, "Reminiscence of the Underground Railroad," by E. H. Trueblood.
^ See Underground Bailroad Becords, pp. 4G, 47.
6 Ibid. , pp. 81-84 ; see also Narrative of Henry Box Brown, loho escaped from slavery enclosed in a box 3 feet long and 2 wide, lorittenfrom a state- ment of facts made by himself, 1849, by Charles Stearns.
CONVEYANCE OF FUGITIVES 61
garden produce to the Philadelphia markets to sell ; when, therefore, she sometimes used her covered market-wagon, even in daytime, to convey fugitives, she attracted no atten- tion, and made her trips without molestation. ^ Calvin Fair- bank abducted the Stanton family, father, mother and six children, from the neighborhood of Covington, Kentucky, by packing them in a load of straw.^ James W. Torrence, of Northwood, Ohio, together with some of his neighbors ex- ported grain, and sometimes feathers, to Sandusky. These products were generally shipped when there were fugitives to go with the load. As the distance to Sandusky was a hundred and twenty miles, refugees who happened to profit by this arrangement were saved much time and no small amount of risk in getting to their destination.^ ]V' r. William I. Bowditch, of Boston, used a two-horse carryall on one oc- casion to take a single fugitive to Concord.* Mr. John Weldon and other abolitionists, of Dwight, Illinois, took negroes to Chicago concealed in wagons loaded with sacks of bran.^ Levi Coffin, of Cincinnati, Ohio, frequently received large companies for which safe transportation had to be sup- plied. On one occasion a party of twenty-eight negroes ar- rived, towards daylight, in the suburbs of Cincinnati, from Boone County, Kentucky, and it was necessary to send them on at once. Accordingly at Friend Coffin's suggestion a number of carriages were procured, formed into a long funeral-like procession and started solemnly on the road to Cumminsville.^ An almost endless array of incidents similar to these can be given, but enough have been recited to illus- trate the caution that prevailed in the transportation of fugitive slaves toward Canada.
The routes were very far from being straight. They are perhaps best described by the word zigzag. The exigencies
1 Smedley, Underground Bailroad, pp. 138, 139.
2 The Rev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times, pp. 24, 25 ; see also the Chicago Tribune, Jan. 29, 1893, p. 33.
8 Conversation with James W. Torrence, Northwood, Logan Co., O., Sept. 22, 1894.
* Letter of William I. Bowditch, Boston, Mass., April 5, 1893. 6 Letter of John Weldon, Dwight, 111., Nov. 7, 1896.
• History of Darke County, Ohio, p. 332 et seq.
62 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
that determined in what direction an escaping slave should go during any particular part of his journey were, in the nature of the case, always local. The ultimate goal was Canada, but a safe passage was of greater importance than a quick one. When speed would contribute safety the guide would make a long trip with his charge, or perhaps resort to the steam railroad ; but under ordinary circumstances, in those regions where the Underground Railroad was most patron- ized, a guide had almost always a choice between two or more routes; he could, as seemed best at the time, take the right-hand road to one station, or the left-hand road to another. In truth, the underground paths in these regions formed a great and intricate network, and it was in no small measure because the lines forming the meshes of this great system converged and branched again at so many stations that it was almost an impossibility for slave-hunters to trace their negroes through even a single county without finding themselves on the wrong trail. It was a common stratagem in times of special emergency to switch off travellers from one course to another, or to take them back on their track and then, after a few days of waiting, send them forward again. It is, then, proper to say that zigzag was one of the regular devices to blind and throw off pursuit. It served moreover to avoid unfriendly localities. It seems probable that the circuitous land route from Toledo to Detroit was an expedient of this sort, for slave-owners and their agents were often known to be on the lookout along the direct thorough- fare between the places named. The two routes between Millersburgh and Lodi in northern Ohio are explained by the statement that the most direct route, the western one, fell under suspicion for a while, and in the meantime a more circuitous path was followed through Holmesville and Seville.^
During the long process by which the slave with the help of friends was being transmuted into the freeman he spent much of his time in concealment. His progress was made in the night-time. When a station was reached he was provided
1 Letter of Thomas L. Smith, Fredericksburg, Wayne Co., 0., Oct. 6, 1894.
HIDING-PLACES 63
with a hiding-place, and he scarcely left it until his host decided it would be safe for him to continue his journey. The hiding-places the fugitive entered first and last were as dissimilar as can well be imagined. Slaves that crossed the Ohio River at Ripley, and fell into the hands of the Rev. John Rankin, were often concealed in his barn, which is said to have been provided with a secret cellar for use by the slaves when pursuers approached. The barn of Deacon Jirch Piatt at Mendon, Illinois, was a haven into which many slaves from Missouri were piloted by way of Quincy. A hazel thicket in Mr. Piatt's pasture-lot was sometimes re- sorted to,^ as was one of his hayricks that was hollow and had a blind entrance. ^ Joshua R. Giddings, the sturdy anti- slavery Congressman from the Western Reserve, had an out- of-the-way bedroom in one wing of his house at Jefferson, , Ohio, that was kept in readiness for fugitive slaves.^ The ^attic over the Liberator office in Boston is said to have been a rendezvous for such persons.^ ^A station-keeper at Plain- field, Illinois, had a woodpile with^^a room in the centre for a hiding-placed^' The Rev. J. Porter, pastor of a Congrega- tional church at Green Bay, Wisconsin, was asked to furnish a place of hiding for a family of fugitives, and at his wife's suggestion he put them in the belfry of his church, where they remained three days before a vessel came by which they could be safely transported to Canada.^ Mr. James M. Westwater and other citizens of Columbus, Ohio, fitted up an old smoke-house standing on Chestnut Street near Fourth Street as a station of the Underground Railroad."^ A fugitive reaching Canton, Washington County, Indiana, was secreted for a while in a low place in a thick, dark
1 Letter of J. E. Piatt, Guthrie, Ok., March 28, 1896. Mr. Piatt is a son of Deacon Jirch Piatt.
2 Letter of William H. Collins, Quincy, 111., Jan. 13, 1896. 8 Conversation with J. Addison Giddings, Jefferson, O.
* Letter of Lewis Ford, Boston, Mass. See also Beminiscences of Fugitive Slave Law Days in Boston, by Austin Bearse, 1880, p. 12.
6 Letter of John Weldon, Dwight, 111., Jan. 10, 1896.
6 Letter of the Kev. J. E. Roy, Chicago, 111., April 9, 1896.
■^ W. G. Deshler and others, Memorial on the Death of James M. West- watevy pp. 14, 15.
64 UNDERGROUND RAD:.R0AD
woods; and afterwards in a rail pen covered with straw .^ Eli F. Brown, of Amesville, Athens County, Ohio, writes : "I built an addition to my house in which I had a room with its partition in pannels. One pannel could be raised about a half inch and then slid back, so as to permit a man to enter the room. When the pannel was in place it appeared like its fellows. ... In the abutment of Zanes- ville bridge on the Putnam side there was a place of con- cealment prepared." ^ " Conductors " Levi Coffin, Edward Harwood, and W. H. Brisbane, of Cincinnati, Ohio, had a number of hiding-places for slaves. " One was in the dark cellar of Coffin's store; another was at Mr. Coffin's out-of- the-way residence between Avondale and Walnut Hills; another was a dark sub-cellar under the rear part of Dr. Bailey's residence, corner of Sixth and College Streets."^ The gallery of the old First Church at Galesburg, Illinois, was utilized as a place of concealment for refugees by cer- tain members of that church.* Gabe N. Johnson, a colored man of Ironton, on the Ohio River, sometimes hid fugitives in a coal-bank back of his house .^ This list of illustrations could be almost indefinitely continued. A sufficient number has been given to show the ingenuity necessarily used to secure safety.
(In the transit from station to station some simple disguise was often assumed. Thomas Garrett, a Quaker of Wilming- ton, Delaware, kept a quantity of garden tools on hand for this purpose. He sometimes gave a man a scythe, rake, or some other implement to carry through town. Having reached a certain bridge on the way to the next station, the pretending laborer concealed his tool under it, as he had been directed, and journeyed on. Later the tool was taken back to Mr. Garrett's to be used for a similar purpose.^ Valentine Nicholson, a station-keeper at Harveysburg, Warren County,
1 Letter of E. H. TrueWood, Hitchcock, Ind.
2 Letter of E. F. Brown, Amesville, O.
8 Cincinnati Commercial Gazette^ Feb. 11, 1894, article by W. Eldebe.
* Letter of Professor George Churchill, Galesburg, Jan. 29, 1896.
* Conversation with Gabe N. Johnson, Ironton, 0., Sept. 30, 1894. « Smedley, Underground Bailroady p. 242.
DISGUISES 65
Ohio, concealed the identity of a fugitive, a mulatto, who
was known to be pursued, by blacking his face and hands
with burnt cork.^ Slight disguises like these were probably
not used as often as more elaborate ones. The Rev. Calvin
Fair bank, and John Fairfield, the Virginian, who abducted
many slaves from the South, resorted frequently to this means
of securing the safety of their followers. Mr. Fairbank tells
us that he piloted slave-girls attired in the finery' of ladies,
men and boys tricked out as gentlemen and the servants of
gentlemen ; and that sometimes he found it necessary to
require his followers to don the garments of the opposite
sex.2 pfji May, 1843, Mr. Fairbank went to Arkansas for
( the purpose of rescuing William Minnis from bondage. He
found that the slave was a young man of light complexion
and prepossessing appearance, and that he closely resembled
a gentleman living in the vicinity of Little Rock. Minnis
was, therefore, fitted out with the necessary wig, beard and
K moustache, and clothes like those of his model ; he was
j quickly drilled in the deportment of his assumed rank,
/ and, as the test proved, he sustained himself well in his part.
/ On boarding the boat that was to carry him to freedom he
' discovered his owner, Mr. Brennan, but so effectual was the
slave's make-up that the master failed to penetrate the
disguise.^^ .
A simitar story is told by Mr. Sidney Speed, of Crawfords- ville, Indiana, when recalling the work of his father, John Speed, and that of Fisher Doherty. "In 1858 or 1859, a mulatto girl about eighteen or twenty years old, very good- looking and with some education, . . . reached our home. The nigger-catchers became so watchful that she could not be moved for several days. In fact, some of them were nearly always at the house either on some pretended busi- ness or making social visits. I do not think that the house was searched, or they would surely have found her, as during all this time she remained in the garret over the old log kitchen, where the fugitives were usually kept when there
1 Letter of Valentine Nicholson, Indianapolis, Ind., Sept. 10, 1892.
2 The Bev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Tiniest p. 10. 8 Ibid.^ p. 34 et seq.
66 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
was danger. Her owner, a man from New Orleans, had just bought her in Louisville, and he had traced her surely to this place ; she had not struck the Underground before, but had made her way alone this far, and as they got no trace of her beyond here they returned and doubled the watches on Doherty and my father. But at length a day came, or a night rather, when she was led safely out through the gar- dens to the house of a colored man named Patterson. There she was rigged out in as fine a costume of silk and ribbons as it was possible to procure at that time, and was furnished with a white baby borrowed for the occasion, and accom- panied by one of the Patterson girls as servant and nurse." Thus disguised, the lady boarded the train at the station. But what must have been her feelings to find her master already in the same car; he was setting out to watch for her at the end of the line. She kept her courage, and when they reached Detroit she went aboard the ferry-boat for Canada ; her pretended nurse returned to shore with the borrowed baby ; and as the gang-plank was being raised, the young slave-woman on the boat removed her veil that she might bid her owner good-by. The master's display of anger as he gazed at the departing boat was as real as the situation was gratifying to his former slave and amusing to the bystanders.^
John Fairfield, the Virginian, depended largely on dis- guises in several of his abducting exploits. At one time he was asked by a number of Canadian refugees to help some of their relatives to the North, and when he found that many of them had very light complexions, he decided to send them to Canada disguised as white persons. Having secured for them the requisite wigs and powder, he was gratified with the transformation in appearance they were able to effect. He therefore secured tickets for his party, and placed them aboard a night train for Harrisburg, where they were met by a person who accompanied them to Cleveland and saw them take boat for Detroit. Later Fairfield succeeded in aiding other companies of slaves to escape from Washington and
1 Letter from Mr. Sidney Speed, Crawf ordsville, Ind. , March 6, 1896.
LACK OF FORMAL ORGANIZATION 67
Harper's Ferry by resorting to similar means.^ Among the Quakers the woman's costume was a favorite disguise for fugitives. No one attired in it was likely to be in the least degree suspicioned of being anything else than what the garb proclaimed. The veiled bonnet also was peculiarly adapted to conceal the features of the person disguised.^
(One incident will suffice to show the utility of the Quaker costume. ] One evening Joseph G. Walker, a Quaker of Wil- mington, Delaware, was appealed to by a slave-woman, who was closely pursued. She was permitted to enter Mr. Walker's house, and a few minutes later, in the gown and bonnet of Mrs. Walker, she passed out of the front door lean- ing upon the arm of the shrewd Quaker.^
It is quite apparent that the Underground Eailroad was not a formal organization with officers of different ranks, a regular membership, and a treasury from which to meet ex-
^^nses. A terminologj* i^ is true, sprang up in connection with the work of the Road, and one hears of station;:keepers, ap-enisy-ermdnctorSf and even presidents of the Underground Railroad; but these titles were figurative terms, borrowed with other expressions from the convenient vocabulary of steam railways; and while they were useful among aboli- tionists to save circumlocution, they commended themselves to the friends of the slave by helping to mystify the minds of the public. The need of organization was not felt except in a few localities. It was only in towns and cities that the distinctions of " managers," " contributing members," and " agents " began to develop in any significant way, and even in the case of these places the distinctions must not be pushed far, for they indicate merely that certain men by their sagacious activity came to be called " managers," while others less bold, the contributing members, were willing to give money towards defraying the expenses of some trusty person, the agent, who would run the risk of piloting fugi- tives. jThe first reference to an organization devoted to the busi-
^ Beminiscences of Levi Coffin^ pp. 439-442. 2 M. G. McDougall, Fugitive Slaves^ p. 61. * Smedley, Underground Bailroad^ p. 244.
68 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
ness of aiding fugitive slaves occurs in a letter of George Washington, bearing date May 12, 1786. Washington speaks of a "society of Quakers in the city [Philadelphia], formed for such purposes. . . ." ^ We have no means of knowing how this body conducted its work, nor how long it continued to exist. It is sometimes stated that the formal organization of the Underground Road took place in 1838, but this is not an accurate statement. An organized society of the Under: ground Railroad was formed in Philadelphia about the year 1838. Mr. Robert Purvis, who was the president, has called this body the first of its kind, but this may be doubted in view of the quotation from Washington's letter above cited. The character of the organization appears from the following account of its methods given by Mr. Purvis : ^ " The funds for carrying on this enterprise were raised from our anti- slavery friends, as the cases came wp? and their needs de- manded it ; for many of the fugitives required no other help than advice and direction how to proceed. To the late Daniel Neall, the society was greatly indebted for his gener- ous gifts, as well as for his encouraging words and fearless independence. . . . The most efficient helpers or agents we had, were two market-women, who lived in Baltimore. . . .
" Another most effective worker was a son of a slaveholder, who lived at Newberne, S.C. Through his agency, the slaves were forwarded by placing them on vessels. . . . Having the address of the active members of the committee, they were enabled to find us, when not accompanied by our agents. . . . The fugitives were distributed among the members of the society, but most of them were received at my house in Phil- adelphia, where ... I caused a place to be constructed under- neath a room, which could only be entered by a trap-door in the floor. ..."
This account shows clearly that the organization of 1838 was limited ; and while it was officered with a president, sec-
1 Spark's Washington^ IX, 158, quoted in Quakers of Pennsylvania, by Dr. A. C. Applegarth, Johns Hopkins Studies, X, 463.
2 The letter from which this quotation is made will he found in Under- ground Bailroadi by R. C. Smedley, pp. 355, 356.
8 The italics are my own.
LACK OF FORMAL ORGANIZATION 69
retary and committee, and had helpers at a distance called agents, it can scarcely be said that the plan of action of the society was different in essential points from that which de- veloped without the formality of election of officers in many underground centres throughout the Northern states. Lg^i Coffin, by his devotion to the cause of the fugitive from boy- hood to old age, gained the title of President of the Under- ground Railroad,^ but he was not at the head of a formal organization. In northeastern Illinois, Peter Stewart, a pros- perous citizen of Wilmington, who was a very active worker in the cause, was sometimes called President of the Under- ground Railroad,^ but here again the distinction seems to have been complimentary and figurative. In truth the work was everywhere spontaneous, and its character was such that organization could have added little or no efficiency. Unfal- tering confidence among members of neighboring stations served better than a code of rules ; special messengers sent on the spur of the moment took the place of conferences held at stated seasons; supplies gathered privately as they were needed sufficed instead of regular dues ; and, in general, the decision and sagacity of the individual was required rather than the less rapid efforts of an organization.
In a few centres where the amount of secret service to be done was large, a slight specialization of work is to be noticed. This division of labor consisted in the employment of a regu- lar conductor or agent at these points to manage the work of transportation of passengers to points farther north; while the station-keepers attended more closely to the work of re- ceiving and caring for the new arrivals. The special con- ductors chosen were men thoroughly acquainted with the different routes of their respective neighborhoods. At Mechanicsburg, Champaign County, Ohio, Udney Hyde, a fearless and well-known citizen, acted as agent between the local stations of J. R. Ware and Levi Rathbun, and stations to the northeast as far as the Alum Creek Quaker Settlement,
^ Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio, Vol. II, pp. 103, 104 ; see also the Beminiscences of Levi Coffin.
2 George H. Woodruff, History of Will County, Blinois, p. 268.
70 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
a distance of forty miles. ^ The stations at Mechanicsburg were among the most widely known in central and southern Ohio. They received fugitives from at least three regular routes, and doubtless had " switch connections " with other lines. Passengers were taken northward over one of the three, perhaps four roads, and as one or two of these lay through pro-slavery neighborhoods a brave and experienced agent was almost indispensable. George W. S. Lucas, a colored man of Salem, Columbiana County, Ohio, made frequent trips with the closed carriage of Philip Evans, between Barnesville, New Philadelphia and Cadiz, and two stations, Ashtabula and Painesville, on the shore of Lake Erie. Occasionally Mr. Lucas conducted parties to Cleveland and Sandusky and Toledo, but in such cases he went on foot or by stage.^ His trips were sometimes a hundred miles and more in length. George L. Burroughes, a colored man of Cairo, Illinois, be- came an agent for the Underground Road in 1857, while act- ing as porter of a sleeping-car running on the Illinois Central Railroad between Cairo and Chicago." At Albany, New York, Stephen Meyers, a negro, was an agent of the Underground Road for a wide extent of territory.'* At Detroit there were several colored agents ; among them George De Baptiste and George Dolarson.^
The slight approach to organization manifest in some centres in the division of labor between station-keepers and special
1 Conversation with J. R. Ware, and with the daughter of Mr, Hyde, Mrs. Amanda Shepherd, Mechanicsburg, O., Sept. 7, 1895; conversation with Major Joseph C. Brand, Urbana, O., Aug. 13, 1894.
2 Conversation with George W. S. Lucas, Salem, Columbiana Co., Aug. 14, 1892, when he was fifty-nine years old. He was remarkably clear and con- vincing in his statements, many of which have since been corroborated. Citizens of Salem referred to him as a reliable source of information.
8 Letter from George L. Burroughes, Cairo, 111., Jan. 6, 1896. Mr. Bur- roughes said that Mr. Robert Delany, a friend from Canada, proposed to him that they both take an agency for the Underground Railroad. Delany took the Rock Island route and Burroughes the Cairo route.
* Letter of Martin I. Townsend, Troy, N.Y., Sept. 4, 1896. Mr. Townsend was counsel for the fugitive, Charles Nalle, in the Nalle or Troy Rescue case. See the little book entitled, Harriet^ the Moses of Her People^ 2d ed., p. 146 ; see also History of the County of Albany, New York, from 1609-1886, p. 725.
^ Conversation with Judge J. W. Finney, Detroit, Mich. , July 27, 1897.
COMMITTEES OF VIGILANCE 71
agents or conductors was caused by the large number of fugi- tives arriving at these points, and the extreme caution neces- sary. When, at length, indignation was aroused in the minds of Northern abolitionists by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, September 18, 1850, the determination to resist this measure displayed itself in certain localities in the formation of vigilance committees. Theodore Parker explains that it was in consequence of the enactment of this measure that " people held indignant meetings, and organized committees of vigilance whose duty was to prevent a fugitive from being arrested, if possible, or to furnish legal aid, and raise every obstacle to his rendition. The vigilance committees," he says, "were also the employees of the U. G. R. R. and effectively disposed of many a casus belli by transferring the disputed chattel to Canada. Money, time, wariness, devoted- ness for months and years, that cannot be computed, and will never be recorded, except, perhaps, in connection with cases whose details had peculiar interest, was nobly rendered by the true anti-slavery men." ^ Such committees of vigilance were organized in Syracuse, New York, Boston, Springfield and some of the smaller towns of Massachusetts, in Phila- delphia and other places. New York City, like Philadelphia, had a Vigilance Committee as early as 1838. About this association of the metropolis there is scarcely any informa- tion.2 We must be content then to confine our attention to the committees called into existence by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.
Eight days after the enactment of this law citizens of Syra- cuse, New York, issued a call through the newspapers for a public meeting, and on October 4 members of all parties crowded the city-hall to express their censure of the law. The meeting recommended " the appointment of a Vigilance Commitee of thirteen citizens, whose duty it shall be to see that no person is deprived of his liberty without ' due process of law.' And all good citizens are earnestly requested to aid
^ Weiss, Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker, Vol. II, pp. 92, 93.
^ Frederick Douglass relates that when he escaped from Maryland to New York, in 1838, he was befriended by David Ruggles, the secretary of the New York Vigilance Committee ; Life of Frederick Douglass, 1881, p. 205.
72 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
and sustain them in all needed efforts for the security of every person claiming the protection of our laws." This committee was appointed and an address and resolutions adopted.^ At an adjourned meeting held on October 12 the assemblage voted to form an association, " pledged to stand by its mem- bers in opposing this law, and to share with any of them the pecuniary losses they may incur under the operation of this law." The determination shown in the organization of these two bodies was well sustained a year later when the attempt was made by officers of the law to seize Jerry McHenry as a fugitive slave. The Vigilance Committee decided to storm the court-house, where the colored man was confined under guard, and rescue the prisoner. This daring piece of work was successfully accomplished, and the government never again attempted to recover any slaves in central New York.^ The organization of the Vigilance Committee of Syracuse was closely followed by the organization of a similar commit- tee in Boston. At a meeting in Faneuil Hall, October 14, 1850, resolutions were adopted expressing the conviction that no citizen would take part in reenslaving a fugitive, and pledging protection to the colored residents of the city. To make good this pledge a Vigilance Committee of fifty was appointed.^ This body organized by choosing a president, treasurer, and secretary, a committee of finance, an executive committee, a legal committee and a committee of special vigi- lance and alarm. An appeal was then issued to the citizens of Boston calling their attention to the arrival of many desti- tute fugitives in Boston, and to the establishment of an agency
1 The Rev. J. W. Loguen gives the names of the committee in his auto- biography, p. 396.
2 Samuel J. May, Becollections of the Anti- Slavery Conflict^ pp. 349-364; Wilson, Bise and Fall of the Slave Power in the United States, Vol. II, pp. 305, 306.
3 Ibid., p. 308. The list of members of the Committee of Vigilance given by Austin Bearse, the doorkeeper of the Committee, contains two hundred and nine names. Among these are A. Bronson Alcott, Edward Atkinson, Henry I. Bowditch, Richard H. Dana, Jr., Lewis Hayden, William Lloyd Garrison, Samuel G. Howe, Francis Jackson, Ellis Gray Loring, James Russell Lowell, Theodore Parker, Edmund Quincy and others of distinction. See pp. 3, 4, 6, 6, in Mr. Bearse's Beminiscences of Fugitive- Slave-Law Days in Boston,
BOSTON COMMITTEE OF VIGILANCE 73
for the purpose of securing employment for fugitive appli- cants. Gifts of money and clothing were asked for. In re- sponse to a circular sent out by the finance committee to all the churches in 1851, a sum of about sixteen hundred dollars was raised. That there might be cooperation throughout the state notices were sent to all the towns in Massachusetts urging the formation of local vigilance committees ; and as a result such committees were organized in some towns.^
The meeting-place of the Boston Committee was Meionaon Hall in Tremont Temple. Members were notified of an in- tended meeting personally, if possible, by the doorkeeper of the committee, Captain Austin Bearse.^ The proceedings of the committee were secret, and comparatively little is now known about their work. It is, however, known that for ten years the organization was active, and that although it was not successful in rescuing Sims and Burns from a hard fate, it nevertheless secured the liberty of more than a hundred others.^
Soon after the Fugitive Slave Law was passed John Brown visited Springfield, Massachusetts, where he had formerly lived. The valley of the Connecticut had long been a line of underground travel, and citizens of Springfield, colored and white, had become identified with operations on this line. Brown at once decided that the new law made organization
1 For much valuable material relating to the Vigilance Committee of Bos- ton, see Theodore Parker's Scrap-Book, in the Boston Public Library.
2 Mr. Bearse says: "There were printed tickets of notice which I deliv- ered to each member in person, if possible, of which the following copies are specimens :
* Boston, June 7, 1854. There will be a meeting of the Vigilance Committee at the Meionaon (Tremont Temple) , on Thursday evening, June 8, at half-past seven. Pass in by the Office Entrance, and through the Meionaon Ante-Boom. Theodore Parker, Chairman of Executive Committees.''
'Vigilance Committee ! The members of the Vigilance Committee are hereby notified to meet at
By order of the Committee,
A. Bearse, Doorkeeper."* " — Beminiscences of Fugitive- Slave- Law Days in Boston^ pp. 15, 16.- 8/6iU,p. 14.
74 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
necessary, and he formed, therefore, the League of Gileadites to resist systematically the enforcement of the law. The name of this order was significant in that it contained a warning to those of its members that should show themselves cowards. "Whosoever is fearful or afraid let him return and depart early from Mount Gilead." ^ In the " Agreement and Rules " that Brown drafted for the order, adopted Janu- ary 15, 1851, the following directions for action were laid down : " Should one of your number be arrested, you must collect together as quickly as possible, so as to outnumber your adversaries. . . . Let no able-bodied man appear on the ground unequipped, or with his weapons exposed to view. . . . Your plans must be known only to yourselves and with the understanding that all traitors must die, wher- ever caught and proven to be guilty. . . . Let the first blow be the signal for all to engage, . . . make clean work with your enemies, and be sure you meddle not with any others. . . . After effecting a rescue, if you are assailed, go into the houses of your most prominent and influential white friends with your wives, and that will effectually fasten upon them the suspicion of being connected with you, and will compel them to make a common cause with you. . . . You may make a tumult in the court-room where a trial is going on by burning gunpowder freely in paper packages. . . . But in such case the prisoner will need to take the hint at once and bestir himself ; and so should his friends improve the opportunity for a general rush. . . . Stand by one another, and by your friends, while a drop of blood remains ; and be hanged, if you must, but tell no tales out of school. Make no confession." By adopting the Agreement and Rules forty-four colored persons constituted themselves "a branch of the United States League of Gileadites," and agreed " to have no officers except a treasurer and secretary pro tem., until after some trial of courage," when they could choose officers on the basis of " courage, efficiency, and gen- eral good conduct." ^ Doubtless the Gileadites of Springfield
1 Judg. vii. 3 ; Deut. xx. 8 ; referred to by Brown in his *' Agreement and Rules."
^ F. B. Sanborn, in his Life and Letters of John Brown^ pp. 125, 126,
WILLIAM STILL,
Chairman of the Acting Vigilance Committee in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1852-1800.
PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEES OF VIGILANCE 75
did efficient service, for it appears that the importance of the town as a way-station on the Underground Road increased after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill.^
We have already learned that Philadelphia had a Vigilance Committee before 1840. In a speech made before the meet- ing that organized the new committee, December 2, 1852, Mr. J. Miller McKim, the secretary of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, gave the reasons for establishing a new committee. He said that the old committee "had become disorganized and scattered, and that for the last two or three years the duties of this department had been performed by individuals on their own responsibility, and sometimes in a very irregular manner." It was accordingly decided to form a new committee, called the General Vigilance Committee, with a chairman and treasurer ; and within this body an Act- ing Committee of four persons, " who should have the re- sponsibility of attending to every case that might require their aid, as well as the exclusive authority to raise the funds necessary for their purpose." The General Committee com- prised nineteen members, and had as its head Mr. Robert Purvis, one of the signers of the Declaration of Sentiments of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and the first president of the old committee. The Acting Committee had as its chairman William Still, a colored clerk in the office of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society and a most energetic underground helper. The Philadelphia Vigilance Commit- tee, thus constituted, continued intact until Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.^ Some insight into the work accomplished by the Acting Committee can be ob- tained by an examination of the book compiled by William Still under the title Underground Railroad Records. The Acting Committee was required to keep a record of all its doings. Mr. Still's volume was evidently amassed by the
gives the agreement, rules, and signatures. See also R. J. Hinton's John Brown and His Men, Appendix, pp. 585, 588.
1 Mason A. Green, History of Spring field, Massachusetts, 1636-1886, p. 506.
2 Article, " Meeting to Form a Vigilance Committee," in the Pennsylvania Freeman, Dec. 9, 1852 ; quoted in Underground Bailroad Becords^ by William Still, pp. 610-612.
76 UNDEKGROUND RAILROAD
transcription of many of the incidents that found their way under this order into the archives of the committee. The work was limited to the assistance of such needy fugitives as came to Philadelphia ; and was not extended, except in rare cases, to inciting slaves to run away from their masters, or to aiding them in so doing.^
The relief of the destitution existing among the wayworn travellers was a matter requiring considerable outlay of time and money on the part of abolitionists. There was occasion- ally a fugitive or family of fugitives, that, having better opportunity or possessing greater foresight than others, made provision for the journey and escaped to Canada with little or no dependence on the aid of underground operators. Asbury Parker, of Ironton, Ohio, fled from Greenup County, Kentucky, in 1857, clad in a suit of broadcloth, alone befit- ting, as he thought, the dignity of a free man.^ The brother of Anthony Bingey, of Windsor, Ontario, came unexpectedly into the possession of five hundred dollars. With this money he instructed a friend in Cincinnati to procure a team and wagon to convey the family of Bingey to Canada. The com- pany arrived at Sandusky after being only three days on the road.^
But the mass of fugitives were thinly clad, and had only such food as they could forage until they reached the Under- ground Railroad. The arrival of a company at a station would be at once followed by the preparation, often at midnight, of a meal for the pilgrims and their guides. It was a common thing for a station to entertain a company of five or six ; and companies of twenty-eight or thirty are not unheard of. Levi Coffin says, " The largest company of slaves ever seated at our table, at one time, numbered seventeen." * During one month in the year 1854 or 1855 there were sixty runaways at the house of Aaron L. Benedict, a station in the Alum
1 Still's Underground Bailroad Becords, p. 177. References to tlie action of the committee of which Mr. Still was chairman will be fomid scattered through the Becords. See, for example, pp. 70, 98, 102, 131, 150, 1C2, 173, 176, 204, 224, 274, 275, 303, 325, 335, 388, 412, 449, 493, 500.
2 Conversation with Asbury Parker, Ironton, 0., Sept. 30, 1894.
8 Conversation with Anthony Bingey, Windsor, Ont., July 3, 1895. * Beminiscences, p. 178,
SUPPLIES FOR PASSENGERS 77
Creek Quaker Settlement in central Ohio. On one occasion twenty sat down to dinner in Mr. Benedict's house. ^ It will thus be seen that the supply of provisions alone was for the average station-keeper no inconsiderable item of expense, and that it was one involving much labor.
The arrangements for furnishing fugitives with clothing, like much of the underground work done at the stations, came within the province of the women of the stations. While the noted fugitive, William Wells Brown, lay sick at the house of his benefactor, Mr. Wells Brown, in southwest- ern Ohio, the family made him some clothing, and Mr. Brown purchased him a pair of boots.^ Women's ■ antirsla- very societies in many places conducted sewing-circles, as a brancli of their work, for the purpose of^suppI^S^^Ifilothes and other necessities to fugitives. The Woman's Anti-Sla- very Society of Ellington, Chautauqua County, New York, sent a letter to William Still, November 21, 1859, saying : " Every year we have sent a box of clothing, bedding, etc., to the aid of the fugitive, and wishing to send it where it would be of the most service, we have it suggested to us, to send to you the box we have at present. You would confer a favor ... by writing us, . . . whether or not it would be more advantageous to you than some nearer station. . . ." ^
The Women's Anti-Slavery Sewing Society of Cincinnati maintained an active interest in underground work going on in their city by supplying clothing to needy travellers.* The Female Anti-Slavery Association of Henry County, Indiana, organized a Committee of Vigilance in 1841 " to seek out such colored females as are not suitably provided for, who may now be, or who shall hereafter come, within our limits, and assist them in any way they may deem expedient, either by advice or pecuniary means. . . ." ^
1 Conversation with M. J. Benedict, Alum Creek Settlement, Dec. 2, 1893. See also Underground Bailroad, Smedley, pp. 56, 136, 142, 174.
2 Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave, written by himself, 2d ed., 1848, p. 102.
^ The letter is printed in full, together with other letters, in Still's Under- ground Railroad Records, pp. 590, 591.
* Levi Coffin, Reminiscences^ p. 316.
^ Protectionist, Arnold Buffum, Editor, New Garden, Ind., 7th mo., 1st, 1841.
78 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
In some of the large centres, money as well as clothing and food was constantly needed for the proper performance of the underground work. Thus, for example, at Cincinnati, Ohio, it was frequently necessary to hire carriages in which to convey fugitives out of the city to some neighboring station. From time to time as the occasion arose Levi Coffin collected the funds needed for such purposes from business acquaintances. He called these contributors "stock-holders " in the Underground Railroad.^ After steam railroads be- came incorporated in the underground system money was required at different points to purchase tickets for fugitives. The Vigilance Committee of Philadelphia defrayed the trav- elling expenses of many refugees in sending some to New York City, some to Elmira and a few to Canada.^ Fred- erick Douglass, who kept a station at Rochester, New York, received contributions of money to pay the railroad fares of the fugitives he forwarded to Canada and to give them a little more for pressing necessities.^
The use of steam railroads as a means of transportation of this class of passengers began with the completion of lines of road to the lakes. This did not take place till about 1850. It was, therefore, during the last decade of the history of the Underground Road that surface lines, as they were some- times called by abolitionists, became a part of the secret system. There were probably more surface lines in Ohio than in any other state. The old Mad River Railroad, or Sandusky, Dayton and Cincinnati Railroad, of western Ohio, (now a part of the " Big Four " system), began to be used at least as early as 1852 by instructed fugitives.* The San- dusky, Mansfield and Newark Railroad (now the Baltimore and Ohio) from Utica, Licking County, Ohio, to Sandusky, was sometimes used by the same class of persons.^ After
1 Beminiscences, pp. 317, 321.
2 Still's Underground Bailroad Becords, p. 613.
3 Ibid. , p. 598. In the fragment of a letter from which Mr. Still quotes, Mr. Douglass says, "They [the fugitives] usually tarry with us only during the night, and are forwarded to Canada by the morning train. We give them supper, lodging, and breakfast, pay their expenses, and give them a half-dollar over."
* The Firelands Pioneer, July, 1888, p. 21. ^ Ibid., pp. 23, 57, 79.
TRANSPORTATION OVER STEAM RAILROADS 79
the construction of the Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati Railroad 1 as far as Greenwich in northern Ohio, fugitives often came to that point concealed in freight-cars. In east- ern Ohio there were two additional routes by rail sometimes employed in underground traffic : one of these appears to have been the Cleveland and Canton from Zanesville north,^ and the other was the Cleveland and Western between Alliance and Cleveland.^ In Indiana the Louisville, New Albany and Chicago Railroad from Crawfordsville north- ward was patronized by underground travellers until the activity of slave-hunters caused it to be abandoned.* Fugi- tives were sometimes transported across the State of Michi- gan by the Michigan Central Railroad. In Illinois there seems to have been not less than three railroads that carried fugi- tives : these were the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy,^ the Chicago and Rock Island ^ and the Illinois Central."^ When John Brown made his famous journey through Iowa in the winter of 1858-1859 he shipped his company of twelve fugi- tives in a stock car from West Liberty, Iowa, to Chicago, by way of the Chicago and Rock Island route.^ In Pennsyl- vania and New York there were several lines over which runaways were sent when circumstances permitted. At Harrisburg, Reading and other points along the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, fugitives were put aboard the cars for Philadelphia.^ From Pennsylvania they were forwarded
1 Ibid.^ p. 74. The "Three C's " is now the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad, or "Big Four" Route.
2 Conversation with Thomas Williams, of Pennsville, 0. ; letter of H. C. Harvey, Manchester, Kan., Jan. 16, 1893.
8 Letter of I. Newton Peirce, Folcroft, Pa., Feb. 1, 1893.
* Letter of Sidney Speed, Crawfordsville, Ind., March 6, 1896. Mr. Speed and his father were both connected with the Crawfordsville centre.
5 Life and Poems of John Howard Bryant^ p. 30 ; letter of William H. Collins, Quincy, 111., Jan. 13, 1896 ; History of Knox County ^ Blinois, p. 211.
^ Letter of George L. Burroughes, Cairo, 111., Jan. 6, 1896.
■^ Ibid. ; conversation with the Rev. R. G. Ramsey, Cadiz, O., Aug. 18, 1892.
8 J. B. Grinnell, Men and Events of Forty Years, p. 216.
^ Smedley, Underground Railroad, pp. 174, 176, 177, 365. The following letter is in point : - ,, Schuylkill, 11th Mo., 7th, 1857.
William Still, Bespected 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. rr^-u-^^ -x«
inme, eic, ^^ ^^ Penntpacker."
80 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
by the Vigilance Committee over different lines, sometimes by "way of the Pennsylvania Railroad to New York City; sometimes by way of the Philadelphia and Reading and the Northern Central to Elmira, New York, whence they were sent on by the same line to Niagara Falls. Fugitives put aboard the cars at Elmira were furnished with money from a fund provided by the anti-slavery society. As a matter of precaution they were sent out of town at four o'clock in the morning, and were always placed by the train officials, who knew their destination, in the baggage-car.^ The New York Central Railroad from Rochester west was an outlet made use of by Frederick Douglass in passing slaves to Canada. At Syracuse, during several years before the beginning of the War, one of the d