|
CHAPTER I. -
SOURCES OF THE HISTORY OF THE
UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
Pg. 1 -
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
HISTORIANS who deal with the
rise and culmination of the anti-slavery movement in the
United States have comparatively 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 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 chapters of the second
volume of his Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in
America.1 Von Holst makes
several references to the work of the Road in his
well-known History of the United States, and
predicts that "The time will yet come, even in the
South, when due recognition will be given to the
touching 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 education."2 Rhodes in
his great work, the History of the United
---------------
1. Chapters VI and VII, pp. 61-86
2. Vol. III, p. 552, foot-note
[Pg. 2]
States from
Compromise of 1850, mentions the system, but
considers it only as a manifestation of popular
sentiment.3 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 form 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 system by being kept in an oblivion
that its operators aptly designated by the figurative
use of the word "underground." Then, too, it was a
movement in which but few of those persons were involved
whose names have been most closely associated 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 outside of the localities where
they lived, and were therefore members of a class that
historians find it exceedingly difficult to bring within
their field of view.
Before attempting to prepare a new account of the
Underground 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 Underground Railroad, by the
Rev. W. M. Mitchell; Underground Railroad Records,
by William Still; The Underground Railroad in
Chester and the Neighboring Counties of Pennsylvania,
y R. C. Smedley; The Reminiscences of Levi
Coffin; Sketches in the History of the Underground
Railroad, by Eber M. Petit; 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
[Pg. 3] - PRINTED SOURCES
ground Railroad in certain
localities, and presenting types of character among the
helpers and the helped. In composition they are
what one would expect of persons who lived simple,
strenuous lives, who with sincerity record what they
knew and experienced. They have not only the
characteristics 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 underground work; finally, about 1855, he
w4ent to Toronto, Canada, to minister to colored
refugees as a missionary in the service of the American
Free Baptist Mission Society.1 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
experience 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.2
Stills' 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 Philadelphia; 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
Underground 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.
---------------
1. Mitchell, Underground Railroad,
Preface, p. vi; p. 17
2. Mr. Mitchell divides his little
book into two chapters, one on the "underground
Railroad," occupying 124 pages, the other on the
"condition of Fugitive Slaves in Canada," occupying 48
pages.
[Pg. 4]
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 396 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 of Simeon Halliday of which he may have
been the original. In need scarcely be said,
therefore, 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 hte many stories first published by him in the
Lake 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 the operators, towns and so forth are
authentic, the writer allows himself the license of the
storyteller 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.
[Pg. 5] - ARTICLES IN PERIODICALS
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.1 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,2 The Firelands Pioneer,3 The
Midland Monthly, 4 The Canadian Magazine of
Politics, Science, Art and Literature5 and The
American Historical Review.6 Three of these
publications, the first two and the last, are of the
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 of 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 Historical Society
of Ohio. The bulk of the number mentioned is made
up of contributions in regard to the Underground Road in
northwestern Ohio.
4. February, 1895, pp. 173-180
5. May, 1895, pp. 9-16
6. April, 1896, pp. 455-463. This
article is a preliminary study prepared by the author
[Pg. 6] - UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
graphical sketch of the abductor Harriet Tubman.1
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
frequently published some of the stirring recollections
of surviving 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 significance 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
geographical 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,
in1890 and 1891, published fifteen chapters of "A
History of Anti-Slavery Days" contributed by Mr. W.
B. Fyffe, recording some episodes 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, 1898, under the name of Aaron Benedict,
affords a knowledge of the way in which the secret work
was carried on in a typical 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
investigations 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 abductor of slaves, is
also given by Mr. Trueblood. The
Rev.
---------------
1. Lillie B. C. Wyman: "Black and
White," in New 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. Grimke: "Anti-Slavery Boston, "ibid.
December, 1890, pp. 441-459.
[Pg. 7] - CONTEMPORANEOUS DOCUMENTS
John Todd
has preserved in the columns of the Tabor (Iowa)
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 Western Iowa"; several of these are devoted to
fugitive slave cases.1
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 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
illiterate negro, who, notwithstanding his
fellow-feeling, was yet sufficiently sagacious to avoid
the open violation of what others might call the law of
the land, Therefore, written evidence of
complicity was for the most part carefully avoided; and
little information concerning any part of the work of
the Underground Railroad 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, dreadful
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.
[Pg. 8] - UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
or that the time would come when I
could publish these records, 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. . . . "1 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.”2 During
the period of the War, Chairman Still
concealed the records and documents 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 1872.3
Theodore Parker, the distinguished
Unitarian clergyman of Boston, and one of the most
active members of the Vigilance 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 scrapbook, given to the
Boston Public Library in 1874 by Mrs. Parker,4
was compiled day by day from Mar. 15, 1851, to Feb. 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 memorable journey through Kansas and Iowa, on his
way to Canada in the winter of 1858 and 1859, with a
company of slaves rescued 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
---------------
1 Underground Railroad Records, 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.
3 See pp. xxxiv, xxxv, xxxvi.
4 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.”
[Pg. 9] - CONTEMPORANEOUS DOCUMENTS
masters, appear the names of station-keepers of the
Underground Railroad in eastern Kansas, and a record of
certain expenditures forming, doubtless, a part of the
cost of his trip.1 When the fearless
abductor arrived at Springdale, Iowa, late in February,
he wrote to a friend in Tabor a statement concerning 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.2
These meagre records, together with the letter written
to the Tribune mentioned above, are all that
Brown wrote, so far as known, giving explicit
information in regard to an exploit that created a stir
throughout the country.
Mr. Jirch Platt, 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. Railroad, 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.”
*
* * *
* * *
*
“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 . Have understood also that three
others were ticketed about mid¬ summer.John
Brooks, Daniel Brooks, Mason Bushrod, Sylvester Bucket
and Hanson Gause” 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
Ibid., pp. 488, 489.
[Pg. 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 importance, 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.1
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
Fugitive Slave Bill in 1850 caused him to destroy it.2
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.3
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, Sept. 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.
3 Smedley, Underground Railroad, pp. 66,
67.
[Pg. 11] - COLLECTION OF REMINISCENCES
house, they might have brought disaster upon many
persons.1 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
volume has been written. Reminiscences have been
gathered by correspondence and by travel from many
surviving abolitionists 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 surviving 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 materials
thus collected relate to the following states: Iowa,
Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan,
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, New
Hampshire, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Vermont,
besides a few items cocerning North Carolina, Maryland
and Delaware.
Underground operations practically ceased with the
beginning 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 Railroad, pp. 120,
121.
[Pg. 12]
materials for this history were drawn from written and
oral accounts obtained at a much later date; and that
these materials, 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 reminiscences 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 operator, but the strange and romantic
character of his unlawful business helped to fix them in
his mind. Some special occurrences 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 persons 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-bellum days were deepened by
the clear definition of their governing principles, the
abiding sense of their religious convictions, 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
concentration of their interests into small compass,
because of the disdain of the communities where they
lived, have secured 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 gathered from different
localities during the last five years articu-
[Pg. 13] - VALUE OF REMINISCENCES
late together, the testimony of different and sometimes
widely separated witnesses combining to support one
another.1
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 Sept. 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, Dec. 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. Sloane2 . . . 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 corrective 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, Nov. 19, 1896
[Pg. 14] -
comfortable for fugitives. In one instance thirteen
fugitives, after resting in the cave for some days, were
taken by the students in two covered wagons to Sandusky,
some 90 miles, where I had gone to engage passage for
them on the Bay City steamboat across the lake to
Malden—where I saw them safely landed on free soil, to
their unspeakable joy. Indeed, I thought one old
man would have died from the gladness of his heart in
being safe in freedom. I went from Belle Centre
[near Northwood] by rail, and did not go with the land
escort—but from what they told me of their experience,
it was often amusing and sometimes thrilling. They
were ostensibly a hunting party of 10 or 12 armed men. .
. . The two covered wagons were a ‘sanctum
sanctorum’ into which no mortal was allowed to peep. . .
. The word of command, ‘Stand back,’ was always
respected by those who were unduly intent upon seeing
the thirteen deer . . . brought from the woods of Logan
and Hardin counties and being taken to Sandusky.”
In the same letter Mr. Milligan
corroborates some information secured from the Rev.
R. G. Ramsey, of Cadiz, Ohio, Aug. 18, 1892, in
regard to an underground route in southern Illinois.
Mr. Ramsey related that his father,
Robert Ramsey, first engaged in Underground
Railroad work at Eden, Randolph County, Illinois, in
1844, and that he carried it on at intervals until the
War. “The fugitives,” he said, “came up the river
to Chester, Illinois, and there they started northeast
on the state road, which followed an old Indian trail.
The stations were each in a community of Covenanters, .
. .” and existed, according to his account, at Chester,
Eden, Oakdale, Nashville and Centralia. “Besides my
father,” said Mr. Ramsey, “John
Hood and two brothers, James B. and Thomas
McClurkin, lived in Oakdale, where my father
lived during the last thirty-five years of his life. He
lived in Eden before this time. . . . ”1 The
Rev. Mr. Milligan writes as follows: “My
father removed to Randolph Co., Ill., in 1847, and with
Rev. Wm. Sloane . . . and the
Covenanter congregations under their ministry kept a
very large depot wide open for slaves escaping from Mis-
---------------
1 Conversation with the Rev. R. G. Ramsey,
Cadiz, Ohio, August 18, 1892
[Pg. 15]
souri. Scores at a time came to Sparta [the
post-office of the Eden settlement mentioned above] —my
father’s region, were harbored there, . . .
and finally escorted to Elkhorn [about two miles from
Oakdale], the region of Father Sloane,
where they were sheltered and escorted . . . to some
friends in the region of Nashville, Ill., and thence
north on the regular trail which I am not able further
to locate. At Sparta, Coultersville and Elkhorn
there was an almost constant supply of fugitives. . . .
But . . . few were ever gotten from the
ægis of the Hayes
and Moores and Todds and McLurkins
and Hoods and Sloanes and Milligans
of that region.”
The evidence above quoted has the well-known value of
two witnesses, examined apart, who corroborate each
other; and it also illustrates the way in which the
pieces of underground routes may be joined together.
These letters, together with some additional testimony,
enable us to trace on the map a section of a secret line
of travel in southern Illinois.
Another example throws light on a channel of escape in
northeastern Indiana. While Levi Coffin
lived at Newport (now Fountain City), Indiana, he
sometimes sent slaves northward by way of what he called
“ the Mississinewa route,”1 from the
Mississinewa River, near which undoubtedly it ran for a
considerable distance. This road seems to have
been called also the Grant County route. In the
most general way only do these descriptions tell
anything about the route. However, correspondence
with several people of Indiana has brought it to light.
One letter2 informs us in regard to fugitives
departing from Newport: “If they came to Economy they
were sent to Grant Co. . . .” Now, so far as
known, Jonesboro’ was the next locality to which they
were usually forwarded, and the line from this point
northward is given us by the Hon. John Ratliff,
of Marion, Indiana, who had been over it with
passengers. He says that the first station north
of Jonesboro’ was North Manchester, where “Morris”
Place
---------------
1 Reminiscences, p. 184.
2 Letter of John Charles, Economy, Wayne
County, Indiana, January 9, 1896. Mr.
Charles is a Quaker, and took part in the
underground work at Economy.
[Pg. 16]
was agent; the next station, Goshen, where Dr.
Matchett harbored fugitives; and thence the line ran
to Young’s Prairie,1 which is in Cass County,
Michigan. The same section 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.” 2
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 testimony. Doubtless the work could
have been more thoroughly executed, if the collection of
materials had been systematically 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
PHILADELPHIA AND NEW YORK
Mr. Hopper is supposed to have resorted to underground
methods as early as 1787.
RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS |
