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CHAPTER II.
-
ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE
UNDERGROUND ROAD
Pg. 17 - 46
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 becoming
indisputably free on crossing the borders of the other.
Not a few persons living within the intervening
territory were deeply opposed to slavery, and although
they were bound by law to discountenance slaves seeking
freedom, they felt themselves to be more strongly bound
by conscience 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 in process of extinction at an early
period in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and the New
England states. From the five and a fraction
states created out of the Northwestern Territory slavery
was excluded by the Ordinance of 1787. It is
interesting to note how rapid was the progress of
emancipation in the Northeastern states, where the
conditions of climate, and 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 Massachusetts was less direct, but not
less effective, in securing the extinction of slavery;
happily it had inserted in the declaration of
[Pg. 18]
rights prefixed to its constitution: "All men are
born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential
and inalienable rights."1 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
provision of the Ordinance of 1787. One of the
most important of these provisions 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."2 It was this feature,
introduced into the great Ordinance by New England men,
that rendered futile the many attempts subsequently made
by Indiana Territory 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"3
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 the constitution that
fixed her place among the free commonwealth. The
enfranchisement of this extended region was thus
accomplished 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, Suppression of the Slave Trade, p. 225
2 See Appendix A, p 359
3 History of the United States, Vol.
I, p. 16.
[Pg. 19] - RENDITION OF FUGITIVES
IN THE COLONIES
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 reasonably 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 another 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, Massachusetts, 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 Confederation
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 Jurisdiccon out of which the said
servant fled, or upon other due proofs, the said servant
shall be deliuered either to his Master 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 Stuyvesant 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 fugitives
had been restored to New Netherlands, and a
proclamation, issued in a spirit of retaliation by the
Lords of the West Indian 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
[Pg. 20] - FUGITIVE SLAVE CLAUSE IN
THE CONSTITUTION
conditions. The temper of the Dutch when
calling for their servants in 1859 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
and also a constant source of trouble between the French
and the Dutch, and between the French and English.1
When, therefore, emancipation acts were passed by
Vermont and four other states the new question came into
existence. 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 the person claiming his or her labor or
service aforesaid."2
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 provision 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."3 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 received the support of all
members present but one, 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
Revised Statutes of the United States, I, 18.
See also Appendix A, p. 359.
[Pg. 21] - FUGITIVE SLAVE CLAUSE IN THE
CONSTITUTION.
sense of humiliation on the part of
the North over the conclusions 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.1 The
South 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 Southerners 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 runaways in any part of
America—a right the South had never before enjoyed.2
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 insisted upon as
having the fundamental and positive sanction of the
government. But what would be the fate of the
running slave was a matter with which, after all,
private principles 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
fugitive 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.3
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 Research Respecting the
Opinions of the Founders of the Republic on Negroes, as
Citizens and as Soldiers, 1862, p. 51 et seq.
2 Elliot's Debates, III, 277.
3 Appendiz A, pp. 359-361
[Pg. 22]
they empowered the owner, his agent or
attorney, to seize the fugitive and take him before a
United States circuit or district 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 hindering
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
ineffectual; Mrs. McDougall points out that two
cases of resistance to the principle of the act occurred
before the close of 1793.1 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 1842.2 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.
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 1850.3 The
---------------
1 Fugitive Slaves, p. 19
2 See Chap. I, pp. 259-267 also Stroud, Sketch of
the Laws Relating to Slavery in the Several States,
2d ed., pp. 220-222.
3 Appendiz A, pp. 361-366
[Pg. 23] - FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW OF 1850
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 features 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 forthwith before the commissioner or other
official, and there the case was to be determined in a
summary manner. 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 escape of
the negro after arrest, made the marshal liable, on his
official bond, for the value of the value of the slave.
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 received in evidence. Ownership was
determined by the simple affidavit of the person
claiming the slave; and when determined it was shielded
by the certificate of the commissioner
from "all molestation . . . by any 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 fugitive, laid the person interfering liable
"to a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, and
imprisonment not exceeding six months," also liable for
"civil damages to the party injured in the sum of one
thousand dollars for each fugitive so
[Pg. 24]
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 fugitive’s
arrest was issued; if, however, the fugitive was
discharged, the commissioner was entitled to five
dollars only.1
By the abolitionists, at whom it was directed, this law
was detested. A government, whose first national
manifesto contained the exalted principles enshrined in
the Declaration of Independence, stooping to the task of
slave-catching, violated all their ideas of national
dignity, ecency 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,” 2 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, resting 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.3 The
penalties of fine and imprisonment for offenders against
the law were severe, but they had no deterrent effect
upon j 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 during 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
3 See Some Recollections of the Anti-Slavery
Conflict, by S. J. May, p. 345 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
Power, Vol. II, pp. 304-322
[Pg. 25] - DESIRE FOR FREEDOM AMONG SLAVES
elsewhere. . . . As Mr. James
Freeman Clarke has said, ‘It was impossible to
convince the people that it was right to send hack 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.’ ”1
The desire for freedom was in the mind of nearly every
enslaved 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
finest touches in Uncle Tom’s Cabin is the joyful
expression of Uncle Tom when told by his good and
indulgent 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.”2 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 systematically hunted by men
with dogs and guns.3 Scraps of
information 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 betterment of their condition.
There can be no doubt that the form in which slavery
existed 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.
3 F. L. Olmsted, JOurney in the Bank
Country, p. 155; Rev. W. M. Mitchell, The
Underground Railroad, pp. 72, 73; M. G. McDougall,
Fugitive Slaves, p. 57.
[Pg. 26]
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, Richard, 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 estimated
that six thousand slaves were carried from Virginia,
though not all of these were sold to other states.1
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 consenus of abolitionist
testimony. Our sole reliance is upon this
testimony until the appearance of the the United States
census reports for 1850 and I860;2 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 reenforced 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 reduced 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.”3 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 Chapt. IX, pp. 342, 343.
3 G. M. Weston, Progress of Slavery in
the United States, Wasington, D. C., 1858, pp. 22,
23.
[Pg. 27] - INCENTIVES TO FLIGHT
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 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.1 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.2 Lewis Richardson,
one of the slaves of Henry Clay, sought relief in
flight after receiving a hundred and fifty stripes from
Mr. Clay's overseer.3 William Edwards,
of Amherstburg, Ontario, left his master on account of a
severe flogging.4 One of the station-keepers of an
underground line in Morgan County, Ohio, recalls an
instance of a family of seven fugitives giving as the
cause of their flight the death of their master, and teh
expected scattering of their number when the division of
the estate should occur.5
It has already been remarked that slaves began to find
their way to Canada before the opening of hte 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.6 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, 1805.
3 The Liberator, April 10, 1846
4 Conversation with William Edwards,
Amherstburg, Ontario, Aug. 3, 1895.
[Pg. 28]
and Virginia brought the news of the disposition of
the Canadian government to defend the rightgs 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 companions and friends.
By 1815 fugitives were crossing the Western Reserve in
Ohio, and regular stations of the Underground Railroad
were lending them assistance in that and other portions
of the state.1
After the discovery of Canada by colored refugees from
the Southern states, it was, presumably, not long before
some of the, 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 negroes 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.; 2
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 substantial aid. The
Rev. Calvin Fairbank, the Rev. Charles T. Torrey
and Dr. Alexander M. Rose 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 Power, Vol. II, p. 63
2 Redpath, The Public Life of
Captain John Brown, p. 229
[Pg. 29] - KNOWLEDGE OF CANADA AMONG SLAVES
Vicksburg, Selma and Columbus,
Mississippi, Augusta, Georgia, and Charleston, South
Carolina.1
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.2 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 Kentucky,
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.3
Depredations of this sort caused alarm among
slaveholders. They 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, 16, 39.
2 Conversation with White and Sidney in
Canada West, August, 1895.
3 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 Railroad’
into Canada.”
[Pg. 30]
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.”1 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 during the trial of
Richard Dillingham in Tennessee in 1849.2
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 enforcement of the Fugitive Slave
Law in 1850.
With the growth of a thing so unfavored as was the
Underground 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 convictions 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 incorporation in the Constitution
of the compromises concerning slavery doubtless quieted
the consciences of many of the early friends of
universal liberty. It was only natural, however,
that there should be some that would hold such
concessions 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 Abolitionist, p.
38.
2 A. L. Benedict, Memoir of Richard Dillingham,
p. 17.
[Pg. 31] - FAVORABLE LOCAL CONDITIONS
ciously to their views, and would aid
a fugitive slave whenever one would ask protection and
help. It is not strange that representatives of
this class should be found more frequently among the
Quakers than any other sect. In southeastern
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
Wilmington, 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
Massachusetts, 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 Declaration of Independence.”1
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.
[Pg. 32]
states. Among the number were
John Rankin, of Ripley, James Gilliland,
of Red Oak, Jesse Lockhart, of
Russellville, Robert B. Dobbins, of Sardinia,
Samuel Crothers, of Greenfield, 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.1
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 denomination
existed the Road was likely to be found in active
operation. Within the borders of Logan County,
Ohio, there were a number of Covenanter homes that
received fugitives; and in southern Illinois, between
the towns of Chester 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 Jackson County, Ohio, the Upper and Lower
Camps, Brown County, Ohio, and the Colored Settlement,
Hamilton County, Indiana, were active. Thelist of
towns and cities in which negroes became coworkers with
white persons in harboring and concealing runaways is a
long one. Oberlin, Portsmouth and Cincinnati,
Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, Philadelphia, 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 correspondents.
[Pg. 33] - ORIGIN OF THE UNDERGROUND MOVEMENT
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,”1
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 Philadelphia, and “whom a
society of Quakers in the city, formed for such
purposes, have attempted to liberate.”3
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 apprehend them when
runaways.”4 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, Grinell, Iowa,
Aug. 3, 1894.
2 Letter from President W. M. Brooks, Tabor, Iowa, Oct.
11, 1894.
3 Sparks's Washington, IX, 158, quoted in
Quakers of Pennsylvania, by Dr. A. C. Applegarth,
Johns Hopkins Studies, X, p. 463.
4. Lunt, Origin of the Late War, Vol. I, p. 20.
[Pg. 34]
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,
settles in Philadelphia, and, although only sixteen or
seventeen years old, had already taken a resolution to
befriend the oppressed Africans.1 Some
case of kidnapping that occurred in Columbia,
Pennsylvania, in 1804, stirred the citizens of that town
to intervention in the runaways' behalf; and the
movement seems to have spread rapidly among the Quakers
of Chester, Lancaster, York, Montgomery, Berks and Bucks
counties.2 New Jersey was probably not
behind southeastern 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
times 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
1818.3 New York was closely allied with
the New Jersey and Philadelphia centres as far back as
our meagre records will permit us to go. Isaac
T. Hopper, who had grown familiar with underground
methods of procedure in Philadelphia, moved to New York
in 1829. No doubt his philanthropic arts were soon
mae use of there, for in 1835 we find him accused,
---------------
1 L. Maria Child, Life of Isaa 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 Railroad, 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 born, (1818) and continued until
the time of the War. Mr. Oliver was railsed
in the family of Thomas Clement, a member of the
Society of Friends. He graduated fro the
Princeton Theological Seminary in 1856. As a youth
he began to take part in rescues. Although
seventy-five years old when visited by the author, he
was vigorous in boy and mind, and seemed to have a
remarkably clear memory.
[Pg. 35] - DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNDERGROUND SYSTEM.
though falsely this time, of harboring
a runaway at his store in Pearl Street.1 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.2
After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, New
York City became more active than ever in receiving and
forwarding refugees.3 This city at the
mouth of the Hudson was the entrepêt
for a line of travel by way of Albany, Syracuse and
Rochester to Canada, and for another line diverging 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 1850.4 In western New York
fugitives began to arrive from the neighboring parts of
the Pennsylvania 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;s
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.
2 History of Florence, Mass., p. 131. 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.
4 Letter of Mrs. Susan L. Crane, Elmira, Sept. 14,
1896. Mrs. Crane's father, Mr. Jervis Langdon, wsa
active in underground work at Elmira, and had a trusted
co-laborer in John W. Jones, who still lives in Elmira.
5. Conversation with Professor Orton, Ohio State
University, Columbus, O., 1893.
[Pg. 36]
tion of migrations of fugitives into
Canada at Black Rock, Buffalo and other points.1
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 activity began “in the latter-part
of the twenties of this century, and lasted till the
time of the Rebellion.”2 In New
Hampshire there was a station at Canaan after 1830, and
probably before that time.3 The Hon.
Mellen Chamberlain, of Chelsea, Massachusetts,
personally conducted a fugitive on two occasions from
Concord, New Hampshire, to his uncle’s at Canterbury, in
the same state “most probably in 1888 or 1839.”4
This thing once begun in New Hampshire seems to have
continued steadily during the decades until the War of
the Rebellion.5 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.6
In Massachusetts the town of Fall River became an
important station in 1839.7 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 Railroad,
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 maternal 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."
4 Letter to Judge Mellen Chamberlain,
Chelsea, Mass., Feb. 1, 1896.
5 Letter of Mr. Thomas P. Cheney, Ashland,
N. H., Mar. 30, 1896.
6 Recollections of the Anti-Slavery
Conflict, p. 297.
7 Elizabeth Buffum Chace, Anti-Slavery
Reminiscences, 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
on refuge from the year named.
[Pg. 37] - ITS SPREAD IN OHIO
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.1
Doubtless there was underground work going on in
Massachusetts before this period, but it was probably of
a less systematic character. In Maine fugitives
frequently obtained 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 Hampshire, and
northward, during the years 1843 to 1845.2
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 passage of the second
Fugitive Slave Law the care of thirty fugitives.3
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 underground 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 freedom beyond
the lakes. John Sloane, of Ravenna,
David Hudson, 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.4 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
Springfield, 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, 1896.
3 Letter of Mr. Brown Thurston, Portland,
Me., Oct. 21, 1895.
4 Wilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave
Power, Vol. II, p. 63; Alexander Black, The Story
of Ohio, see account of the Underground Railroad.
[Pg. 38]
in the western part.1
At least one case of underground procedure 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
Marysville, Ohio, by Richard Dixon, an
eye-witness. The alleged runaway, seized at
Delaware, was unceremoniously taken from the custody of
his mounted captor when the two reached Worthington, and
was brought before Colonel James Kilbourne, 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.2 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.3
If now the testimony of the oldest surviving
abolitionists from the different regions of the state be
compared, some interesting results may be found.
Job Mullin, a Quaker of Warren 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.4
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.”5 Dr.
Thomas Cowgill, an aged Quaker of Kennard,
Champaign County, recollects that the work of the
Underground Railroad began in his
---------------
1 Letter of Col. D. W. H. Howard, Wauseon, O., Aug. 22,
1894.
2 Conversaton with Robert McCrory, Marysville, O.,
Sept. 30, 1898. Mr. McCrory was educated at
Oberlin College, and has an excellent memory.
3 Howe's Historical Collections of Ohio, Vol. I,
p. 614.
4. Letter from Job Mullin, dictated to his son-in-law,
W. H. Newport, at Springboro, O., Sept. 9, 1895.
5. Conversation with Mr. Eliakim H. Moore, Athens, O.
[Pg. 39] - ITS SPREAD IN OHIO
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 entertained at Dry Run Church, in Ross County.1
William A. Johnston, an old resident of
Coshocton, testifies: "We had such a road here as
early as the twenties, I know from tradition and
personal observation."2 Mahlon
Pickrell, a prominent 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."3
Finally, Mr. R. C. Corwin, of Lebanon, writes:
"My first recollection of the business dates back to
about 1820, when I remember 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
activity."4 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 an employing them."5
After reciting a number of instances of rescus occurring
between 1820 and 1850, Mr. Sloane remarks
---------------
1 Conversation with
Joseph Skillgess, Urbana, O., Aug. 14, 1894.
2 Letter of Wm. A. Johnston, Coshocton, O., Aug. 23,
1894.
3 Letter of Hannah W. Blackburn, for her father, Mahlon
Pickrell, Zanesfield, O., Mar. 25, 1893.
4. letter of R. C. Corwin, Lebanon, O., Sept. 11, 1895.
5. The Firelands Pioneer, July, 1888, p. 84.
[Pg. 40]
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.1
The foregoing items have been brought together to show
that there was no break in the business 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 organized 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 antislavery 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.”2 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
concealment and rendered them all the service in my
power. . . . These outlying slaves knew where I lived,
and, when reduced 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.”3
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.
3. Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, 2d. ed., pp.
20, 21.
[Pg. 41] - EARLY ACTIVITIES IN ILLINOIS
at which three distinct lines of
Underground Road converged. It is probable, however,
that wayfarers from bondage 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.”1
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
abolitionist 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 considered probable in
those parts that are and must remain without
corroboration. Concerning his father Mr.
Leeper writes: “John Leeper moved from
Marshall County, Tennessee, to Bond County, Illinois, in
1816. Was a hater of slavery. . . . Remained in
Bond County until 1823, then moved to Jacksonville,
Morgan County, and in 1831 to Putnam County, and in 1833
to Bureau County, Illinois. . . . My father’s house was
always a hiding-place for the fugitive
---------------
1 Letter from
John E. 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.
[Pg. 42]
from slavery.”1 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
established, 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 during 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 Underground 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 50 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.”2
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, Ill., 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.
[Pg. 43] - OPERATIONS IN IOWA
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
concerned with secret projects to help slaves to Canada.
The lines of travel of fugitive slaves that extended
east throughout the entire length of Iowa were more or
less associated with Kansas men and Kansas movements,
and their development 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 Undergrounds 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 1854.
We 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 reports 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.
[Pg. 44]
says Dr. Howe, "trod
this path every year, but they did not attract much
public attention."1 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 Secretary 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 1830-1840. 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."2
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 consensus of
testimony of many underground agents, to the effect that
the decade from 1850 to 1860 was the period of the
Road's greatest activity in all sections of the North.3
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 designation came into use among
slave-hunters in the neighborhood of Columbia soon after
the Quakers in southeastern Penn-
---------------
1 S. G. Howe, The Refugees 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
3 Some
conclusions presented in the American Historical
Review, April, 1896, pp. 460-462, are here repeated.
[Pg. 45] - NAMING OF THE ROAD
sylvania began
their concerted action in harboring and forwarding
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 bewildered and baffled the
slave-owners and their agents, who are said to have
declared, "there must be an Underground Railroad
somewhere."1 As this work reached
considerable development 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 application
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 become 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,'
afterwards' ' Underground Railroad.' "2
A colored man, the Rev. W. M. Mitchell,
who was for several years a resident of
---------------
1 R. C. Smedley, Underground Railroad, pp. 34,
35.
2 The Firelands Pioneer, July, 1888, p. 35.
[Pg. 46]
southern Ohio, and a friend of fugitives, gives what
appears to be a version of Mr. Sloane's story.1
These anecdotes are hardly morethan traditions,
affording a fair general explanation of the way in which
the Underground Railroad got its name; but they cannot
be trusted in the details of time, place and occasions.
Whatever the manner and date of its suggestion, the
designation was generally accepted as an apt title for
the mysterious means of transporting fugitive slaves to
Canada
---------------
1 The Underground Railroad, pp. 4, 5.
A CROSSING PLACE FOR FUGITIVE SLAVES ON THE OHIO RIVER,
AT STEUBENVILLE, OHIO.
(from a recent photograph)
HOUSE ON THE REV. JOHN RANKIN, RIPLEY,
OHIO.
Situated on the top of a high hill, this initial station
was readily found by runaways from the KEntucky shore
opposite.
(From a recent photograph)
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