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CHAPTER VIII
FUGITIVE SETTLERS IN THE NORTHERN STATES
P. 235
THERE were many fugitives from
bondage that did not avail themselves of the protection
afforded by the proximity of Canadian soil. For
various reasons these persons remained within the
borders of the free states; some were drawn by the
affinities of race to seek permanent homes in
communities of colored people; some, keeping the stories
of their past lives hidden, found employment as well as
oblivion among the crowds in cities and towns; some,
choosing localities more or less remote from large
centres of population, settled where the presence of
Quakers, Wesleyan Methodists, Covenanters or Free
Presbyterians gave them the assurance of safety and
assistance; and some, after a severe experience of
pioneer life in the woods of Canada, preferred to run
their chances on the southern shores of the lakes, where
it was easier to gain a livelihood, and whence escape
could be made across the line at the first intimation of
danger.
As one would suppose, it is impossible to determine
with any accuracy how many fugitive settlers there were
in the North at any particular time. Estimates
both local and general in character have come down to
us, and, naturally enough, one is inclined to attach
greater value to the former than to the latter, on the
score of probable correctness, but here the investigator
is met by the extreme paucity of examples, which, as it
happens, are confined to two towns in eastern
Massachusetts, namely, Boston and New Bedford. In
October, 1850, the Rev. Theodore Parker stated
publicly that there were in Boston from four hundred to
six hundred fugitives.1 Concerning the
refugee populatizon of New Bedford our information is
much less definite, for it is
---------------
1 Chronotype, Oct. 7, 1850.
[Page 236]
reported that in that place there were between six
hundred and seven hundred colored citizens, many of whom
were fugitives.1 Nevertheless one
cannot doubt that the representatives of this class were
numerous and widely scattered throughout the whole
territory of the free zone, for reference is made by
many surviving abolitionists not only to individual
refugees or single families of refugees that dwelt in
their neighborhood, but even to settlements a
considerable part of whose people were runaway slaves.
Where conditions were peculiarly favorable it was not an
unknown thing for runaways to conclude their journeys
when scarcely more than within the borders of free
territory. The Rev. Thomas C. Oliver, of
Windsor, Canada, is authority for the statement that
fugitive settlers swarmed among their Quaker protectors
at Greenwich, New Jersey, on the very edge of a slave
state.2 In communities situated at
greater distance from the sectional line, like Columbus3
and Akron,4 Ohio, Elmira5
and Buffalo,6 New York, and Detroit,
Michigan, many fugitives are known to have lived.
The Rev. Calvin Fairbank relates that, while
visiting Detroit in 1849, he discovered several families
he had helped from slavery living near the city.
He went to see these families, and afterward wrote
concerning them: “Living near the Johnsons, and
like them contented and comfortable, I found the
Stewart and Coleman families, for whom
I had also lighted the path of freedom.”7
In the vicinity of Sandy Lake, in the northwestern part
of Pennsylvania, there was a colony of colored people,
most of whom were runaway slaves.8
Such evidence, which is local in its nature, should be
considered in conjunction with the general estimates of
those persons that expressed opinions after wide
observation in regard to the whole number of fugitive
settlers in the North.
---------------
1 Clipping from the Commonwealth,
preserved in a scrap-book relating to Theodore
Parker, Boston Public Library.
2 Conversation with Mr. Oliver,
Windsor, Ont., Aug. 2, 1895.
3 Conversation with the Rev. James
Poindexter, Columbus, O., summer of 1895.
4 History of Summit County, Ohio, pp.
579, 580.
5 Letters of Mrs. Susan L. Crane,
Elmira, N.Y.
6 See p. 250, this chapter.
7 The Chicago Tribune, Jan. 29, 1893.
8 Letter of John E. Hogue,
Greenville, Pa., Nov. 26, 1895.
[Page 237] - RISKS OF
FUGITIVE SETTLERS IN THE STATES -
The most indefinite of these contemporary opinions is
that of the veteran underground helper, Samuel J. May,
who states that “hundreds ventured to remain this side
of the Lakes.”1 Other judges attempt to
put their estimates into figures; thus, Henry
Wilson thinks that by 1850 twenty thousand had found
homes in the free states; 2 Mr.
Franklin B. Sanborn, admitting the inherent
difficulty of the calculation, places the number at from
twenty-five thousand to fifty thousand;3 and
the Canadian refugee, Josiah Henson, wrote in
1852: “It is estimated that the number of fugitive
slaves in the various free states . . . amounts
to 50,000.”4
Fugitives that thus dwelt in the Northern states for a
longer or shorter period did so at their own risk, and
in general against the advice of their helpers.
Their reliance for safety was altogether upon their own
wariness and the public sentiment of the communities
where they lived, and until slavery perished in the
Civil War they were subjected to the fear of surprise
and seizure. The Southern people apparently
regarded their right to recover their escaped slaves as
unquestionable as their right to reclaim their strayed
cattle, and they were determined to have the former as
freely and fully recognized in the North as the latter;5
and it might be added that there were not a few people
in the North quite willing to admit the slaveholder’s
right freely to reclaim his human property, and to aid
him in doing so. What the sentiment was that
prevailed in the North during the twenties and thirties
of the present century is evidenced in certain laws
enacted by the legislatures of some of the states in
line with the Federal Slave Law of 1793. Thus, in
an act passed by the assembly of Pennsylvania, Mar. 25,
1826, provision was made for the issuance by courts of
record of the commonwealth of certificates or warrants
---------------
1 Some Recollections of our Anti-Slavery
Conflict, p. 297.
2 Rise and Fall of the Slave Power,
Vol. II, p. 304; see also E. B. Andrews’
History of the United States, Vol. II, p. 36.
3 Conversation with Mr. Sanborn,
Cambridge, Mass., March, 1897.
4 The Life of Josiah Henson, formerly a
Slave, as narrated by Himself, p. 97.
5 James H. Fairchild, The
Underground Railroad, Tract No. 87, in Vol. IV,
Western Reserve Historical Society, p. 106.
[Page 238]
of removal for negroes or mulattoes, claimed to be
fugitives from labor;1 and in a law enacted
by the legislature of Ohio, Feb. 26, 1839, it was
provided that any justice of the peace, judge of a court
of record, or mayor should authorize the arrest of a
person claimed as a fugitive slave on the affidavit of
the claimant or his agent, and that the judge of a court
of record before whom the fugitive was brought should
grant a certificate of removal upon the presentation of
satisfactory proof.2
Among those that paid homage to such laws as these, and
thus made the North an unsafe refuge for slaves, were to
be found representatives of all classes of society.
Samuel J. May opens to view the convictions of
some of the most cultured people of his day by the
following incidents related concerning two well-known
New England clergymen. “The excellent Dr. E. S.
Gannett, of Boston, was heard to say, more than
once, very emphatically, and to justify it, ‘that he
should feel it to be his duty to turn away from his door
a fugitive slave,— unfed, unaided in any way, rather
than set at naught the law of the land.’
“ And Rev. Dr. Dewey, whom we accounted one of
the ablest expounders and most eloquent defenders of our
Unitarian faith,— Dr. Dewey was reported
to have said at two different times, in public lectures
or speeches during the fall of 1850 and the winter of
1851, that ‘he would send his mother into slavery,
rather than endanger the Union, by resisting this law
enacted by the constituted government of the nation.’
He has often denied that he spoke thus of his ‘maternal
relative,’ and therefore I allow that he was
misunderstood. But he has repeatedly acknowledged
that he did say, ‘I would consent that my own brother,
my own son, should go, ten times rather would I go
myself into slavery, than that this Union should be
sacrificed.’ ”3 After the occurrence of
the famous Jerry rescue at Syracuse, Oct. 1, 1851, many
newspapers representing both political parties
---------------
1 G. M. Stroud, A Sketch of the Laws Relating
to Slavery, 2d ed., 1856,
pp. 281, 282.
2 Statutes of the State of Ohio, 1841, collated
by J. R. Swan, pp. 695-600.
3 Some Recollections of our Anti-Slavery Conflict,
p. 367.
[Page 239] - RISKS OF
FUGITIVE SETTLERS IN THE STATES -
emphatically condemned the successful resistance made to
the law by the abolitionists as “a disgraceful,
demoralizing and alarming act.” 1
There were not wanting in almost every community
members of the shiftless class of society that were
always ready to obstruct the passage of fugitive slaves
to the North, and whose most vigorous exercise was taken
in the course of some slave-hunting adventure. The
Rev. W. M. Mitchell, who had had this class to
contend with in the performance of his underground work
during a number of years in Ohio, characterized it in a
description, penned in 1860, in which he sets forth one
of the conditions that made the Northern states an
unsafe refuge for self-liberated negroes. “The
progress of the Slave,” he wrote, “ is very much impeded
by a class of men in the Northern States who are too
lazy to work at respectable occupations to obtain an
honest living, but prefer to obtain it, if possible,
whether honestly or dishonestly, by tracking runaway
slaves. On seeing advertisements in the newspapers
of escaped slaves, with rewards offered, they, armed to
the teeth, saunter in and through Abolition Communities
or towns, where they are likely to find the object of
their pursuit. They sometimes watch the houses of known
Abolitionists. . . . We are hereby warned, and for
our own safety and that of the Slave, we act with
excessive caution. The first discoverer of these
bloody rebels communicates their presence to others of
our company, that the entire band in that locality is
put on their guard. If the slave has not reached
us, we are on the lookout, with greater anxiety than the
hunters, for the fugitive, to prevent his falling into
the possession of those demons in human shape. On
the other hand should the Slave be so fortunate as to be
in our possession at the time, we are compelled to keep
very quiet, until the hunter loses all hopes of finding
him, therefore gives up the search as a bad job, or
---------------
1 Some Recollections of Our Anti-Slavery
Conflict, p. 380. The newspapers named by Mr.
May are, The Advertiser and The
American of Rochester, The Gazette and
Observer of Utica, The Oneida Whig, The
Register, The Argus and The Express of
Albany, The Courier and Inquirer and
The Express of New York.
[Page 240]
moves on to another Abolition Community, which gives us
an opportunity of removing the Fugitive further from
danger, or sending him towards the North Star. . . ”1
It is not to be supposed, of course, that the business
of slave-hunting was carried on mainly by the persons
here described in such uncomplimentary terms.
Persons of this type contented themselves generally, no
doubt, with acting as spies and informers, and rarely
engaged in the excitement of a slave-hunt except as the
aids of Southern planters or their agents. If it
is true that there was a sentiment averse to slavery
prevailing through many years in the North, it is also
true that the residents of the free states for the most
part conceded the right of Southerners to pursue and
recover their fugitives without hindrance from their
Northern neighbors, The free states thus became
what the abolitionists called the “hunting-ground” of
the South, and as early as 1830 or 1835 the pursuit of
slaves began to attract wide attention. During the
years following many localities, especially in the
middle states, were visited from time to time by parties
on the trail of the fleeing bondman, or seeking out the
secluded home of some self-freed slave; and after the
enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 Southerners
became more energetic than before in pushing the search
for their escaped chattels. It has been recorded
that “more than two hundred arrests of persons claimed
as fugitives were made from the time of the passage of
the Bill to the middle of 1856. About a dozen of
these were free persons, who succeeded in establishing
the claim that they never had been slaves; other
persons, equally free, were carried off. Half a
dozen rescues were made, and the rest of these cases
were delivered to their owners. These arrests took
place more frequently in Pennsylvania than in any other
Northern state. Many fugitives were caught and
carried back, of whom we have no accounts, save that
they were seen on the deck of some river steamboat, in
the custody of their owners, without even passing
through the formality of appearing before a
commissioner. About two-thirds of the persons
arrested as above had trials. When the arrests to
the number of two hundred, at least, can be traced,
---------------
1 The Underground Railroad, pp. 13,
14.
[Page 241] - EFFECT OF
THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW OF 1850
and their dates fixed, during six years, we may suppose
that the Bill was not, as some politicians averred,
practically of little consequence.”1
Concerning the efficiency of the new law there is a
difference of opinion among the contemporary writers
that commented upon it; but there could be no
disagreement as to the distress into which it plunged
some of the refugees long resident in the free states.
In not a few instances these persons had married,
acquired homes, and were rearing their families in peace
and happiness. Under the Fugitive Slave Act some
of these settlers were seized upon the affidavit of
their former owners, and with the sanction of the
federal authority were carried back into slavery.
Among the many cases that might be cited the following
will serve to illustrate the misfortunes ever ready to
be precipitated upon fugitive settlers in the Northern
states. In 1851 John Bolding,
claimed as the property of a citizen of Columbia, South
Carolina, was arrested in Poughkeepsie, New York, and
taken back to the South. Bolding was a
young man of good character, recently married, and the
possessor of a small tailor shop in Poughkeepsie.2
In August, 1853, George Washington
McQuerry,of Cincinnati,was remanded to slavery in
Kentucky. He had lived several years in Ohio, had
married a free woman, and they had three children.3
In September, 1858, a family of colored persons at
Uniontown, Pennsylvania, were claimed as slaves by a
Virginian. Their statement that they had been
permitted by their master to visit friends in Fayette
County did not prevent their immediate restoration to
him.4 In May, 1857, Addison
White, a runaway from Kentucky, was found living
near Meclianicsburg, Ohio, where he had been at work
about six months earning means to send for his wife and
children. Some of the abolitionists of the
neighborhood prevented his reclamation.5 In
three of these cases at least the reenslavement of the
refugees was prevented by an abolition sentiment locally
---------------
1 Weiss, Life and Correspondence
of Theodore Parker, Vol. II, p. 93.
2 The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims,
by Samuel May, Jr., 1861, p. 19.
3 Ibid., p. 31. See Appendix B, p.
374.
4 Ibid., p. 68 et seq.
5 See Appendix B, p. 375
[Page 242]
strong enough to lead to the purchase of the slaves from
their claimants; but it is noteworthy that public
opinion in the neighborhoods where these runaways lived
was unable to shield them from capture.
The refugees that preferred to settle in the Northern
states rather than in Canada naturally made homes for
themselves in anti-slavery communities among tried
friends. Here they could rest with some assurance
upon the benevolence of these localities and feel safe,
although their liberty was still in danger. A
slave-hunter in entering such neighborhoods was obliged
to move with great caution; he was in the midst of
strangers, with few allies, and his scheme was likely to
fail if his presence became known. Sometimes, when
he was in the very act of leading the captive back to
the South in bonds he would find his progress
interrupted by a crowd, his authority questioned, his
return to the office of a magistrate insisted upon, and
ultimately, perhaps, his prisoner released by a
procedure more or less formal. The slave-hunter
that incautiously flourished weapons and made threats
was likely to be arreted and subjected to such
additional delays and inconveniences as would render his
undertaking expensive as well as vexatious. There
can be no doubt that this was the experience of many
slave-owners that sought to recover their servants in
the free states. Mr. Clay touched on this
point, Apr. 22, 1850, in presenting petitions to the
United States Senate from four citizens of Kentucky.
These persons, he said, "state that each of them has
lost a slave. . . . That these slaves have taken
refuge in the state of Ohio, and that it is in vain for
them to attempt to recapture them; that they cannot go
there and attempt to recover their property without
imminent hazard to their lives.”1 This
statement, reiterating the idea contained in the
petitions themselves, namely, that the danger attending
pursuit was great, is too strong in reference to a large
number of the abolition communities in the Northern
states, in many of which non-resistance principles were
advocated. At the same time it must be remembered
that the usual methods of slave-catchers were not
conciliatory to the people
---------------
1 Congressional Globe, New Series,
YoL XXII, Part I, p. 793.
[Page 243] - INCREASED
DIFFICULTY OF RECLAMATION
among whom they went, and that their bravado sometimes
secured for them rough treatment at the hands of a mob,
especially if the number of colored people present was
large enough to warrant their venting their outraged
feelings.
The difficulty of recovering slave property in the
North had been considerable for some years, and it was
steadily growing greater. The uncertainty of
reclamation in the large number of cases made the whole
business unprofitable and undesirable for slave-owners.
A writer in the North American Review for
July, 1850, says, “Though thousands of slaves have
escaped by crossing the Ohio River, or Mason and Dixon’s
line, during the last five years, no attempt has been
made to reclaim them in more than one case out of a
thousand.”1 If one takes this statement
as meant to convey merely the idea that the number of
pursuits was extremely small in proportion to the number
of escapes there will be no difficulty in accepting it,
for probably this was the fact down to 1850; and the
explanation of it, so far as can be gathered from the
lips of Southern men, is to be found in the strong
probability of failure in undertaking these costly
enterprises. Thus Mr. Mason, of Virginia,
in his argument in favor of a new fugitive slave law,
declared that, under the existing conditions, “you may
as well go down into the sea and endeavor to recover
from his native element a fish which has escaped from
you, as expect to recover a . . . fugitive. Every
difficulty is thrown in your way by the population. . .
. There are armed mobs, rescues. This is the real
state of things.”2
The law of 1850 was intended to remove the occasion for
such complaints on the part of slaveholders, and secure
them in the recovery and possession of their property.
The effect of its provisions upon the South was to
arouse slave-owners to greater activity in the pursuit
of their chattels, while in the North the effect was to
increase greatly the determination in the minds of many
to resist the enforcement of the law. Despite the
severe penalties it levelled
---------------
1 F. Bowen on “ Extradition of
Fugitive Slaves,” Vol. LXXI, p. 252 et seq.
2 Congressional Globe, Thirty-first
Congress, First Session, p. 1583 ; also M. G.
McDougall, Fugitive Slaves, p. 31.
[Page 244]
against those that should be guilty of shielding the
refugee, the expression of sympathy for fugitive
settlers was open and hearty in many quarters; and
public meetings were held by abolitionists to proclaim
defiance to the law and protection to the fugitive.
At Lowell, Massachusetts, an immense Free Soil meeting
adopted resolutions inviting former residents of the
city to return from Canada, where they had taken refuge;1
at Syracuse, New York, a gathering of all parties
declared its abhorrence of the Fugitive Slave Law, and
formed an association or vigilance committee “so that
the Southern oppressors may know that the people of
Syracuse and its vicinity are prepared to sustain one
another in resisting the encroachments of despotism”;2
at Boston an indignation meeting was held “ for the
denunciation of the law and the expression of sympathy
and cooperation with the fugitive.” Among the
resolutions adopted at this meeting, one advised “ the
fugitive slaves and colored inhabitants of Boston and
the neighborhood to remain with us, for we have not the
smallest fear that any one of them will be taken from us
and carried off to bondage; and we trust that such as
have fled in fear will return to their business and
homes”; another resolution proposed the appointment of a
vigilance committee “to secure the fugitives and colored
inhabitants of Boston and vicinity from any invasion of
their rights by persons acting under the law.”3
In Ashtabula County, Ohio, a meeting at Hartsgrove
resolved, “that we hold the Fugitive Slave Law in utter
contempt . . . and that we will not aid in catching the
fugitive, but will feed him, and protect him with all
the means in our power, and that we will pledge our
sympathy and property for the relief of any person in
our midst who may suffer any penalties for an honorable
opposition . . . to the requirements of this law.”4
In other portions also of the free states meetings were
held in which the purpose was avowed to protect fugitive
slaves.5
---------------
1 Wilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in
America, Vol. II, p. 306.
2 Samuel J. May, Some Recollections of Our
Anti-Slavery Conflict, p. 353.
3 John Weiss, Life and Correspondence
of Theodore Parker, Vol. II, p. 94.
4 Article by the Rev. S. D. Peet, in
History of Ashtabula County, Ohio (1878), pp.33,
34.
5 “No sooner was the deed done, the Fugitive Slave Act
sent forth to be
[Page 245] - PERSONAL
LIBERTY LAWS
The change of sentiment in the North from passive
acquiescence in the law to active resistance to it is
best seen, perhaps, in the history of the so-called
personal liberty laws. The real object of these
statutes was to impair the operation of the national
Fugitive Slave Law, although their proposed object was
in most cases to prevent the removal of free colored
citizens to the South under the claim that they were
fugitive slaves. These statutes were passed by the
legislatures of various states during the period of a
little more than thirty years from 1824 to 1858, the
greater number being enacted after the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise in 1854. The first two in the
series were those enacted by Indiana and Connecticut in
1824 and 1888 respectively, and provided that on appeal
fugitives might have a trial by jury. In 1840
Vermont and New York framed laws granting jury trial,
and also providing attorneys to defend fugitives.
In 1842 the Prigg decision gave the occasion for
a new class of statutes; the release of state
authorities from the execution of the Slave Law by the
opinion handed down by Justice Story was
taken advantage of in Massachusetts, Vermont,
Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, and the officers of the
states were forbidden from performing the duties imposed
by the law of 1793. The decade from 1850 to 1860
is marked by a fresh crop of these personal liberty
acts, due to the sentiment aroused by the law of 1850
and aggravated by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.
As the new national law avoided the employment of state
officers, state legislation was now directed in the main
to limiting the powers of the executors of the laws as
far as possible, and depriving them of the facilities of
action. Thus, the new laws generally provided
counsel for any one arrested as a fugitive; secured to
him a trial surrounded by the usual safeguards;
prohibited the use of state jails; and forbade state
officers to issue writs or give aid to the claimant.
The penalty for the violation of. these
---------------
the law of the land, than outcries of contempt and
defiance came from every free state, and pledges of
protection were given to the colored population. It is
not within the scope of my plan to attempt an account of
the indignation meetings that were held in places too
numerous to he even mentioned here.” S. J. May,
Some Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict,
p. 349.
[Page 246]
provisions was a heavy fine and imprisonment.
“Such, acts,” it is said, “were passed in Vermont,
Connecticut and Rhode Island, in Massachusetts, Michigan
and Maine. Later, laws were also enacted in
Wisconsin, Kansas, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Of the
other Northern States, two only, New Jersey and
California, gave any official sanction to the rendition
of fugitives. In New Hampshire, New York, Indiana,
Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota, however, no full personal
liberty laws were passed.”1
Notwithstanding the disposition shown in many parts of
the free states to protect fugitive settlers, the Slave
Law of 1850 spread consternation and distress among
them, and caused numbers to leave the little homes they
had established for themselves, and renew their search
for liberty. Perhaps in no community of the North
did fugitive settlers feel themselves more secure than
in Boston, the city of Garrison, Phillips
and Parker; here they were gathered together by
the Rev. Leonard B. Grimes, a colored man, who
soon organized a church of fugitive slaves, and such was
the feeling of confidence among them that in 1849 a
building was begun for this unique congregation.
Within a few months, however, the new Slave Law was
enacted, and wrung from this band of runaways a cry of
anguish that may be justly regarded as expressing the
distress of the people of this class in all quarters of
the free states. At a meeting of the Boston
refugees, held Oct. 5, 1850, an appeal to the clergy of
Massachusetts was issued, in the preamble of which was
embodied the slaves’ view of their own situation, and
their pitiful entreaty for help. As “trembling,
proscribed and hunted fugitives . . . now scattered
through the various towns and villages of Massachusetts,
and momentarily liable to be seized by the strong arm of
government, and hurried back to stripes, tortures and
bondage . . .” they implored the clergy to “ ‘lift up
(their) voices like a trumpet’ against the Fugitive
Slave Bill, recently adopted by Congress. . . .”2
The church building of the
---------------
1 M. G. McDougall, Fugitive Slaves,
pp. 65-70, and the references there given.
2 Scrap-book of clippings, circulars, etc.,
presented to the Boston Public Library by Mrs. L. D.
Parker.
[Page 247] -
CONSTERNATION AMONG FUGITIVES IN THE NORTH
fugitive settlers “was arrested midway towards its
completion, and the members were scattered in wild
dismay. More than forty fled to Canada. One
of their number, Shadrach, was seized, but more
fortunate than the hapless Sims, who had no
fellowship with them, he succeeded in making his
escape.”1 An individual case that
illustrates the sudden disaster experienced by numerous
households throughout the North was recorded by the
Rev. J. S. C. Abbott, in January, 1852. The
case occurred in Boston in 1851: “A colored girl,
eighteen years of age, a few y6ars ago escaped from
slavery at the South. Through scenes of adventure
and peril she found her way to Boston, obtained
employment, secured friends, and became a consistent
member of a Methodist church. She became
interested in a very worthy young man, of her own
complexion, who was a member of the same church.
They were soon married. Their home, though humble,
was the abode of piety and contentment. . . . Seven
years passed away; they had two little boys, one six and
the other four years of age. These children, the
sons of a free father, but of a mother who had been a
slave, by the laws of our Southern states were doomed to
their mother’s fate. These Boston boys, born
beneath the shadow of Faneuil Hall, the
sons of a free citizen of Boston, and educated in the
Boston free schools, were, by the compromises of the
Constitution, admitted to be slaves, the property of a
South Carolinian planter. The Boston father had no
right to his own sons. The law, however, had long
been considered a dead letter. The Christian
mother, as she morning and evening bowed with her
children in prayer, felt that they were safe from the
slave-hunter, surrounded as they were by the churches,
the schools, and the free institutions of Massachusetts.
“The Fugitive Slave Law was enacted. It revived
the hopes of the slave-owners. A young, healthy,
energetic mother, with two fine boys, was a rich prize.
. . . Good men began to say: ‘We must enforce this law;
it is one of the compromises of the Constitution.’
Christian ministers began to preach: ‘The voice of the
law is the voice of God.
---------------
1 C. E. Stevens, Anthony Burns, A
History, 1856, p. 208.
[Page 248]
There is no higher rule of duty.’ . . . The poor woman
was panic-stricken. Her friends gathered around
her and trembled for her. Her husband was absent
from home, a seaman on board one of our Liverpool
packets. She was afraid to get out of doors lest
some one from the South should see her and recognize
her. One day, as she was going to the grocery for
some provisions, her quick and anxious eye caught a
glimpse of a man prowling around, whom she immediately
recognized as from the vicinity of her old home of
slavery. Almost fainting with terror, she hastened
home, and, taking her two children by the hand, fled to
the house of a friend. She and her trembling
children were hid in the garret. In less than one hour
after her escape, the officer with a writ came for her
arrest.
"... At midnight, her friends took her in a hack, and
conveyed her, with her children, to the house of her
pastor. A prayer-meeting had been appointed there,
at that hour, in behalf of the suffering sister. A
small group of stricken hearts were assembled. . . .
Groanings and lamentations filled the room. No one
could pray. . . . Other fugitives were there,
trembling in view of a doom more dreadful to them than
death. After an hour of weeping . . . they took
this Christian mother and her children in a hack, and
conveyed them to one of the Cunard steamers, which
fortunately was to sail for Halifax the next day. . . .
Her brethren and sisters of the church raised a little
money from their scanty means to pay her passage, and to
save her for a few days from starving, after her first
arrival in the cold land of strangers. Her husband
soon returned to Boston, to find his home desolate, his
wife and his children exiles in a foreign land.
“I think that this narrative may be relied upon as
accurate. I received the facts from the lips of
one, a member of the church, who was present at that
midnight ‘weeping- meeting,’ before the Lord. Such is
slavery in Boston, in the year 1852. Has the North
nothing to do with slavery ? ”1
---------------
1 Quoted by P. B. Sanborn, in his
Life of Dr. S. G. Howe, the Philanthropist, pp. 237,
238, 239. Similar stories are related by Lydia
Maria Child, in her Life of Isaac T. Hopper,
pp. 455-458.
[Page 249] - EXODUS OF
FUGITIVES FROM THE STATES
In localities nearer to slave territory than Boston, and
in places where anti-slavery sentiment was perhaps less
pronounced, it may be supposed that terror was not less
prevalent among fugitive settlers. The members of
the colored community near Sandy Lake in northwestern
Pennsylvania, many of whom had purchased small farms and
had them partly paid for, sold out or gave away their
farms and went to Canada in a body.1
The sudden disappearance of refugees from their
habitations in various other places as soon as the
character of the new law became noised abroad was a
phenomenon the cause of which was unmistakable. Of
the many that thus vanished from their accustomed
haunts,2 Josiah Henson, writing
in 1852, said: “Some have found their way to England,
but the mass are flying to Canada, where they feel
themselves secure. Already several thousands have
gone thither, and have added considerably to the number
already settled, or partially settled, in that part of
the British dominions. . . .”3 As Mr.
Henson was a worker among the refugees in Canada
he was in a position to speak from his personal
knowledge, and his testimony is sustained by that of the
Rev. Anthony Bingey, an escaped slave, who helped
receive fugitives at Amherstburg, Ontario, one of the
chief landing-places of the negro emigrants from the
United States. Mr. Bingey states that after
the Fugitive Slave Law took effect the runaways came
there “by fifties every day, like frogs in Egypt.”
Before that time “many had settled in the States, but
after the Fugitive Slave Law they could be taken, so
they came in from all parts.”4 Sumner
estimated that, altogether, “as many as six thousand
Christian men and women, meritorious persons,—a larger
band than that of the escaping Puritans,—precipitately
fled from homes which they had established” to British
soil. The Liberator published a statement, made in
February, 1851,
---------------
1 Letter of John F. Hogue,
Greenville, Pa., Nov. 25, 1895; letter of the Rev.
James Lawson, Franklin, Pa., Nov. 25, 1895.
2 Life of William Lloyd Garrison,
Vol. III, p. 302. See also Rhodes’s
History of the United States, Vol. I, p. 198.
3 The Life of Josiah Henson, formerly a
Slave, as narrated by Himself, pp. 97, 98, 99.
4 Conversation with Mr. Bingey,
Windsor, Ont., July 31, 1896.
[Page 250]
that the African Methodist and Baptist churches of
Buffalo, New York, had both lost a large number of
members, the loss of the former being given as one
hundred. The Baptist church of the colored people
of Rochester, in the same state, out of a membership of
one hundred and fourteen, lost one hundred and twelve,
including the pastor. The African Baptist church
of Detroit lost eighty-four members at this time.1
One must not imagine, however, that all the fugitives
migrated beyond the borders of the free states. No
doubt a considerable number, more daring than the rest,2
or in some way favored by circumstances, chose to remain
and run the risk of discovery. Colonel
Thomas Wentworth Higginson asserts
that “For many years fugitive slaves came to
Massachusetts and remained, this lasting until the
Fugitive Slave Law was passed in 1850, and longer.
Even after that period we tried to keep them in
Worcester, where I then lived, it being a strong
anti-slavery place, and they often stayed.”3 Some
of the fugitives that were induced to move by the Slave
Law only passed from one state into another, instead of
continuing their journey to regions beyond the
jurisdiction of a United States commissioner. Of a
company of blacks dwelling near the home of Elijah F.
Pennypaeker in Chester County, Pennsylvania, at the
time of the enactment of the law of 1850, it is said
that while some went to Canada, some went to New York
and some to Massachusetts.4 It was
noted above that the new church of the fugitives of
Boston was stopped midway in the process of building by
the promulgation of the act, but it is significant that
the structure was completed soon after. Evidently
not all of the refugees departed from the city of their
adoption. It is related that “When the first fury
of the storm had blown over, Mr. Grimes
set himself with redoubled energy to repair the
---------------
1 Life of Garrison, Vol. Ill, p. 302
; also foot-note, pp. 302, 303.
2 “Some of the boldest chose to remain, and
armed themselves to defend their freedom, instinctively
calculating that the sight of such an exigency would
make the Northern heart beat too rapidly for prudence!”
Weiss, Life and Correspondence of Theodore
Parker, Vol. II, p. 92.
3 Letter of Mr. Higginson,
Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 5, 1894.
4 R. C. Smedley, History of the
Underground Railroad, p. 210
[Page 251] -
UNDERGROUND MEN AMONG FUGITIVES IN THE NORTH
wastes that had been made. He collected money from
the charitable, and purchased the members of his church
out of slavery, that they might return without fear to
the fold. He made friends among the rich, who
advanced funds for the completion of his church.
At length it was finished, and, as if for an omen of
good, was dedicated on the first day when Burns
stood for trial before Commissioner Loring.”1
Runaways entering the free states for the
first time after the subsidence of the paroxysm of fear
among their fellows sometimes remained in neighborhoods
where the conditions were supposed to be favorable to
their safety. Some of these were never disturbed,
and consequently never went to Canada at all.
Among the fugitive settlers in the Northern states
there were some at least that became widely known among
abolitionists and others as active agents of the
Underground Railroad. Frederick Douglass
was one of these, and during his residence in New
Bedford, Massachusetts, and later during his residence
in Rochester, New York, he was able to help many
runaways. The Rev. J. W. Loguen, who became
a bishop of the African Methodist Church about 1869,
settled in Syracuse, New York, in 1841, and became
immediately one of the managers of secret operations
there. In his hospitable home, Samuel J. May
relates, was fitted up an apartment for fugitive slaves,
and, for years before the Emancipation Act, scarcely a
week passed without some one, in his flight from
slavedom to Canada, enjoyed shelter and repose at
Elder Loguen’s.”2 Lewis Hayden,
for many years a prominent citizen of Boston, who owed
his liberty to the self-sacrificing efforts of the
Rev. Calvin Fairbank and Miss Delia Webster
in September, 1844,3 made a practice of
harboring slaves in his house, number 66 Phillips
---------------
1 C. E. Stevens, Anthony
Burns, A History, p. 208. In a foot-note
it is said, “The church is a neat and commodious brick
structure, two stories in height, and handsomely
finished in the interior. It will seat five or six
hundred people. The whole cost, including the
land, was $13,000, of which, through the exertion of
Mr. Grimes, $10,000 have already (1856) been
paid. . . .”
2 Some Recollections of our Anti-Slavery
Conflict, pp. 202, 203.
3 Rev. Calvin Fairbank During
Slavery Times, pp. 46, 48, 49.
[Page 252]
Street. “Some there are,” a recent writer
declares, “who well remember when William
Craft was in hiding here from the slave-catchers,
and how Lewis Hayden had placed two kegs
of gunpowder on the premises, resolved to blow up his
house rather than surrender the fugitive. The
heroic frenzy of the resolute black face, as with match
in hand Hayden stood waiting the man-stealers,
those who saw it declare that they can never forget.”1
William Wells Brown, who
distinguished himself as an anti-slavery lecturer in
this country and England, rendered considerable service
to fellow-fugitives shortly after his escape from
Missouri about 1840.2 Securing
employment on a Lake Erie steamboat, he was able to
provide the means of transportation for many runaways
across the lake. As the boat frequently touched at
Cleveland on its trips to and fro between Buffalo and
Detroit, Mr. Brown made an arrangement
with some Cleveland friends to furnish transportation,
which was done without charge, for any negroes they
might wish to send to Canada. The result was that
delegations of anxious refugees were often taken aboard
at the Cleveland wharf. Brown engaged in
this service in the early forties, and his companies
were therefore small, but he sometimes gave passage to
four or five at one time. “In the year 1842,” he
says, “I conveyed, from the first of May to the first of
December, sixty-nine fugitives over Lake Erie to Canada.
In 1843 I visited Malden, in upper Canada, and
counted seventeen in that small village whom I had
assisted in reaching Canada.”3 John
W. Jones, a respected citizen of Elmira, New York,
made his way in 1844 from Virginia to the city where he
still lives. During the following year he
succeeded in aiding two younger brothers to join him,
and thereafter he continued, in cooperation with Mr.
Jervis Langdon and other abolitionists of
Elmira, to succor his brethren in their search for
places of refuge. After the construction of the
Northern Central Railroad
---------------
1 Article by A. H. Grimké,
on “ Anti-Slavery Boston,” in The New Eng- land
Magazine, December, 1890, p. 458.
2 S. J. May, Some Recollections of
our Anti-Slavery Conflict, p. 289.
3 Narrative of William W. Brown, A
Fugitive Slave, pp. 106, 107, 108
[Page 253] -
UNDERGROUND MEN AMONG FUGITIVES IN THE NORTH -
through Elmira, Mr. Jones effected an
arrangement with some of the employees of that road by
which his friends could be carried through to the
Canadian border in baggage-cars. At the same time
he was in regular correspondence with William
Still, the agent of the central underground station
at Philadelphia, who frequently sent him companies of
passengers requiring immediate transportation.1
John H. Hooper, a fugitive from the Eastern Shore
of Maryland and an acquaintance there of Fred
Douglass, kept a station at Troy, New York, where he
settled.2 Louis Washington,
who fled from Richmond, Virginia, to Columbus, Ohio,
became a conductor of the Underground Road at that
point. Mr. James Poindexter, a well-known colored
clergyman of Columbus, knew Washington intimately, and
testifies that he had teams and wagons with which he
conveyed the midnight pilgrims on their way.3
There are other cases of fugitive settlers that became
members of the large company of underground operators.
But a sufficient number have been mentioned to indicate
that they were not rare. The first and the last of
the seven named did not continue long in the status of
escaped slaves. Frederick Douglass
secured his liberty in a legal way through the payment
by English friends of the sum of $750 to his master.
Louis Washington purchased his own
freedom. The other five, so far as known, were
never relieved by the payment of money from the claims
of their masters. Most, if not all, of these men
remained in the Northern states after the passage of the
Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.
---------------
1 Letters of Mrs. Susan Crane,
Elmira, N.Y.; letters of John W. Jones, Elmira, N.Y.;
see also Still, Underground Railroad Records, p.
530.
2 Letters of Mr. Martin I. Townsend,
Troy. N.Y., Sept. 4, 1896, and April 3, 1897.
3 Conversation with Mr. Poindexter,
Columbus, 0., in the summer of 1895.
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