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CHAPTER XI. -
EFFECT OF THE UNDERGROUND
RAILROAD
Pg. 340 -
THE Underground Road as a subject for
research - Obscurity of the subject - Books dealing with
the subject
Magazine articles on the Underground Railroad -
Newspaper articles on the subject
Scarcity of contemporaneous documents - Reminiscences
the chief source - The value of reminiscences
illustrated
THE effect of Underground
Railroad operations in steadily withdrawing from the
South some of its property and thus causing constant
irritation to slave-owners and slave-traders has already
been commented upon. The persons losing slaves of
course regarded their losses as a personal and
undeserved misfortune. Yet, considering the
question broadly from the standpo9int of their own
interests, the work of the underground system was a
relief to the masters and to the South. The
possibility of a servile insurrection was a dreadful
thing for Southern minds to contemplate; but they could
not easily dismiss the terrible scenes enacted in San
Domingo during the yeas 1791 to 1793 and the three
famous uprisings of 1800, 1820 and 1831, in South
Carolina and Virginia. The Underground Railroad
had among its passengers such persons as Josiah
Henson, J. W. Loguen, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman,
William Wells Brown and Henry Bibb; it
therefore furnished the means of escape for persons well
qualified for leadership among the slaves, and thereby
lessened the danger of an uprising of the blacks against
their masters. The negro historian, Williams,
has said of the Underground Road that it served as a
"safety-valve to the institution of slavery. As
soon as leaders arose among the slaves, who refused to
endure the yoke, they would go North. Had they
remained there must have been enacted at the South the
direful scenes of San Domingo."1
It is difficult to arrive at any satisfactory idea of
the actual loss sustained by slave-owners through
underground channels. The charges of bad faith
against the free states made in Congress by Southern
members where sometimes accompanied
---------------
1 History of the Negro Race in America, Vol II,
pp. 58, 59 [Page 341] - LOSS
SUSTAINED BY SLAVE-OWNERS -
by estimates of the amount of human property lost on
account of the indisposition of those living north of
Mason and Dixon's line to meet the requirements of the
fugitive slave legislation. Thus as early as 1822,
Moore, of Virginia, speaking in the House in favor of a
new fugitie recovery law, said that the district he
represented lost four or five thousand dollars worth of
runaway slaves annually.1 In August,
1850, Atchison, of Kentucky, informed the Senate that
"depredations to the amount of hundreds of thousands of
dollars are committed upon the property of the people of
the border slave states of this Union annually."2
Pratt of Maryland, said that not less than
$80,000 worth of slaves was lost every year b citizens
of this state.3 Mason, of
Virginia, declared that the losses of ihs state were
already too heavy to be borne, that they were increasing
from year to year, and were then in excess of $100,000
per year.4 Butler, of South
Carolina, reckoned the annual loss of the Southern
section at $200,000.5 Clingman,
of North Carolina, said that the thirty thousand
fugitives then reported to be living in the North were
worth at current prices little less than $15,000,000.6
Claiborne, the biographer of General John A.
Quitman, who was at one time governor of Louisiana,
indicated as one of the defects of the second Fugitive
Slave Law its failure to make "provision for the
restitution to the South of the $30,000,000, of which
she had been plundered through the 100,000 slaves
abducted from her in the course of the last forty years"
(1810-1850);7 and the same writer stated that
slavery was rapidly disappearing from the District of
Columbia at the time of the enactment of the new law,
the number of slaves "having been reduced since 1840
form ---------------
1 Benton's Abridgment of the Debates of Congress,
Vol. VII, p. 296.
2 Congressional Glove, Thirty-first Congress,
First Session, Appendix, p. 1601.
3 Ibid., p. 1603.
4 Ibid., p. 1606.
5 Von Holst, Constitutional and Political History of
the United States, Vol. III, p. 552.
6 Congressional Globe, Thirty-first Congress,
First Session, p. 202. See also Von Holst's work,
Vol. III, p. 552, foot-note.
7 J. F. H. Caliborne, Life and Correspondence of
John A. Quitman,Vol. II, p. 28.
[Page 342]
4,694 to 650, by 'underground railroads' and felonious
abductions."1
The wide divergences among the estimates here given, as
well as the obvious difficulty of getting reliable
information in regard to the number of runaway slaves,
renders these figures of little use in determining the
loss of human property by the slaveholding states.
Nevertheless, the estimates are valuable in illustrating
the character of the complaints that were made in
Congress, and in enabling one to realize that the tenure
of slave property in the border states was rendered
precarious by the operations of the Underground
Railroad. Can it be thought strange that the
disappearance week by week and month by month of
valuable slaves over the unknown routes of the
underground system should have produced wrath, suspicion
and hostility in the minds of people who could justly
claim to have a constitutional guarantee, the laws of
Congress, and the decisions of the highest courts on
their side?
In the compendiums of the United States Census for 1850
and 1860 are some statistics on fugitive slaves, which
fall far short of the most moderate estimates of the
Southerners, and flatly disagree with the testimony
gathered from all other quarters. The official
reports appear to show that the number of slaves
escaping from their masters was small and
inconsiderable, that it rapidly decreased, and that it
was independent of proximity to a free population.
But the censuses are not only opposed to the evidence,
they are on their face inadequate.
If, as those tables indicate, only 1,011 slaves escaped
from
their masters in 1850, and only 803 in 1860, and in the
latter year only 500 escaped from the border slave
states, then it becomes impossible to understand the
emphasis laid by Southern men upon the value of their
runaway slaves, the steady pressure made by the border
states for a more stringent law that resulted in the
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and the allegation of bad
faith on the part of the North put
---------------
1 J. F. H. Claiborne, Life and
Correspondence of John A. Quitman, Vol. II,
p. 30. His figures are, of course, of not correct.
[Pg. 343] - CENSUS REPORTS ON FUGITIVE
SLAVES -
forth by the Southern states as a reason for secession.1
In considering the weight to be ascribed to the figures
on fugitive slaves supplied by the census compendiums,
it is proper to set over against them the showing
afforded by the same compendiums relative to the decline
of the slave population in the border slave states
during the decade 1850-1860;for it is to be noted that
the compendiums show a marked decline in these states,
that they show a greater percentage of decline in the
northernmost counties of these states than in the states
as a whole, and, what is even more remarkable, that the
loss appears to have been still greater during this time
in the four "pan-handle" counties of Virginia than in
any of the other states referred to, or in the border
counties of any one of them.2 It can
scarcely be suggested that the relatively rapid decline
of the slave population in the border counties was due
to larger shipments of slaves to the far South from
these marginal regions without at the same time
suggesting that the explanation for such shipments lay
in the proximity of a free population and the numerous
lines of Underground Railroad maintained by it.
The concurrence of evidence from sources other than the
census reports, and the agreement therewith of part of
the evidence gathered from these reports themselves,
constrains one to say that those who compiled the
statistics on fugitive slaves did not secure the facts
in full; and that the complaints of large losses
sustained by slave-owners through the befriending of
fugitive slaves by Northern people, frequently made by
Southern representatives in Congress and by the South
generally, were not without sufficient foundation.
It is natural that there should be great variation
among the guesses made as to the total number of those
indebted for liberty to the Underground Road. Very
few of the persons that harbored runaways were so
indiscreet as to keep a register of their hunted
visitors. The hospitality was equal to all
possible demands, but was kept strictly secret.
Under these circumstances one should handle all
numerical generalizations with caution.
---------------
1 Census of 1860, pp. 11, 12. See Tale
A, Appendix C, p. 378.
2 See Tables B and C, Appendix C, p. 379.
[Pg. 344]
Record of Fugitives Aided During Five Months.
[Pg. 345] - FACSIMILEOF OSBORN'S
RECORD
Kept by Daniel Osborn, of Alum Creek Settlement, Ohio.
[Pg. 346]
By rare good fortune the writer has found a single leaf
of a diary kept by Daniel Osborn, a Friend or
Quaker, of Alum Creek Settlement, Delaware County, Ohio,
which gives a record of the blacks passing through that
neighborhood during an interval of five months, from
April 14 to Sept. 10, 1844. The accompanying
facsimiles, which reproduce the two sides of the leaf,
show that the number is forty-seven. The year in
which this memorandum was made may be fairly taken as a
average year, and the line on which this Quaker
settlement was a station as a representative underground
route in Ohio. Now, along Ohio's southern boundary
there were the initial stations of at least twelve
important lines of travel, some of which were certainly
in operation before 1830. Let us consider, as we
may properly, that the period of operation continued
from 1830 to 1860. Taking these as the elements
for a computation, one may reckon that Ohio may have
aided not less than 40,000 fugitives in the thirty years
included in our reckoning.1 That the number
of refugees after 1844 did not decrease is indicated by
the statement that during one month in the year of
1854-1855 sixty were harbored by one member of the Alum
Creek Settlement. It is to be remembered that
several families of the settlement were engaged in this
work.2
An illustration of
underground activity in the East may be ventured. Mr.
Robert Purvis, of Philadelphia, states that he kept
a record of the fugitives that passed through the hands
of the Vigilance Committee of Philadelphia for a long
period, till the trepidation of his family after the
passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill in 1850 caused him to
destroy it. His record book showed, he says, an
average of one a day sent northward. In other
words, between 1830 and 1860 over 9,000 runaways were
aided in Philadelphia. But we know that the
Vigilance Committee did not begin this sort of work in
the Quaker City, and that underground activities there
date back at least to the time of Isaac T. Hopper’s
earliest efforts, that ---------------
1 This computation was first printed by the
writer in the American Historical Review, April,
1896, pp. 462, 463.
2 Conversation with M. J. Benedict,
L. A. Benedict and others, Alum Creek Settlement,
Ohio, Dec. 2, 1893. [Pg. 347] -
DRAIN ON RESOURCES OF LAWRENCE DEPOT -
is, 1800 and before. We also know that there were
many centres round about Philadelphia, some of whose
work was certainly done independently of that place.
That the resources of some of the operators in centres
in the West were being drained almost to exhaustion by
the demands of the heavy traffic towards the close of
the underground period, distinctly appears in the
following letter from Col. J. Bowles, of
Lawrence, Kansas, to Mr. F. B. Sanborn:—
LAWRENCE April 4th, 1859
MR. F. B. SANBOURN
Dear Sir at the suggestion of friend Judge Conway
I address you these few hastily written lines. I
see I am expected to give you some information as to the
present condition of the U. G. R. R. in Kansas or
more particularly at the Lawrence depot. In ofrer
that you may fully understand the present condition of
affairs I shall ask your permission to relate a small
bit of the early history of this, the only paying, R. R.
in Kansas.
Lawrence has been (from the first settlement of Kansas)
known and cursed by all slave holders in and out of Mo.
for being an abolition town. Missourians have a
peculiar faculty for embracing every opportunity to
denounce, curse, and blow every thing they
dislike. This peculiar faculty of theirs gave
Lawrence great notoriety in Mo. especially among
the negroes to whom the principal part of their
denunciations were directed and on whom they were
intended to have great effect. I have learned from
negroes who were emigrating from Mo. that they never
would have known anything about a land of freedom or
that they had a friend in the world only from their
master’s continual abuse of the Lawrence abolits.
Slaves are usually very cunning and believe about as
much as they please of what the master is telling him (thoug
of course he must affect to believe every word) knowing
it is to the master’s interest to keep him ignorant of
every thing that would make him likely or even wish to
be free.
One old fellow said “when he started to come to
Lawrence he didn’t know if all de peoples in disha town
war debbils as ole massa had said or not, but dis he did
know if he could get dar safe old massa was fraid to
come arter him, and if dey all should prove to be bad as
ole massa had said he could lib wid dem bout as well as
at home.” Some few of them were unavoidably taken
[Pg. 348]
back to Mo. after leaving here for Iowa. Many of
them found an opportunity to make their escape and bring
others with them and none ever failed to be a successful
missionary in the cause, telling every one he had a
chance to converse with of the land of freedom, and the
friends he found in Lawrence. One man I know well
who has been captured twice and was shot each time in
resisting his captors (one of whom he killed) told me
that he was confident he had assisted in the escape of
no less than twenty five of his fellow beings, and that
he had also given information or sown the seed that
would make a hundred more free men. He is now with
some others in or about Canada. The last and
successful escape was made from western Texas where he
was sent for safe keeping. You can see from the
above why L_____ has had more than would seem to be her
share of this good work to do. At first our means
were limited and of course could not do much but then we
were not so extensively known or patronized. As
our means increased we found a corresponding increase in
opportunity for doing good to the white man as well as
the black. Kansas has been preeminently a land of
charity. The friends in the East have helped such
objects liberally yet Kansas has had much to do for
herself in that line. To give you an idea of what
has been done by the people of this place in U. G. R. R.
I’ll make a statement of the number of fugitives who
have found assistance here. In the last four years
I am personally known to [cognizant of] the fact of
nearly three hundred fugitives having passed through and
received assistance from the abolitionists here at
Lawrence. Thus you see we have been continually
strained to meet the heavy demands that were almost
daily made upon us to carry on this (not very)
gradual emancipation. I usually have assisted
in collecting or begging money for the needy of either
class. Many of the most zealous in the cause of
humanity complained (as they had good cause to) that
this heavy (and continually increasing) tax was
interfering with their business to such a degree that
they could not stand it longer and that other provisions
must be made by which they would be relieved of a
portion of a burden they had long bourn. This was
about the state of affairs last Christmas when as you
are aware the slaves have a few days holiday. Many
of them chose this occasion to make a visit to Lawrence
and during the week some twenty four came to our town,
five or six of the number brought means to assist them
on their journey. These were sent on but the
remainder must be kept until money could be raised to
send them on. $150 [Pg.
349] - DRAIN ON RESOURCES OF LAWRENCE DEPOT -
was the ain’t necessary to send them to a place of
safety. Under the circumstances it necessarily
took some time to raise that am’t, and a great many
persons had to be applied to. It was not enough
that the sympathies and love for the cause of humanity
was appealed to in order to raise money, many had to be
argued with and shown that the cause was actually in a
suffering condition and the fugitives were then in town
and the number must also be made known in order that the
person might give liberally. Lawrence like most
all towns has her bad men pimps and worst of all a few
democrats, all of whom will do anything for money.
Somewhere in the ranks of the intimate friends to the
cause these traitors to God and humanity found a judas
who for thirty pieces of silver did betray our cause.
This was not suspected until after the capture of Ur
Day. . . . Every thing goes to prove that the
capture of Day’s party was the work of a traitor who
though suspected has not yet been fairly tried and dealt
with as will be done as soon as Day is bailed out which
will be done [in] a few days.
* * *
* * * *
* * We would like .
. . that you plead our cause with those of our friends
who are disposed to censure us and convince them we are
still worthy and in great need of their respect and
cooperation. I am sorry to say (but tis true) that
many of the most zealous in the cause of humanity have
become somewhat discouraged by the hard times and the
lamentable capture of Day and party and cannot be
induced to take hold of it and lend a willing hand.
Never the less the work has went slowly but surely on,
until very recently. Those who have
persevered like many others, have found their bottom
dollar also of the money so generously contributed by
persons of your notable society. This is partialy
owing to heavy expenses of the trial of Dr Day
and son which has been principally borne by the society
here and has amounted to near $300. Now seems to
be our dark day and we are casting about to see what can
be done. We have some eight or ten fugitives now
on hand who cannot be sent off until we get an addition
to our financial department. This statement of
facts has been made with a full knowledge of the many
calls that is made upon your generosity in that quarter.
Nothing shall be urged as an alternative for we feel
confident the case here presented will meet with merited
assistance sympathy or advice, as you may deem best.
One word of old Brown and his movement in the
emancipation cause, and I will have done. I
understand from [Pg. 350]
some parties who have been corresponding with some
persons in Boston and other places in behalf of our
cause that we could and would receive material aid only
they are holding themselves in readiness to assist
Brown. Such men I honor and they show themselves
worthy the highest regard yet I assure them they do not
understand Brown’s plans for carrying out his
cause. I have known Brown nearly four
years, he is a bold cool calculating and far seeing man
who is as consciencious as he is smart. He “knows
the right and dare maintain it.” I have talked
confidentially with him on the subject. I know he
expressed himself in this way as to the effects that he
intended to make the master pay the way of the slave to
the land of freedom. That is he intended to take
property enough with the slaves to pay all expenses.
So you see there is not fear of a large demand from that
quarter. By no means would I be understood as
counciling not to assist him. No indeed if I
counciled at all it would be to this effect, render him
all the assistance he ever asks for he is worthy and his
cause is a good one. Others would have been
with him only they had all they could do in another
quarter. I feel myself highly honored to be placed
where I can with propriety communicate with a society
whom I have only known to admire. Hoping what I
have written (disconnectedly and badly written as it is)
may be acceptable and that I may hear from you soon.
I am very respectfully Your obedient servant
J. BOWLES
Lawrence
F. B. SANBOURN
Concord.
The success of the Underground Road in transporting
negroes beyond the limits of the Southern states was
long ago commented upon as standing in marked contrast
with that of the American Colonization Society.
This association was organized in 1816 and soon had
auxiliary societies in most of the states. Its
object was to remove the free blacks and such as might
be made free from the South, and colonize them on the
coast of Africa. By 1857, after an existence of
forty years, the Colonization Society had sent to Africa
9,502 emigrants, of whom 3,676 were free-born, 326
self-purchased, and 5,500 emancipated on condition of
being transported. That the informal method of the
abolitionists was many times as efficient as that
adopted by the organization mentioned,
[Pg. 351] - ACCUSATIONS MADE BY
SOUTHERN STATES -
with its treasury and its board of officers, cannot be
denied.1
It is not surprising that the secret enterprises of
this determined class of people - so effectual as to
make rare the pursuit of a fugitive during the last
years of the decade preceding the War2 -
should have become the ground of an important charge
against the North in the crisis of 1860. The
violation of the Fugitive Slave Law was an accusation
upon which Southern members of Congress rang all the
changes in the course of the violent debates of the
sessions of 1860-1861. Thus Jones, of
Georgia, said in the House in April, 1860: "It is a
notorious fact that in a good many of the non-slaving
holding states the Republican party have regularly
organized societies - underground railroads - for the
avowed purpose of stealing the slaves from the border
States, and carrying them off to a free State or to
Canada. These predatory hands are kept up by
private and public subscriptions among the
Abolitionists; and in many of the States, I am sorry to
say, they receive the sanction and protection of the
law. The border States lose annually thousands and
millions of collars' worth of property by this system of
larceny that has been carried on for years."
Polk of Missouri, whose state had suffered not a
little through the flight and abduction of slaves, made
the same complaint in the Senate in January, 1861:
"Underground railroads are established," said he,
"stretching from the remotest slaveholding States clear
up ---------------
1 E. M. Pettit, Sketches in the
History of the Underground Railroad, Introduction,
p. xi. Wilson gives an account of the
American Colonization Society in his Rise and Fall of
the Slave Power, Vol. I, pp. 208-222; see also the
Life of Garrison, by his children, Index.
2 McDougall, Fugitive Slaves,
p. 71. [Pg. 352]
to Canada. Secret agencies are put to work in the
very midst of our slaveholding communities to steal away
slaves. The constitutional obligation for the
rendition of the fugitive from service is violated.
The laws of Congress enacted to carry this provision of
the Constitution into effect are not executed.
Their execution is prevented. Prevented, first, by
hostile and unconstitutional state legislation.
Secondly, by a vitiated public sentiment. Thirdly,
by the concealing of the slave, so that the United
States law cannot be made to reach him. And when
the runaway is arrested under the fugitive slave law -
which, however, is seldom the ase - he is very often
rescued . . . . This lawlessness is felt with
special seriousness in the border slave States.
The underground railroads start mostly from these
States. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are lost
annually. And no State loses more heavily than my
own. Kentucky, it is estimated, loses annually as
much as $200,000. The other border States no doubt
lose in the same ratio, Missouri much more.
But all these losses and outrages, all this disregard of
constitutional obligation and social duty, are as
nothing in their bearing upon the Union in comparison
with the animus, the intent and purpose of which they
are at once the fruit and the evidence. . . .” 1
Of this animus the election of Lincoln was
regarded as the crowning proof; and it became, as is
well known, the signal for secession.
In December, 1860, the very month in which South
Carolina chose to withdraw from the Union, the arrest of
a runaway negro in Canada gave rise to an extradition
case that became an additional cause of excitement.
The negro was William Anderson who in 1853 had
been caught without a pass in Missouri, and had killed
the man that tried to capture him. In 1860 he was
recognized in Canada by a slave-catcher from Missouri,
was arrested on the charge of murder, and thrown into
jail at Toronto. As the Ashburton treaty contained
an article providing for the extradition of slaves
guilty of crimes committed in the United States, the
American government sought to secure the surrender of
-----
1 Congressional Globe, Thirty-sixth
Congress, Second Session, p. 356; see also ibid.,
Appendix, p. 197. [Pg. 353] -
EXTRADITION OF ANDERSON REFUSED -
Anderson for punishment. Lord Elgin,
Governor-General of Canada at the time, was appealed to
in the fugitive’s behalf by Mrs. Laura S. Haviland.
He made a spirited reply to the effect that “in case of
a demand for William Anderson, he should
require the case to be tried in their British court; and
if twelve freeholders should testify that he had been a
man of integrity since his arrival in their dominion, it
should clear him.” Nevertheless, the case was
twice decided against the defendant, first by the common
magistrate’s court, then by the Court of Error and
Appeal, to which it had been carried on a writ of habeas
corpus. But this did not end the matter.
Through the efforts of the fugitive’s friends
application was made for a writ of habeas corpus to the
English Court of the Queen’s Bench, and the writ was
granted. Anderson was defended by Gerrit
Smith, whose eloquent speech produced a profound
impression in Canada, and did not fail to attract
considerable notice in all parts of the United States.1
During the month of December, in which the Anderson
case came into prominence, the example of secession set
by South Carolina was followed by five other cotton
states. Meantime Congress was giving unmistakable
evidence of the importance attaching to the fugitive
slave question. In his message of December 4,
President Buchanan gave serious consideration
to this question, although he insisted that the Fugitive
Slave Law had been duly enforced in every contested case
during his administration.2 He
recommended an “ explanatory amendment” to the
Constitution affording “recognition of the right of the
master to have his slave who has escaped from one state
to another restored and ‘delivered up’ to him, and of
the validity of the Fugitive Slave Law enacted for this
purpose, together with a declaration that all State laws
impairing or defeating this right, are violations of
---------------
1 Accounts of Anderson's case will be found
in a collection of pamphlets in the Boston Public
Library; in the Liberator, Dec. 3, 1860 and Jan. 22,
1861; in A Woman's Life Work, by Laura S.
Haviland, pp. 207, 208; in the History of Canada,
by J. M. McMullen, Vol. II, p. 259; in the History of
Canada, by John MacMullen, p. 553; and in
Fugitive Slaves, by M. G. McDougall, pp. 25,
26.
2 Journal of the Senate, Thirty-sixth
Congress, Second Session, p. 10.
[Pg. 354]
the Constitution, and are consequently null and void.”1
On December 12 not less than eleven resolutions were
introduced into the House on this subject, and on
December 13, 18 and 24 other resolutions followed.
Resolutions of a similar nature continued to be
presented in both Houses during January and February of
the succeeding year, ceasing only with the end of the
session.2
These efforts on the part of the national legislature
to appease the spirit of secession in the South were
paralleled by efforts equally futile on the part of
various Northern state legislatures during the same
period. It was reported that towards the close of
the year 1860 a caucus of governors of seven Republican
states was held in New York City, and decided to
recommend to their legislatures “the unconditional and
early repeal of the personal liberty bills passed by
their respective states.” As a matter of fact this
recommendation was made by the Republican governors of
four states, Maine, Massachusetts, New York and
Illinois, and the Democratic governors of Rhode Island
and Pennsylvania. Rhode Island repealed her
personal liberty law in January, 1861; Massachusetts
modified hers in March; and was followed by Vermont,
which took similar action in April. Ohio had
repealed her act in 1858, but her legislature seized
this opportunity to urge her sister states to cancel any
of their statutes “conflicting with or rendering less
efficient the Constitution or the laws.”3
The conciliation of the South was clearly the purpose of
these measures, but action came too late, for confidence
between the sections had already been destroyed.
The fact that the border slave states, with the
exception of Virginia, remained in the Union, must not
be interpreted as indicating small losses of human
property by these states. The strong ties existing
between the states lying on either side of the sectional
line, the presence of a rigorous Union sentiment in
Kentucky, western Virginia and the slaveholding regions
lying east and west of these, together with the hope
---------------
1 Journal of the Senate, Thirty-sixth
Congress, Second Session, p. 18.
2 For a complete list of these resolutions
see Mrs. McDougall’s monograph on
Fugitive Slaves, Appendix, pp. 117-119.
3 Rhodes, History of the United States,
Vol. Ill, pp. 262, 263. [Pg.
355] - CONCLUSION OF FUGITIVE SLAVE CONTROVERSY -
of a new compromise entertained by these states, tended
to keep them in their places in the Union. The
prospect of a stampede of slaves, in case they should
join the secession, movement, was a consideration that
may be supposed to have had some weight in fixing the
decision of the border slave states. Certainly it
was one to which Northern men attached considerable
importance at the time in explaining the steadfast
position of these states; and the impossibility of
recovering even a single fugitive from the free states
in case of a disruption of the Union along Mason and
Dixon’s line was a thing of which Southern members of
the national House were duly reminded by their Northern
colleagues.
The retention of the loyalty of the border slave states
was a matter of grave concern to President
Lincoln, who sought first of all the preservation of
the Union. In his inaugural address Lincoln had
declared his purpose to see to it that the Fugitive
Slave Law was executed, and when a few months later an
opportunity presented itself he kept his promise.
Congress also realized the need of caution on account of
the border states, and moved slowly in framing general
enactments. The changed conditions surrounding the
slaves, due to the marshalling of forces for the War and
the advance of Northern troops into the enemy’s country,
multiplied the chances for escape throughout the South,
and removed the necessity for a long and perilous
journey by the slaves to find friends. Negroes
from the plantations of both loyal and disloyal masters
flocked to the camps of Union soldiers, and could not be
separated. Under such circumstances the need of
uniformity of method in dealing with cases early became
apparent. The War had scarcely more than commenced
when protests began to be made against the employment of
Northern troops as slave-catchers. A letter read
in the Senate by Mr. Sumner, in December,
1861, made inquiry, “Shall our sons, who are offering
their lives for the preservation of our institutions, be
degraded to slave-catchers for any persons, loyal or
disloyal? If such is the policy of the government,
I shall urge my son to shed no more blood for its
preservation.”1 Two German companies in
one of the Massachusetts regi-
---------------
1 Congressional Globe, Thirty-seventh
Congress, First Session, p. 30.
[Pg. 356]
ments also entered protest, making it a condition of
their enlistment that they should not be required to
perform such discreditable service. "They
complained, and with them the German population
generally throughout the country.”1 The
inexpediency of the return of fugitives by the army was
recognized by Congress in the early part of 1862, and a
bill forbidding officers from restoring them under any
consideration was signed by the President on May 14,
1862.2
The various acts of Congress and the President relative
to fugitive slaves down to the Proclamation of
Emancipation, practically circumscribed the legal effect
of the Fugitive Slave laws to the border states, for in
the free states the laws had not been observed for a
long time. It was not until June, 1864, that these
measures were swept from the statute-book of the nation,
notwithstanding the insistence of Kentucky and the other
loyal states of the South that a constitutional
obligation rested upon the government to retain them.
The repeal act did not remove this obligation.
Such a result could come only with the extinction of
slavery, and the last vestige of slavery did not
disappear until the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment
to the Constitution in 1865. The Amendment
provides: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude,
except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party
shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the
United States or any place subject to their
jurisdiction.”
The general significance of the long controversy in
regard to fugitive slaves can best be understood by
tracing the development as a sectional issue of the
question at the bottom of it, namely, the obligation to
restore fugitives to their masters. The creation
of a line dividing the free North from the slaveholding
South in the early years of our national history, and
the enactment of the first Fugitive Slave Law, by which
the general government assumed a certain responsibility
for runaways, led to the opening of the question. From
that time ---------------
1 Congressional Globe, Thirty-seventh
Congress, First Session, p. 30; see also M. G.
McDougall's Fugitive Slaves, p. 79.
2 House Journal, Thirty-seventh
Congress, Second Session, p. 265; Senate Journal,
Thirty-seventh Congress, Secon Session, p. 285;
Congressional Globe, Thirty-seventh Congress, Second
Session, p. 1243. [Pg. 357]
on, the steadily increasing number of escapes, together
with the spread of the underground system, which made
these escapes almost uniformly successful, kept the
question open. Operations along the secret lines
constantly caused aggravation in the South; and the
pursuit of passengers, mobs and violence were results
widely witnessed in the North. The other questions
between the sections were subject to compromise, but
party action could not control the workings of the
Underground Railroad. The stirring sights and
affecting stories with which the North became acquainted
through the stealthy migration of slaves were well
adapted to make abolitionists rapidly, and the
consequence was more aggravation on both sides.
The practice of midnight emancipation in Northern states
during the early years was accompanied, not unnaturally,
with the formulation and statement of the principle of
immediatism in neighborhoods where underground methods
were familiar. Thus the way was prepared for
Garrison and his talented coworkers, whose eloquent
tongues and pens could no more be controlled by
pro-slavery forces than could the Underground Railroad
itself. Agitation reacted upon the Road and
increased its activity; this caused counter agitation by
Southerners in and out of Congress until a more rigorous
Fugitive Slave Law was secured.
The Compromise of 1850 failed to reconcile the
sections: Northern men despised the Fugitive Slave
Law, and displayed greater zeal than ever before in
aiding runaway slaves. Thus, in the later stages
of the controversy, as from its beginning, the fugitive
was a successful missionary in the cause of freedom.
Personal liberty laws were passed by the free states to
defend him; Uncle Tom's Cabin was written to
portray to the world his aspirations for liberty and his
endeavors to secure it; John Brown devised a
"subterranean pass way" to assist him, as a part of the
great scheme of liberation that failed at Harper's
ferry. One of the chief reasons for with-drawing
from the Union assigned by the seceding states was the
bad faith of the North in refusing to surrender
fugitives. At eh outbreak of the Civil War large
numbers of slaves sought refuge with the Union fores,
the government soon found it impracticable to restore
them, and disavowed all re- [Pg.
358]
sponsibility for them in 1862. By the Proclamation
of Emancipation slavery was abolished within the area of
the disloyal states, and the controversy became merely
formal, the loyal slave states striving to maintain an
abstract right based by them upon the Constitution.
In 1864, however, they were forced to yield, and the
fugitive, slave legislation was repealed. The year
following witnessed the cancellation of the fugitive
slave clause in the Constitution by the amendment of
that instrument. In view of all this it is safe to
say that the Underground Railroad was one of the
greatest forces which brought on the Civil War, and thus
destroyed slavery.
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