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  THE
  UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
  FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM

[Illustration: THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD:

LEVI COFFIN RECEIVING A COMPANY OF FUGITIVES IN THE OUTSKIRTS OF
CINCINNATI, OHIO.

(From a painting by C. T. Webber, Cincinnati, Ohio.)]

  THE
  UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
  FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM

  A COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY

  Wilbur H. Siebert

  _With an Introduction by_
  Albert Bushnell Hart

  DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.
  Mineola, New York

_Bibliographical Note_

This Dover edition, first published in 2006, is an unabridged
republication of _The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom_,
originally published by The Macmillan Company, New York and London,
in 1898. The original fold-out map facing page 113 has now been set
into the book on three separate pages in the same location.

_International Standard Book Number: 0-486-45039-2_

Manufactured in the United States of America Dover Publications,
Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N. Y. 11501

To My Wife

INTRODUCTION

BY ALBERT BUSHNELL HART

Of all the questions which have interested and divided the people
of the United States, none since the foundation of the Federal
Union has been so important, so far-reaching, and so long contested
as slavery. During the first half of the nineteenth century the
other great national questions were nearly all economic--taxation,
currency, banks, transportation, lands,--and they had a strong
material basis, a flavor of self-interest; but though slavery had
also an economic side, the reasons for the onslaught upon it were
chiefly moral. The first objection brought by the slave-power
against the anti-slavery propaganda was the cry of the sacredness
of vested and property rights against attack by sentimentalists;
but what dignified the whole contest was the very fact that the
sentiment for human rights was at the bottom of it, and that the
abolitionists felt a moral responsibility even though property
owners suffered. The slavery question, which in origin was
sectional, became national as the moral issues grew clearer; and
finally loomed up as the dominant question through the determination
of both sides to use the power and prestige of the national
government. From the moral agitation came also the personal element
in the struggle, the development of strong characters, like Calhoun,
Toombs, Stephens and Jefferson Davis on one side; like Lundy,
Lovejoy, Garrison, Giddings, Sumner, Chase, John Brown and Lincoln
on the other.

Among the many weak spots in the system of slavery none gave such
opportunities to Northern abolitionists as the locomotive powers
of the slaves; a "thing" which could hear its owner talking about
freedom, a "thing" which could steer itself Northward and avoid
the "patterollers," was a thing of impaired value as a machine,
however intelligent as a human being. From earliest colonial times
fugitive slaves helped to make slavery inconvenient and expensive.
So long as slavery was general, every slaveholder in every colony
was a member of an automatic association for stopping and returning
fugitives; but, from the Revolution on, the fugitives performed the
important function of keeping continually before the people of the
states in which slavery had ceased, the fact that it continued in
other parts of the Union. Nevertheless, though between 1777 and 1804
all the states north of Maryland threw off slavery, the free states
covenanted in the Federal Constitution of 1787 to interpose no
obstacle to the recapture of fugitives who might come across their
borders; and thus continued to be partners in the system of slavery.
From the first there was reluctance and positive opposition to this
obligation; and every successful capture was an object lesson to
communities out of hearing of the whipping-post and out of sight of
the auction-block.

In aiding fugitive slaves the abolitionist was making the most
effective protest against the continuance of slavery; but he was
also doing something more tangible; he was helping the oppressed, he
was eluding the oppressor; and at the same time he was enjoying the
most romantic and exciting amusement open to men who had high moral
standards. He was taking risks, defying the laws, and making himself
liable to punishment, and yet could glow with the healthful pleasure
of duty done.

To this element of the personal and romantic side of the slavery
contest Professor Siebert has devoted himself in this book. The
Underground Railroad was simply a form of combined defiance of
national laws, on the ground that those laws were unjust and
oppressive. It was the unconstitutional but logical refusal of
several thousand people to acknowledge that they owed any regard
to slavery or were bound to look on fleeing bondmen as the property
of the slaveholders, no matter how the laws read. It was also a
practical means of bringing anti-slavery principles to the attention
of the lukewarm or pro-slavery people in free states; and of
convincing the South that the abolitionist movement was sincere and
effective. Above all, the Underground Railroad was the opportunity
for the bold and adventurous; it had the excitement of piracy, the
secrecy of burglary, the daring of insurrection; to the pleasure
of relieving the poor negro's sufferings it added the triumph of
snapping one's fingers at the slave-catcher; it developed coolness,
indifference to danger, and quickness of resource.

The first task of the historian of the Underground Railroad is to
gather his material, and the characteristic of this book is to
consider the whole question on a basis of established facts. The
effort is timely; for there are still living, or were living when
the work began, many hundreds of persons who knew the intimate
history of parts of the former secret system of transportation;
the book is most timely, for these invaluable details are now fast
disappearing with the death of the actors in the drama. Professor
Siebert has rescued and put on record events which in a few years
will have ceased to be in the memory of living men. He has done for
the history of slavery what the students of ballad and folk-lore
have done for literature; he has collected perishing materials.

Reminiscence is of course, standing alone, an insufficient basis
for historical generalization. On that point Professor Siebert
has been careful to explain his principle: he does not attempt
to generalize from single memories not otherwise substantiated,
but to use reminiscences which confirm each other, to search out
telling illustrations, and to discover what the tendencies were from
numerous contrasted testimonies. Actual contemporary records are
scanty; a few are here preserved, such as David Putnam's memorandum,
and Campbell's letter; and the crispness which they give to the
narrative makes us wish for more. The few available biographies,
autobiographies, and contemporary memoirs have been diligently
sought out and used; and no variety of sources has been ignored
which seemed likely to throw light on the subject. The ground has
been carefully traversed; and it is not likely that much will
ever be added to the body of information collected by Professor
Siebert. His list of sources, described in the introductory chapter
and enumerated in the Appendices, is really a carefully winnowed
bibliography of the contemporary materials on slavery.

The book is practically divided into four parts: the Railroad
itself (Chapters ii, v); the railroad hands (Chapters iii, iv,
vi); the freight (Chapters vii, viii); and political relations and
effects (Chapters ix, x, xi). Perhaps one of the most interesting
contributions to our knowledge of the subject is the account of
the beginnings of the system of secret and systematic aid to
fugitives. The evidence goes to show that there was organization
in Pennsylvania before 1800; and in Ohio soon after 1815. The book
thus becomes a much-needed guide to information about the obscure
anti-slavery movement which preceded William Lloyd Garrison, and
to some degree prepared the way for him; and it will prove a
source for the historian of the influence of the West in national
development. As yet we know too little of the anti-slavery movement
which so profoundly stirred the Western states, including Kentucky
and Missouri, and which came closely into contact with the actual
conditions of slavery. As Professor Siebert points out, most of the
early abolitionists in the West were former slaveholders or sons of
slaveholders.

Professor Siebert has applied to the whole subject a graphic form of
illustration which is at the same time a test of his conclusions.
How can the scattered reminiscences and records of escapes in
widely separated states be shown to refer to the results of one
organized method? Plainly by applying them to the actual face of the
country, so as to see whether the alleged centres of activity have
a geographical connection. The painstaking map of the lines of the
Underground Railroad "system" is an historical contribution of a
novel kind; and it is impossible to gainsay its evidence, which is
expounded in detail in one of the chapters of the book. The result
is a gratifying proof of the usefulness of scientific methods in
historical investigation; one who lived in an anti-slavery community
before the Civil War is fascinated by tracing the hitherto unknown
stretches north and south from the centre which he knew. The map
bears testimony not only to the wide-spread practice of aiding
fugitives, but to the devotion of the conductors on the Underground
Railroad. How useful a section of Mr. Siebert's map would have been
to the slave-catcher in the 50's, when so many strange negroes were
appearing and disappearing in the free states! The facts presented
in the brief compass of the map would have been of immense value
also to the leaders of the Southern Confederacy in 1861, as a
confirmation of their argument that the North would not perform its
constitutional duty of returning the fugitives; yet there is no
record in this book of the betraying of the secrets of the U. G. R.
R. by any person in the service. The moral bond of opposition to the
whole slave power kept men at work forwarding fugitives by a road
of which they themselves knew but a small portion. The political
philosophers who think that the Civil War might have been averted by
timely concessions would do well to study this picture of the wide
distribution of persons who saw no peace in slavery.

Amid all the varieties of anti-slavery men, from the Garrisonian
abolitionist to faint-hearted slaveholders like James G. Birney,
it is interesting to see how many had a share in the Underground
Railroad; and how many earned a reputation as heroes. Professor
Siebert has gathered the names of about 3,200 persons known to
have been engaged in this work--a roll of honor for many American
families. Everybody knew that the fugitives were aided by Fred
Douglass, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Gerrit Smith, Joshua Giddings,
John Brown, Levi Coffin, Thomas Garrett and Theodore Parker; but
this book gives us some account of the interest of men like Thaddeus
Stevens, not commonly counted among the sons of the prophets; and
performs a special service to the student of history and the lover
of heroic deeds, by the brief account of the services of obscure
persons who deserve a place in the hearts of their countrymen. Men
like Rev. George Bourne, Rev. James Duncan and Rev. John Rankin,
years before Garrison's propaganda, had begun to speak and publish
against slavery, and to prepare men's minds for a righteous
disregard of Fugitive Slave Acts. Joseph Sider, with his carefully
subdivided peddler's wagon, deserves a place alongside the better
known Henry Box Brown. The thirty-five thousand stripes of Calvin
Fairbank, seventeen years a convict in the Kentucky penitentiary,
range him with Lovejoy as an anti-slavery martyr. Rev. Charles
Torrey had in the work of rousing slaves to escape, the same
devotion to a fatal duty as that which animated John Brown. And no
one who has ever heard Harriet Tubman describe her part as "Moses"
of the fugitives can ever forget that African prophetess, whose
intense vigor is relieved by a shrewd and kindly humanity.

The quiet recital of the facts has all the charm of romance to
the passengers on the Underground Railroad: whether travelling
by night in a procession of covered wagons, or boldly by day in
disguises; whether boxed up as so much freight, or riding on passes
unhesitatingly given by abolitionist directors of railroads; the
fugitives in these pages rejoice in their prospect of liberty. The
road sign near Oberlin, of a tiger chasing a negro, was a white
man's joke; but it was a negro who said, apropos of his master's
discouraging account of Canada: "They put some extract onto it to
keep us from comin'"; and neither Whittier in his poems, nor Harriet
Beecher Stowe in her novels, imagined a more picturesque incident
than the crossing of the Detroit River by Fairfield's "gang" of
twenty-eight rescued souls singing, "I'm on my way to Canada, where
colored men are free," to the joyful accompaniment of their firearms.

To the settlements of fugitives in Canada Professor Siebert has
given more labor than appears in his book; for his own visits
supplement the accounts of earlier investigators; and we have here
the first complete account of the reception of the negroes in Canada
and their progress in civilization.

Upon the general question of the political effects of the
Underground Railroad, the book adds much to our information, by its
discussion of the probable numbers of fugitives, and of the alarm
caused in the slave states by their departure. The census figures
of 1850 and 1860 are shown to be wilfully false; and the escape
of thousands of persons seems established beyond cavil. Into the
constitutional question of the right to take fugitives, the book
goes with less minuteness, since it is intended to be a contribution
to knowledge, and not an addition to the abundant literature on the
legal side of slavery.

It has been the effort of Professor Siebert to furnish the means for
settling the following questions: the origin of the system of aid to
the fugitives, popularly called the Underground Railroad; the degree
of formal organization; methods of procedure; geographical extent
and relations; the leaders and heroes of the movement; the behavior
of the fugitives on their way; the effectiveness of the settlement
in Canada; the numbers of fugitives; and the attitude of courts and
communities. On all these questions he furnishes new light; and he
appears to prove his concluding statement that "the Underground
Railroad was one of the greatest forces which brought on the Civil
War and thus destroyed slavery."

CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I

  SOURCES OF THE HISTORY OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

                                                                 PAGE

  The Underground Road as a subject for research                    1

  Obscurity of the subject                                          2

  Books dealing with the subject                                    2

  Magazine articles on the Underground Railroad                     5

  Newspaper articles on the subject                                 6

  Scarcity of contemporaneous documents                             7

  Reminiscences the chief source                                   11

  The value of reminiscences illustrated                           12

  CHAPTER II

  ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE UNDERGROUND ROAD

  Conditions under which the Underground Road originated           17

  The disappearance of slavery from the Northern states            17

  Early provisions for the return of fugitive slaves               19

  The fugitive slave clause in the Ordinance of 1787               20

  The fugitive slave clause in the United States Constitution      20

  The Fugitive Slave Law of 1793                                   21

  The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850                                   22

  Desire for freedom among the slaves                              25

  Knowledge of Canada among the slaves                             27

  Some local factors in the origin of the underground movement     30

  The development of the movement in eastern Pennsylvania, in
  New Jersey, and in New York                                      33

  The development of the movement in the New England states        36

  The development of the movement in the West                      37

  The naming of the Road                                           44

  THE METHODS OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

  Penalties for aiding fugitive slaves                              47

  Social contempt suffered by abolitionists                         48

  Espionage practised upon abolitionists                            50

  Rewards for the capture of fugitives and the kidnapping of
        abolitionists                                               52

  Devices to secure secrecy                                         54

  Service at night                                                  54

  Methods of communication                                          56

  Methods of conveyance                                             59

  Zigzag and variable routes                                        61

  Places of concealment                                             62

  Disguises                                                         64

  Informality of management                                         67

  Colored and white agents                                          69

  City vigilance committees                                         70

  Supplies for fugitives                                            76

  Transportation of fugitives by rail                               78

  Transportation of fugitives by water                              81

  Rescue of fugitives under arrest                                  83

  CHAPTER IV

  UNDERGROUND AGENTS, STATION-KEEPERS, OR CONDUCTORS

  Underground agents, station-keepers, or conductors                87

  Their hospitality                                                 87

  Their principles                                                  89

  Their nationality                                                 90

  Their church connections                                          93

  Their party affinities                                            99

  Their local standing                                             101

  Prosecutions of underground operators                            101

  Defensive League of Freedom proposed                             103

  Persons of prominence among underground helpers                  104

  CHAPTER V

  STUDY OF THE MAP OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD SYSTEM

  Geographical extent of underground lines                         113

  Location and distribution of stations                            114

  Southern routes                                                  116

  Lines of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York                  120

  Routes of the New England states                                 128

  Lines within the old Northwest Territory                         134

  Noteworthy features of the general map                           139

  Complex routes                                                   141

  Broken lines and isolated place names                            141

  River routes                                                     142

  Routes by rail                                                   142

  Routes by sea                                                    144

  Terminal stations                                                145

  Lines of lake travel                                             147

  Canadian ports                                                   148

  CHAPTER VI

  ABDUCTION OF SLAVES FROM THE SOUTH

  Aversion among underground helpers to abduction of slaves        150

  Abductions by negroes living along the northern border of the
    slave states                                                   151

  Abductions by Canadian refugees                                  152

  Abductions by white persons in the South                         153

  Abductions by white persons of the North                         154

  The Missouri raid of John Brown                                  162

  John Brown's great plan                                          166

  Abductions attempted in response to appeals                      168

  Devotees of abduction                                            178

  CHAPTER VII

  LIFE OF THE COLORED REFUGEES IN CANADA

  Slavery question in Canada                                       190

  Flight of slaves to Canada                                       192

  Refugees representative of the slave class                       195

  Misinformation about Canada among slaves                         197

  Hardships borne by Canadian refugees                             198

  Efforts toward immediate relief for fugitives                    199

  Attitude of the Canadian government                              201

  Conditions favorable to their settlement in Canada               203

  Sparseness of population                                         203

  Uncleared lands                                                  204

  Encouragement of agricultural colonies among refugees            205

  Dawn Settlement                                                  205

  Elgin Settlement                                                 207

  Refugees' Home Settlement                                        209

  Alleged disadvantages of the colonies                            211

  Their advantages                                                 212

  Refugee settlers in Canadian towns                               217

  Census of Canadian refugees                                      220

  Occupations of Canadian refugees                                 223

  Progress made by Canadian refugees                               224

  Domestic life of the refugees                                    227

  School privileges                                                228

  Organizations for self-improvement                               230

  Churches                                                         231

  Rescue of friends from slavery                                   231

  Ownership of property                                            232

  Rights of citizenship                                            233

  Character as citizens                                            233

  CHAPTER VIII

  FUGITIVE SETTLERS IN THE NORTHERN STATES

  Number of fugitive settlers in the North                         235

  The Northern states an unsafe refuge for runaway slaves          237

  Reclamation of fugitives in the free states                      239

  Protection of fugitives in the free states                       242

  Object of the personal liberty laws                              245

  Effect of the law of 1850 on fugitive settlers                   246

  Underground operators among fugitives of the free states         251

  CHAPTER IX

  PROSECUTIONS OF UNDERGROUND RAILROAD MEN

  Enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793                      254

  Grounds on which the constitutionality of the measure was
    questioned                                                     254

  Denial of trial by jury to the fugitive slave                    255

  Summary mode of arrest                                           257

  The question of concurrent jurisdiction between the federal
    and state governments in fugitive slave cases                  259

  The law of 1793 versus the Ordinance of 1787                     261

  Power of Congress to legislate concerning the extradition of
    fugitive slaves denied                                         263

  State officers relieved of the execution of the law by the
    Prigg decision, 1842                                           264

  Amendment of the law of 1793 by the law of 1850                  265

  Constitutionality of the law of 1850 questioned                  267

  First case under the law of 1850                                 268

  Authority of a United States commissioner                        269

  Penalties imposed for aiding and abetting the escape of
    fugitives                                                      273

  Trial on the charge of treason in the Christiana case, 1854      279

  Counsel for fugitive slaves                                      281

  Last case under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850                   285

  Attempted revision of the law                                    285

  Destructive attacks upon the measure in Congress                 286

  Lincoln's Proclamation of Emancipation                           287

  Repeal of the Fugitive Slave Acts                                288

  CHAPTER X

  THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IN POLITICS

  Valuation of the Underground Railroad in its political aspect    290

  The question of the extradition of fugitive slaves in colonial
        times                                                      290

  Importance of the question in the constitutional conventions     293

  Failure of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793                        294

  Agitation for a more efficient measure                           295

  Diplomatic negotiations for the extradition of colored
    refugees from Canada, 1826-1828                                299

  The fugitive slave a missionary in the cause of freedom          300

  Slave-hunting in the free states                                 302

  Preparation for the abolition movement of 1830                   303

  The Underground Railroad and the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850      308

  The law in Congress                                              310

  The enforcement of the law of 1850                               316

  The Underground Road and _Uncle Tom's Cabin_                     321

  Political importance of the novel                                323

  Sumner on the influence of escaped slaves in the North           324

  The spirit of nullification in the North                         327

  The Glover rescue, Wisconsin, 1854                               327

  The rendition of Burns, Boston, 1854                             331

  The rescue of Addison White, Mechanicsburg, Ohio, 1857           334

  The Oberlin-Wellington rescue, 1858                              335

  Obstruction of the Fugitive Slave Law by means of the personal
  liberty acts                                                     337

  John Brown's attempt Lo free the slaves                          338

  CHAPTER XI

  EFFECT OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

  The Underground Road the means of relieving the South of many
  despairing slaves                                                340

  Loss sustained by slave-owners through underground channels      340

  The United States census reports on fugitive slaves              342

  Estimate of the number of slaves escaping into Ohio, 1830-1860   346

  Similar estimate for Philadelphia, 1830-1860                     346

  Drain on the resources of the depot at Lawrence, Kansas,
        described in a letter of Col. J. Bowles, April 4, 1859     347

  Work of the Underground Railroad as compared with that of the
        American Colonization Society                              350

  The violation of the Fugitive Slave Law a chief complaint of
        Southern states at the beginning of the Civil War          351

  Refusal of the Canadian government to yield up the fugitive
        Anderson, 1860                                             352

  Secession of the Southern states begun                           353

  Conclusion of the fugitive slave controversy                     355

  General effect and significance of the controversy               356

ILLUSTRATIONS, PORTRAITS, FACSIMILES AND MAPS

  The Underground Railroad: Levi Coffin receiving a company of
  fugitives in the outskirts of Cincinnati, Ohio        _Frontispiece_

                                                           FACING PAGE

  Isaac T. Hopper                                                   17

  The Runaway: a stereotype cut used on handbills advertising
        escaped slaves                                              27

  Crossing-place on the Ohio River at Steubenville, Ohio            47

  The Rankin House, Ripley, Ohio                                    47

  Facsimile of an Underground Message                    _On page_  57

  Barn of Seymour Finney, Detroit, Michigan                         65

  The Old First Church, Galesburg, Illinois                         65

  William Still                                                     75

  Levi Coffin                                                       87

  Frederick Douglass                                               104

  Caves in Salem Township, Washington County, Ohio                 130

  House of Mrs. Elizabeth Buffum Chace, Valley Falls, Rhode
        Island                                                     130

  The Detroit River at Detroit, Michigan                           147

  Ashtabula Harbor, Ohio                                           147

  Ellen Craft as she escaped from Slavery                          163

  Samuel Harper and Wife                                           163

  Dr. Alexander M. Ross                                            180

  Harriet Tubman                                                   180

  Group of Refugee Settlers at Windsor, Ontario, C.W.              190

  Theodore Parker                                                  205

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson                                       205

  Dr. Samuel G. Howe                                               205

  Benjamin Drew                                                    205

  Church of the Fugitive Slaves, Boston, Massachusetts             235

  Salmon P. Chase                                                  254

  Thomas Garrett                                                   254

  Rush R. Sloane                                                   282

  Thaddeus Stevens                                                 282

  J. R. Ware                                                       282

  Rutherford B. Hayes                                              282

  Gerrit Smith                                                     290

  Joshua R. Giddings                                               290

  Charles Sumner                                                   290

  Richard H. Dana                                                  290

  Bust of Rev. John Rankin                                         307

  Harriet Beecher Stowe                                            321

  Captain John Brown                                               338

  Facsimile of a Leaf from the Diary of Daniel Osborn
                                                   _On pages_ 344, 345

  MAPS

  Map of the Underground Railroad System             _Facing page_ 113

  Map of Underground Lines in Southeastern Pennsylvania     "      113

  Map of Underground Lines in Morgan County, Ohio      _On page_   136

  Lewis Falley's Map of the Underground Routes of Indiana and
        Michigan                                       _On page_   138

  Map of an Underground Line through Livingston and La Salle
       Counties, Illinois                              _On page_   139

  Map of Underground Lines through Greene, Warren and Clinton
        Counties, Ohio                                 _On page_   140

APPENDICES

                                                                 PAGES

  APPENDIX A: Constitutional Provisions and National Acts
        relative to Fugitive Slaves, 1787-1850                 359-366

  APPENDIX B: List of Important Fugitive Slave Cases           367-377

  APPENDIX C: Figures from the United States Census Reports
        relating to Fugitive Slaves                           378, 379

  APPENDIX D: Bibliography                                     380-402

  APPENDIX E: Directory of the names of Underground Railroad
        Operators and Members of Vigilance Committees          403-439

PREFACE

This volume is the outgrowth of an investigation begun in 1892-1893,
when the writer was giving a portion of his time to the teaching of
United States history in the Ohio State University. The search for
materials was carried on at intervals during several years until the
mass of information, written and printed, was deemed sufficient to
be subjected to the processes of analysis and generalization.

Patience and care have been required to overcome the difficulties
attaching to a subject that was in an extraordinary sense a hidden
one; and the author has constantly tried to observe those well-known
dicta of the historian; namely, to be content with the materials
discovered without making additions of his own, and to let his
conclusions be defined by the facts, rather than seek to cast these
"in the mould of his hypothesis."

Starting without preconceptions, the writer has been constrained
to the views set forth in Chapters X and XI in regard to the real
meaning and importance of the underground movement. And if it be
found by the reader that these views are in any measure novel, it is
hoped that the pages of this book contain evidence sufficient for
their justification. There is something mysterious and inexplicable
about the whole anti-slavery movement in the United States, as its
history is generally recounted. According to the accepted view the
anti-slavery movement of the thirties and the later decades has been
considered as altogether distinct from the earlier abolition period
in our history, both in principle and external features, and as
separated from it by a considerable interval of time. The earlier
movement is supposed to have died a natural death, and the later to
have sprung into full life and vigor with the appearance of Garrison
and the _Liberator_. Issue is made with this view in the following
pages, where Macaulay's rational account of revolutions in general
may, perhaps, be thought to find illustration. Macaulay says in
one of his essays: "As the history of states is generally written,
the greatest and most momentous revolutions seem to come upon them
like supernatural inflictions, without warning or cause. But the
fact is, that such revolutions are almost always the consequences
of moral changes, which have gradually passed on the mass of the
community, and which ordinarily proceed far before their progress
is indicated by any public measure. An intimate knowledge of the
domestic history of nations is therefore absolutely necessary to the
prognosis of political events." Or, the essayist might have added,
to a subsequent understanding of them.

It is impossible for the author to make acknowledgments to all who
have contributed, directly and indirectly, to the promotion of
his research. A liberal use of foot-notes suffices to reduce his
obligations in part only. But, although the great balance of his
indebtedness must stand against him, his special acknowledgments
are due in certain quarters. The writer has to thank Professor J.
Franklin Jameson of Brown University for calling his attention to
a rare and important little book, which otherwise would almost
certainly have escaped his notice. To Professor Eugene Wambaugh of
the Harvard Law School he is indebted for the critical perusal of
Chapter IX, on the Prosecutions of Underground Railroad Men,--a
chapter based largely on reports of cases, and involving legal
points about which the layman may easily go astray. The frequent
citations of the monograph on _Fugitive Slaves_ by Mrs. Marion
G. McDougall attest the general usefulness of that book in the
preparation of the present work. For personal encouragement in
the undertaking after the collection of materials had begun, and
for assistance while the study was being put in manuscript, the
author is most deeply indebted to Professor Albert Bushnell Hart,
and the Seminary of American History in Harvard University, over
which he and his colleague, Professor Edward Channing, preside. The
proof-sheets of this book have been read by Mr. F. B. Sanborn, of
Concord, Massachusetts, and, it is hardly necessary to add, have
profited thereby in a way that would have been impossible had they
passed under the eye of one less widely acquainted with anti-slavery
times and anti-slavery people. More than to all others the author's
gratitude is due to the members of his own household, without whose
abiding interest and ready assistance in many ways this work could
not have been carried to completion. It should be said that no
responsibility for the use made of data or the conclusions drawn
from them can justly be imposed upon those whose generous offices
have kept these pages freer from discrepancies than they could have
been otherwise.

It is a fortunate circumstance that, by the kindness of the artist,
Mr. C. T. Webber, the reproduction of his painting entitled "The
Underground Railroad" can appear as the frontispiece of this book.
Mr. Webber was fitted by his intimate acquaintance with the Coffin
family of Cincinnati, Ohio, and their remarkable record in the work
of secret emancipation, to give a sympathetic delineation of the
Underground Railroad in operation.

  OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY,
  October, 1898.

THE

UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

FROM

SLAVERY TO FREEDOM

CHAPTER I

SOURCES OF THE HISTORY OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

Historians who deal with the rise and culmination of the
anti-slavery movement in the United States have comparatively little
to say of one phase of it that cannot be neglected if the movement
is to be fully understood. This is the so-called Underground
Railroad, which, during fifty years or more, was secretly engaged
in helping fugitive slaves to reach places of security in the free
states and in Canada. Henry Wilson speaks of the romantic interest
attaching to the subject, and illustrates the coöperative efforts
made by abolitionists in behalf of colored refugees in two short
chapters of the second volume of his _Rise and Fall of the Slave
Power in America_.[1] Von Holst makes several references to the
work of the Road in his well-known _History of the United States_,
and predicts that "The time will yet come, even in the South, when
due recognition will be given to the touching unselfishness, simple
magnanimity and glowing love of freedom of these law-breakers on
principle, who were for the most part people without name, money, or
higher education."[2] Rhodes in his great work, the _History of the
United States from the Compromise of 1850_, mentions the system,
but considers it only as a manifestation of popular sentiment.[3]
Other writers give less space to an account of this enterprise,
although it was one that extended throughout many Northern states,
and in itself supplied the reason for the enactment of the Fugitive
Slave Law of 1850, one of the most remarkable measures issuing from
Congress during the whole anti-slavery struggle.

  [1] Chapters VI and VII, pp. 61-86.

  [2] Vol. III, p. 552, foot-note.

  [3] _History of the United States_, Vol. II, pp. 74-77, 361, 362.

The explanation of the failure to give to this "institution" the
prominence which it deserves, is to be found in the secrecy in which
it was enshrouded. Continuous through a period of two generations,
the Road spread to be a great system by being kept in an oblivion
that its operators aptly designated by the figurative use of the
word "underground." Then, too, it was a movement in which but few
of those persons were involved whose names have been most closely
associated in history with the public agitation of the question of
slavery, or with those political developments that resulted in the
destruction of slavery. In general the participants in underground
operations were quiet persons, little known outside of the
localities where they lived, and were therefore members of a class
that historians find it exceedingly difficult to bring within their
field of view.

Before attempting to prepare a new account of the Underground
Railroad, from new materials, something should be said of previous
works upon it, and especially of the seven books which deal
specifically with the subject: _The Underground Railroad_, by the
Rev. W. M. Mitchell; _Underground Railroad Records_, by William
Still; _The Underground Railroad in Chester and the Neighboring
Counties of Pennsylvania_, by R. C. Smedley; _The Reminiscences of
Levi Coffin_; _Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad_,
by Eber M. Pettit; _From Dixie to Canada_, by H. U. Johnson; and
_Heroes in Homespun_, by Ascott R. Hope (a _nom de plume_ for Robert
Hope Moncrieff).

While several of these volumes are sources of original material,
their value is chiefly that of collections of incidents, affording
one an insight into the workings of the Underground Railroad in
certain localities, and presenting types of character among the
helpers and the helped. In composition they are what one would
expect of persons who lived simple, strenuous lives, who with
sincerity record what they knew and experienced. They have not only
the characteristics of a deep-seated, moral movement, they have also
an undeniable value for historical purposes.

Mitchell's small volume of 172 pages was published in England in
1860. Its author was a free negro, who served as a slave-driver in
the South for several years, then became a preacher in Ohio, and
for twelve years engaged in underground work; finally, about 1855,
he went to Toronto, Canada, to minister to colored refugees as a
missionary in the service of the American Free Baptist Mission
Society.[4] It was while soliciting money in England for the purpose
of building a chapel and schoolhouse for his people in Toronto
that he was induced to write his book. The range of experience
of the author enabled him to relate at first hand many incidents
illustrative of the various phases of underground procedure, and to
give an account of the condition of the fugitive slaves in Canada.[5]

  [4] Mitchell, _Underground Railroad_, Preface, p. vi; p. 17.

  [5] Mr. Mitchell divides his little book into two chapters, one
  on the "Underground Railroad," occupying 124 pages, the other on
  the "Condition of Fugitive Slaves in Canada," occupying 48 pages.

Still's _Underground Railroad Records_, a large volume of 780
pages, appeared in 1872, and a second edition in 1883. For some
years before the War Mr. Still was a clerk in the office of the
Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia; and from 1852
to 1860 he served as chairman of the Acting Vigilance Committee
of Philadelphia, a body whose special business it was to harbor
fugitives and help them towards Canada. About 1850 Mr. Still began
to keep records of the stories he heard from runaways, and his
book is mainly a compilation of these stories, together with some
Underground Railroad correspondence. At the end there are some
biographical sketches of persons more or less prominent in the
anti-slavery cause. The book is a mine of material relating to the
work of the Vigilance Committee of Philadelphia.

Operations carried on in an extended field of six or seven counties
in southeastern Pennsylvania, over routes many of which led to
the Quaker City, are recounted in Smedley's volume of 395 pages,
published in 1883. The abundant reminiscences and short biographies
were patiently gathered by the author from many aged participants in
underground enterprises.

In his _Reminiscences_, a book of 732 pages, Levi Coffin, the
reputed president of the Underground Railroad, relates his
experiences from the time when he began, as a youth in North
Carolina, to direct slaves northward on the path to liberty, till
the time when, after twenty years of service in eastern Indiana and
fifteen in Cincinnati, Ohio, he and his coworkers were relieved by
the admission of slaves within the lines of the Union forces in the
South. Mr. Coffin was a Quaker of the gentle but firm type depicted
by Harriet Beecher Stowe in the character Simeon Halliday, of which
he may have been the original. It need scarcely be said, therefore,
that his autobiography is characterized by simplicity and candor,
and supplies a fund of information in regard to those branches of
the Road with which its author was connected.

Pettit's _Sketches_ comprise a series of articles printed in the
Fredonia (New York) _Censor_, during the fall of 1868, and collected
in 1879 into a book of 174 pages. The author was for many years a
"conductor" in southwestern New York, and most of the adventures
narrated occurred within his personal knowledge.

Johnson's _From Dixie to Canada_ is a little volume of 194 pages,
in which are reprinted some of the many stories first published
by him in the _Lake Shore Home Magazine_ during the years 1883 to
1889 under the heading, "Romances and Realities of the Underground
Railroad." The data that most of these tales embody were accumulated
by research, and while the names of operators, towns and so forth
are authentic, the writer allows himself the license of the
story-teller instead of restricting himself to the simple recording
of the information secured. His investigations have given him an
acquaintance with the routes of northeastern Ohio and the adjacent
portions of Pennsylvania and New York.

Hope's volume, published in 1894, does not increase the number
of our sources of information, inasmuch as its materials are
derived from Still's _Underground Railroad Records_ and Coffin's
_Reminiscences_. It was written by an Englishman apparently as a
popular exposition of the hidden methods of the abolitionists.

To these books should be added a pamphlet of thirty pages,
entitled _The Underground Railroad_, by James H. Fairchild, D.D.,
ex-President of Oberlin College, published in 1895 by the Western
Reserve Historical Society.[6] The author had personal knowledge
of many of the events he narrates and recounts several underground
cases of notoriety; he thus affords a clear insight into the
conditions under which secret aid came to be rendered to runaways.

  [6] _Tract No. 87_, in Vol. IV, pp. 91-121, of the publications
  of the Society.

It is surprising that a subject, the mysterious and romantic
character of which might be supposed to appeal to a wide circle
of readers, has not been duly treated in any of the modern
popular magazines. During the last ten years a few articles
about the Underground Railroad have appeared in _The Magazine of
Western History_,[7] _The Firelands Pioneer_,[8] _The Midland
Monthly_,[9] _The Canadian Magazine of Politics, Science, Art and
Literature_[10] and _The American Historical Review_.[11] Three of
these publications, the first two and the last, are of a special
character; the other two, although they appeal to the general
reader, cannot be said to have attempted more than the presentation
of a few incidents out of the experience of certain underground
helpers. From time to time the _New England Magazine_ has given its
readers glimpses of the Underground Road by its articles dealing
with several well-known fugitive slave cases, and a biographical
sketch of the abductor Harriet Tubman.[12] But it would be quite
impossible for any one to gain an adequate idea of the movement from
the meagre accounts that have appeared in any of these magazines.

  [7] March, 1887, pp. 672-682.

  [8] July, 1888, pp. 19-88. This periodical is issued by
  the Firelands Historical Society of Ohio. The bulk of the
  number mentioned is made up of contributions in regard to the
  Underground Road in northwestern Ohio.

  [9] February, 1895, pp. 173-180.

  [10] May, 1895, pp. 9-16.

  [11] April, 1896, pp. 455-463. This article is a preliminary
  study prepared by the author.

  [12] Lillie B. C. Wyman: "Black and White," in _New England
  Magazine_, N.S., Vol. V, pp. 476-481; "Harriet Tubman," _ibid._,
  March, 1896, pp. 110-118. Nina M. Tiffany: "The Escape of William
  and Ellen Craft," _ibid._, January, 1890, p. 524 _et seq._;
  "Shadrach," _ibid._, May, 1890, pp. 280-283; "Sims," _ibid._,
  June, 1890, pp. 385-388; "Anthony Burns," _ibid._, July, 1890,
  pp. 569-576. A. H. Grimké: "Anti-Slavery Boston," _ibid._,
  December, 1890, pp. 441-459.

In contrast with the magazines, the newspapers have frequently
published some of the stirring recollections of surviving
abolitionists, but the result for the reader is usually that he
learns only some anecdotes concerning a small section of the Road,
without securing an insight into the real significance of the
underground movement. Without undertaking here to print a full
list of articles on the subject, it is worth while to notice a few
newspapers in which series of sketches have appeared of more or less
value in extending our geographical knowledge of the system, or in
illustrating some important phase of its working. The New Lexington
(Ohio) _Tribune_, from October, 1885, to February, 1886, contains a
series of reminiscences, written by Mr. Thomas L. Gray, that supply
interesting information about the work in southeastern Ohio. The
Pontiac (Illinois) _Sentinel_, in 1890 and 1891, published fifteen
chapters of "A History of Anti-Slavery Days" contributed by Mr. W.
B. Fyffe, recording some episodes in the development of this Road
in northeastern Illinois. The _Sentinel_, of Mt. Gilead, Ohio, in
a series of articles, one of which appeared every week from July
13 to August 17, 1893, under the name of Aaron Benedict, affords
a knowledge of the way in which the secret work was carried on in
a typical Quaker community. In _The Republican Leader_, of Salem,
Indiana, at various dates from Nov. 17, 1893, to April, 1894, E.
Hicks Trueblood printed the results of some investigations begun
at the instance of the author, which disclose the principal routes
of south central Indiana. An account of the peculiar methods of
the pedler Joseph Sider, an abductor of slaves, is also given by
Mr. Trueblood. The Rev. John Todd has preserved in the columns
of the Tabor (Iowa) _Beacon_, in 1890 and 1891, some valuable
reminiscences, running through more than twenty numbers of the
paper, under the title, "The Early Settlement and Growth of Western
Iowa"; several of these are devoted to fugitive slave cases.[13]

  [13] Other newspapers in which materials have been found are
  mentioned in the Appendix, pp. 395-398.

It is not surprising, in view of the unlawful nature of
Underground Railroad service, that extremely little in the way of
contemporaneous documents has descended to us even across the short
span of a generation or two, and that there are few written data for
the history of a movement that gave liberty to thousands of slaves.
The legal restraints upon the rendering of aid to slaves bent on
flight to Canada were, of course, ever present in the minds of
those that pitied the bondman, whether a well-informed lawyer, like
Joshua R. Giddings, or an illiterate negro, who, notwithstanding his
fellow-feeling, was yet sufficiently sagacious to avoid the open
violation of what others might call the law of the land. Therefore,
written evidence of complicity was for the most part carefully
avoided; and little information concerning any part of the work of
the Underground Road was allowed to get into print. It is known that
records and diaries were kept by certain helpers; and a few of the
letters and messages that passed between station-keepers have been
preserved. These sources of information are as valuable as they are
rare: they would doubtless be more plentiful if the Fugitive Slave
Law of 1850 had not created such consternation as to lead to the
destruction of most of the telltale documents.

The great collection of contemporaneous material is that of William
Still, relating mainly to the work of the Vigilance Committee of
Philadelphia. The motives and the methods of Mr. Still in keeping
his register are given in the following words: "Thousands of
escapes, harrowing separations, dreadful longings, dark gropings
after lost parents, brothers, sisters, and identities, seemed ever
to be pressing on my mind. While I knew the danger of keeping strict
records, and while I did not then dream that in my day slavery would
be blotted out, or that the time would come when I could publish
these records, it used to afford me great satisfaction to take them
down fresh from the lips of fugitives on the way to freedom, and
to preserve them as they had given them...."[14] When in 1852 Mr.
Still became the chairman of the Acting Committee of Vigilance his
opportunities were doubtless increased for obtaining histories of
cases; and he was then directed as head of the committee "to keep a
record of all their doings, ... especially of the money received and
expended on behalf of every case claiming their interposition."[15]
During the period of the War, Chairman Still concealed the records
and documents he had collected in the loft of Lebanon Cemetery
building, and although their publication became practicable when the
Proclamation of Emancipation was issued, the _Underground Railroad
Records_ did not appear until 1872.[16]

  [14] _Underground Railroad Records_, pp. xxxiii, xxxiv.

  [15] _Ibid._, p. 611, where is printed an article from the
  _Pennsylvania Freeman_, December 9, 1852, giving an account of
  the formation of the Committee.

  [16] See pp. xxxiv, xxxv, xxxvi.

Theodore Parker, the distinguished Unitarian clergyman of Boston,
and one of the most active members of the Vigilance Committee
of that city, kept memoranda of occurrences growing out of the
attempted enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law in his neighborhood.
He was outspoken in his opposition to the law, and was not less bold
in gathering into a journal, along with newspaper clippings and
handbills referring to the troubles of the time, manuscripts of his
own bearing on the unlawful procedure of the Committee. This journal
or scrap-book, given to the Boston Public Library in 1874 by Mrs.
Parker,[17] was compiled day by day from March 15, 1851, to February
19, 1856, and throws much light on the rendition of the fugitives
Burns and Sims.

  [17] The title Mr. Parker gave to this scrap-book is as follows:
  "Memoranda of the Troubles in Boston occasioned by the infamous
  Fugitive Slave Law."

John Brown, of Osawattomie, left a few notes of his memorable
journey through Kansas and Iowa, on his way to Canada in the winter
of 1858 and 1859, with a company of slaves rescued by him from
bondage in western Missouri. On the back of the original draft of
a letter written by Brown for the _New York Tribune_ soon after
the slaves had been taken from their masters, appear the names
of station-keepers of the Underground Railroad in eastern Kansas,
and a record of certain expenditures forming, doubtless, a part of
the cost of his trip.[18] When the fearless abductor arrived at
Springdale, Iowa, late in February, he wrote to a friend in Tabor a
statement concerning the "Reception of Brown and Party at Grinnell,
Iowa, compared with Proceedings at Tabor," in which he set down in
the form of items the substantial attentions he had received at the
hands of citizens of Grinnell.[19] These meagre records, together
with the letter written to the _Tribune_ mentioned above, are all
that Brown wrote, so far as known, giving explicit information in
regard to an exploit that created a stir throughout the country.

  [18] Sanborn, _Life and Letters of John Brown_, p. 482.

  [19] _Ibid._, pp. 488, 489.

Mr. Jirch Platt, of the vicinity of Mendon, Illinois, recorded
his experiences as a station-keeper in a "sort of diary and farm
record," and in a "blue-book," and appears to have been the only one
of the underground helpers of Illinois that ventured to chronicle
matters of this kind. The diary is still extant, and shows entries
covering a period of more than ten years, closing with October,
1859; the following items will illustrate sufficiently the character
of the record:--

"_May 19, 1848._ Hannah Coger arrived on the U. G. Railroad, the
last $100.00 for freedom she was to pay to Thomas Anderson, Palmyra,
Mo. The track is kept bright, it being the 3rd time occupied since
the first of April...."

"_Nov. 9, '54._ Negro hoax stories have been very high in the market
for a week past."

"_Oct. 1859._ U. G. R. R. Conductor reported the passage of five,
who were considered very valuable pieces of Ebony, all designated
by names, such as _John Brooks_, _Daniel Brooks_, _Mason Bushrod_,
_Sylvester Lucket_ and _Hanson Gause_. Have understood also that
three others were ticketed about midsummer."

In Ohio, Daniel Osborn, of the Alum Creek Quaker Settlement, in
the central part of the state, kept a diary, of which to-day only
a leaf remains. This bit of paper gives a record of the number
of negroes passing through the Alum Creek neighborhood during an
interval of five months, from April 14 to September 10, 1844,
and is of considerable importance, because it supplies data that
furnish, when taken in connection with other terms, the elements
for an interesting computation of the number of slaves that escaped
into Ohio.[20] In the correspondence of Mr. David Putnam, of Point
Hamar, near Marietta, Ohio, there were found a few letters relating
to the journeys of fugitives. That even these few letters remain is
doubtless due to neglect or oversight on the part of the recipient.
It is noticeable that some of them bear unmistakable signs of
intended secrecy, the proper names having been blotted out, or
covered with bits of paper.

  [20] See Chap. XI, p. 346.

Underground managers who were so indiscreet as to keep a diary or
letters for a season, were induced to part with such condemning
evidence under the stress of a special danger. Mr. Robert Purvis,
of Philadelphia, states that he kept a record of the fugitives
that passed through his hands and those of his coworkers in the
Quaker City for a long period, till the trepidation of his family
after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill in 1850 caused him to
destroy it.[21] Daniel Gibbons, a Friend, who lived near Columbia
in southeastern Pennsylvania, began in 1824 to keep a record of the
number of fugitives he aided. He was in the habit of entering in his
book the name of the master of each fugitive, the fugitive's own
name and his age, and the new name given him. The data thus gathered
came in time to form a large volume, but after the passage of the
Fugitive Slave Law Mr. Gibbons burned this book.[22] William Parker,
the colored leader in the famous Christiana case, was found by a
friend to have a large number of letters from escaped slaves hidden
about his house at the time of the Christiana affair, September
11, 1851, and these fateful documents were quickly destroyed. Had
they been discovered by the officers that visited Parker's house,
they might have brought disaster upon many persons.[23] Thus,
the need of secrecy constantly served to prevent the making of
records, or to bring about their early destruction. The written and
printed records do give a multitude of unquestioned facts about the
Underground Railroad; but when wishing to find out the details of
rational management, the methods of business, and the total amount
of traffic, we are thrown back on the recollections of living
abolitionists as the main source of information; from them the gaps
in the real history of the Underground Railroad must be filled, if
filled at all.

  [21] Conversation with Robert Purvis, Philadelphia, Pa., December
  24, 1895.

  [22] Smedley, _Underground Railroad_, pp. 56, 57.

  [23] Smedley, _Underground Railroad_, pp. 120, 121.

It is with the aid of such memorials that the present volume has
been written. Reminiscences have been gathered by correspondence
and by travel from many surviving abolitionists or their families;
and recollections of fugitive slave days have been culled from
books, newspapers, letters and diaries. During three years of the
five years of preparation the author's residence in Ohio afforded
him opportunity to visit many places in that state where former
employees of the Underground Railroad could be found, and to extend
these explorations to southern Michigan, and among the surviving
fugitives along the Detroit River in the Province of Ontario.
Residence in Massachusetts during the years 1895-1897 has enabled
him to secure some interesting information in regard to underground
lines in New England. The materials thus collected relate to
the following states: Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio,
Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, New
Hampshire, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Vermont, besides a few
items concerning North Carolina, Maryland and Delaware.

Underground operations practically ceased with the beginning of the
Civil War. In view of the lapse of time, the reasons for trusting
the credibility of the evidence upon which our knowledge of the
Underground Road rests should be stated. Some of the testimony
dealt with in this chapter was put in writing during the period
of the Road's operation, or at the close of its activity, and,
therefore, cannot be easily questioned. But it may be said that
a large part of the materials for this history were drawn from
written and oral accounts obtained at a much later date; and that
these materials, even though the honesty and fidelity of the
narrators be granted, are worthy of little credit for historical
purposes. Such a criticism would doubtless be just as applied to
reminiscences purporting to represent particular events with great
detail of narration, but clearly it would lose much of its force
when directed against recollections of occurrences that came within
the range of the narrator's experience, not once nor twice, but
many times with little variation in their main features. It would
be difficult to imagine an "old-time" abolitionist, whose faculties
are in a fair state of preservation, forgetting that he received
fugitives from a certain neighbor or community a few miles away,
that he usually stowed them in his garret or his haymow, and that
he was in the habit of taking them at night in all kinds of weather
to one of several different stations, the managers of which he knew
intimately and trusted implicitly. Not only did repetition serve to
deepen the general recollections of the average operator, but the
strange and romantic character of his unlawful business helped to
fix them in his mind. Some special occurrences he is apt to remember
with vividness, because they were in some way extraordinary. If it
be argued that the surviving abolitionists are now old persons, it
should not be forgotten that it is a fact of common observation that
old persons ordinarily remember the occurrences of their youth and
prime better than events of recent date. The abolitionists, as a
class, were people whose remembrances of the ante-bellum days were
deepened by the clear definition of their governing principles, the
abiding sense of their religious convictions, and the extraordinary
conditions, legal and social, under which their acts were performed.
The risks these persons ran, the few and scattered friends they had,
the concentration of their interests into small compass, because
of the disdain of the communities where they lived, have secured
to us a source of knowledge, the value of which cannot be lightly
questioned. If there be doubt on this point, it must give way before
the manner in which statements gathered from different localities
during the last five years articulate together, the testimony of
different and sometimes widely separated witnesses combining to
support one another.[24]

  [24] The value of reminiscences and memoirs is considered in
  an article on "Recollections as a Source of History," by the
  Hon. Edward L. Pierce, in the _Proceedings of the Massachusetts
  Historical Society_, March and April, 1896, pp. 473-490. This,
  with the remarks of Professor H. Morse Stephens in his article
  entitled "Recent Memoirs of the French Directory," _American
  Historical Review_, April, 1896, pp. 475, 476, 489, should
  be read as a corrective by the student that finds himself
  constrained to have recourse to recollections for information.

The elucidation by new light of some obscure matter already
reported, the verification by a fresh witness of some fact already
discovered, gives at once the rule and test of an investigation
such as this. Out of many illustrations that might be given, the
following are offered. Mr. J. M. Forsyth, of Northwood, Logan
County, Ohio, writes under date September 22, 1894: "In Northwood
there is a denomination known as Covenanters; among them the
runaways were safe. Isaac Patterson has a cave on his place where
the fugitives were secreted and fed two or three weeks at a time
until the hunt for them was over. Then friends, as hunters, in
covered wagons would take them to Sandusky. The highest number taken
at one time was seven. The conductors were mostly students from
Northwood. All I did was to help get up the team...."

The Rev. J. S. T. Milligan, of Esther, Pennsylvania, December 5,
1896, writes entirely independently: "In 1849 my brother ... and
I went ... to Logan Co., Ohio, to conduct a grammar school ...
at a place called Northwood. The school developed into a college
under the title of Geneva Hall. J. R. W. Sloane[25] ... was elected
President and moved to Northwood in 1851.... The region was settled
by Covenanters and Seceders, and every house was a home for the
wanderers. But there was a cave on the farm of a man by the name of
Patterson, absolutely safe and fairly comfortable for fugitives.
In one instance thirteen fugitives, after resting in the cave for
some days, were taken by the students in two covered wagons to
Sandusky, some 90 miles, where I had gone to engage passage for them
on the Bay City steamboat across the lake to Malden--where I saw
them safely landed on free soil, to their unspeakable joy. Indeed, I
thought one old man would have died from the gladness of his heart
in being safe in freedom. I went from Belle Centre [near Northwood]
by rail, and did not go with the land escort--but from what they
told me of their experience, it was often amusing and sometimes
thrilling. They were ostensibly a hunting party of 10 or 12 armed
men.... The two covered wagons were a 'sanctum sanctorum' into which
no mortal was allowed to peep.... The word of command, 'Stand back,'
was always respected by those who were unduly intent upon seeing
the thirteen deer ... brought from the woods of Logan and Hardin
counties and being taken to Sandusky."

  [25] The Rev. J. R. W. Sloane, D.D., was the father of Professor
  William M. Sloane, of Columbia University, New York City.
  Professor Sloane, in a letter recently received, says: "The first
  clear, conscious memory I have is of seeing slaves taken from
  our garret near midnight, and forwarded towards Sandusky. I also
  remember the formal, but rather friendly, visitation of the house
  by the sheriff's posse." Date of letter, Paris, November 19, 1896.

In the same letter Mr. Milligan corroborates some information
secured from the Rev. R. G. Ramsey, of Cadiz, Ohio, August 18, 1892,
in regard to an underground route in southern Illinois. Mr. Ramsey
related that his father, Robert Ramsey, first engaged in Underground
Railroad work at Eden, Randolph County, Illinois, in 1844, and
that he carried it on at intervals until the War. "The fugitives,"
he said, "came up the river to Chester, Illinois, and there they
started northeast on the state road, which followed an old Indian
trail. The stations were each in a community of Covenanters, ..."
and existed, according to his account, at Chester, Eden, Oakdale,
Nashville and Centralia. "Besides my father," said Mr. Ramsey,
"John Hood and two brothers, James B. and Thomas McClurkin, lived
in Oakdale, where my father lived during the last thirty-five years
of his life. He lived in Eden before this time...."[26] The Rev.
Mr. Milligan writes as follows: "My father removed to Randolph Co.,
Ill., in 1847, and with Rev. Wm. Sloane ... and the Covenanter
congregations under their ministry kept a very large depot wide
open for slaves escaping from Missouri. Scores at a time came to
Sparta [the post-office of the Eden settlement mentioned above]--my
father's region, were harbored there, ... and finally escorted to
Elkhorn [about two miles from Oakdale], the region of Father Sloane,
where they were sheltered and escorted ... to some friends in the
region of Nashville, Ill., and thence north on the regular trail
which I am not able further to locate. At Sparta, Coultersville and
Elkhorn there was an almost constant supply of fugitives.... But ...
few were ever gotten from the ægis of the Hayes and Moores and Todds
and McLurkins and Hoods and Sloanes and Milligans of that region."

  [26] Conversation with the Rev. R. G. Ramsey, Cadiz, Ohio, August
  18, 1892.

The evidence above quoted has the well-known value of two witnesses,
examined apart, who corroborate each other; and it also illustrates
the way in which the pieces of underground routes may be joined
together. These letters, together with some additional testimony,
enable us to trace on the map a section of a secret line of travel
in southern Illinois.

Another example throws light on a channel of escape in northeastern
Indiana. While Levi Coffin lived at Newport (now Fountain City),
Indiana, he sometimes sent slaves northward by way of what he
called "the Mississinewa route,"[27] from the Mississinewa River,
near which undoubtedly it ran for a considerable distance. This
road seems to have been called also the Grant County route. In the
most general way only do these descriptions tell anything about
the route. However, correspondence with several people of Indiana
has brought it to light. One letter[28] informs us in regard to
fugitives departing from Newport: "If they came to Economy they
were sent to Grant Co...." Now, so far as known, Jonesboro' was the
next locality to which they were usually forwarded, and the line
from this point northward is given us by the Hon. John Ratliff,
of Marion, Indiana, who had been over it with passengers. He says
that the first station north of Jonesboro' was North Manchester,
where "Morris" Place was agent; the next station, Goshen, where
Dr. Matchett harbored fugitives; and thence the line ran to Young's
Prairie,[29] which is in Cass County, Michigan. The same section of
Road, but with a few additional stations, is marked out by William
Hayward. The additional stations may not have existed at the time
when Mr. Ratliff served as a guide, or he may have forgotten to
mention them. Mr. Hayward writes: "My cousin, Maurice Place, often
brought carriage loads of colored people from North Manchester,
Wabash Co., to my father's house, six miles west of Manchester on
the Rochester road.... We would keep them ... until sometime in the
night; then my father would go with them to Avery Brace's ... three
miles ... north, through the woods. He took them ... seven miles
farther ... to Chauncey Hurlburt's in Kosciusko Co.... They (the
Hurlburts) took them twelve miles farther ... to Warsaw, to a man by
the name of Gordon, and he took them to Dr. Matchett's in Elkhart
Co., not far from Goshen. There were friends there to help them to
Michigan."[30]

  [27] _Reminiscences_, p. 184.

  [28] Letter of John Charles, Economy, Wayne County, Indiana,
  January 9, 1896. Mr. Charles is a Quaker, and took part in the
  underground work at Economy.

  [29] Letter from Charles W. Osborn, Economy, Indiana, March 4,
  1896. Mr. Osborn obtained the names of stations in conversation
  with Mr. Ratliff.

  [30] Letter of William Hayward.

In weighing the testimony amassed, the author has had the advantage
of personal acquaintance with many of those furnishing information;
and the internal evidence of letters has been considered in
estimating the worth of written testimony. Doubtless the work could
have been more thoroughly executed, if the collection of materials
had been systematically undertaken by some one a decade or two
earlier. It is certain that it could not have been postponed to a
later period. Since the inception of this research the ravages of
time have greatly thinned the company of witnesses, who count it
among their chiefest joys that they were permitted to live to see
their country rid of slavery, and the negro race a free people.

[Illustration: ONE OF THE PIONEERS IN THE UNDERGROUND MOVEMENT IN
PHILADELPHIA AND NEW YORK.

Mr. Hopper is supposed to have resorted to underground methods as
early as 1787.]

CHAPTER II

ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE UNDERGROUND ROAD

The Underground Road developed in a section of country rid of
slavery, and situated between two regions, from one of which slaves
were continually escaping with the prospect of 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, 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 took action three
years later. Pennsylvania provided by statute for gradual abolition,
and its example was followed by Rhode Island and Connecticut in
1784, by New York in 1799, and by New Jersey in 1804. Massachusetts
was less direct, but not less effective, in securing the extinction
of slavery; happily it had inserted in the declaration of rights
prefixed to its constitution: "All men are born free and equal, and
have certain natural, essential and inalienable rights."[31] 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.

  [31] Constitution of Massachusetts, Part I, Art. 1; quoted by Du
  Bois, _Suppression of the Slave Trade_, p. 225.

There is little to be said about the remaining group of states with
which we are here concerned. Their territorial organizations were
effected under the provisions of the 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."[32] 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."[33] The five states, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
Michigan and Wisconsin were therefore admitted to the Union as
free states. West of the Mississippi River there is one state, at
least, that must be added to the group just indicated, namely, Iowa.
Slaveholding was prevented within its domain by the Act of Congress
of 1820, prohibiting slavery in the territory acquired under the
Louisiana purchase north of latitude 36° 30', and several years
before this law was abrogated Iowa had entered statehood with a
constitution that fixed her place among the free commonwealths. The
enfranchisement of this extended region was thus 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, that of the status of fugitives in
free regions. The elements were in the proper condition for the
crystallization of this question.

  [32] See Appendix A, p. 359.

  [33] _History of the United States_, Vol. I, p. 16.

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 India Company, forbidding the rendition
of fugitive slaves to New Haven, had been annulled, that the
agreement for the mutual surrender of runaways was made by the
two parties. Negotiations in regard to fugitives early took place
between Maryland and New Netherlands; at one time on account of the
flight of some slaves from the Southern colony into the Northern
colony, and later on account of the reversal of the conditions.
The temper of the Dutch when calling for their servants in 1659
was not conciliatory, for they threatened, if their demand should
be refused, "to publish free liberty, access and recess to all
planters, servants, negroes, fugitives, and runaways which may go
into New Netherland." The escape of fugitives from the Eastern
colonies northward to Canada was also a constant source of trouble
between the French and the Dutch, and between the French and
English.[34]

  [34] M. G. McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, pp. 2-11.

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."[35]

  [35] _Journals of Congress_, XII, 84, 92.

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."[36] 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.

  [36] Constitution of the United States, Art. IV, § 2. See
  _Revised Statutes of the United States_, I, 18. See also Appendix
  A, p. 359.

In the sentiment of the time there seems to have been no 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.[37] 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.[38] 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.

  [37] 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._

  [38] Elliot's _Debates_, III, 277.

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.[39] 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: 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.

  [39] Appendix A, pp. 359-361.

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.[40] 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.[41] 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.

  [40] _Fugitive Slaves_, p. 19.

  [41] See Chap. IX, pp. 259-267; also Stroud, _Sketch of the Laws
  Relating to Slavery in the Several States_, 2d ed., pp. 220-222.

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.[42] The 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 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 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.[43]

  [42] Appendix A, pp. 361-366.

  [43] _Statutes at Large_, IX, 462-465.

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, decency and consistency. Many persons,
indeed, justified their opposition to the law in the familiar
words: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness." The scriptural injunction "not to deliver
unto his master the servant that hath escaped,"[44] 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.[45] The penalties of
fine and imprisonment for offenders against the law were severe,
but they had no deterrent effect upon those engaged in helping
slaves to Canada. On the contrary, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850
stimulated the work of secret emancipation. "The passage of the new
law," says a recent investigator, "probably increased the number of
anti-slavery people more than anything else that had occurred 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 elsewhere.... As
Mr. James Freeman Clarke has said, 'It was impossible to convince
the people that it was right to send back to slavery men who were so
desirous of freedom as to run such risks. All education from boyhood
up to manhood had taught us to believe that it was the duty of all
men to struggle for freedom.'"[46]

  [44] _Deut._ xxiii, 15, 16.

  [45] 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.

  [46] M. G. McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, p. 43; J. F. Clarke,
  _Anti-Slavery Days_, p. 92.

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."[47] 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.[48] 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.

  [47] Rhodes, _History of the United States_, Vol. I, p. 377.

  [48] F. L. Olmsted, _Journey in the Back Country_, p. 155; Rev.
  W. M. Mitchell, _The Underground Railroad_, pp. 72, 73; M. G.
  McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, p. 57.

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 amenities of the patriarchal
type had practically disappeared. With the rapid expansion of
the industries peculiar to the South after the opening up of the
Louisiana purchase, the invention of the cotton gin, and the removal
of the Indians from the Gulf states, came the era of the slave's
dismay. The auction block and the brutal overseer became his dread
while awake, his nightmare when asleep. That his fears were not ill
founded is proved by the activity of the slave-marts of Baltimore,
Richmond, New Orleans and Washington from the time of the migrations
to the Mississippi territory until the War. Alabama is said to have
bought millions of dollars worth of slaves from the border states up
to 1849. Dew estimated that six thousand slaves were carried from
Virginia, though not all of these were sold to other states.[49]

  [49] Edward Ingle, _Southern Side-Lights_, p. 293.

The fear of sale to the far South must have stimulated slaves to
flight. That the number of escapes did increase is deduced from
the consensus of abolitionist testimony. Our sole reliance is upon
this testimony until the appearance of the United States census
reports for 1850 and 1860;[50] 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 reënforced 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."[51] Then, too, the negro's attachment to
the land of his birth, and to his kindred, when these were not torn
from him, must be allowed to have hindered flight in many instances;
when, however, the appearance of the dreaded slave-dealer, or
the brutality of the overseer or the master, spread dismay among
the hands of a plantation, flights were likely to follow. This
was sometimes the case, too, when by the death of a planter the
division of his property among his heirs was made necessary. William
Johnson, of Windsor, Ontario, ran away from his Kentucky master
because he was threatened with being sent South to the cotton and
rice fields.[52] 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.[53]
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.[54] William Edwards, of Amherstburg, Ontario,
left his master on account of a severe flogging.[55] 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 the expected
scattering of their number when the division of the estate should
occur.[56]

  [50] These reports will be dealt with in another connection. See
  Chap. XI, pp. 342, 343.

  [51] G. M. Weston, _Progress of Slavery in the United States_,
  Washington, D.C., 1858, pp. 22, 23.

  [52] Conversation with William Johnson, Windsor, Ontario, July,
  1895.

  [53] Conversation with Horace Washington, Windsor, Ontario, Aug.
  2, 1895.

  [54] _The Liberator_, April 10, 1846.

  [55] Conversation with William Edwards, Amherstburg, Ontario,
  Aug. 3, 1895.

  [56] Letter of H. C. Harvey, Manchester, Kan., Jan. 16, 1893.

[Illustration: This picture of a poor fugitive is from one of the
stereotype cuts manufactured in this city for the southern market,
and used on handbills offering rewards for runaway slaves.

THE RUNAWAY

(Slightly enlarged from _The Anti-Slavery Record_,
published in New York City by the American Anti-Slavery Society.)]

It has already been remarked that slaves began to find their way to
Canada before the opening of the present century, but information
in regard to that country as a place of refuge can scarcely be said
to have come into circulation before the War of 1812. The hostile
relations existing between the two nations at that time caused
negroes of sagacious minds to seek their liberty among the enemies
of the United States.[57] Then, too, soldiers returning from the War
to their homes in Kentucky and Virginia brought the news of the
disposition of the Canadian government to defend the rights of the
self-emancipated slaves under its jurisdiction. Rumors of this sort
gave hope and courage to the blacks that heard it, and, doubtless,
the welcome reports were spread by these among trusted 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.[58]

  [57] S. G. Howe, _The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West_, pp.
  11, 12.

  [58] Wilson, _History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power_,
  Vol. II, p. 63.

After the discovery of Canada by colored refugees from the Southern
states, it was, presumably, not long before some of them, returning
for their families and friends, gave circulation in a limited way
to reports more substantial than the vague rumors hitherto afloat.
Among the escaped slaves that carried the promise of Canadian
liberty across Mason and Dixon's line were such successful abductors
as Josiah Henson and Harriet Tubman. In 1860 it was estimated that
the number of 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."[59]
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. Ross may be cited
as notable examples of this class. The latter, a citizen of Canada,
made extensive tours through various slave states for the express
purpose of spreading information about Canada and the routes by
which that country could be reached. He made trips into Maryland,
Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee, and did not think it too great a
risk to make excursions into the more southern states. He went to
New Orleans, and from that point set out on a journey, in the course
of which he visited Vicksburg, Selma and Columbus, Mississippi,
Augusta, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina.[60]

  [59] Redpath, _The Public Life of Captain John Brown_, p. 229.

  [60] Dr. A. M. Ross, _Recollections and Experiences of an
  Abolitionist_, 2d ed., 1876, pp. 10, 11, 15, 39.

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.[61] 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.[62]

  [61] Conversation with White and Sidney in Canada West, August,
  1895.

  [62] 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."

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 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."[63]
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.[64] 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.

  [63] Dr. A. M. Ross, _The Recollections and Experiences of an
  Abolitionist_, p. 38.

  [64] A. L. Benedict, _Memoir of Richard Dillingham_, p. 17.

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 tenaciously 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."[65] 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.

  [65] George W. Julian, _Life of Joshua R. Giddings_, p. 157.

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 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.[66] The stations in
Bond, Putnam and Bureau counties, Illinois, were kept in part by
anti-slavery settlers from the South.

  [66] _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.

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. The list 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 students 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,"[67]
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."[68]

  [67] Letter from Professor L. F. Parker, Grinnell, Iowa, Aug. 30,
  1894.

  [68] Letter from President W. M. Brooks, Tabor, Iowa, Oct. 11,
  1894.

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."[69] 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."[70] 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 society in Philadelphia. However that may
be, it appears probable that the record of Philadelphia as a centre
of active sympathy with the fugitive slave was continuous from the
time of Washington's letters. In 1787 Isaac T. Hopper, who soon
became known as a friend of slaves, settled in Philadelphia, and,
although only sixteen or seventeen years old, had already taken a
resolution to befriend the oppressed Africans.[71] Some cases 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.[72]
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 ties of blood that are known to have
been favorable in other quarters to the development of underground
routes. That protection was given to fugitives early in the present
century by the Quakers of southwestern New Jersey can scarcely
be doubted; and we are told that negroes were being transported
through New Jersey before 1818.[73] 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 made use of there, for in 1835 we find him accused, though
falsely this time, of harboring a runaway at his store in Pearl
Street.[74] 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.[75] After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in
1850, New York City became more active than ever in receiving and
forwarding refugees.[76] This city at the mouth of the Hudson was
the entrepôt 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.[77] In western New York fugitives began to arrive from the
neighboring parts of 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;[78]
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 cessation of migrations of fugitives into
Canada at Black Rock, Buffalo and other points.[79]

  [69] Sparks's _Washington_, IX, 158, quoted in _Quakers of
  Pennsylvania_, by Dr. A. C. Applegarth, Johns Hopkins Studies, X,
  p. 463.

  [70] Lunt, _Origin of the Late War_, Vol. I, p. 20.

  [71] L. Maria Child, _Life of Isaac T. Hopper_, 1854, p. 35.

  [72] _History of Chester County, Pennsylvania_, R. C. Smedley's
  article on the "Underground Railroad," p. 426; also Smedley,
  _Underground Railroad_, p. 26.

  [73] 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 raised in the family of Thomas Clement, a
  member of the Society of Friends. He graduated from 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 body and mind, and seemed to have a
  remarkably clear memory.

  [74] L. Maria Child, _Life of Isaac T. Hopper_, p. 316.

  [75] _History of Florence, Mass._, p. 131, Charles A. Sheffeld,
  Editor.

  [76] 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.

  [77] Letter of Mrs. Susan L. Crane, Elmira, Sept. 14, 1896. Mrs.
  Crane's father, Mr. Jervis Langdon, was active in underground
  work at Elmira, and had a trusted co-laborer in John W. Jones,
  who still lives in Elmira.

  [78] Conversation with Professor Orton, Ohio State University,
  Columbus, O., 1893.

  [79] 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.

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."[80] In New Hampshire there was a station
at Canaan after 1830, and probably before that time.[81] 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 1838
or 1839."[82] This thing once begun in New Hampshire seems to
have continued steadily during the decades until the War of the
Rebellion.[83] 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.[84] In Massachusetts
the town of Fall River became an important station in 1839.[85]
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 personal 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.[86] 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.[87] 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.[88]

  [80] Letter of Mr. Aldis O. Brainerd, St. Albans, Vt., Oct. 21,
  1895.

  [81] 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."

  [82] Letter of Judge Mellen Chamberlain, Chelsea, Mass., Feb. 1,
  1896.

  [83] Letter of Mr. Thomas P. Cheney, Ashland, N.H., March 30,
  1896.

  [84] _Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict_, p. 297.

  [85] 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 of refuge from
  the year named.

  [86] 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.

  [87] Letter of the Rev. O. B. Cheney, Pawtuxet, R.I., Apr. 8,
  1896.

  [88] Letter of Mr. Brown Thurston, Portland, Me., Oct. 21, 1895.

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.[89] 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 in the western part.[90] 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.[91] 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.[92] 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.[93] 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."[94] Dr. Thomas Cowgill, an aged Quaker
of Kennard, Champaign County, recollects that the work of the
Underground Railroad began in his 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.[95] 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."[96] 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."[97] 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."[98] Among these aged witnesses, those have been quoted
whose experience, character and clearness of mind gave weight to
their words. Mr. Rush R. Sloane, of Sandusky, who made some local
investigations in northwestern Ohio and published the results in
1888, produces some evidence that agrees with the testimony just
given. He found that, "The first runaway slave known as such at
Sandusky was there in the fall of the year 1820.... Judge Jabez
Wright, one of the three associate judges who held the first term
of court in Huron County in 1815, was among the first white men
upon the Firelands to aid fugitive slaves; he never failed when
opportunity offered to lend a helping hand to the fugitives,
secreting them when necessary, feeding them when they were hungry,
clothing and employing them."[99] After reciting a number of
instances of rescues occurring between 1820 and 1850, Mr. Sloane
remarks 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.[100] 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.

  [89] Wilson, _Rise and Fall of the Slave Power_, Vol. II, p.
  63; Alexander Black, _The Story of Ohio_, see account of the
  Underground Railroad.

  [90] Letter of Col. D. W. H. Howard, Wauseon, O., Aug. 22, 1894.

  [91] Conversation with Robert McCrory, Marysville, O., Sept. 30,
  1898. Mr. McCrory was educated at Oberlin College, and has an
  excellent memory.

  [92] Howe's _Historical Collections of Ohio_, Vol. I, p. 614.

  [93] Letter from Job Mullin, dictated to his son-in-law, W. H.
  Newport, at Springboro, O., Sept. 9, 1895.

  [94] Conversation with Mr. Eliakim H. Moore, Athens, O.

  [95] Conversation with Joseph Skillgess, Urbana, O., Aug. 14,
  1894.

  [96] Letter of Wm. A. Johnston, Coshocton, O., Aug. 23, 1894.

  [97] Letter of Hannah W. Blackburn, for her father, Mahlon
  Pickrell, Zanesfield, O., March 25, 1893.

  [98] Letter of R. C. Corwin, Lebanon, O., Sept. 11, 1895.

  [99] _The Firelands Pioneer_, July, 1888, p. 34.

  [100] The _Firelands Pioneer_, July, 1888, p. 34 _et seq._

In North Carolina underground methods are known to have been
employed by white persons of respectability as early as 1819. We