The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom. Wilbur Henry Siebert
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]
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]
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: