The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom. Wilbur Henry Siebert
States during the years 1826–1828, the object being, as Mr. Clay, the Secretary of State, himself declared, "to provide for a growing evil." The evidence gathered from surviving abolitionists in the states adjacent to the lakes shows an increased activity of the Underground Road during the period 1830–1840. The reason for flight given by the slave was, in the great majority of cases, the same, namely, fear of being sold to the far South. It is certainly significant in this connection that the decade above mentioned witnessed the removal of the Indians from the Gulf states, and, in the words of another contemporary observer and reporter, "the consequent opening of new and vast cotton fields."[108] The swelling emphasis laid upon the value of their escaped slaves by the Southern representatives in Congress, and by the South generally, resounded with terrific force at length in the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. That act did not, as it appears, check or diminish in any way the number of underground rescues. In spite of the exhibit on fugitive slaves made in the United States census report of 1860, which purports to show that the number of escapes was about a thousand a year, it is difficult to doubt the consensus of testimony of many underground agents, to the effect that the decade from 1850 to 1860 was the period of the Road's greatest activity in all sections of the North.[109]
It is not known when the name "Underground Railroad" came to be applied to these secret trails, nor where it was first applied to them. According to Mr. Smedley the designation came into use among slave-hunters in the neighborhood of Columbia soon after the Quakers in southeastern Pennsylvania began their concerted action in harboring and forwarding fugitives. The pursuers seem to have had little difficulty in tracking slaves as far as Columbia, but beyond that point all trace of them was generally lost. All the various methods of detection customary in such cases were resorted to, but failed to bring the runaways to view. The mystery enshrouding these disappearances completely bewildered and baffled the slave-owners and their agents, who are said to have declared, "there must be an Underground Railroad somewhere."[110] As this work reached considerable development in the district indicated during the first decade of this century the account quoted is seen to contain an anachronism. Railroads were not known either in England or the United States until about 1830, so that the word "railroad" could scarcely have received its figurative application as early as Mr. Smedley implies.
The Hon. Rush R. Sloane, of Sandusky, Ohio, gives the following account of the naming of the Road: "In the year 1831, a fugitive named Tice Davids came over the line and lived just back of Sandusky. He had come direct from Ripley, Ohio, where he crossed the Ohio River. …
"When he was running away, his master, a Kentuckian, was in close pursuit and pressing him so hard that when the Ohio River was reached he had no alternative but to jump in and swim across. It took his master some time to secure a skiff, in which he and his aid followed the swimming fugitive, keeping him in sight until he had landed. Once on shore, however, the master could not find him. No one had seen him; and after a long … search the disappointed slave-master went into Ripley, and when inquired of as to what had become of his slave, said … he thought 'the nigger must have gone off on an underground road.' The story was repeated with a good deal of amusement, and this incident gave the name to the line. First the 'Underground Road,' afterwards 'Underground Railroad.'"[111] A colored man, the Rev. W. M. Mitchell, who was for several years a resident of southern Ohio, and a friend of fugitives, gives what appears to be a version of Mr. Sloane's story.[112] These anecdotes are hardly more than traditions, affording a fair general explanation of the way in which the Underground Railroad got its name; but they cannot be trusted in the details of time, place and occasion. Whatever the manner and date of its suggestion, the designation was generally accepted as an apt title for a mysterious means of transporting fugitive slaves to Canada.
A CROSSING PLACE FOR FUGITIVE SLAVES ON THE OHIO RIVER, AT STEUBENVILLE, OHIO.
(From a recent photograph.)
HOUSE OF THE REV. JOHN RANKIN, RIPLEY, OHIO.
Situated on the top of a high hill, this initial station was readily found by runaways from the Kentucky shore opposite.
(From a recent photograph.)
CHAPTER III
THE METHODS OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
By the enactment of the first Fugitive Slave Law, February 12, 1793, the aiding of fugitive slaves became a penal offence. This measure laid a fine of five hundred dollars upon any one harboring escaped slaves, or preventing their arrest. The provisions of the law were of a character to stimulate resistance to its enforcement. The master or his agent was authorized to arrest the runaway, wherever found; to bring him before a judge of the circuit or the district court of the United States, or before a local magistrate where the capture was made; and to receive, on the display of satisfactory proof, a certificate operating as a full warrant for taking the prisoner back to the state from which he had fled. This summary method of disposing of cases involving the high question of human liberty was regarded by many persons as unjust; they freely denounced it, and, despite the penalty attached, many violated the law. Secrecy was the only safeguard of these persons, as it was of those they were attempting to succor; hence arose the numerous artifices employed.
The uniform success of the attempts to evade this first Fugitive Slave Law, and doubtless, also, the general indisposition of Northern people to take part in the return of refugees to their Southern owners, led, as early as in 1823, to negotiations between Kentucky and the three adjoining states across the Ohio. It is unnecessary to trace the history of these negotiations, or to point out the statutes in which the legislative results are recorded. It is notable that sixteen years elapsed before the legislature of Ohio passed a law to secure the recovery of slave property, and that the new enactment remained on the statute books only four years. The penalties imposed by this law for advising or for enticing a slave to leave his master, or for harboring a fugitive, were a fine, not to exceed five hundred dollars, and, at the discretion of the court, imprisonment not to exceed sixty days. In addition, the offender was to be liable in an action at the suit of the party injured.[113] It can scarcely be supposed that a state Fugitive Slave Law like this would otherwise affect persons that were already engaged in aiding runaways than to make them more certain than ever that their cause was just.
The loss of slave property sustained by Southern planters was not diminished, and the outcry of the South for a more rigorous national law on the subject was by no means hushed. In 1850 Congress met the case by substituting for the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 the measure called the second Fugitive Slave Law. The penalties provided by this law were, of course, more severe than those of the act of 1793. Any person hindering the claimant from arresting the fugitive, or attempting the rescue or concealment of the fugitive, became "subject to a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, or imprisonment not exceeding six months," and was liable for "civil damages to the party injured by such illegal conduct in the sum of one thousand dollars for each fugitive so lost." These provisions of the new law only added fresh fuel to the fire. The determination to prevent the recovery of escaped slaves by their owners spread rapidly among the inhabitants of the free states. Many of these persons, who had hitherto refrained from acting for or against the fugitive, were provoked into helping defeat the action of a law commanding them "to aid and assist in the prompt and efficient execution" of a measure that would have set them at the miserable business of slave-catching. Clay only expressed a wish instead of a fact, when he maintained in 1851 that the law was being executed in Indiana, Ohio and other states. Another Southern senator was much nearer the truth when he complained of the small number of recaptures under the recent act.
The risk of suffering severe penalties by violating