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