Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 752, May 25, 1878

No. 752.
Price 1½ d.
SATURDAY, MAY 25, 1878.
The Coffyns or Coffins are a Devonshire family, said to have been founded by one of the followers of the Conqueror. In 1642 Tristram Coffyn, a son of this old house, sailed from Plymouth for New England, taking with him his wife and five children, his mother and two sisters. He settled at Salisbury, in the colony of Massachusetts, and his descendants are now to be found in many of the States. Several of them have won themselves a name of note in the service of their country; but none has a higher claim to the remembrance, not only of their fellow-citizens but of all who honour worth wherever it is to be found, than Levi Coffin, whose memoirs lie before us under the title of Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, the Reputed President of the Underground Railroad, being a brief History of the Labours of a Lifetime on behalf of the Slave (London: Sampson Low, 1876). His tale, told in plain homely language, is a stirring one, and shews us a phase of American life which is happily a thing of the past; for now that slavery is abolished there is no longer any need for the devoted labours of the true-hearted men who by means of the once famous ‘Underground Railroad’ helped the fugitive slave on his way to the land of freedom—over the Canadian border and into British territory, where, and where only, he was safe from kidnappers and hunters.
Levi Coffin was born in 1798. His father was a member of a colony of the Society of Friends, settled at New Garden in North Carolina; and he himself has always belonged to that religious profession. One day when he was about seven years old he was standing beside his father, who was chopping up some wood at a little distance from the house. Along the road came a coffle or gang of slaves, chained in couples on each side of a long chain which extended between them. At some distance behind came the slave-dealer with a wagon-load of supplies. Levi’s father spoke pleasantly to the slaves. ‘Well boys,’ he said, ‘why do they chain you?’ One of them replied for the rest: ‘They have taken us away from our wives and children, and they chain us lest we should make our escape and go back to them.’ The gang tramped off along the dusty road; and in answer to the child’s eager questions, his father told him what slavery was; and little Levi endeavoured to realise the troubles of the poor men he had just seen, by thinking—‘How terribly we should feel if father were taken away from us!’