The
Underground Railroad
from Slavery to Freedom
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
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
[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] |
| CHAPTER III | |
| 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 | |
| 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