The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom: A comprehensive history

by Wilbur Henry Siebert

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Unpublished Reminiscences

The materials upon which in large measure this book is based are reminiscences gathered by correspondence and conversation with more than a thousand persons, many of whom were old-time abolitionists, while the remainder included the families and intimate friends of abolitionists, and a number of fugitive slaves. It was discovered by the author after only a short search for published sources that little was to be gleaned in the libraries and that information sufficient in amount for an extended study could be obtained only by what geologists and botanists call field-work. The collection of materials went on as time could be spared for this purpose until a great mass of letters and notes had been brought together, and then the work of sorting, arranging and classifying began. The reminiscences were grouped by states and counties, so as to bring out as far as possible the coincident and confirmatory character of evidence relating to the same neighborhood or district; and the value of the materials appeared in the tracings of underground lines the author was able to make, county by county and state by state, throughout the region of the free states from Iowa to Maine. For the purpose of showing the extent and importance of the underground movement these unpublished reminiscences have proved to be invaluable.

2. Printed Collections of Underground Railroad Incidents

There are a few volumes that supply us with numerous illustrations of the Underground Railroad in operation. These books are not general treatises on the underground system, but give us an insight into the clandestine work of several limited localities; they are important because they exhibit the methods and devices of operators, show the sacrifices made by them in behalf of the midnight seekers after liberty, and supplement with valuable matter the unpublished reminiscences. In addition to the well-known books of Still, Smedley and Coffin, the author has found the three smaller, and hitherto unquoted books by W. M. Mitchell, E. M. Pettit and H. U. Johnson, to be useful.

3. Personal Recollections

A few of those who were active in aiding slaves to escape to Canada have published volumes of personal recollections, in which, among other things, they tell more or less about their connection with the humane but illegitimate work of the abolitionists, and give vivid sketches of some of their associates, as well as of some of their dark-skinned protégés. Such books are the Rev. James Freeman Clarke's Anti-Slavery Days, the Rev. Samuel J. May's Recollections of our Anti-Slavery Conflict, J. B. Grinnell's Men and Events of Forty Years, Mrs. Laura S. Haviland's A Woman's Life Work and Mrs. E. B. Chace's Anti-Slavery Reminiscences.

A small class of books, of which the Personal Memoirs of Daniel Drayton, and the books by Dr. A. M. Ross and the Rev. Calvin Fairbank are representatives, are indispensable as sources of information relating to the abduction of slaves from the South. The little book entitled Harriet, the Moses of her People, in which that remarkable guide of fugitives, Harriet Tubman, relates her exploits through the pen of her friend, Mrs. S. H. Bradford, properly belongs to this group.

4. Letters, Diaries and Scrap-books

The liability of Underground Railroad operators to severe penalties for harboring runaways explains the dearth of evidence in the form of letters, diaries and scrap-books they have left behind; such evidence would have been incriminating. It is known that a few abolitionists kept diaries and scrap-books and even wrote letters in regard to the business of the Road, but most of these records appear to have been destroyed before the beginning of the Civil War. The author has been able to secure only two or three letters and the single leaf of a diary in centres where much work was done. Three scrap-books in the Boston Public Library, containing memoranda, clippings, handbills, etc., that refer in particular to the experiences of Theodore Parker, shed much light on the work of the Vigilance Committee of Boston, and supply important information in regard to the famous case of Anthony Burns.

5. Biographies and Memoirs

Biographies and memoirs of anti-slavery men not infrequently contain references to aid rendered to fugitives, explain the motives of the philanthropists, and give their versions of the fugitive slave cases that came within their immediate knowledge; such books are often indices of the public sentiment of the localities in which their subjects lived, and when read in conjunction with the biographies of pro-slavery advocates help us to realize the conflicting interests that expressed themselves in the slavery controversy. Lydia Maria Child's Life of Isaac T. Hopper has preserved to us the record of one of the pioneers of the underground movement, while the biographies of Gerrit Smith and James and Lucretia Mott, show these persons to have been worthy successors of the benign and shrewd Hopper. In the biographies of John Brown by Redpath, Hinton and Sanborn, and in the Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, by her son, Charles E. Stowe, we have proofs of the deep and enduring impression made by underground experiences upon strong characters capable of assimilating and transforming these into forces of historical moment. Chase, Seward and Sumner were among our public men who acted as counsel for fugitive slaves; it is not surprising therefore that their biographers have given considerable space to the consideration of cases with which these men were connected. The prominence of the statesmen just named and others of their class as party leaders makes their biographies indispensable in tracing the political history of the ante-bellum period. Claiborne's Life and Correspondence of John A. Quitman may properly be named as an excellent and valuable example of the class of biographies of prominent men of the South.

A few obituary pamphlets have been gathered, which have proved to be of some service: such are A. L. Benedict's Memoir of Richard Dillingham, and pamphlets relating to Mr. John Hossack, of Ottawa, Illinois, and Mr. James M. Westwater, of Columbus, Ohio.

6. Slave Biographies and Autobiographies

A recital of the life and sufferings of many colored refugees in books written by themselves or by sympathetic friends, and published in various free states during the two or three decades preceding 1860, tended to increase the Northern feeling against slavery and doubtless also to carry to many minds convictions that found a partial expression in underground efforts. These books contain descriptions of slave life on the plantation and tell with the omission of particulars, which it would have been imprudent at the time to relate, the story of the escape to liberty. The omission of these particulars renders these sources of little use in tracing the secret routes to Canada followed by the refugees, or in confirming, in part or in whole, the routes of others. In the case of Frederick Douglass, the gaps and omissions appearing in the first autobiography are filled with much valuable information in the second, written after slavery was abolished. The books by Josiah Henson, the Rev. J. W. Loguen and Austin Steward are interesting as the narratives of negroes of superior ability who spent a part at least of their time after self-emancipation in Canada, and could therefore write intelligently on the condition of their people there.

7. Materials relating to Slavery and Fugitive Slaves in Canada

There is but little material in regard to slavery and fugitive slaves in Canada. The question of slavery in the provinces is clearly presented in a few pages of Vol. XXV of the Magazine of American History, while the life of the colored refugees in Canada during the period of immigration and settlement can only be seen in anything like a sufficient light in Benjamin Drew's North-Side View of Slavery, and Dr. S. G. Howe's Refugees from Slavery in Canada West.

8. State, County and Local Histories

Many contributions on the Underground Railroad appear in the collections of historical, biographical and other materials that make up a large number of our state, county and local histories so-called. Accounts, which when taken by themselves are fragmentary and therefore of little importance, have been brought to light by searching through these histories; and not unnaturally, perhaps, the largest number have been found in the county histories of Ohio. Six or seven of these histories afford articles relating to the Underground Railroad; and characteristic items and incidents have been printed in both state and local histories besides. Illinois comes next in the number of contributions preserved in its local histories. The utmost diligence of the student in the library alcoves devoted to Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, will result in the finding of from one to three contributions only, as the case may be; while from the shelves given to Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and New Jersey, he is not likely to secure anything to his purpose.

9. Reports of Societies

The reports of anti-slavery societies, especially those of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, are rich in comments upon the prosecutions in the South of abductors of slaves, and do not fail to show the effect of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 upon the activity of Underground Railroad lines. They also tell something of the missionary work done among the refugees in Canada. In the last-named respect they are secondary to the Reports of the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada, the Refugees' Home Society, and the Canada Mission.

Within the past ten years various societies of the historical type have been instrumental, directly or indirectly, in the publication of addresses bearing upon the violation of the Fugitive Slave laws. A series of lectures before the Political Science Association of the University of Michigan, several of which involve this theme, were published in 1889 under the general title, Constitutional History of the United States as seen in the Development of American Law. A collection of letters and addresses commemorative of the anti-slavery movement and some of its leaders was printed in 1893 in a book, called Old Anti-Slavery Days, by the Danvers (Mass.) Historical Society. An address on "The Underground Railroad" by ex-President James H. Fairchild, of Oberlin College, forms Tract No. 87 in Vol. IV. of the publications of the Western Reserve Historical Society. The best account of the Glover rescue case will be found in a pamphlet by Mr. Vroman Mason on the Fugitive Slave Law in Wisconsin, with Reference to Nullification Sentiment, issued in 1895 by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

10. Records of Trials

The reader who acquaints himself even superficially with John Codman Hurd's two volumes, entitled the Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United States, can not fail to be impressed with the value of legal reports for the study of the great contention over slavery. Hurd's pages are full of descriptions and discussions of cases in their judicial bearing, and his foot-notes are largely made up of references to the published reports of trials.

In the series of these records of trials, one may trace the history of legal opposition to the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave laws, note the decision in the Prigg case, by which the efficiency of the law of 1793 was destroyed, and the Southern demand for a new law made imperative, mark the clash of state and federal jurisdictions, and see the growth of the spirit of nullification in the North. For these purposes, one should consult not only the records of the Supreme Court and the lower courts, such as Federal Cases, Howard's Reports, McLean's Reports, Ohio State Reports, Wisconsin Reports, etc., but also the various law periodicals, for example, the American Law Register, the Legal Intelligencer, and the Western Law Journal. Some important cases have been published in pamphlet form, while two at least are more minutely set forth in books; a volume is devoted to the Oberlin-Wellington rescue case, and several relate to the trial of Anthony Burns.

11. Periodicals and Newspapers

In marked contrast with the legal reports and law periodicals, little can be gleaned from the popular magazines of fugitive slave days. The ethics of resistance to the laws for the recovery of runaways is discussed in the North American Review for July, 1850, and in the Democratic Review, Vol. V, 1851, and incidents typical of the experience of the underground operator and his confederates are recited in Once a Week for June, 1862. Careful and extended search has revealed nothing in the better known periodicals published during the War and the two decades following. Recently, however, abolitionists have become retrospective and reminiscent, and the tales of their midnight adventures in contravention of those laws of their country which they deemed subversive of the "higher law" begin to appear in periodicals and newspapers. For example, the first of a series of stories, which are founded upon facts, was printed in the Lake Shore and Home Magazine for July, 1887, an article on the Underground Railroad appeared in the Magazine of Western History for March, 1887, and a "symposium" of reminiscences was published in the Firelands Pioneer for July, 1888. Articles of a miscellaneous nature, in which points of interest are brought out, have been appearing in some of the monthly magazines within more recent years, for instance, in the Atlantic Monthly, the Century Magazine, and the New England Magazine.

Only vague and rare references to the Underground Railroad and its workings are made in the newspapers of ante-bellum days, and these are of little value. The Liberator was fierce in its opposition to the Fugitive Slave Laws, and contains many stories of fugitives, but in this, as in less radical newspapers, the editor observed a discreet silence concerning the secret efforts of his colaborers in emancipating the bondman. It is necessary, therefore, to rely upon the long delayed accounts contributed by operators now advanced in years to the columns of the press. In 1885, interesting articles were printed in the Western Star, of Indiana, and the New Lexington (Ohio) Tribune, and since then, especially since 1890, many others have been published. These have been patiently gathered, and form a part of the author's collections.

12. Histories of Religious Societies

Materials relative to the attitude of various religious denominations towards slavery are to be found in the histories of the different church organizations, such as William Hodgson's The Society of Friends in the Nineteenth Century, Dr. H. N. McTyeire's History of Methodism, and Dr. R. E. Thompson's History of the Presbyterian Churches in the United States.

Other works, for example A. C. Applegarth's Quakers in Pennsylvania and S. B. Weeks' Southern Quakers and Slavery, which, while dealing with a single denomination, are not to be regarded as denominational histories in any strict sense, contain points of interest and value.

13. Materials Bearing on Legislation

The study of our colonial legislation supplies ample proof that the harboring of the hunted slave early became a source of annoyance to slave-owners. Laws against this misdemeanor, with curious penalties attached, are included in the collections of statutes of various colonies, for example, in the Laws and Ordinances of New Netherlands, the Maryland Archives (Assembly Proceedings), the Acts of the Province of New York, the Province Laws of Pennsylvania, the Laws of Virginia, etc. These statutes have been made accessible through their publication in series of volumes, a good collection of which may be found in the State Library in Boston. Among the most important editions are Leaming and Spicer's collection for New Jersey, Hening's series of Virginia Statutes at Large, Bacon's collection for Maryland, and Iredell's edition of South Carolina Statutes.

The history of our national legislation respecting fugitive slaves may be traced in outline in the Journals of the Senate and House. For the voicing of the need of this legislation, which one would naturally expect to find in the speeches of members from the Southern states, one must turn to the Annals of Congress, covering the period from 1789 to 1824, the Congressional Debates, for the period from 1824 to 1837, and the Congressional Globe from 1833 to 1864. The provisions of the Fugitive Slave laws one may find, of course, in the Statutes at Large, and some of the effects of the law of 1850 may be studied in a pamphlet entitled The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims, compiled by Samuel May, Jr., and first published in 1856. An enlarged edition of this pamphlet was issued in 1861.

14. Contemporaneous and Modern Books on Slavery

Under this heading are brought for convenience several different classes of books on slavery. The first of these classes comprises the three small volumes, published during the interval from 1816 to 1826, in which immediate emancipation was advocated by the Rev. George Bourne, the Rev. James Duncan, and the Rev. John Rankin. Our interest here in the teaching of these men arises primarily from the circumstance that two of them, at least, are known to have done what they could to advance the work of the Underground Railroad, while all of them lived, at the time of the appearance of their books, on or near the border line over which came the trembling fugitive in search of freedom.

Another class is made up of volumes descriptive of slavery. Such are Mrs. Frances A. Kemble's Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1836-1839, Frederick Law Olmsted's Cotton Kingdom, G. M. Weston's Progress of Slavery in the United States, and a book that has but recently come from the press, Edward Ingle's Southern Sidelights.

In a third class must be grouped such recent monographs as Mrs. Marion G. McDougall's Fugitive Slaves, and Miss Mary Tremaine's Slavery in the District of Columbia. The former has been found to be especially serviceable, not only because of its subject matter, but also because of its numerous and accurate references and its long list of notable fugitive slave cases.

15. Secondary Works

One will seek in vain in the secondary works for an adequate account of the Underground Railroad, or a proper estimate of its importance, whether one looks in the general histories of the United States, such as the works of Von Holst, Schouler, and Rhodes, the more condensed books of which we have an example in Prof. J. W. Burgess's The Middle Period, or the histories of slavery, like Wilson's Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Greeley's American Conflict, Williams' History of the Negro Race, and Willey's History of the Anti-Slavery Cause in State and Nation. These works are important for their discussions from different points of view of the political forces and constitutional questions involved in the struggle for emancipation, and in general they present descriptions of the famous contested fugitive slave cases and cases of rescue, but they have failed, on account of the small amount of evidence hitherto available, to arrive at a proper view of the political significance of the underground system.

16. Libraries

While the great mass of evidence that has made this volume possible was collected by field work, the author did not neglect to search libraries, both public and private, in the prosecution of his undertaking. He was able to make use of the public libraries of Cincinnati, besides the private library of Major E. C. Dawes of that city, the state library, and the library of Ohio State University at Columbus, the library of C. M. Burton, Esq., of Detroit, Michigan, and during two years' residence in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he was able to avail himself of the splendid collections of anti-slavery books and pamphlets to be found in the Boston Public Library and the library of Harvard University. The materials for the chapter on "Prosecutions of Underground Railroad Men" were gathered in the Harvard Law Library.

---

[PRINTED COLLECTIONS OF UNDERGROUND RAILROAD INCIDENTS]

Levi Coffin. Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, the Reputed President of the Underground Railroad; being a Brief History of the Labors of a Lifetime in Behalf of the Slave, with the Stories of Numerous Fugitives, who gained their Freedom through his Instrumentality; and Many Other Incidents. Second Edition. Cincinnati, 1880.

Ascott R. Hope (a nom de plume for Robert Hope Moncrieff). Heroes in Homespun, 1894.

H. U. Johnson. From Dixie to Canada. Romances and Realities of the Underground Railroad. (Reprinted from the Lake Shore and Home Magazine.) Vol. I. Orwell, Ohio, 1894.

Rev. W. M. Mitchell. The Underground Railroad. London, 1860.

Eber M. Pettit. Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad; comprising Many Thrilling Incidents of the Escape of Fugitives from Slavery, and the Perils of those who aided them. Fredonia, N. Y., 1879.

R. C. Smedley. History of the Underground Railroad in Chester and the Neighboring Counties of Pennsylvania. Lancaster, Pa., 1883.

William Still. Underground Railroad Records. Revised Edition. With a Life of the Author. Narrating the Hardships, Hairbreadth Escapes, and Death Struggles of the Slaves in their Efforts for Freedom. Together with Sketches of Some of the Eminent Friends of Freedom, and Most Liberal Aiders and Advisers of the Road. Hartford, Conn., 1886.