The anti-slavery movement was fast becoming something more than a sentiment or an opinion with which one might try conclusions in the forum. It was fast becoming a revolutionary movement which meant force, more force, and, finally, the utmost force. All the time Frederick Douglass, like William Lloyd Garrison, was in the forward ranks. The tone of “no compromise” rang out with increasing insistence.
“Come what will,” said Douglass, “I hold it to be morally certain that sooner or later, by fair means or foul means, in peace or in blood, in judgment or in mercy, slavery is doomed to cease out of this otherwise goodly land, and liberty is destined to become the settled law of the republic.”
“I am in earnest,” said Garrison, “I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retract a single inch, and I will be heard.”
These declarations by these two conspicuous Abolitionists are aptly expressive of the growing intensity of the anti-slavery feeling. Such words called more loudly for action than for argument. What was known in the United States during the anti-slavery struggle as the “Underground Railway,” best represents all that was aggressive and militant in that contest. This so-called “railway system” was constituted and operated in defiance of law by the Abolitionists. It was Abolition in action.
But if the Underground Railway was conducted in defiance of law, it should be said that the law in its terms, spirit, and effects seemed to them who were engaged in operating the road to be in defiance of those principles of liberty and the rights of man, which they had been taught to think were higher than any positive enactment of a legislature.
The Underground Railway had none of the features of the modern railway, except the carrying of passengers, and these were limited in kind and in the direction of the travel. No one could obtain passage on this road, unless he or she were a slave, and wanted to be free. The trains ran in but one direction, and that was Northward. There were no “Jim Crow” cars, no sleepers and no smokers, and all passengers were carried free of charge. It was a railroad without stockholders, but it had innumerable directors. No dividends were paid except to passengers, and such dividends were in the form of certificates of freedom from bondage.
To be more explicit, the Underground Railway was a system of clandestine travel, extending from the borders of “Mason and Dixon’s Line” through the North and West to Canada. The residence of Mr. Douglass was one of the last stations on the line before reaching British soil. Much has been written about this mysterious railway, but the details of its activities have never been told. From September 26, 1850, to the breaking out of the Civil War, the new and rigid Fugitive Slave Law was in active operation, and it was in open violation of this measure that the Underground Railway was conducted. A slave, and sometimes an entire family or body of slaves, would make the dash for liberty, escaping across the borders of Maryland into Pennsylvania. There they found themselves in the hands of friendly Quakers, who piloted them by night to other stations, where they were secreted until a favorable opportunity presented itself to push them along farther north.
Mr. Douglass’s house in Rochester was a large three-story frame structure, situated in the centre of four acres of land on South Avenue, two miles from the business portion of the city. It stood out by itself, the nearest residence being fully five hundred feet away to the north. This was the objective point, before reaching Canada, for many slaves fleeing from the South. The tales of privation and suffering told by these men, women, and children who escaped half-clad, encountering in the wintertime snow-drifts and zero weather, made a profound impression on the people of the North through whose towns they passed and in whose homes they constantly sought protection. Thus it was that many a Northern farmer, convinced, it may be, of the right or expediency of slavery, found himself compelled, from motives of common humanity, to open his doors to these refugees, and grant their appeals for food and shelter. Many a cold winter night has a knock come to Mr. Douglass’s door, when a white-faced stranger, covered with frost and snow, would announce in whispered tones that he had a sleigh full of runaway Negroes en route for Canada. Mr. Douglass, or Mrs. Douglass in her husband’s absence, calling the boys, Lewis, Fred and Charles, would have fires started in that part of the house where fugitives were hidden away, and at an opportune time they were taken to Charlotte, seven miles from Rochester, and placed aboard a Lake Ontario steamer for Canada. These friendly white farmers had to hasten on for fear of detection, which meant terrible penalties. Thus it will be seen that the risks which their sympathy for the slave led them to take were very serious.
It required large sums of money to keep this Underground Railway system in motion. The runaways must be fed, clothed, and their passage paid across the lake to Canada. Mr. Douglass was in the lecture-field most of the time to raise money to do his part. The Female Anti-Slavery Society, with its branches throughout the North, solicited funds and clothing, and, as these unfortunate fugitives were invariably destitute, means had to be supplied them until they could secure employment under the British flag.
Besides William Still of Philadelphia, among colored people, Mr. Douglass had the active coöperation of Dr. James McCune Smith, of New York; Stephen J. Myers, of Albany; William Rich, of Troy, and Rev. J. W. Loguen, of Syracuse. Many others actively assisted in the work, including Charles Lennox Remond, William Whipper, of Philadelphia; Thomas L. Dorsey, Rev. Henry Highland Garnet, Anthony Barrier, of Brockport, N. Y., and Thomas Downing, of New York. There were not a few clashes with the law in efforts to capture and return escaping slaves, but only two or three such attempts were successful.