On their arrival at the place of destination, they were more or less jaded and warm, and hence unmarketable until properly fitted up. To facilitate this, buildings or “pens” were provided where they were well fed and given liberal rations of whiskey. Under the management of some genial dealer, they were induced to tell stories, sing songs and make merry. In this way they were soon recuperated and ready for the ordeals of another sale in which they were subjected to much the same scrutiny of body and limb that is bestowed upon a horse when the person would ascertain its physical condition.
To escape this degradation and the hardships of the southern plantations, the more intelligent and hardy of the slave population early began to flee to the free states as an asylum from cruel bondage. As if in anticipation of this, the constitution had provided for their return, and under its provisions many were restored to their masters, through the cupidity of sordid northern men, for the rewards offered.
Finding so many of their chattels escaping and the sentiment against their return growing stronger and stronger, the southern people, with the aid of abettors at the north, succeeded in 1850, in securing the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, which imposed heavy fines and even imprisonment for in any way aiding a fugitive from slavery to escape. By its provisions every man at the North was virtually made a slave catcher.
Canada now became the goal of the fugitive, and to its safe retreat thousands escaped, and yet so successful was the business of slave culture that in 1860 the whole number of persons held as mere chattels, without a vested right in land, or home, or wife, or husband, or child, or life, even, that might not be served by the will of the master, amounted to 3,953,000 souls. The bitterness of sectional feeling engendered by such a state of affairs, and the intense activity of nerve and intellect called forth thereby, can never be duly appreciated except by those who were active participants in the affairs of ten years ante bellum.
The second question, and, also, many points covered by the first, will be best answered by following the thread of these “Romances and Realities of the Underground Railroad,” gathered as they are from personal observation, extensive reading, visitations along many of the old lines, and numerous interviews and extensive correspondence with those heroic men and women who dared their fortunes and their personal liberty in the cause of humanity and right, still lingering among us, as, also, with many a passenger over this truly wonderful thoroughfare.
REFUGEES IN WASHINGTON CHURCHYARD.
CHAPTER I.
JO NORTON.
I.
So many and varied have been the changes of half a century, and so rapid the growth of the city in the past twenty-five years, that few of the present inhabitants of Washington, and less of its old-time frequenters, now ever think of the cemetery that skirted the stage road leading north from the city. True, in those by-gone days it was a popular burial place, even for the first families of the capital, but like many another “silent city” it long since fell into disuse, and consequently became for years the most desirable place near the city for an underground railroad station, and to such use it was assiduously appropriated.