After it was over, Parker, with two other colored men, knowing that arrest must follow, secreted themselves under piles of shavings in an old carpenter's shop. At night they sent four wagons in different directions as decoys for the detectives, and were carried safely away by a fifth. Many negroes hid that night in the corn shocks, and under the floors of houses, until escape could be made in safety.[212]
Castner Hanway was arrested, and arraigned before the United States court on the charge of treason; but no proof of a conspiracy to make a general and public resistance to the law could be found, and he was acquitted. Afterward it was desired to try Hanway and Lewis for "riot and murder," but the grand jury ignored the bill, and all prisoners were released. With these prosecutions the end of the affair was apparently reached, though perhaps its influence may be traced in a succeeding case.
§ 61. Miller case (1851).—A noted kidnapper from Maryland, in 1851, seized a free negro girl living at the house of Mr. Miller, in Nottingham, Pennsylvania, and took her to Baltimore. Mr. Miller followed them, and succeeded in getting her freed. He then started back, but never reached home. Search was made, and his body found upon the way. It was thought that the murder was committed in revenge for the part he had taken in the Christiana riot.[213]
§ 62. John Brown in Kansas (1858).—It was during this period also that John Brown was endeavoring to put into execution his famous plan for freeing the slaves. This is interesting, not only as typical of organized efforts to free the slaves on the plantations, but also because of its connection with other phases of the slavery question, into which we shall not attempt to enter here. His idea was first to gather as large a force as possible, then, when his men were properly drilled, to run off the slaves in large numbers; to retain the brave and strong in the mountains, and to send the weak and timid to the North by the "Underground Railroad."[214]
In December, 1858, Brown divided his forces into two divisions, and went into Missouri. Here he succeeded in freeing eleven slaves, and, though pursued by a far superior number of Missourians, took them safely into Kansas. The affair, by its boldness, created great excitement throughout the South. The Governor of Missouri offered three thousand dollars reward, and the President of the United States two hundred and fifty dollars, for Brown's capture; within a very short time he had succeeded in conveying himself and his eleven fugitives safely into Canada, and the horses which he had appropriated from the slaveholders in order to carry his protegés out of Kansas were afterward publicly sold by him in Ohio.[215]
CHAPTER IV. FUGITIVES AND THEIR FRIENDS.
§ 63. [Methods of escape.]
§ 64. [Reasons for escape.]
§ 65. [Conditions of slave life.]
§ 66. [Escapes to the woods.]
§ 67. [Escapes to the North.]
§ 68. [Use of protection papers.]
§ 69. [Fugitives disguised as whites: Craft case.]
§ 70. [Underground Railroad.]
§ 71. [Rise and growth of the system.]
§ 72. [Methods pursued.]
§ 73. [Colored agents of the Underground Railroad.]
§ 74. [Prosecutions of agents.]
§ 75. [Formal organization.]
§ 76. [General effect of escapes.]
§ 63. Methods of escape.—The great increase in the number of fugitives after 1850 was in part due to the uneasiness felt by Northern people under a law which made them co-workers with the South in a system of slave hunting, and in part to the greater ease of communication now afforded between the two sections. The knowledge that there was in the North a body of "abolitionists" eager to aid them from bondage to freedom was also spreading more widely each day among the slaves.
Public interest in the subject was more and more aroused, not only by the cases of cruelty and injustice which were forcibly brought to the attention of Northern communities, but also by the romantic and thrilling episodes of the escapes. To understand the attitude of the North toward fugitives, it is necessary to examine some of the different methods used by the fugitives in their flight. Perhaps a better point of view than that of the outside observer will be gained by placing ourselves in the position of the slave, and examining his motives for flight, the difficulties which he encountered at home, the manner in which he overcame them, and, finally, the various paths of escape then open to him, and the agencies which befriended him and forwarded him on his way.