The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom: A comprehensive history

by Wilbur Henry Siebert

In North Carolina underground methods are known to have been employed by white persons of respectability as early as 1819. We are informed that "Vestal Coffin organized the Underground Railroad near the present Guilford College in 1819. Addison Coffin, his son, entered its service as a conductor in early youth and still survives in hale old age.... Vestal's cousin, Levi Coffin, became an anti-slavery apostle in early youth and continued unflinching to the end. His early years were spent in North Carolina, whence he helped many slaves to reach the West."[101] Levi Coffin removed to Indiana in 1826. Of his own and his cousin's activities in behalf of slaves while still a resident of North Carolina, Mr. Coffin writes: "Runaway slaves used frequently to conceal themselves in the woods and thickets of New Garden, waiting opportunities to make their escape to the North, and I generally learned their places of concealment and rendered them all the service in my power.... These outlying slaves knew where I lived, and, when reduced to extremity of want or danger, often came to my room, in the silence and darkness of the night, to obtain food or assistance. In my efforts to aid these fugitives I had a zealous coworker in my friend and cousin Vestal Coffin, who was then, and continued to the time of his death—a few years later—a staunch friend to the slave."[102] When Levi Coffin emigrated in 1826 to southeastern Indiana, he did not give up his active interest in the fleeing slave, and his house at Newport (now Fountain City) became a centre at which three distinct lines of Underground Road converged. It is probable, however, that wayfarers from bondage found aid from pioneer settlers in Indiana before Friend Coffin's arrival. John F. Williams, of Economy, Indiana, says that fugitives "commenced coming in 1820," and he denominated himself "an agent since 1820," although he "never kept a depot till 1852."[103] It is scarcely necessary to make a showing of testimony to prove that an expansion of routes like that taking place in Ohio and states farther east occurred also in Indiana.

It is doubtful at what time stations first came to exist in Illinois. Mr. H. B. Leeper, an old resident of that state, assigns their origin to the years 1819 and 1820, at which time a small colony of anti-slavery people from Brown County, Ohio, settled in Bond County, southern Illinois. Emigrations from this locality to Putnam County, about 1830, led, he thinks, to the establishment there of a new centre for this work. These settlers were persons that had left South Carolina on account of slavery, and during their residence in Brown County, Ohio, had accepted the abolitionist views of the Rev. James Gilliland, a Presbyterian preacher of Red Oak; and in Illinois they did not shrink from putting their principles into practice. This account is plausible, and as it is substantiated in certain parts by facts from the history of Brown County, Ohio, it may be considered probable in those parts that are and must remain without corroboration. Concerning his father Mr. Leeper writes: "John Leeper moved from Marshall County, Tennessee, to Bond County, Illinois, in 1816. Was a hater of slavery.... Remained in Bond County until 1823, then moved to Jacksonville, Morgan County, and in 1831 to Putnam County, and in 1833 to Bureau County, Illinois.... My father's house was always a hiding-place for the fugitive from slavery."[104] On the basis of this testimony, and the probability in the case, we may believe that the underground movement in Illinois dates back, at least, to the time of the admission of Illinois into the Union, that is, to 1818. Soon after 1835, the movement seems to have become well established, and to have increased in importance with considerable rapidity till the War.

It is a fact worthy of note that the years that witnessed the beginnings in Ohio, Indiana, North Carolina and Illinois of this curious method of assailing the slave power, precede but slightly those that witnessed the formulation of three several bills in Congress designed to strengthen the first Fugitive Slave Law. The three measures were drafted during the interval from 1818 to 1822.

The abolitionist enterprises of the more western states, Iowa and Kansas, came too late to be in any way connected with the proposal of these bills. The settlement of these territories was, of course, considerably behind that of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, but the nearness of the new regions to a slaveholding section insured the opportunity for Underground Railroad work as soon as settlement should begin. Professor L. F. Parker, of Tabor College, Iowa, has sketched briefly the successive steps in the opening of his state to occupancy. "The Black-Hawk Purchase opened the eastern edge of Iowa to the depth of 40 or 50 miles to the whites in 1833. The strip ... west of that which included what is now Grinnell was not opened to white occupancy till 1843, and it was ten years later before the white residents in this county numbered 500. Grinnell was settled in 1854, when central and western Iowa was merely dotted by a few hamlets of white men, and seamed by winding paths along prairie ridges and through bridgeless streams."[105] One of the early settlers in southeastern Iowa was J. H. B. Armstrong, who had been familiar with the midnight appeals of escaping slaves in Fayette County, Ohio. Mr. Armstrong removed to the West in 1839, and settled in Lee County, Iowa. His proximity to the northeastern boundary of Missouri seems to have involved him in Underground Railroad work from the start, on the route running to Salem and Denmark. When in 1852 Mr. Armstrong moved to Appanoose County, and located within four miles of the Missouri line, among a number of abolitionists, he found himself even more concerned with secret projects to help slaves to Canada. The lines of travel of fugitive slaves that extended east throughout the entire length of Iowa were more or less associated with Kansas men and Kansas movements, and their development is, therefore, to be assigned to the time of the outbreak of the struggle over Kansas (1854). Residents of Tabor in southwestern Iowa, and of Grinnell in central Iowa, agree in designating 1854 as the year in which their Underground Railroad labors began. The Rev. John Todd, one of the founders of the college colony of Tabor, is authority for the statement that the first fugitives arrived in the summer of 1854.[106] Professor Parker states that Grinnell was a stopping-place for the hunted slave from the time of its founding in 1854.

We may summarize our findings in regard to the expansion of the Underground Railroad, then, by saying that it had grown into a wide-spread "institution" before the year 1840, and in several states it had existed in previous decades. This statement coincides with the findings of Dr. Samuel G. Howe in Canada, while on a tour of investigation in 1863. He reports that the arrivals of runaway slaves in the provinces, at first rare, increased early in the century; that some of the fugitives, rejoicing in the personal freedom they had gained and banishing all fear of the perils they must endure, went stealthily back to their former homes and brought away their wives and children. The Underground Road was of great assistance to these and other escaping slaves, and "hundreds," says Dr. Howe, "trod this path every year, but they did not attract much public attention."[107] It does not escape Dr. Howe's consideration, however, that the fugitive slaves in Canada were soon brought to public notice by the diplomatic negotiations between England and the United States during the years 1826-1828, the object being, as Mr. Clay, the Secretary of State, himself declared, "to provide for a growing evil." The evidence gathered from surviving abolitionists in the states adjacent to the lakes shows an increased activity of the Underground Road during the period 1830-1840. The reason for flight given by the slave was, in the great majority of cases, the same, namely, fear of being sold to the far South. It is certainly significant in this connection that the decade above mentioned witnessed the removal of the Indians from the Gulf states, and, in the words of another contemporary observer and reporter, "the consequent opening of new and vast cotton fields."[108] The swelling emphasis laid upon the value of their escaped slaves by the Southern representatives in Congress, and by the South generally, resounded with terrific force at length in the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. That act did not, as it appears, check or diminish in any way the number of underground rescues. In spite of the exhibit on fugitive slaves made in the United States census report of 1860, which purports to show that the number of escapes was about a thousand a year, it is difficult to doubt the consensus of testimony of many underground agents, to the effect that the decade from 1850 to 1860 was the period of the Road's greatest activity in all sections of the North.[109]

It is not known when the name "Underground Railroad" came to be applied to these secret trails, nor where it was first applied to them. According to Mr. Smedley the designation came into use among slave-hunters in the neighborhood of Columbia soon after the Quakers in southeastern Pennsylvania began their concerted action in harboring and forwarding fugitives. The pursuers seem to have had little difficulty in tracking slaves as far as Columbia, but beyond that point all trace of them was generally lost. All the various methods of detection customary in such cases were resorted to, but failed to bring the runaways to view. The mystery enshrouding these disappearances completely bewildered and baffled the slave-owners and their agents, who are said to have declared, "there must be an Underground Railroad somewhere."[110] As this work reached considerable development in the district indicated during the first decade of this century the account quoted is seen to contain an anachronism. Railroads were not known either in England or the United States until about 1830, so that the word "railroad" could scarcely have received its figurative application as early as Mr. Smedley implies.

The Hon. Rush R. Sloane, of Sandusky, Ohio, gives the following account of the naming of the Road: "In the year 1831, a fugitive named Tice Davids came over the line and lived just back of Sandusky. He had come direct from Ripley, Ohio, where he crossed the Ohio River....

"When he was running away, his master, a Kentuckian, was in close pursuit and pressing him so hard that when the Ohio River was reached he had no alternative but to jump in and swim across. It took his master some time to secure a skiff, in which he and his aid followed the swimming fugitive, keeping him in sight until he had landed. Once on shore, however, the master could not find him. No one had seen him; and after a long ... search the disappointed slave-master went into Ripley, and when inquired of as to what had become of his slave, said ... he thought 'the nigger must have gone off on an underground road.' The story was repeated with a good deal of amusement, and this incident gave the name to the line. First the 'Underground Road,' afterwards 'Underground Railroad.'"[111] A colored man, the Rev. W. M. Mitchell, who was for several years a resident of southern Ohio, and a friend of fugitives, gives what appears to be a version of Mr. Sloane's story.[112] These anecdotes are hardly more than traditions, affording a fair general explanation of the way in which the Underground Railroad got its name; but they cannot be trusted in the details of time, place and occasion. Whatever the manner and date of its suggestion, the designation was generally accepted as an apt title for a mysterious means of transporting fugitive slaves to Canada.