HARBOR, ASHTABULA COUNTY, OHIO, IN 1860,
A PLACE OF DEPORTATION FOR FUGITIVES ON LAKE ERIE.
(From a photograph in possession of J. D. Hulbert, Esq., of Harbor, Ohio.)
Hundreds, nay, thousands of fugitives found crossing-places along the Detroit River, especially at the city of Detroit. The numerous routes of Indiana together with several of the chief routes of western Ohio poured their passengers into Detroit, thence to be transported by ferries and row-boats to the tongue of land pressing its shore-line for thirty miles from Lake Erie to Lake St. Clair upon the very borders of Michigan. The movement of slaves to this region was a fact of which Southerners early became apprised, and their efforts to recover their servants as these were about to enter the Canaan already within sight were occasionally successful, although the majority of the people of Detroit[462] and of the surrounding districts rejoiced to see the slave-catchers outwitted.
The places of deportation remaining to be mentioned are four, along the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan, namely, Milwaukee, Racine, South Port and Chicago. Of these the last-named was, doubtless, the most important, since through it chiefly were drained off the fugitives that came from Missouri over the routes of Iowa and Illinois. A single operator of Chicago, Mr. Philo Carpenter, is said to have guided not less than two hundred negroes to Canada-bound vessels.[463]
The lines of boat-service to the Canadian termini require a few words of comment. The longest line of travel on the lakes was that connecting the ports of Wisconsin and Illinois with Detroit or Amherstburg,[464] and was only approached in length by the route from Chicago to Collingwood, Ontario.[465] Five hundred miles would be a minimum statement of the distance refugees were carried by the boats of abolitionist captains from these westernmost ports to their havens of refuge. On Lake Erie the routes were, of course, much shorter, and ran up and down the lake, as well as across it. Important routes joined Toledo, Sandusky and Cleveland to Amherstburg and Detroit at one end of the lake, and Dunkirk, Ashtabula Harbor, Painesville and Cleveland with Buffalo and Black Rock at the other end of the lake. Certain boats running on these routes came to be known as abolition boats, with ample accommodations for underground passengers. Thus, we are told, such passengers "depended on a vessel named the Arrow, which for many years plied between Sandusky and Detroit, but always touched first at Malden, Canada, where the fugitives were landed."[466] Frequent use was also made of scows, sail-boats and sharpies, with which refugees could be "set across" the lake, and landed at almost any point along the shore. Small vessels, a part of whose "freight" had been received from the Underground Railroad, were often despatched to Port Burwell in the night from the warehouse of Hubbard and Company, forwarding and commission merchants of Ashtabula Harbor.[467] Similar enterprises were carried on at various other points along the lake.[468] So far as known, Lake Ontario had only a few comparatively insignificant routes: at the upper end of the lake were two, one joining Rochester and St. Catherines, the other, St. Catherines and Toronto; at the lower end of the lake, Oswego, Port Ontario and Cape Vincent seem to have been connected by lines with Kingston.
It is impossible to tell how many cities, towns and villages in Canada became terminals of the underground system. Outside of the interlake region of Ontario it is safe to name Kingston, Prescott, Montreal, Stanstead and St. John, New Brunswick. Within that region the terminals were numerous, being scattered from the southern shore of Georgian Bay to Lake Erie, and from the Detroit and Huron rivers to the Niagara. Owen Sound, Collingwood and Oro were the northernmost resorts, so far as now known. Toronto, Queen's Bush, Wellesley, Galt and Hamilton occupied territory south of these, and farther south still, in the marginal strip fronting directly on Lake Erie, there were not less than twenty more places of refuge. The most important of these were naturally those situated at either end of the strip, and along the shore-line, namely, Windsor, Sandwich and Amherstburg, New Canaan, Colchester and Kingsville, Gosfield and Buxton, Port Stanley, Port Burwell and Port Royal, Long Point, Fort Erie and St. Catherines. In the valley of the Thames also many refugees settled, especially at Chatham, Dresden and Dawn, and at Sydenham, London and Wilberforce. The names of two additional towns, Sarnia on the Huron River and Brantford on the Grand, complete the list of the known Canadian terminals. This enumeration of centres cannot be supposed to be exhaustive. A full record would take into account the localities in the outlying country districts as well as those adjoining or forming a part of the hamlets, towns and cities of the whites, whither the blacks had penetrated. The untrodden wilds of Canada, as well as her populous places, seemed hospitable to a people for whom the hardships of the new life were fully compensated by the consciousness of their possession of the rights of freemen, rights vouchsafed them by a government that exemplified the proud boast of the poet Cowper:—
"Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free!
They touch our country and their shackles fall."