The occurrence of these events at the national capital during a session of Congress, gave them a significance they would not otherwise have had. That they would become the subject of much fierce debate was assured by the presence in Congress of such champions as Messrs. Giddings and Hale for the anti-slavery party, and Messrs. Foote, Toombs, Calhoun and Davis for the pro-slavery party. Mr. Calhoun expressed the view of the South when, speaking upon a resolution brought before the Senate by Mr. Hale, April 20, he recorded himself as being in favor of an act making penal "these atrocities, these piratical attempts, these wholesale captures, these robberies of seventy odd of our slaves at a single grasp." In this and in similar utterances made at the time, he foreshadowed the determination of the South to have a law that would restrain if possible from all temptations to aid or abet the escape of slaves. The result of this determination is seen in the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.
This notable voyage of the Pearl, which caused so great an excitement at the time, has been frequently chronicled, while the experiences of the young Quaker, Richard Dillingham, have been seldom recounted, though marked by the same elements of daring and resignation. In December, 1848, the close of the year of the Pearl's adventure, Mr. Dillingham was solicited by some colored people in Cincinnati, Ohio, to go to Tennessee and bring away their relatives, who were slaves under a "hard master" at Nashville. He entered upon the project, made his way into the very heart of the South and arranged with the slaves for their escape. At the time appointed his three protégés were placed in a closed carriage and driven rapidly away, Mr. Dillingham following on horseback. The party got as far as Cumberland bridge, where they were betrayed by a colored man in whom confidence had been placed, and the fugitives and their benefactor were arrested. Mr. Dillingham was committed to jail, and his bail was fixed at seven thousand dollars. At his trial, which occurred April 12, 1849, Dillingham confessed, and asked for clemency, urging by way of explanation the dependence of his aged parents upon him as a stay and protection. As to the crime for which he was held he said frankly: "I have violated your laws.... But I was prompted to it by feelings of humanity. It has been suspected ... that I was leagued with a fraternity who are combined for the purpose of committing such offences as the one with which I am charged. But ... the impression is false, I alone am guilty, I alone committed the offence, and I alone must suffer the penalty...." Yielding to his plea for clemency the jury returned a verdict for three years in the penitentiary, the mildest sentence allowed by the law for the offence. The Nashville Daily Gazette of April 13 did not conceal the fact that Mr. Dillingham belonged to a respectable family, and stated that he was not without the sympathy of those who attended the trial.[520] The prisoner himself was most grateful for the consideration shown him, and, in a letter to his betrothed written two days after his trial, he spoke of his short sentence with the deepest gratitude and thankfulness toward the court and jury and the prosecutors themselves. "My sentence," he added, "is far more lenient than my most sanguine hopes have ever anticipated."[521] The termination of the imprisonment of Dillingham was most melancholy. Separated from his aged parents, to whom he was devoted, and from the woman that was to have become his wife, his health soon proved unequal to the severe experiences of prison life; his keepers after nine months gave him respite from heavy work about the prison, and assigned him the place of steward in the hospital. He had not long been in his new station when cholera broke out among the convicts, and his services were in constant demand. His strength was soon exhausted, and about the first of August, 1850, he succumbed to the dread epidemic raging in the prison.[522]
It was the year in which young Dillingham came to his melancholy end that Mr. William L. Chaplin was found guilty of an offence similar to that for which Dillingham suffered.[523] When Mr. Charles T. Torrey, editor of the Albany Patriot, was sent to the Maryland penitentiary for aiding slaves to escape, Mr. Chaplin assumed control of Mr. Torrey's paper. Like his predecessor, Mr. Chaplin spent part of his time in the city of Washington reporting congressional proceedings for the Patriot, and like him could not be deaf to an entreaty in behalf of slaves. In 1850 Mr. Chaplin was prevailed upon to attempt the release from bondage of two negroes, one the property of Robert Toombs, the other, of Alexander H. Stephens. The sequel to this enterprise is thus recounted by Mr. George W. Clark, an intimate friend of General Chaplin's: "Suspicion was somehow awakened and watch set; the General was intercepted, arrested and imprisoned, and the attempt failed. The General gave bail, Secretary Seward being on his bond for five thousand dollars. While passing through Baltimore on his return home he was rearrested and put into ... prison there, on a charge of aiding slaves to escape from that state. The bonds required were twenty thousand dollars.... It was arranged that William R. Smith, a noble and generous-hearted Quaker, and George W. Clark should traverse the State and appeal to the friends of humanity for contributions to save the General from the fate we feared awaited him, for if his case went to trial he would probably be sentenced to fifteen years in their State Prison, which would no doubt amount to a death sentence. William R. Smith and I went to work in live earnest. An abolition merchant, Mr. Chittenden of New York, gave us three thousand dollars, the always giving Gerrit Smith gave us five thousand, other friends gave us two thousand, but we still lacked ten thousand.... We were in great distress and anxiety over the extreme situation when the generous Gerrit Smith voluntarily came again to the rescue and advanced the other ten thousand dollars." It was in this way, through the most open-handed generosity of his friends, that Mr. Chaplin was enabled to go free after being in jail only five months. Prudence dictated the sacrificing of the excessive bail rather than the braving of fortune through a trial certain to end in conviction.
We have thus far considered the recorded efforts toward the abduction of slaves made by six persons in response to the entreaty of the slaves concerned or of some of their friends. It is noteworthy that in the case of five of these persons their efforts, first or last, were calamitous, and that all were white persons. We come now to the case of Josiah Henson, exceptional in the series, by reason of the uniform success of his endeavors, and because of his race connections. Born and bred a slave, Henson at length resolved to extricate himself and family from the abjectness of their situation. "With a degree of prudence, courage and address," says Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, "which can scarcely find a parallel in any history, he managed with his wife and two children to escape to Canada. Here he learned to read, and, by his superior talent and capacity for management, laid the foundation for the fugitive settlement of Dawn...."[524] The possession of the qualities indicated in this characterization of Mr. Henson rendered him equal to such emergencies as arose in his missions to the South in search of friends and relatives of Canadian refugees.
Mr. Henson has left us the record of two journeys to the Southern states, made at the instance of James Lightfoot, a refugee of Fort Erie, Ontario.[525] Lightfoot had a number of relatives in slavery near Maysville, Kentucky, and was ready to use the little property he had accumulated during the short period of his freedom in securing the liberation of his family. Beginning the journey alone, Mr. Henson travelled on foot about four hundred miles through New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, to his destination. The fact that the Lightfoots decided it to be unsafe to make their escape at this time did not prevent their visitor from agreeing to come a year later for them, nor did it prevent him from returning to Canada with companions. He went nearly fifty miles into the interior of Kentucky, where, as he learned, there was a large party eager to set out for a land of freedom, but waiting until an experienced leader should appear. In Bourbon County he found about thirty fugitives collected from different states, and with these he started northward. Mr. Henson gives his itinerary in the following words: "We succeeded in crossing the Ohio River in safety, and arrived in Cincinnati the third night after our departure. Here we procured assistance; and, after stopping a short time to rest, we started for Richmond, Indiana. This is a town which had been settled by Quakers, and there we found friends indeed, who at once helped us on our way, without loss of time; and after a difficult journey of two weeks through the wilderness, reached Toledo, Ohio, ... and there we took passage for Canada."[526] In the autumn of the year following this abduction Mr. Henson again visited Kentucky. This time several of the Lightfoots were willing to go North with him, and a Saturday night after dark was chosen as the time for setting out. In spite of some untoward happenings during the early part of the journey, and of pursuit even to Lake Erie, the daring guide and his party of four or five were put aboard a sailing-vessel and safely landed on Canadian soil. "Words cannot describe," writes Mr. Henson, "the feelings experienced by my companions as they neared the shore; their bosoms were swelling with inexpressible joy as they mounted the seats of the boat, ready eagerly to spring forward, that they might touch the soil of the freeman. And when they reached the shore they danced and wept for joy, and kissed the earth on which they first stepped, no longer the Slave, but the Free." Mr. Henson asserts, that "by similar means to those above narrated," he was "instrumental in delivering one hundred and eighteen human beings" from bondage.[527]
Important and interesting among the abductors are the few individuals that we must call, for want of a better designation, the devotees of abduction. We have already considered a person of this type in the odd character, John Fairfield, the Virginian. There are several other persons known to have been not less zealous than he in their violation of what were held in the South to be legitimate property rights. The names of these adventurous liberators are Rial Cheadle, Alexander M. Ross, Elijah Anderson, John Mason and Harriet Tubman.
Rial Cheadle appears to have been a familiar figure among the abolitionists of southeastern Ohio. Mr. Thomas L. Gray, a reputable citizen of Deavertown, Ohio, for many years engaged in underground operations in Morgan County, vouches for the extended and aggressive work of Cheadle, who frequently stopped at Mr. Gray's house for rest and refreshment on his midnight trips to Zanesville and stations farther on.[528] Cheadle seems to have been a man of eccentricities, if not of actual aberration of mind; or his oddities may have been assumed to prevent himself being taken seriously by those he wanted to despoil. He is said to have lived in Windsor Township, Morgan County, Ohio, on the site of the present village of Stockport, and to have engaged in teaching and other occupations for a time; finally, however, he devoted himself to the work of the Underground Road. He indulged himself in old-time minstrelsy, composing songs, which he sang for the entertainment of himself and others, and he thereby increased, doubtless, the reputation for harmless imbecility, which he seems to have borne among those ignorant of his purpose. He paid occasional visits to Virginia. "As a result it is said the slaves were frequently missing, but as his arrangements were carefully made the object of his visit was usually successful.... His habits were so well known to those who gave food and shelter to the negro that they were seldom unprepared for a nocturnal visit from him.... After the Emancipation, he said he was like Simeon of old, 'ready to depart.' He died in 1867."[529]
A man differing greatly from Rial Cheadle in all respects, save the intensity of his compassion for the slave, was the abductor Alexander M. Ross. Born in 1832 in the Province of Ontario, Canada, Mr. Ross sought, when a young man, to inform himself upon the question of American slavery, not only from the teachings of some of the foremost anti-slavery leaders of England and the United States, but also from the recital of their experiences by a number of fugitive slaves that had found an asylum in the province of his birth. While he was engaged in making inquiries among the refugees, Uncle Tom's Cabin was published, and brought conviction to many minds. "To me," writes Mr. Ross, "it was a command. A deep and settled conviction impressed me that it was my duty to help the oppressed to freedom.... My resolution was taken to devote all my energies to let the oppressed go free."[530] In accordance with this resolution young Ross left Canada in November, 1856. He visited Gerrit Smith, at Peterboro, New York, who was ever ready to encourage the liberation of the slave, and who went with him to Boston, New York and Philadelphia, and westward into the states of Ohio and Indiana. The purpose of these travels was, evidently, to acquaint the intending liberator with the means to be employed by him in his new work, and with the persons in connection with whom he was to operate. Indeed, Mr. Ross distinctly says, in speaking of these visits, "I was initiated into a knowledge of the relief societies, and the methods adopted to circulate information among the slaves of the South; the routes to be taken by the slaves, after reaching the so-called free states; and the relief posts, where shelter and aid for transportation could be obtained."[531] His chief supporters, besides Gerrit Smith, were Theodore Parker and Lewis Tappan.[532]
During his expeditions Mr. Ross spread the knowledge of Canada among the slaves in the neighborhood of a number of Southern cities, such as Richmond, Virginia, Nashville, Tennessee, Columbus and Vicksburg, Mississippi, Selma and Huntsville, Alabama, Augusta, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina. His method of procedure was fixed in its details only after his arrival upon the scene of action; an ostensible interest or purpose was kept to the fore, and the real business of spreading the gospel of escape was reserved for clandestine conferences with slaves chosen on the score of intelligence and trustworthiness. These persons were informed how Canada could be best reached, and were told to spread with care the information among their fellows. If any decided within a few days that they would act upon the advice given them, explicit instructions were repeated to them, and they were supplied with compasses, knives, pistols, money and such provisions as they needed. Thus equipped, they were started on their long and dangerous journey. Occasionally, when circumstances seemed to require it, Mr. Ross would personally guide the party to a station of the Underground Road, or even accompany it to Canada; otherwise he betook himself in haste to some new field of labor. The unimpeachable character of Mr. Ross, and the early appearance of the first edition of his Recollections make his reminiscences especially valuable and worth quoting. Mr. Ross began his work at Richmond early in the year 1857. His narrative of his first venture is as follows: "On my arrival in Richmond, I went to the house of a gentleman to whom I had been directed, and who was known at the North to be a friend of freedom. I spent a few weeks in quietly determining upon the best plans to adopt. Having finally decided upon my course, I invited a number of the most intelligent, active and reliable slaves to meet me at the house of a colored preacher, on a Sunday evening. On the night appointed for this meeting, forty-two slaves came to hear what prospect there was for an escape from bondage.... I explained to them my ... purpose in visiting the slave states, the various routes from Virginia to Ohio and Pennsylvania, and the names of friends in border towns who would help them on to Canada. I requested them to circulate this information discreetly among all upon whom they could rely.... I requested as many as were ready to accept my offer, to come to the same house on the following Sunday evening, prepared to take the 'Underground Railroad' to Canada.