CHURCH OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVES IN BOSTON.
This church once stood near the house of Lewis Hayden, 66 Phillips Street, Boston, Massachusetts.
(From an old engraving.)
[CHAPTER VIII]
FUGITIVE SETTLERS IN THE NORTHERN STATES
There were many fugitives from bondage that did not avail themselves of the protection afforded by the proximity of Canadian soil. For various reasons these persons remained within the borders of the free states; some were drawn by the affinities of race to seek permanent homes in communities of colored people; some, keeping the stories of their past lives hidden, found employment as well as oblivion among the crowds in cities and towns; some, choosing localities more or less remote from large centres of population, settled where the presence of Quakers, Wesleyan Methodists, Covenanters or Free Presbyterians gave them the assurance of safety and assistance; and some, after a severe experience of pioneer life in the woods of Canada, preferred to run their chances on the southern shores of the lakes, where it was easier to gain a livelihood, and whence escape could be made across the line at the first intimation of danger.
As one would suppose, it is impossible to determine with any accuracy how many fugitive settlers there were in the North at any particular time. Estimates both local and general in character have come down to us, and, naturally enough, one is inclined to attach greater value to the former than to the latter, on the score of probable correctness, but here the investigator is met by the extreme paucity of examples, which, as it happens, are confined to two towns in eastern Massachusetts, namely, Boston and New Bedford. In October, 1850, the Rev. Theodore Parker stated publicly that there were in Boston from four hundred to six hundred fugitives.[691] Concerning the refugee population of New Bedford our information is much less definite, for it is reported that in that place there were between six hundred and seven hundred colored citizens, many of whom were fugitives.[692] Nevertheless one cannot doubt that the representatives of this class were numerous and widely scattered throughout the whole territory of the free zone, for reference is made by many surviving abolitionists not only to individual refugees or single families of refugees that dwelt in their neighborhood, but even to settlements a considerable part of whose people were runaway slaves. Where conditions were peculiarly favorable it was not an unknown thing for runaways to conclude their journeys when scarcely more than within the borders of free territory. The Rev. Thomas C. Oliver, of Windsor, Canada, is authority for the statement that fugitive settlers swarmed among their Quaker protectors at Greenwich, New Jersey, on the very edge of a slave state.[693] In communities situated at greater distance from the sectional line, like Columbus[694] and Akron,[695] Ohio, Elmira[696] and Buffalo,[697] New York, and Detroit, Michigan, many fugitives are known to have lived. The Rev. Calvin Fairbank relates that, while visiting Detroit in 1849, he discovered several families he had helped from slavery living near the city. He went to see these families, and afterward wrote concerning them: "Living near the Johnsons, and like them contented and comfortable, I found the Stewart and Coleman families, for whom I had also lighted the path of freedom."[698] In the vicinity of Sandy Lake, in the northwestern part of Pennsylvania, there was a colony of colored people, most of whom were runaway slaves.[699]
Such evidence, which is local in its nature, should be considered in conjunction with the general estimates of those persons that expressed opinions after wide observation in regard to the whole number of fugitive settlers in the North. The most indefinite of these contemporary opinions is that of the veteran underground helper, Samuel J. May, who states that "hundreds ventured to remain this side of the Lakes."[700] Other judges attempt to put their estimates into figures; thus, Henry Wilson thinks that by 1850 twenty thousand had found homes in the free states;[701] Mr. Franklin B. Sanborn, admitting the inherent difficulty of the calculation, places the number at from twenty-five thousand to fifty thousand;[702] and the Canadian refugee, Josiah Henson, wrote in 1852: "It is estimated that the number of fugitive slaves in the various free states ... amounts to 50,000."[703]