The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom: A comprehensive history

by Wilbur Henry Siebert

The change of sentiment in the North from passive acquiescence in the law to active resistance to it is best seen, perhaps, in the history of the so-called personal liberty laws. The real object of these statutes was to impair the operation of the national Fugitive Slave Law, although their proposed object was in most cases to prevent the removal of free colored citizens to the South under the claim that they were fugitive slaves. These statutes were passed by the legislatures of various states during the period of a little more than thirty years from 1824 to 1858, the greater number being enacted after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854. The first two in the series were those enacted by Indiana and Connecticut in 1824 and 1838 respectively, and provided that on appeal fugitives might have a trial by jury. In 1840 Vermont and New York framed laws granting jury trial, and also providing attorneys to defend fugitives. In 1842 the Prigg decision gave the occasion for a new class of statutes; the release of state authorities from the execution of the Slave Law by the opinion handed down by Justice Story was taken advantage of in Massachusetts, Vermont, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, and the officers of the states were forbidden from performing the duties imposed by the law of 1793. The decade from 1850 to 1860 is marked by a fresh crop of these personal liberty acts, due to the sentiment aroused by the law of 1850 and aggravated by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. As the new national law avoided the employment of state officers, state legislation was now directed in the main to limiting the powers of the executors of the laws as far as possible, and depriving them of the facilities of action. Thus, the new laws generally provided counsel for any one arrested as a fugitive; secured to him a trial surrounded by the usual safeguards; prohibited the use of state jails; and forbade state officers to issue writs or give aid to the claimant. The penalty for the violation of these provisions was a heavy fine and imprisonment. "Such acts," it is said, "were passed in Vermont, Connecticut and Rhode Island, in Massachusetts, Michigan and Maine. Later, laws were also enacted in Wisconsin, Kansas, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Of the other Northern States, two only, New Jersey and California, gave any official sanction to the rendition of fugitives. In New Hampshire, New York, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota, however, no full personal liberty laws were passed."[723]

Notwithstanding the disposition shown in many parts of the free states to protect fugitive settlers, the Slave Law of 1850 spread consternation and distress among them, and caused numbers to leave the little homes they had established for themselves, and renew their search for liberty. Perhaps in no community of the North did fugitive settlers feel themselves more secure than in Boston, the city of Garrison, Phillips and Parker; here they were gathered together by the Rev. Leonard B. Grimes, a colored man, who soon organized a church of fugitive slaves, and such was the feeling of confidence among them that in 1849 a building was begun for this unique congregation. Within a few months, however, the new Slave Law was enacted, and wrung from this band of runaways a cry of anguish that may be justly regarded as expressing the distress of the people of this class in all quarters of the free states. At a meeting of the Boston refugees, held October 5, 1850, an appeal to the clergy of Massachusetts was issued, in the preamble of which was embodied the slaves' view of their own situation, and their pitiful entreaty for help. As "trembling, proscribed and hunted fugitives ... now scattered through the various towns and villages of Massachusetts, and momentarily liable to be seized by the strong arm of government, and hurried back to stripes, tortures and bondage ..." they implored the clergy to "'lift up (their) voices like a trumpet' against the Fugitive Slave Bill, recently adopted by Congress...."[724] The church building of the fugitive settlers "was arrested midway towards its completion, and the members were scattered in wild dismay. More than forty fled to Canada. One of their number, Shadrach, was seized, but more fortunate than the hapless Sims, who had no fellowship with them, he succeeded in making his escape."[725] An individual case that illustrates the sudden disaster experienced by numerous households throughout the North was recorded by the Rev. J. S. C. Abbott, in January, 1852. The case occurred in Boston in 1851: "A colored girl, eighteen years of age, a few years ago escaped from slavery at the South. Through scenes of adventure and peril she found her way to Boston, obtained employment, secured friends, and became a consistent member of a Methodist church. She became interested in a very worthy young man, of her own complexion, who was a member of the same church. They were soon married. Their home, though humble, was the abode of piety and contentment.... Seven years passed away; they had two little boys, one six and the other four years of age. These children, the sons of a free father, but of a mother who had been a slave, by the laws of our Southern states were doomed to their mother's fate. These Boston boys, born beneath the shadow of Faneuil Hall, the sons of a free citizen of Boston, and educated in the Boston free schools, were, by the compromises of the Constitution, admitted to be slaves, the property of a South Carolinian planter. The Boston father had no right to his own sons. The law, however, had long been considered a dead letter. The Christian mother, as she morning and evening bowed with her children in prayer, felt that they were safe from the slave-hunter, surrounded as they were by the churches, the schools, and the free institutions of Massachusetts.

"The Fugitive Slave Law was enacted. It revived the hopes of the slave-owners. A young, healthy, energetic mother, with two fine boys, was a rich prize.... Good men began to say: 'We must enforce this law; it is one of the compromises of the Constitution.' Christian ministers began to preach: 'The voice of the law is the voice of God. There is no higher rule of duty.'... The poor woman was panic-stricken. Her friends gathered around her and trembled for her. Her husband was absent from home, a seaman on board one of our Liverpool packets. She was afraid to get out of doors lest some one from the South should see her and recognize her. One day, as she was going to the grocery for some provisions, her quick and anxious eye caught a glimpse of a man prowling around, whom she immediately recognized as from the vicinity of her old home of slavery. Almost fainting with terror, she hastened home, and, taking her two children by the hand, fled to the house of a friend. She and her trembling children were hid in the garret. In less than one hour after her escape, the officer with a writ came for her arrest.

"... At midnight, her friends took her in a hack, and conveyed her, with her children, to the house of her pastor. A prayer-meeting had been appointed there, at that hour, in behalf of the suffering sister. A small group of stricken hearts were assembled.... Groanings and lamentations filled the room. No one could pray.... Other fugitives were there, trembling in view of a doom more dreadful to them than death. After an hour of weeping ... they took this Christian mother and her children in a hack, and conveyed them to one of the Cunard steamers, which fortunately was to sail for Halifax the next day.... Her brethren and sisters of the church raised a little money from their scanty means to pay her passage, and to save her for a few days from starving, after her first arrival in the cold land of strangers. Her husband soon returned to Boston, to find his home desolate, his wife and his children exiles in a foreign land.

"I think that this narrative may be relied upon as accurate. I received the facts from the lips of one, a member of the church, who was present at that midnight 'weeping-meeting,' before the Lord. Such is slavery in Boston, in the year 1852. Has the North nothing to do with slavery?"[726]

In localities nearer to slave territory than Boston, and in places where anti-slavery sentiment was perhaps less pronounced, it may be supposed that terror was not less prevalent among fugitive settlers. The members of the colored community near Sandy Lake in northwestern Pennsylvania, many of whom had purchased small farms and had them partly paid for, sold out or gave away their farms and went to Canada in a body.[727] The sudden disappearance of refugees from their habitations in various other places as soon as the character of the new law became noised abroad was a phenomenon the cause of which was unmistakable. Of the many that thus vanished from their accustomed haunts,[728] Josiah Henson, writing in 1852, said: "Some have found their way to England, but the mass are flying to Canada, where they feel themselves secure. Already several thousands have gone thither, and have added considerably to the number already settled, or partially settled, in that part of the British dominions...."[729] As Mr. Henson was a worker among the refugees in Canada he was in a position to speak from his personal knowledge, and his testimony is sustained by that of the Rev. Anthony Bingey, an escaped slave, who helped receive fugitives at Amherstburg, Ontario, one of the chief landing-places of the negro emigrants from the United States. Mr. Bingey states that after the Fugitive Slave Law took effect the runaways came there "by fifties every day, like frogs in Egypt." Before that time "many had settled in the States, but after the Fugitive Slave Law they could be taken, so they came in from all parts."[730] Sumner estimated that, altogether, "as many as six thousand Christian men and women, meritorious persons,—a larger band than that of the escaping Puritans,—precipitately fled from homes which they had established" to British soil. The Liberator published a statement, made in February, 1851, that the African Methodist and Baptist churches of Buffalo, New York, had both lost a large number of members, the loss of the former being given as one hundred. The Baptist church of the colored people of Rochester, in the same state, out of a membership of one hundred and fourteen, lost one hundred and twelve, including the pastor. The African Baptist church of Detroit lost eighty-four members at this time.[731]

One must not imagine, however, that all the fugitives migrated beyond the borders of the free states. No doubt a considerable number, more daring than the rest,[732] or in some way favored by circumstances, chose to remain and run the risk of discovery. Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson asserts that "For many years fugitive slaves came to Massachusetts and remained, this lasting until the Fugitive Slave Law was passed in 1850, and longer. Even after that period we tried to keep them in Worcester, where I then lived, it being a strong anti-slavery place, and they often stayed."[733] Some of the fugitives that were induced to move by the Slave Law only passed from one state into another, instead of continuing their journey to regions beyond the jurisdiction of a United States commissioner. Of a company of blacks dwelling near the home of Elijah F. Pennypacker in Chester County, Pennsylvania, at the time of the enactment of the law of 1850, it is said that while some went to Canada, some went to New York and some to Massachusetts.[734] It was noted above that the new church of the fugitives of Boston was stopped midway in the process of building by the promulgation of the act, but it is significant that the structure was completed soon after. Evidently not all of the refugees departed from the city of their adoption. It is related that "When the first fury of the storm had blown over, Mr. Grimes set himself with redoubled energy to repair the wastes that had been made. He collected money from the charitable, and purchased the members of his church out of slavery, that they might return without fear to the fold. He made friends among the rich, who advanced funds for the completion of his church. At length it was finished, and, as if for an omen of good, was dedicated on the first day when Burns stood for trial before Commissioner Loring."[735] Runaways entering the free states for the first time after the subsidence of the paroxysm of fear among their fellows sometimes remained in neighborhoods where the conditions were supposed to be favorable to their safety. Some of these were never disturbed, and consequently never went to Canada at all.

Among the fugitive settlers in the Northern states there were some at least that became widely known among abolitionists and others as active agents of the Underground Railroad. Frederick Douglass was one of these, and during his residence in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and later during his residence in Rochester, New York, he was able to help many runaways. The Rev. J. W. Loguen, who became a bishop of the African Methodist Church about 1869, settled in Syracuse, New York, in 1841, and became immediately one of the managers of secret operations there. In his hospitable home, Samuel J. May relates, was fitted up an apartment for fugitive slaves, and, for years before the Emancipation Act, scarcely a week passed without some one, in his flight from slavedom to Canada, enjoyed shelter and repose at Elder Loguen's."[736] Lewis Hayden, for many years a prominent citizen of Boston, who owed his liberty to the self-sacrificing efforts of the Rev. Calvin Fairbank and Miss Delia Webster in September, 1844,[737] made a practice of harboring slaves in his house, number 66 Phillips Street. "Some there are," a recent writer declares, "who well remember when William Craft was in hiding here from the slave-catchers, and how Lewis Hayden had placed two kegs of gunpowder on the premises, resolved to blow up his house rather than surrender the fugitive. The heroic frenzy of the resolute black face, as with match in hand Hayden stood waiting the man-stealers, those who saw it declare that they can never forget."[738]

William Wells Brown, who distinguished himself as an anti-slavery lecturer in this country and England, rendered considerable service to fellow-fugitives shortly after his escape from Missouri about 1840.[739] Securing employment on a Lake Erie steamboat, he was able to provide the means of transportation for many runaways across the lake. As the boat frequently touched at Cleveland on its trips to and fro between Buffalo and Detroit, Mr. Brown made an arrangement with some Cleveland friends to furnish transportation, which was done without charge, for any negroes they might wish to send to Canada. The result was that delegations of anxious refugees were often taken aboard at the Cleveland wharf. Brown engaged in this service in the early forties, and his companies were therefore small, but he sometimes gave passage to four or five at one time. "In the year 1842," he says, "I conveyed, from the first of May to the first of December, sixty-nine fugitives over Lake Erie to Canada. In 1843 I visited Malden, in upper Canada, and counted seventeen in that small village whom I had assisted in reaching Canada."[740] John W. Jones, a respected citizen of Elmira, New York, made his way in 1844 from Virginia to the city where he still lives. During the following year he succeeded in aiding two younger brothers to join him, and thereafter he continued, in coöperation with Mr. Jervis Langdon and other abolitionists of Elmira, to succor his brethren in their search for places of refuge. After the construction of the Northern Central Railroad through Elmira, Mr. Jones effected an arrangement with some of the employees of that road by which his friends could be carried through to the Canadian border in baggage-cars. At the same time he was in regular correspondence with William Still, the agent of the central underground station at Philadelphia, who frequently sent him companies of passengers requiring immediate transportation.[741] John H. Hooper, a fugitive from the Eastern Shore of Maryland and an acquaintance there of Fred Douglass, kept a station at Troy, New York, where he settled.[742] Louis Washington, who fled from Richmond, Virginia, to Columbus, Ohio, became a conductor of the Underground Road at that point. Mr. James Poindexter, a well-known colored clergyman of Columbus, knew Washington intimately, and testifies that he had teams and wagons with which he conveyed the midnight pilgrims on their way.[743] There are other cases of fugitive settlers that became members of the large company of underground operators. But a sufficient number have been mentioned to indicate that they were not rare. The first and the last of the seven named did not continue long in the status of escaped slaves. Frederick Douglass secured his liberty in a legal way through the payment by English friends of the sum of $750 to his master. Louis Washington purchased his own freedom. The other five, so far as known, were never relieved by the payment of money from the claims of their masters. Most, if not all, of these men remained in the Northern states after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.