The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom: A comprehensive history

by Wilbur Henry Siebert

The dismissal without proper authority of seven fugitives from the custody of their captors at Sandusky, Ohio, by Mr. Rush R. Sloane, a lawyer of that city, led to the institution of two suits against him by Mr. L. F. Weimer, the claimant of three of the slaves. The suits were tried before the District Court of the United States at Columbus, Ohio, in 1854, and a verdict for $3,000 and costs was returned in favor of the slaveholder. The costs amounted to $330.30, and the defendant had also to pay $1,000 in attorneys' fees. Some friends of Mr. Sloane in Sandusky formed a committee and collected $393, an amount sufficient to pay the court and marshal's costs, but the judgment and the other expenses were borne by the defendant individually.[812]

The burden of the penalty, of which, as we have just seen, a small fraction was assumed by sympathizers with the offender in the case of Mr. Sloane, was altogether removed by friendly contributors in the case of another citizen of Sandusky. Two negroes from Kentucky, who were being cared for at the house of Mr. F. D. Parish, were protected from arrest by their benefactor in February, 1845. As Parish was a fearless agent of the Underground Road, the fugitives were not seen afterwards in northern Ohio. The result was that Parish was required to undergo three trials, and in the last, in 1849, the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Ohio fined him $500, the estimated value of the slaves at the time. This sum, together with the costs and expenses, amounting to as much more, was paid by friends of Mr. Parish, who made up the necessary amount by subscriptions of one dollar each.[813]

It will have been noticed that the Van Zandt and Parish cases were in litigation for about five years each. A famous Illinois case, that of Dr. Richard Eells, occupied the attention of the courts and of the public more or less during an entire decade. The incidents that gave rise to this case occurred in Adams County, Illinois, in 1842. In that year Mr. Eells was indicted for secreting a slave owing service to Chauncey Durkee, of Missouri, and was convicted and sentenced to pay a fine of $400 and the costs of the prosecution. The case was taken on writ of error first to the Supreme Court of the state, and after the death of Mr. Eells to the Supreme Court of the United States. In both instances the judgment of the original tribunal was confirmed. The decision of the federal court was reached at its December term for 1852.[814]

It was sometimes made clear in the courts that the defendants in cases arising under the Fugitive Slave laws were persons in the habit of evading the requirements of these laws. This is true of the case of Ray vs. Donnell and Hamilton, which was tried before the United States Circuit Court in Indiana, at the May term, 1849. A slave woman, Caroline, and her four children fled from Kemble County, Kentucky, and found shelter in a barn near Clarksburg, Indiana. Here they were discovered by Woodson Clark, a farmer living in the neighborhood, who took measures immediately to inform their master, while the slaves were removed to a fodder-house for safe-keeping. In some way Messrs. Donnell and Hamilton learned of the capture of the negroes by Mr. Clark, and secured a writ of habeas corpus in their behalf; but, if the testimony of Mr. Clark's son, supported by certain circumstantial evidence, is to be credited, the blacks were released from custody by the personal efforts of the defendants, and not by legal process. Considerable evidence conflicting with that just mentioned appears to have had little weight with the jury, for it gave a verdict for the claimant and assessed his damages at $1,500.[815]

In the trial of Mitchell, an abolitionist of the town of Indiana, Pennsylvania, in 1853, for harboring two fugitives, some of the evidence was intended to show that he was connected with a "regularly organized association," the business of which was "to entice negroes from their owners, and to aid them in escaping to the North." The slaves he was charged with harboring had been given employment on his farm in the country, where, as it was thought, they would be secure. After remaining about four months they were apprised of danger and escaped. Justice Grier charged the jury to "let no morbid sympathy, no false respect for pretended 'rights of conscience,' prevent it from judging the defendant justly." A verdict of $500 was found for the plaintiff.[816]

Penalties for hindering the arrest of a fugitive slave were imposed in two other noted cases, which deserve mention here, although they are considered at length in another connection. One of these was Booth's case, with which the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, and the District and Supreme Courts of the United States dealt between the years 1855 and 1858. The sentence pronounced against Mr. Booth included imprisonment for one month and a fine of $1,000 and costs—$1,451 in all.[817] The other case was what is commonly known as the Oberlin-Wellington case, tried in the United States District Court at Cleveland, Ohio, in 1858 and 1859. Only two out of the thirty-seven men indicted were convicted, and the sentences imposed were comparatively light. Mr. Bushnell was sentenced to pay a fine of $600 and costs and to be imprisoned in the county jail for sixty days, while the sentence of the colored man, Langston, was a fine of $100 and costs and imprisonment for twenty days.

In all of the cases thus far considered the charges upon which the transgressors of the Fugitive Slave laws were prosecuted were, in general terms, harboring and concealing runaways, obstructing their arrest, or aiding in their rescue. There was, however, one case in which the crime alleged in the indictment was much more serious, being nothing less than treason against the United States. This was the famous Christiana case, marked not only by the nature of the indictment, but by the organized resistance to arrest made by the slaves and their friends, and by the violent death of one of the attacking party. The frequent abduction of negroes from the neighborhood of Christiana, in southeastern Pennsylvania, seems to have given occasion for the formation, about 1851, of a league for self-protection among the many colored persons living in that region.[818] The leading spirit in this association was William Parker, a fugitive slave whose house was a refuge for other runaways. On September 10, Parker and his neighbors received word from the Vigilance Committee of Philadelphia that Gorsuch, a slaveholder of Maryland, had procured warrants for the arrest of two of his slaves, known to be staying at Parker's house. When, therefore, Gorsuch with his son and some friends appeared upon the scene about daybreak on the morning of the 11th, and, having broken into the house, demanded the fugitives, the negroes lost little time in sounding a horn from one of the upper-story windows to summon their friends. From fifty to one hundred men, armed with guns, clubs and corn-cutters, soon came up. Castner Hanway and Elijah Lewis, two Quakers, who had been drawn to the place by the disturbance, declined to join the marshal's posse and help arrest the slaves; but they advised the negroes against resisting the law, and warned Gorsuch and his party to depart if they would prevent bloodshed. Neither side would yield, and a fight was soon in progress. In the course of the conflict the slave-owner was killed, his son severely wounded, and the fugitives managed to escape.

The excitement caused by this affair extended throughout the country. The President of the United States placed a company of forty-five marines at the disposal of the United States marshal, and these proceeded under orders to the place of the riot. A large number of police and special constables made search far and wide for those concerned in the rescue. Their efforts were rewarded with the arrest of thirty-five negroes and three Quakers, among the latter Hanway and Lewis, who gave themselves up. The prisoners were taken to Philadelphia and indicted by the grand jury for treason. Hanway was tried before the Circuit Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in November and December, 1851. In the trial it was shown by the defence that Mr. Hanway was a native of a Southern state, had lived long in the South, and, during his three years' residence in Pennsylvania, had kept aloof from anti-slavery organizations and meetings; his presence at the riot was proved to be accidental. Under these circumstances the charge of Justice Grier to the jury was a demonstration of the unsoundness of the indictment: the judge asked the jury to observe that a conspiracy to be classed as an act of treason must have been for the purpose of effecting something of a public nature; and that the efforts of a band of fugitive slaves in opposition to the capture of any of their number, even though they were directed by friends and went the full length of committing murder upon their pursuers, was altogether for a private object, and could not be called "levying war" against the nation. It did not take the jury long to decide the case. After an absence of twenty minutes the verdict "not guilty" was returned. One of the negroes was also tried, but not convicted. Afterward a bill was brought against Hanway and Lewis for riot and murder, but the grand jury ignored it, and further prosecution was dropped.[819]

One cannot examine the records of the various cases that have been passed in review in the preceding pages of this chapter without being struck in many instances by the character of the men that served as counsel for fugitive slaves and their friends. It not infrequently happens that one comes upon the name of a man whose principles, ability and eloquence won for him in later years positions of distinction and influence at the bar and in public life. In the Christiana case, for example, Thaddeus Stevens was a prominent figure; in the Van Zandt case Salmon P. Chase and William H. Seward presented the arguments against the Fugitive Slave Law before the United States Supreme Court;[820] Mr. Chase also appeared in Eells' case, and in the case known as ex parte Robinson, besides others of less judicial importance. Rutherford B. Hayes took part in a number of fugitive slave cases in Cincinnati, Ohio. A letter written by the ex-President in 1892 says: "As a young lawyer, from the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law until the war, I was engaged in slave cases for the fugitives, having an understanding with Levi Coffin and other directors and officers of the U. R. R. that my services would be freely given."[821] John Jolliffe, another lawyer of Cincinnati, less known than the anti-slavery advocates already mentioned, was sometimes associated with Chase and Hayes in pleading the cause of fugitives.[822] The Western Reserve was not without its members of the bar that were ready to display their legal talent in a movement well grounded in the popular mind of eastern Ohio. An illustration is afforded by the trial of the Oberlin-Wellington rescuers, when four eminent attorneys of Cleveland offered their services for the defence, declining at the same time to accept a fee. The event shows that the political aspirations of these men were not injured by their procedure, for Mr. Albert G. Riddle, who spoke first for the defence, was elected to Congress from the Cleveland district the following year, and Mr. Rufus P. Spalding, one of his associates, was similarly honored by the same district in 1862.[823] In November, 1852, the legal firm of William H. West and James Walker, of Bellefontaine, Ohio, attempted to release from custody several negroes belonging to the Piatt family of Kentucky, before their claimants could arrive to prove property. The attempt was successful, and, by prearrangement, the fugitives were taken into a carriage and driven rapidly to a neighboring station of the Underground Railroad. The funds to pay the sheriff, the court expenses and the livery hire were borne in part by Messrs. West and Walker.[824]