University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER IV

UNDERGROUND AGENTS, STATION-KEEPERS, OR CONDUCTORS

Persons opposed to slavery were, naturally, the friends of
the fugitive slave, and were ever ready to respond to his
appeals for help. Shelter and food were readily supplied
him, and he was directed or conveyed, generally in the night,
to sympathizing neighbors, until finally, without any forethought
or management on his own part, he found himself in
Canada a free man. These helpers, in the course of time,
came to be called agents, station-keepers, or conductors on the
Underground Railroad. Of the names of those that belonged
to this class of practical emancipationists, 3,211 have been
catalogued;[1] change of residence and death have made it
impossible to obtain the names of many more. Considering
the kind of labor performed and the danger involved, one is
impressed with the unselfish devotion to principle of these
emancipators. There was for them, of course, no outward
honor, no material recompense, but instead such contumely
and seeming disgrace as can now be scarcely comprehended.

Nevertheless, they were rich in courage, and their hospitality
was equal to all emergencies. They gladly gave aid and
comfort to every negro seeking freedom; and the numbers
befriended by many helpers despite penalties and abuse show
with what moral determination the work was carried on. It
has been said that the Hopkins, Salsbury, Snediger, Dickey
and Kirkpatrick families, of southern Ohio, forwarded more
than 1,000 fugitives to Canada before the year 1817.[2] Daniel
Gibbons, of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, was engaged
in helping fugitive slaves during a period of fifty-six years.
"He did not keep a record of the number he passed until 1824.

But prior to that time, it was supposed to have been over 200,
and up to the time of his death (in 1853) he had aided about
1,000."[3] It has been estimated that Dr. Nathan M. Thomas, of
Schoolcraft, Michigan, forwarded between 1,000 and 1,500 fugitives.[4]
John Fairfield, the abductor, "piloted not only hundreds,
but thousands."[5] The Rev. Charles T. Torrey went to
Maryland and "from there sent—as he wrote previous to 1844
—some 400 slaves over different routes to Canada."[6] Philo
Carpenter, of Chicago, is reported to have escorted 200 fugitives
to vessels bound for Canada.[7] In a letter to William,
Still, in November, 1857, Elijah F. Pennypacker, of Chester
County, Pennsylvania, writes, "we have within the past two
months passed forty-three through our hands."[8] H. B. Leeper,
of Princeton, Illinois, says that the most successful business
he ever accomplished in this line was the helping on of thirty-one
men and women in six weeks' time.[9] Leverett B. Hill,
of Wakeman, Ohio, assisted 103 on their way to Canada
during the year 1852.[10] Mr. Van Dorn, of Quincy, in a service
of twenty-five years, assisted "some two or three hundred
fugitives."[11] W. D. Schooley, of Richmond, Indiana, writes,
"I think I must have assisted over 100 on their way to
liberty."[12] Jonathan H. Gray, Milton Hill and John H.
Frazee were conductors at Carthage, Indiana, and are said to
have helped over 150 fugitives.[13] "Thousands of fugitives
found rest" at Ripley, Brown County, Ohio.[14] During the
lifetime of General McIntire, a Virginian, who settled in
Adams County, Ohio, "more than 100 slaves found a safe
retreat under his roof." Other helpers in the same state
rendered service deserving of mention. Ozem Gardner, of
Sharon Township, Franklin County, "assisted more than 200
fugitives on their way in all weathers and at all times of the
day and night."[15] It is estimated by a friend of Dr. J. A.
Bingham and George J. Payne, two operators of Gallia
County, that the line of escape with which these men were
connected was travelled by about 200 slaves every year from
1845 to 1856.[16] From 1844 to 1860 John H. Stewart, a colored
station-keeper of the same county, kept about 100 fugitives
at his house.[17] Five hundred are said to have passed
through the hands of Thomas L. Gray, of Deavertown, in Morgan
County.[18] Ex-President Fairchild speaks of the "multitudes"
of fugitives that came to Oberlin, and says that "not
one was ever finally taken back to bondage."[19] Many other
stations and station-agents that were instrumental in helping
large numbers of slaves from bondage to freedom cannot be
mentioned here.

Reticent as most underground operators were at the time
in regard to their unlawful acts, they did not attempt to conceal
their principles. On the contrary, they were zealous in
their endeavors to make converts to a doctrine that seemed
to them to have the combined warrant of Scripture and of
their own conscience, and that agreed with the convictions
of the fathers of the Republic. The Golden Rule and the
preamble of the Declaration of Independence they often recited
in support of their position. When they had transgressed
the Fugitive Slave Law of Congress they were wont
to find their justification in what ex-President Fairchild of
Oberlin has aptly called the Fugitive Slave Law of the Mosaic
institutions:[20] "Thou shalt not deliver unto his master
the servant which hath escaped unto thee; he shall dwell
with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall

choose in one of thy gates where it liketh him best; thou
shalt not oppress him."[21] They refused to observe a law that
made it a felony in their opinion to give a cup of cold water
to famishing men and women fleeing from servitude. Their
faith and determination is clearly expressed in one of the
old anti-slavery songs:—

Theodore Parker was but the mouthpiece of many abolitionists
throughout the Northern states when he said, at the conclusion
of a sermon in 1850: "It is known to you that the
Fugitive Slave Bill has become a law. . . . To law framed
of such iniquity I owe no allegiance. Humanity, Christianity,
manhood revolts against it. . . . For myself I say it solemnly,
I will shelter, I will help, and I will defend the fugitive with
all my humble means and power. I will act with any body
of decent and serious men, as the head, or the foot, or the
hand, in any mode not involving the use of deadly weapons,
to nullify and defeat the operation of this law. . . ."[22]

Sentiments of this kind were cherished in almost every
Northern community by a few persons at least. There were
some New England colonies in the West where anti-slavery
sentiments predominated. These, like some of the religious
communities, as those of the Quakers and Covenanters, became
well-known centres of underground activity. In general it
is safe to say that the majority of helpers in the North were
of Anglo-American stock, descendants of the Puritan and
Quaker settlers of the Eastern states, or of Southerners that
had moved to the Northern states to be rid of slavery. The

many stations in the eastern and northern parts of Ohio and the
northern part of Illinois may be safely attributed to the large
proportion of New England settlers in those districts. Localities
where the work of befriending slaves was largely in the
hands of Quakers will be mentioned in another connection.
Southern settlers in Brown County and adjoining districts in
Ohio are said to have been regularly forwarding escaped slaves
to Canada before 1817.[23] The emigration of a number of these
settlers to Bond County, Illinois, about 1820, and the removal
of a few families from that region to Putnam County in the
same state about a decade later, helps to explain the early
development of secret routes in the southern and north central
parts of Illinois.[24]

In the South much secret aid was rendered fugitives, no
doubt, by persons of their own race. Two colored market-women
in Baltimore were efficient agents for the Vigilance
Committee of Philadelphia.[25] Frederick Douglass's connection
with the Underground Railroad began long before he
left the South.[26] In the North, people of the African race
were to be found in most communities, and in many places
they became energetic workers. Negro settlements in the
interior of the free states, as well as along their southern
frontier, soon came to form important links in the chain of
stations leading from the Southern states to Canada.

In the early days running slaves sometimes sought and
received aid from Indians. This fact is evidenced by the
introduction of fugitive recovery clauses into a number
of the treaties made between the colonies and Indian tribes.
Seven out of the eight treaties made between 1784 and 1786
contained clauses for the return of black prisoners, or of
"negroes and other property."[27] A few of the colonies
offered rewards to induce Indians to apprehend and restore
runaways. In 1669 Maryland "ordered that any Indian who

shall apprehend a fugitive may have a 'match coate' or its
value. Virginia would give '20 armes length of Roanake,'
or its value, while in Connecticut 'two yards of cloth' was
considered sufficient inducement."[28] The inhabitants of the
Ottawa village of Chief Kinjeino in northwestern Ohio were
kindly disposed towards the fugitive;[29] and the people of
Chief Brant, who held an estate on the Grand River in
Ontario west of Niagara Falls, were in the habit of receiving
colored refugees.[30]

The people of Scotch and Scotch-Irish descent were
naturally liberty loving, and seem to have given hearty
support to the anti-slavery cause in whatever form it presented
itself to them. The small number of Scotch communities
in Morgan and Logan counties, Ohio, and in Randolph
and Washington counties, Illinois, were centres of underground
service.

The secret work of the English, Irish and German settlers
cannot be so readily localized. In various places a
single German, Irishman, or Englishman is known to have
aided escaped slaves in coöperation with a few other persons
of different nationality, but so far as known there
were no groups made up of representatives of one or another
of these races engaged in such enterprises. At Toledo,
Ohio, the company of helpers comprised Congressman James
M. Ashley, a Pennsylvanian by birth; Richard Mott, a
Quaker; James Conlisk, an Irishman; William H. Merritt,
a negro; and several others.[31] Lyman Goodnow, an operator
of Waukesha, Wisconsin, says he was told that "in cases
of emergency the Germans were next best to Quakers
for protection."[32] Two German companies from Massachusetts
enlisted for the War only when promised that they
should not be required to restore runaways to their owners.[33]

Some religious communities and church societies were conservators
of abolition ideas. The Quakers deserve, in this
work, to be placed before all other denominations because of
their general acceptance and advocacy of anti-slavery doctrines
when the system of slavery had no other opponents.
From the time of George Fox until the last traces of the
evil were swept from the English-speaking world many
Quakers bore a steadfast testimony against it.[34] Fox reminded
slaveholders that if they were in their slaves'
places they would consider it "very great bondage and
cruelty," and he urged upon the Friends in America to
preach the gospel to the enslaved blacks. In 1688 German
Friends at Germantown, Pennsylvania, made an official protest
"against the traffic in the bodies of men and the treatment
of men as cattle." By 1772 New England Friends
began to disown (expel) members for failing to manumit
their slaves; and four years later both the Philadelphia and
the New York yearly meetings made slaveholding a disownable
offence. A similar step was taken by the Baltimore
Yearly Meeting in 1777; and meetings in Virginia were
directed, in 1784, to disown those that refused to emancipate
their slaves.[35] Owing to obstacles in the way of setting
slaves free in North Carolina, a committee of Quakers of
that state was appointed in 1822 to examine the laws of
some of the free states respecting the admission of people
of color therein. In 1823 the committee reported that there
was "nothing in the laws of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois to
prevent the introduction of people of color into those states,
and agents were instructed to remove slaves placed in their
care as fast as they were willing to go." These facts show
the sentiment that prevailed in the Society of Friends.
Many Southern Quakers moved to the North on account of
their hatred of slavery, and established such important
centres of underground work as Springboro and Salem, Ohio,
and Spiceland and New Garden, Indiana. Quakers in New

Bedford and Lynn, Massachusetts, and Valley Falls, Rhode
Island, engaged in the service. The same class of people in
Maryland coöperated with members of their society in the
vicinity of Philadelphia. The existence of numerous Underground
Railroad centres in southeastern Pennsylvania and in
eastern Indiana is explained by the fact that a large number
of Quakers dwelt in those regions.

The Methodists began to take action against slavery in
1780. At an informal conference held at Baltimore in that
year the subject was presented in the form of a "Question,—
Ought not this conference to require those travelling preachers
who hold slaves to give promises to set them free?" The
answer given was in the affirmative. Concerning the membership
the language adopted was as follows: "We pass our
disapprobation on all our friends who keep slaves; and advise
their freedom." Under the influence of Wesleyan
preachers, it is said, not a few cases of emancipation occurred.
At a conference in 1785, however, it was decided to "suspend
the execution of the minute on slavery till the deliberations of
a future conference. . . ." Four years later a clause appeared
in the Discipline, by whose authority is not known,
prohibiting "The buying or selling the bodies or souls of
men, women, or children, with an intention to enslave them."
This provision evidently referred to the African slave-trade.
In 1816 the General Conference adopted a resolution that
"no slaveholder shall be eligible to any official station in
our Church hereafter, where the laws of the state in which
he lives will admit of emancipation, and permit the liberated
slave to enjoy freedom." Later there seems to have been a
disposition on the part of the church authorities to suppress
the agitation of the slavery question, but it can scarcely be
doubted that the well-known views of the Wesleys remained
for some at least the standard of right opinion, and
that their declarations formed for these the rule of action.
In 1842 a secession from the church took place, chiefly if
not altogether on account of the question of slavery, and
a number of abolitionist members of the uncompromising
type founded a new church organization, which they called
the "Wesleyan Methodist Connection of America." Slaveholders

were excluded from fellowship in this body. Within
two or three years the new organization had drawn away
twenty thousand members from the old.[36] In 1844 a much
larger secession took place on the same question, the occasion
being the institution of proceedings before the General
Conference against the Rev. James O. Andrew, D.D., a slaveholding
bishop of the South. This so aggravated the Methodist
Episcopal societies in the slave states that they withdrew
and formed the Methodist Episcopal Church South. Among
the members of the Wesleyan Methodist Connection and of
the older society of the North there were a number of zealous
underground operators. Indeed, it came to be said of the
Wesleyans, as of the Quakers, that almost every neighborhood
where a few of them lived was likely to be a station of the
secret Road to Canada. It is probable that some of the Wesleyans
at Wilmington, Ohio, coöperated with Quakers at that
point. In Urbana, Ohio, there were Methodists of the two
divisions engaged.[37] Service was also performed by Wesleyans
at Tippecanoe, Deersville and Rocky Fort in Tuscarawas
County,[38] and at Piqua, Miami County, Ohio.[39] In Iowa a
number of Methodist ministers were engaged in the work.[40]

The third sect to which a considerable proportion of underground
operators belonged was Calvinistic in its creed. All
the various wings of Presbyterianism seem to have had representatives
in this class of anti-slavery people. The sinfulness
of slavery was a proposition that found uncompromising advocates
among the Presbyterian ministers of the South in the
early part of this century. In 1804 the Rev. James Gilliland
removed from South Carolina to Brown County. Ohio, because
he had been enjoined by his presbytery and synod "to
be silent in the pulpit on the subject of the emancipation of
the African."[41] Other ministers of prominence, like Thomas

D. Baird, David Nelson and John Rankin, left the South because
they were not free to speak against slavery. In 1818 the
Presbyterian Church declared the system "inconsistent with
the law of God and totally irreconcilable with the gospel of
Christ." This teaching was afterwards departed from in 1845
when the Assembly confined its protest to admitting rather
mildly that there was "evil connected with slavery," and declining
to countenance "the traffic in slaves for the sake of
gain; the separation of husbands and wives, parents and
children, for the sake of filthy lucre or the convenience of the
master; or cruel treatment of slaves in any respect." The
dissatisfaction caused by this evident compromise led to the
formation of a new church in 1847 by the "New School" Presbytery
of Ripley, Ohio, and a part of the "Old School" Presbytery
of Mahoning, Pennsylvania. This organization was
called the Free Church, and by 1860 had extended as far west
as Iowa.[42] It is not strange that the region in Ohio where the
Free Presbyterian Church was founded was plentifully dotted
with stations of the Underground Railroad, and that the house
of the Rev. John Rankin, who was the leader of the movement,
was known far and wide as a place of refuge for the fugitive
slave.[43] At Savannah, Ashland County, Iberia, Morrow
County, and a point near Millersburgh, Holmes County,
Ohio, the work is associated with Free Presbyterian societies
once existing in those neighborhoods.[44] In the northern part
of Adams County, as also in the northern part of Logan
County, Ohio, fugitives were received into the homes of Covenanters.
Galesburg, Illinois, with its college was founded in
1837 by Presbyterians and Congregationalists, who united to
form one religious society under the name of the "Presbyterian
Church of Galesburg." Opposition to slavery was one
of the conditions of membership in this organization from
the beginning. This intense anti-slavery feeling caused the
church to withdraw from the presbytery in 1855.[45] From
the starting of the colony until the time of the War fugitives
from Missouri were conducted thither with the certainty of
obtaining protection. Thus Galesburg became, probably,
the principal underground station in Illinois.[46] Joseph S.
White, of New Castle, in western Pennsylvania, notes the
circumstance that all the men with whom he acted in underground
enterprises were Presbyterians.[47]

The religious centre in Ohio most renowned for the aid of
refugees was the Congregational colony and college at Oberlin.
The acquisition of a large anti-slavery contingent from
Lane Seminary in 1835 caused the college to be known from
that time on as a "hotbed of abolitionism." Fugitives were
directed thither from points more or less remote, and during
the period from 1835 to 1860 Oberlin was a busy station,[48]
receiving passengers from at least five converging lines.[49] So
notorious did the place become that a guide-board in the form
of a fugitive running in the direction of the town was set up
by the authorities on the Middle Ridge road, six miles north
of Oberlin, and the sign of a tavern, four miles away, "was
ornamented on its Oberlin face with a representation of a fugitive
slave pursued by a tiger."[50] On account of the persistent
ignoring of the law against harboring slaves by those connected
with the institution, the existence of the college was put in
jeopardy. Ex-President Fairchild relates that, "A Democratic
legislature at different times agitated the question of repealing
the college charter. The fourth and last attempt was
made in 1843, when the bill for repeal was indefinitely postponed
in the House by a vote of thirty-six to twenty-nine."[51]
The anti-slavery influence of Oberlin went abroad with its

students. Ex-President W. M. Brooks, of Tabor College, Iowa,
a graduate of Oberlin, says," The stations on the Underground
Railroad in southwestern Iowa were in the region of Civil
Bend, where the colony from Oberlin, Ohio, settled, which
afterwards settled Tabor. . . . From this point (Civil Bend,
now Percival) fugitives were brought to Tabor after 1852;
here the entire population was in sympathy with the escaped
fugitives; . . . there was scarcely a man in the community
who was not ready to do anything that was needed to help
fugitives on their way to Canada."[52] The families that founded
Tabor were "almost all of them Congregationalists."[53] Professor
L. F. Parker of Grinnell, Iowa, names Oberlin students
in connection with Quakers as the chief groups in Iowa whose
houses were open to fugitives.[54] Grinnell itself was first
settled by people that were mainly Congregationalists.[55] From
the time of its foundation (1854) it was an anti-slavery centre,
"well known and eagerly sought by the few runaways who
came from the meagre settlements southwest. . . in Missouri."[56]

There were, of course, members of other denominations that
befriended the slave; thus, it is known that the Unitarian
Seminary at Meadville, Pennsylvania, was a centre of underground
work,[57] but, in general, the lack of information concerning
the church connections of many of the company of
persons with whom this chapter deals prevents the drawing of
any inference as to whether these individuals acted independently
or in conjunction with little bands of persons of their
own faith.

There seems to have been no open appeal made to church
organizations for help in behalf of fugitives except in Massachusetts.
In 1851, and again in 1854, the Vigilance Committee
of Boston deemed it wise to send out circulars to the
clergymen of the commonwealth, requesting that contributions

be taken by them to be applied in mitigation of the
misery caused by the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law.
The boldness and originality of such an appeal, and more
especially the evident purpose of its framers to create sentiment
by this means among the religious societies, entitle it to
consideration. The first circular was sent out soon after the
enactment of the odious law, and the second soon after the
passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The results secured by
the two circulars will be seen in the following letter from
Francis Jackson, of Boston, to his fellow-townsmen and coworker,
the Rev. Theodore Parker.

The political affiliations of underground helpers before
1840 were, necessarily, with one or the other of the old

parties—the Whig or the Democratic. As the Whig party
was predominantly Northern, and as its sentiments were more
distinctly anti-slavery than those of its rival, it is fair to suppose
that the small band of early abolitionists were, most of
them, allied with that party.[59] The Missouri Compromise
in 1820, one may surmise, enabled those that were wavering
in their position to ally themselves with the party that was
less likely to make demands in the interests of the slave
power. In 1840 opportunity was given abolitionists to take
independent political action by the nomination of a national
Liberty ticket. At that time, and again in 1844, many underground
operators voted for the candidates of the Liberty party,
and subsequently for the Free Soil nominees.[60]

But it is not to be supposed that all friends of the fugitive
joined the political movement against slavery. Many there
were that regarded party action with disfavor, preferring the
method of moral suasion. These persons belonged to the
Quakers, or to the Garrisonian abolitionists. The Friends
or Quakers refused as far as possible to countenance slavery,
and when the political development of the abolition cause
came they regretted it, and their yearly meetings withheld
their official sanction, so far as known, from every political
organization. Nevertheless, there were some members of the
Society of Friends that were swept into the current, and
became active supporters of the Liberty party.[61] The most
noted and influential of these was the anti-slavery poet,
Whittier.[62] When, in 1860, the Republican party nominated
Lincoln, "a large majority of the Friends, at least in the
North and West, voted for him."[63]

The followers of Garrison that remained steadfast to the
teachings and the example of their leader shunned all connection
with the political abolitionist movement. Garrison

never voted but once,[64] and by 1854 had gone so far in his
denunciation of slavery that he burned the Constitution of
the United States at an open-air celebration of the abolitionists
at Framingham, Massachusetts.[65] To his dying day he seems
to have believed "that the cause would have triumphed
sooner, in a political sense, if the abolitionists had continued
to act as one body, never yielding to the temptation of forming
a political party, but pressing forward in the use of the
same instrumentalities which were so potent from 1831 to
1840."[66]

The abolitionists were ill-judged by their contemporaries,
and were frequently subjected to harsh language and occasionally
to violent treatment by persons of supposed respectability.
The weight of opprobrium they were called upon to
bear tested their great strength of character. If the probity,
integrity and moral courage of this abused class had been
made the criteria of their standing they would have been
held from the outset in high esteem by their neighbors.
However, they lived to see the days of their disgrace turned
into days of triumph. "The muse of history," says Rhodes,
"has done full justice to the abolitionists. Among them
were literary men, who have known how to present their
cause with power, and the noble spirit of truthfulness pervades
the abolition literature. One may search in vain for
intentional misrepresentation. Abuse of opponents and criticism
of motives are common enough, but the historians of
the abolition movement have endeavored to relate a plain,
honest tale; and the country has accepted them and their
work at their true value. Moreover, a cause and its promoters
that have been celebrated in the vigorous lines of
Lowell and sung in the impassioned verse of Whittier will
always be of perennial memory."[67]

Contempt was not the only hardship that the abolitionist
had to face when he admitted the fleeing black man within
his door, but he braved also the existing laws, and was sometimes

compelled to suffer the consequences for disregarding
the slaveholder's claim of ownership. In 1842 the prosecution
of John Van Zandt, of Hamilton County, Ohio, was
begun for attempting to aid nine slaves to escape. The case
was tried first in the Circuit Court of the United States, and
then taken by appeal to the Supreme Court. The suits were
not concluded when the defendant died in May, 1847. The
death of the plaintiff soon after left the case to be settled by
administrators, who agreed that the costs, amounting to one
thousand dollars, should be paid from the possessions of the
defendant.[68] The judgments against Van Zandt under the
Fugitive Slave Law amounted to seventeen hundred dollars.[69]
In 1847 several members of a crowd that was instrumental
in preventing the seizure of a colored family by the name of
Crosswhite, at Marshall, Michigan, were indicted under the
Fugitive Slave Law of 1793. Two trials followed, and at the
second trial three persons were convicted, the verdict against
them amounting, with expenses and costs, to six thousand
dollars.[70] In 1848 Daniel Kauffman, of Cumberland County,
Pennsylvania, sheltered a family of thirteen slaves in his barn,
and gave them transportation northward. He was tried, and
sentenced to pay two thousand dollars in fine and costs.
Although this decision was reversed by the United States
Supreme Court, a new suit was instituted in the Circuit
Court of the United States and a judgment was rendered
against Kauffman amounting with costs to more than four
thousand dollars. This sum was paid, in large part if not
altogether, by contributions.[71] In 1854 Rush R. Sloane, a
lawyer of Sandusky, Ohio, was tried for enabling seven fugitives
to escape after arrest by their pursuers. The two
claimants of the slaves instituted suit, but one only obtained
a judgment, which amounted to three thousand dollars and
costs.[72] The arrest of the fugitive, Anthony Burns, in Boston,
in the same year, was the occasion for indignation meetings at
Faneuil and Meionaon Halls, which terminated in an attempt
to rescue the unfortunate negro. Theodore Parker, Wen dell
Phillips and T. W. Higginson took a conspicuous part in
these proceedings, and were indicted with others for riot.
When the first case was taken up the counsel for the defence
made a motion that the indictment be quashed. This was
sustained by the court, and the affair ended by all the cases
being dismissed.[73]

These and other similar cases arising from the attempted
enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act in various parts of the
country led to the proposal of a Defensive League of Freedom.
A pamphlet, issued soon after the rendition of Burns,
by Ellis Gray Loring, Samuel Cabot, Jr., Henry J. Prentiss,
John A. Andrew and Samuel G. Howe, of Boston, and James
Freeman Clarke, of Roxbury, Massachusetts, stated the object
of the proposed league to be "to secure all persons claimed
as fugitives from slavery, and to all persons accused of violating
the Fugitive Slave Bill the fullest legal protection; and
also indemnify all such persons against costs, fines, and expenses,
whenever they shall seem to deserve such indemnification."
The league was to act as a "society of mutual protection
and every member was to assume his portion of such
penalties as would otherwise fall with crushing weight on a
few individuals." Subscriptions were to be made by the members
of the organization, and five per cent of these subscriptions
was to be called for any year when it was needed.[74]
How much service this association actually performed, or
whether, indeed, it got beyond the stage of being merely proposed
is not known; in any event, the fact is worth noting
that men of marked ability, distinction and social connection

were forming societies, like the Defensive League of Freedom,
and the various vigilance committees, for the purpose of defeating
the Fugitive Slave Act.

Among the underground helpers there are a number of
notable persons that have admitted with seeming satisfaction
their complicity in disregarding the Fugitive Slave Law. A
letter from Frederick Douglass, the famous Maryland bondman
and anti-slavery orator, says: "My connection with the
Underground Railroad began long before I left the South,
and was continued as long as slavery continued, whether I
lived in New Bedford, Lynn [both in Massachusetts], or
Rochester, N.Y. In the latter place I had as many as eleven
fugitives under my roof at one time."[75] In his autobiography
Mr. Douglass declares concerning his work in this connection:
"My agency was all the more exciting and interesting because
not altogether free from danger. I could take not a
step in it without exposing myself to fine and imprisonment,
. . . but in face of this fact, I can say, I never did more congenial,
attractive, fascinating, and satisfactory work."[76] Dr.
Alexander M. Ross, a Canadian physician and naturalist, who
has received the decorations of knighthood from several of
the monarchs of Europe in recognition of his scientific discoveries,
spent a considerable part of his time from 1856 to
1862 in spreading a knowledge of the routes leading to Canada
among the slaves of the South.[77] Dr. Norton S. Townshend,
one of the organizers of the Ohio State University and
for years professor of agriculture in that institution, acted as
a conductor on the Underground Railroad while he was a
student of medicine in Cincinnati, Ohio.[78] Dr. Jared P. Kirtland,
a distinguished physician and scientist of Ohio, kept a
station in Poland, Mahoning County, where he resided from
1823 to 1837.[79]

Harriet Beecher Stowe gained the intimate knowledge of

FREDERICK DOUGLASS.

the methods of the friends of the slave she displays in Uncle
Tom's Cabin through her association with some of the most
zealous abolitionists of southern Ohio. Her own house on
Walnut Hills, Cincinnati, was a refuge whence persons whose
types are portrayed in George and Eliza, the boy Jim and
his mother, were guided by her husband and brother a portion
of the way towards Canada.[80] Colonel Thomas Wentworth
Higginson, the essayist and author, while stationed as
the pastor of a free church in Worcester, Massachusetts, from
1852 to 1858, often had fugitives directed to his care. In a
recent letter he writes of having received on one occasion a
"consignment of a young white slave woman with two white
children" from the Rev. Samuel J. May, who had put her
"into the hands, for escort, of one of the most pro-slavery
men in Worcester." The pro-slavery man, of course, did not
have a suspicion that he was acting as conductor on the
Underground Railroad.[81]

Joshua R. Giddings, for twenty years in Congress an ardent
advocate of the abolition of slavery, kept a particular chamber
in his house at Jefferson, Ohio, for the use of refugees.[82] Sometimes
when passing through Alliance, Ohio, Mr. Giddings
found opportunity to call upon his friend, I. Newton Peirce,
to whom he contributed money for the transportation of runaway
slaves by rail from that point to Cleveland.[83] What his
views were of the irritating law of 1850, he declared on the
floor of the House of Representatives, February 11, 1852, in
the following words: ". . . Let me say to Southern men;
It is your privilege to catch your own slaves, if any one catches
them. . . . When you ask us to pay the expenses of arresting
your slaves, or to give the President authority to appoint
officers to do that dirty work, give them power to compel our
people to give chase to the panting bondman, you overstep
the bounds of the Constitution, and there we meet you, and
there we stand and there we shall remain. We shall protest

against such indignity; we shall proclaim our abhorrence of
such a law. Nor can you seal or silence our voices."[84]

Thaddeus Stevens, a leading lawyer of Pennsylvania, who
rendered the cause of abolition distinguished service in Congress,
where he gained the title of the "great commoner,"
entered upon the practice of his profession at Gettysburg in
1816, and soon became known as a friend of escaping slaves.
His removal to Lancaster in 1842 did not take him off the
line of flight, and he continued to act as a helper. The woman
that "kept house for him for more than twenty years, and
nursed him at the close of his life, was one of the slaves he
helped to freedom."[85]

James M. Ashley, member of Congress from Ohio for over
nine years, and his successor in the House, Richard Mott, a
Quaker, were confederates in their violation of the Slave Act
at Toledo, Ohio. Mr. Ashley began his service in behalf of
the blacks early in life. As a youth of seventeen in Kentucky,
he helped two companies across the Ohio River, one company
of seven persons, and the other of five.[86] Sidney Edgerton,
who was elected to Congress from Ohio on the Free Soil
ticket in 1858, and four years after was appointed governor
of Montana Territory by President Lincoln, assisted his father
in the befriending of slaves at Tallmadge, Summit County,
Ohio.[87] Jacob M. Howard, afterwards United States senator
from Michigan, was one of the principal operators at Detroit.[88]
General Samuel Fessenden, of Maine, who received the nomination
of the Liberty party for the governorship of his state, and
later for Congress, and was during forty years the leading
member of the bar in Maine, gave escaped bondmen reaching
Portland a hearty welcome to his house on India Street.[89] In
Vermont there were a number of men prominent in public
affairs that were actively engaged in underground enterprises.

Colonel Jonathan P. Miller, of Montpelier, who went to Greece,
and assisted that country in its uprising in the twenties, served
as a member of the Vermont legislature in 1833, and took part
in the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840, was among
the early helpers in New England. Lawrence Brainerd, for
several years candidate for governor of Vermont, and later
chosen to the United States Senate as a Free Soiler, gave
shelter to the wanderers at St. Albans, where they were almost
within sight of "the Promised Land."[90] Others were the
Rev. Alvah Sabin, elected to Congress in 1853, who kept a
station at the town of Georgia, the Hon. Joseph Poland of
Montpelier, the Hon. William Sowles of Swanton, the Hon.
John West of Morristown and the Hon. A. J. Russell of
Troy.[91]

Gerrit Smith, the famous philanthropist, kept open house
for fugitives in a fine old mansion at Peterboro, New York.
He was one of the prime movers in the organization of the
Liberty party at Arcade, New York, in 1840, and was its
candidate for the presidency in 1848 and in 1852. He was
elected to Congress in 1853 and served one term. It is said
that during the decade 1850 to 1860 he "aided habitually in
the escape of fugitive slaves and paid the legal expenses of
persons accused of infractions of the Fugitive Slave Law."[92]
The Rev. Owen Lovejoy, brother of the martyr Elijah P.
Lovejoy, served four terms in the national House of Representatives.
On one occasion he was taunted by some pro-slavery
members of the House with being a "nigger-stealer."
In a speech made February 21, 1859, Mr. Lovejoy, referring
to these accusations, said: "Is it desired to call attention to
this fact—of my assisting fugitive slaves? . . . Owen Lovejoy
lives at Princeton, Illinois, three-quarters of a mile east
of the village, and he aids every fugitive that comes to his
door and asks it. Thou invisible demon of slavery, dost thou
think to cross my humble threshold, and forbid me to give
bread to the hungry and shelter to the houseless! I bid you

defiance in the name of my God!"[93] Josiah B. Grinnell, who
represented a central Iowa district in the Thirty-eighth and
the Thirty-ninth congresses, had a chamber in his house at
Grinnell that came to be called the "liberty room." John
Brown, while on his way to Canada with a band of Missouri
slaves, in the winter of 1858–1859, stacked his arms in this
room, and his company of fugitives slept there.[94] Mr. Grinnell
relates of the members of this party, "They came at night,
and were the darkest, saddest specimens of humanity I have
ever seen, glad to camp on the floor, while the veteran was
a night guard, with his dog and a miniature arsenal ready
for use on alarm. . . ."[95]

Thurlow Weed, the distinguished journalist and political
manager, even in his busiest hours had time to afford relief
to the underground applicant. One who knew Mr. Weed
intimately relates the following incident: "On one occasion
when several eminent gentlemen were waiting [to see the
journalist] they were surprised and at first much vexed, by
seeing a negro promptly admitted. The negro soon reappeared,
and hastily left the house, when it was learned that
he was a runaway slave, and had been aided in his flight for
liberty by the man who was too busy to attend to Cabinet
officers, but had time to say words of encouragement and
present means of support to a flying fugitive."[96] Sydney
Howard Gay, for several years managing editor of the New
York Tribune, and subsequently on the editorial staff of the
New York Post and the Chicago Tribune, was an efficient
agent of the Underground Railroad while in charge of the
Anti-Slavery Standard, which he conducted in New York
City from 1844 to 1857.[97]

Among the clergymen that made it a part of their religious
duty to minister to the needs of the exiles from the South,
were John Rankin, Samuel J. May and Theodore Parker.

Mr. Rankin, a native of Tennessee, early developed his antislavery
views in Kentucky, where from 1817 to 1821 he
served as pastor of two Presbyterian churches at the town of
Carlisle. During the next forty-four years he resided at Ripley,
Ohio, in a neighborhood frequented by runaways.[98] Doubtless
he became a patron of these midnight visitors at the time
of his location in Ripley. In 1828 he established himself in
a house situated upon the crest of a hill just back of the town
and overlooking the Ohio River. For many years the lights
beaming through the windows of this parsonage were hailed
by slaves fleeing from the soil of Kentucky as beacons to guide
them to a haven of safety.[99]

Samuel J. May, for many years a prominent minister in
the Unitarian Church, writes: "So long ago as 1834, when I
was living in the eastern part of Connecticut, I had fugitives
addressed to my care. . . . Even after I came to reside in
Syracuse [New York] I had much to do as a station-keeper
or conductor on the Underground Railroad, until slavery was
abolished by the proclamation of President Lincoln. . . .
Fugitives came to me from Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky,
Tennessee and Louisiana. They came, too, at all hours of
day and night, sometimes comfortably, yes, and even handsomely
clad, but generally in clothes every way unfit to be
worn, and in some instances too unclean and loathsome to be
admitted into my house."[100]

Theodore Parker, the learned theologian and iconoclast of
Boston, often deserted his study that he might work in the
cause of humanity. In his Journal, under the date October
23, 1850, Mr. Parker wrote: ". . . The first business of the
anti-slavery men is to help the fugitives; we, like Christ, are
to seek and save that which is lost."[101] In an unsigned note
written in 1851 to his friend Dr. Francis, Mr. Parker says:—

Among the underground workers there were two whose
principal object in life seems to have been to assist fugitive
slaves. These two organizers of underground travel were
Levi Coffin, of Cincinnati, Ohio, and Thomas Garrett, of Wilmington,
Delaware, both lifelong members of the Society of
Friends, both capable business men, both able to number the
unfortunates they had succored in terms of thousands.

Thomas Garrett was born in Pennsylvania in 1789, and
espoused the cause of emancipation at the age of eighteen,
when a colored woman in the employ of his father's family
was kidnapped. He succeeded in rescuing the woman from
the hands of her abductors, and from that time on made it
his special mission to aid negroes in their attempts to gain
freedom. In 1822 he removed to Wilmington, Delaware, and
during the next forty years his efforts in behalf of fugitives
were unremitting. He was not so fortunate as Levi Coffin
in escaping the penalties of the Fugitive Slave Law; an open
violation of the law got him into difficulty in 1848. He was
tried on four counts before Judge Taney, and his entire property
was swallowed up in fines amounting to eight thousand
dollars. There is a tradition that the presiding judge admonished
Garrett to take his loss as a lesson and in the future
to desist from breaking the laws; whereupon the aged Quaker
stoutly replied: "Judge, thou hast not left me a dollar, but
I wish to say to thee, and to all in this court-room, that if
any one knows of a fugitive who wants a shelter and a friend,
send him to Thomas Garrett and he will befriend him."[103] Although

sixty years of age when misfortune befel him, Mr.
Garrett was successful in again acquiring a competence
through the kindness of fellow-townsmen in advancing him
capital with which to make a fresh start. Though satisfied,
he was wont to think that his real work in life was never
finished. "The war came a little too soon for my business.
I wanted to help off three thousand slaves. I had only got up
to twenty-seven hundred!"

Mr. Coffin was a native of North Carolina. Born in 1798,
he was while still a boy moved to assist in the escape of
slaves by witnessing the cruel treatment the negroes were
compelled to endure. In 1826 he settled in Wayne County,
Indiana, on the line of the Underground Road, and such was
his activity that his house at New Garden (now Fountain
City) soon became the converging point of three principal
routes from Kentucky. In 1847 Mr. Coffin removed to
Cincinnati for the purpose of opening a store where goods
produced by free labor only should be sold. His relations
with the humane work were maintained, and the genial but
fearless Quaker came to be known generally by the fictitious
but happy title, President of the Underground Railroad. It
has been said of Mr. Coffin that "for thirty-three years he
received into his house more than one hundred slaves every
year."[104] In 1863 the Quaker philanthropist assisted in the
establishment of the Freedmen's Bureau. In the following
year and again in 1867, he visited Europe as agent for the
Western Freedmen's Aid Commission. When the adoption of
the Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution was celebrated
in Cincinnati by colored citizens and their friends, Mr. Coffin
was one of those called upon by the chairman to address
the great meeting. In response, the veteran station-keeper
explained how he had obtained the title of President of the
Underground Road. He said, "The title was given to me
by slave-hunters, who could not find their fugitive slaves
after they got into my hands. I accepted the office thus
conferred upon me, and . . . endeavored to perform my

duty faithfully. Government has now taken the work out
of our hands. The stock of the Underground Railroad has
gone down in the market, the business is spoiled, the road is
now of no further use."[105] He then amid much applause
resigned his office, and declared the operations of the Underground
Railroad at an end.