University of Virginia Library

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.[1] 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.[2] 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.[3] In communities situated at greater distance
from the sectional line, like Columbus[4] and Akron,[5] Ohio,
Elmira[6] and Buffalo,[7] 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."[8] 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.[9]

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."[10] 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;[11] Mr. Franklin
B. Sanborn, admitting the inherent difficulty of the calculation,
places the number at from twenty-five thousand to fifty
thousand;[12] 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."[13]

Fugitives that thus dwelt in the Northern states for a
longer or shorter period did so at their own risk, and in
general against the advice of their helpers. Their reliance
for safety was altogether upon their own wariness and the
public sentiment of the communities where they lived, and
until slavery perished in the Civil War they were subjected
to the fear of surprise and seizure. The Southern people
apparently regarded their right to recover their escaped
slaves as unquestionable as their right to reclaim their
strayed cattle, and they were determined to have the former
as freely and fully recognized in the North as the latter;[14]
and it might be added that there were not a few people in the
North quite willing to admit the slaveholder's right freely
to reclaim his human property, and to aid him in doing so.
What the sentiment was that prevailed in the North during
the twenties and thirties of the present century is evidenced
in certain laws enacted by the legislatures of some of the
states in line with the Federal Slave Law of 1793. Thus, in
an act passed by the assembly of Pennsylvania, March 25,
1826, provision was made for the issuance by courts of
record of the commonwealth of certificates or warrants

of removal for negroes or mulattoes, claimed to be fugitives
from labor;[15] and in a law enacted by the legislature
of Ohio, February 26, 1839, it was provided that any justice
of the peace, judge of a court of record, or mayor should
authorize the arrest of a person claimed as a fugitive slave
on the affidavit of the claimant or his agent, and that the
judge of a court of record before whom the fugitive was
brought should grant a certificate of removal upon the
presentation of satisfactory proof.[16]

Among those that paid homage to such laws as these, and
thus made the North an unsafe refuge for slaves, were to be
found representatives of all classes of society. Samuel J.
May opens to view the convictions of some of the most
cultured people of his day by the following incidents related
concerning two well-known New England clergymen. "The
excellent Dr. E. S. Gannett, of Boston, was heard to say,
more than once, very emphatically, and to justify it, 'that
he should feel it to be his duty to turn away from his door
a fugitive slave,—unfed, unaided in any way, rather than
set at naught the law of the land.'

"And Rev. Dr. Dewey, whom we accounted one of the
ablest expounders and most eloquent defenders of our Unitarian
faith,—Dr. Dewey was reported to have said at two
different times, in public lectures or speeches during the
fall of 1850 and the winter of 1851, that 'he would send his
mother into slavery, rather than endanger the Union, by resisting
this law enacted by the constituted government of
the nation.' He has often denied that he spoke thus of his
'maternal relative,' and therefore I allow that he was misunderstood.
But he has repeatedly acknowledged that he did
say, 'I would consent that my own brother, my own son,
should go, ten times rather would I go myself into slavery,
than that this Union should be sacrificed.'"[17] After the
occurrence of the famous Jerry rescue at Syracuse, October
1, 1851, many newspapers representing both political parties

emphatically condemned the successful resistance made to
the law by the abolitionists as "a disgraceful, demoralizing
and alarming act."[18]

There were not wanting in almost every community members
of the shiftless class of society that were always ready
to obstruct the passage of fugitive slaves to the North, and
whose most vigorous exercise was taken in the course of
some slave-hunting adventure. The Rev. W. M. Mitchell,
who had had this class to contend with in the performance
of his underground work during a number of years in Ohio,
characterized it in a description, penned in 1860, in which
he sets forth one of the conditions that made the Northern
states an unsafe refuge for self-liberated negroes. "The
progress of the Slave," he wrote, "is very much impeded by
a class of men in the Northern States who are too lazy to
work at respectable occupations to obtain an honest living,
but prefer to obtain it, if possible, whether honestly or dishonestly,
by tracking runaway slaves. On seeing advertisements
in the newspapers of escaped slaves, with rewards
offered, they, armed to the teeth, saunter in and through
Abolition Communities or towns, where they are likely to
find the object of their pursuit. They sometimes watch the
houses of known Abolitionists. . . . We are hereby warned,
and for our own safety and that of the Slave, we act with
excessive caution. The first discoverer of these bloody
rebels communicates their presence to others of our company,
that the entire band in that locality is put on their
guard. If the slave has not reached us, we are on the lookout,
with greater anxiety than the hunters, for the fugitive,
to prevent his falling into the possession of those demons
in human shape. On the other hand should the Slave be so
fortunate as to be in our possession at the time, we are compelled
to keep very quiet, until the hunter loses all hopes of
finding him, therefore gives up the search as a bad job, or

moves on to another Abolition Community, which gives us
an opportunity of removing the Fugitive further from danger,
or sending him towards the North Star. . . ."[19]

It is not to be supposed, of course, that the business of
slave-hunting was carried on mainly by the persons here
described in such uncomplimentary terms. Persons of this
type contented themselves generally, no doubt, with acting as
spies and informers, and rarely engaged in the excitement of
a slave-hunt except as the aids of Southern planters or their
agents. If it is true that there was a sentiment averse to slavery
prevailing through many years in the North, it is also true
that the residents of the free states for the most part conceded
the right of Southerners to pursue and recover their
fugitives without hindrance from their Northern neighbors.
The free states thus became what the abolitionists called
the "hunting-ground" of the South, and as early as 1830 or
1835 the pursuit of slaves began to attract wide attention.
During the years following many localities, especially in the
middle states, were visited from time to time by parties on
the trail of the fleeing bondman, or seeking out the secluded
home of some self-freed slave; and after the enactment of
the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 Southerners became more
energetic than before in pushing the search for their escaped
chattels. It has been recorded that "more than two hundred
arrests of persons claimed as fugitives were made from the
time of the passage of the Bill to the middle of 1856. About
a dozen of these were free persons, who succeeded in establishing
the claim that they never had been slaves; other
persons, equally free, were carried off. Half a dozen rescues
were made, and the rest of these cases were delivered to their
owners. These arrests took place more frequently in Pennsylvania
than in any other Northern state. Many fugitives
were caught and carried back, of whom we have no accounts,
save that they were seen on the deck of some river steamboat,
in the custody of their owners, without even passing through
the formality of appearing before a commissioner. About two-thirds
of the persons arrested as above had trials. When the
arrests to the number of two hundred, at least, can be traced,

and their dates fixed, during six years, we may suppose that
the Bill was not, as some politicians averred, practically of
little consequence."[20]

Concerning the efficiency of the new law there is a difference
of opinion among the contemporary writers that commented
upon it; but there could be no disagreement as to
the distress into which it plunged some of the refugees long
resident in the free states. In not a few instances these
persons had married, acquired homes, and were rearing their
families in peace and happiness. Under the Fugitive Slave
Act some of these settlers were seized upon the affidavit
of their former owners, and with the sanction of the federal
authority were carried back into slavery. Among the many
cases that might be cited the following will serve to illustrate
the misfortunes ever ready to be precipitated upon
fugitive settlers in the Northern states. In 1851 John
Bolding, claimed as the property of a citizen of Columbia,
South Carolina, was arrested in Poughkeepsie, New York,
and taken back to the South. Bolding was a young man
of good character, recently married, and the possessor of
a small tailor shop in Poughkeepsie.[21] In August, 1853,
George Washington McQuerry, of Cincinnati, was remanded
to slavery in Kentucky. He had lived several years in Ohio,
had married a free woman, and they had three children.[22]
In September, 1853, a family of colored persons at Uniontown,
Pennsylvania, were claimed as slaves by a Virginian.
Their statement that they had been permitted by their master
to visit friends in Fayette County did not prevent their
immediate restoration to him.[23] In May, 1857, Addison White,
a runaway from Kentucky, was found living near Mechanicsburg,
Ohio, where he had been at work about six months
earning means to send for his wife and children. Some of
the abolitionists of the neighborhood prevented his reclamation.[24]
In three of these cases at least the reënslavement of
the refugees was prevented by an abolition sentiment locally

strong enough to lead to the purchase of the slaves from
their claimants; but it is noteworthy that public opinion in
the neighborhoods where these runaways lived was unable
to shield them from capture.

The refugees that preferred to settle in the Northern
states rather than in Canada naturally made homes for
themselves in anti-slavery communities among tried friends.
Here they could rest with some assurance upon the benevolence
of these localities and feel safe, although their liberty
was still in danger. A slave-hunter in entering such neighborhoods
was obliged to move with great caution; he was in
the midst of strangers, with few allies, and his scheme was
likely to fail if his presence became known. Sometimes,
when he was in the very act of leading the captive back to
the South in bonds, he would find his progress interrupted
by a crowd, his authority questioned, his return to the office
of a magistrate insisted upon, and ultimately, perhaps, his
prisoner released by a procedure more or less formal. The
slave-hunter that incautiously flourished weapons and made
threats was likely to be arrested and subjected to such additional
delays and inconveniences as would render his undertaking
expensive as well as vexatious. There can be no
doubt that this was the experience of many slave-owners
that sought to recover their servants in the free states. Mr.
Clay touched on this point, April 22, 1850, in presenting
petitions to the United States Senate from four citizens of
Kentucky. These persons, he said, "state that each of them
has lost a slave. . . . That these slaves have taken refuge
in the state of Ohio, and that it is in vain for them to attempt
to recapture them; that they cannot go there and
attempt to recover their property without imminent hazard to
their lives."[25] This statement, reiterating the idea contained
in the petitions themselves, namely, that the danger attending
pursuit was great, is too strong in reference to a large
number of the abolition communities in the Northern states,
in many of which non-resistance principles were advocated.
At the same time it must be remembered that the usual
methods of slave-catchers were not conciliatory to the people

among whom they went, and that their bravado sometimes
secured for them rough treatment at the hands of a mob,
especially if the number of colored people present was large
enough to warrant their venting their outraged feelings.

The difficulty of recovering slave property in the North
had been considerable for some years, and it was steadily
growing greater. The uncertainty of reclamation in the
large number of cases made the whole business unprofitable
and undesirable for slave-owners. A writer in the North
American Review for July, 1850, says, "Though thousands of
slaves have escaped by crossing the Ohio River, or Mason
and Dixon's line, during the last five years, no attempt has
been made to reclaim them in more than one case out of a
thousand."[26] If one takes this statement as meant to convey
merely the idea that the number of pursuits was extremely
small in proportion to the number of escapes there
will be no difficulty in accepting it, for probably this was the
fact down to 1850; and the explanation of it, so far as can
be gathered from the lips of Southern men, is to be found
in the strong probability of failure in undertaking these
costly enterprises. Thus Mr. Mason, of Virginia, in his
argument in favor of a new fugitive slave law, declared that,
under the existing conditions, "you may as well go down
into the sea and endeavor to recover from his native element a
fish which has escaped from you, as expect to recover a . . .
fugitive. Every difficulty is thrown in your way by the
population. . . . There are armed mobs, rescues. This is
the real state of things."[27]

The law of 1850 was intended to remove the occasion for
such complaints on the part of slaveholders, and secure
them in the recovery and possession of their property. The
effect of its provisions upon the South was to arouse slave-owners
to greater activity in the pursuit of their chattels,
while in the North the effect was to increase greatly the
determination in the minds of many to resist the enforcement
of the law. Despite the severe penalties it levelled

against those that should be guilty of shielding the refugee,
the expression of sympathy for fugitive settlers was open
and hearty in many quarters; and public meetings were held
by abolitionists to proclaim defiance to the law and protection
to the fugitive. At Lowell, Massachusetts, an immense Free
Soil meeting adopted resolutions inviting former residents
of the city to return from Canada, where they had taken
refuge;[28] at Syracuse, New York, a gathering of all parties declared
its abhorrence of the Fugitive Slave Law, and formed
an association or vigilance committee "so that the Southern
oppressors may know that the people of Syracuse and its
vicinity are prepared to sustain one another in resisting the
encroachments of despotism";[29] at Boston an indignation
meeting was held "for the denunciation of the law and the
expression of sympathy and coöperation with the fugitive."
Among the resolutions adopted at this meeting, one advised
"the fugitive slaves and colored inhabitants of Boston and
the neighborhood to remain with us, for we have not the
smallest fear that any one of them will be taken from us
and carried off to bondage; and we trust that such as have
fled in fear will return to their business and homes";
another resolution proposed the appointment of a vigilance
committee "to secure the fugitives and colored inhabitants
of Boston and vicinity from any invasion of their rights
by persons acting under the law."[30] In Ashtabula County,
Ohio, a meeting at Hartsgrove resolved, "that we hold the
Fugitive Slave Law in utter contempt . . . and that we will
not aid in catching the fugitive, but will feed him, and protect
him with all the means in our power, and that we will
pledge our sympathy and property for the relief of any person
in our midst who may suffer any penalties for an honorable
opposition . . . to the requirements of this law."[31] In
other portions also of the free states meetings were held in
which the purpose was avowed to protect fugitive slaves.[32]

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."[33]

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. . . ."[34] 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."[35] 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 'weepingmeeting,'
before the Lord. Such is slavery in Boston, in the
year 1852. Has the North nothing to do with slavery?"[36]

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.[37] 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,[38] 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. . . ."[39] 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."[40] 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.[41]

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,[42] 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."[43] 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.[44]
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."[45]
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."[46] 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,[47] 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."[48]

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.[49] 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 Maiden, in upper Canada,
and counted seventeen in that small village whom I had
assisted in reaching Canada."[50] 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.[51] 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.[52] 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.[53] 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.