 | The underground railroad from slavery to freedom, |  |
INTRODUCTION
BY ALBERT BUSHNELL HART
Of all the questions which have interested and divided
the people of the United States, none since the foundation
of the Federal Union has been so important, so far-reaching,
and so long contested as slavery. During the first half of
the nineteenth century the other great national questions
were nearly all economic—taxation, currency, banks, transportation,
lands,—and they had a strong material basis, a
flavor of self-interest; but though slavery had also an
economic side, the reasons for the onslaught upon it were
chiefly moral. The first objection brought by the slave-power
against the anti-slavery propaganda was the cry
of the sacredness of vested and property rights against
attack by sentimentalists; but what dignified the whole
contest was the very fact that the sentiment for human
rights was at the bottom of it, and that the abolitionists felt
a moral responsibility even though property owners suffered.
The slavery question, which in origin was sectional, became
national as the moral issues grew clearer; and finally
loomed up as the dominant question through the determination
of both sides to use the power and prestige of the
national government. From the moral agitation came also
the personal element in the struggle, the development of
strong characters, like Calhoun, Toombs, Stephens and
Jefferson Davis on one side; like Lundy, Lovejoy, Garrison,
Giddings, Sumner, Chase, John Brown and Lincoln on the
other.
Among the many weak spots in the system of slavery none
gave such opportunities to Northern abolitionists as the locomotive
owner talking about freedom, a "thing" which could steer
itself Northward and avoid the "patterollers," was a thing of
impaired value as a machine, however intelligent as a human
being. From earliest colonial times fugitive slaves helped to
make slavery inconvenient and expensive. So long as slavery
was general, every slaveholder in every colony was a member
of an automatic association for stopping and returning fugitives;
but, from the Revolution on, the fugitives performed
the important function of keeping continually before the
people of the states in which slavery had ceased, the fact;
that it continued in other parts of the Union. Nevertheless,
though between 1777 and 1804 all the states north of Maryland
threw off slavery, the free states covenanted in the
Federal Constitution of 1787 to interpose no obstacle to the
recapture of fugitives who might come across their borders;
and thus continued to be partners in the system of slavery.
From the first there was reluctance and positive opposition
to this obligation; and every successful capture was an
object lesson to communities out of hearing of the whipping-post
and out of sight of the auction-block.
In aiding fugitive slaves the abolitionist was making the
most effective protest against the continuance of slavery;
but he was also doing something more tangible; he was
helping the oppressed, he was eluding the oppressor; and at
the same time he was enjoying the most romantic and exciting
amusement open to men who had high moral standards.
He was taking risks, defying the laws, and making himself
liable to punishment, and yet could glow with the healthful
pleasure of duty done.
To this element of the personal and romantic side of the
slavery contest Professor Siebert has devoted himself in this
book. The Underground Railroad was simply a form of
combined defiance of national laws, on the ground that those
laws were unjust and oppressive. It was the unconstitutional
but logical refusal of several thousand people to
bound to look on fleeing bondmen as the property of the
slaveholders, no matter how the laws read. It was also
a practical means of bringing anti-slavery principles to the
attention of the lukewarm or pro-slavery people in free
states; and of convincing the South that the abolitionist
movement was sincere and effective. Above all, the Underground
Railroad was the opportunity for the bold and
adventurous; it had the excitement of piracy, the secrecy
of burglary, the daring of insurrection; to the pleasure of
relieving the poor negro's sufferings it added the triumph
of snapping one's fingers at the slave-catcher; it developed
coolness, indifference to danger, and quickness of resource.
The first task of the historian of the Underground Railroad
is to gather his material, and the characteristic of this book
is to consider the whole question on a basis of established
facts. The effort is timely; for there are still living, or were
living when the work began, many hundreds of persons who
knew the intimate history of parts of the former secret system
of transportation; the book is most timely, for these invaluable
details are now fast disappearing with the death of the
actors in the drama. Professor Siebert has rescued and put
on record events which in a few years will have ceased to be
in the memory of living men. He has done for the history
of slavery what the students of ballad and folk-lore have
done for literature; he has collected perishing materials.
Reminiscence is of course, standing alone, an insufficient
basis for historical generalization. On that point Professor
Siebert has been careful to explain his principle: he does not
attempt to generalize from single memories not otherwise
substantiated, but to use reminiscences which confirm each
other, to search out telling illustrations, and to discover
what the tendencies were from numerous contrasted testimonies.
Actual contemporary records are scanty; a few are
here preserved, such as David Putnam's memorandum, and
Campbell's letter; and the crispness which they give to the
autobiographies, and contemporary memoirs have
been diligently sought out and used; and no variety of
sources has been ignored which seemed likely to throw light
on the subject. The ground has been carefully traversed;
and it is not likely that much will ever be added to the body
of information collected by Professor Siebert. His list of
sources, described in the introductory chapter and enumerated
in the Appendices, is really a carefully winnowed bibliography
of the contemporary materials on slavery.
The book is practically divided into four parts: the Railroad
itself (Chapters ii, v); the railroad hands (Chapters
iii, iv, vi); the freight (Chapters vii, viii); and political
relations and effects (Chapters ix, x, xi). Perhaps one of
the most interesting contributions to our knowledge of tlie
subject is the account of the beginnings of the system of
secret and systematic aid to fugitives. The evidence goes
to show that there was organization in Pennsylvania before
1800; and in Ohio soon after 1815. The book thus becomes
a much-needed guide to information about the obscure
anti-slavery movement which preceded William Lloyd Garrison,
and to some degree prepared the way for him; and it
will prove a source for the historian of the influence of the
West in national development. As yet we know too little
of the anti-slavery movement which so profoundly stirred
the Western states, including Kentucky and Missouri, and
which came closely into contact with the actual conditions of
slavery. As Professor Siebert points out, most of the early
abolitionists in the West were former slaveholders or sons
of slaveholders.
Professor Siebert has applied to the whole subject a graphic
form of illustration which is at the same time a test of his
conclusions. How can the scattered reminiscences and
records of escapes in widely separated states be shown, to
refer to the results of one organized method? Plainly by
applying them to the actual face of the country, so as to see
connection. The painstaking map of the lines of the Underground
Railroad "system" is an historical contribution of a
novel kind; and it is impossible to gainsay its evidence,
which is expounded in detail in one of the chapters of the
book. The result is a gratifying proof of the usefulness of
scientific methods in historical investigation; one who lived
in an anti-slavery community before the Civil War is fascinated
by tracing the hitherto unknown stretches north and
south from the centre which he knew. The map bears testimony
not only to the wide-spread practice of aiding fugitives,
but to the devotion of the conductors on the Underground
Railroad. How useful a section of Mr. Siebert's map would
have been to the slave-catcher in the 50's, when so many
strange negroes were appearing and disappearing in the free
states! The facts presented in the brief compass of the map
would have been of immense value also to the leaders of the
Southern Confederacy in 1861, as a confirmation of their
argument that the North would not perform its constitutional
duty of returning the fugitives; yet there is no record in this
book of the betraying of the secrets of the U. G. R. R. by
any person in the service. The moral bond of opposition to
the whole slave power kept men at work forwarding fugitives
by a road of which they themselves knew but a small
portion. The political philosophers who think that the
Civil War might have been averted by timely concessions
would do well to study this picture of the wide distribution
of persons who saw no peace in slavery.
Amid all the varieties of anti-slavery men, from the
Garrisonian abolitionist to faint-hearted slaveholders like
James G. Birney, it is interesting to see how many had a
share in the Underground Railroad; and how many earned
a reputation as heroes. Professor Siebert has gathered the
names of about 3,200 persons known to have been engaged
in this work—a roll of honor for many American families.
Everybody knew that the fugitives were aided by Fred
Joshua Giddings, John Brown, Levi Coffin, Thomas Garrett
and Theodore Parker; but this book gives us some account
of the interest of men like Thaddeus Stevens, not commonly
counted among the sons of the prophets; and performs a
special service to the student of history and the lover of
heroic deeds, by the brief account of the services of obscure
persons who deserve a place in the hearts of their countrymen.
Men like Rev. George Bourne, Rev. James Duncan
and Rev. John Rankin, years before Garrison's propaganda,
had begun to speak and publish against slavery, and to
prepare men's minds for a righteous disregard of Fugitive
Slave Acts. Joseph Sider, with his carefully subdivided
peddler's wagon, deserves a place alongside the better
known Henry Box Brown. The thirty-five thousand stripes
of Calvin Fairbank, seventeen years a convict in the
Kentucky penitentiary, range him with Lovejoy as an
anti-slavery martyr. Rev. Charles Torrey had in the work
of rousing slaves to escape, the same devotion to a fatal duty
as that which animated John Brown. And no one who has
ever heard Harriet Tubman describe her part as "Moses" of
the fugitives can ever forget that African prophetess, whose
intense vigor is relieved by a shrewd and kindly humanity.
The quiet recital of the facts has all the charm of
romance to the passengers on the Underground Railroad:
whether travelling by night in a procession of covered
wagons, or boldly by day in disguises; whether boxed up
as so much freight, or riding on passes unhesitatingly given
by abolitionist directors of railroads; the fugitives in these
pages rejoice in their prospect of liberty. The road sign
near Oberlin, of a tiger chasing a negro, was a white man's
joke; but it was a negro who said, apropos of his master's
discouraging account of Canada: "They put some extract
onto it to keep us from comin'"; and neither Whittier in
his poems, nor Harriet Beecher Stowe in her novels,
imagined a more picturesque incident than the crossing of
rescued souls singing, "I'm on my way to Canada, where
colored men are free," to the joyful accompaniment of their
firearms.
To the settlements of fugitives in Canada Professor
Siebert has given more labor than appears in his book;
for his own visits supplement the accounts of earlier
investigators; and we have here the first complete account
of the reception of the negroes in Canada and their progress
in civilization.
Upon the general question of the political effects of the
Underground Railroad, the book adds much to our information,
by its discussion of the probable numbers of fugitives,
and of the alarm caused in the slave states by their departure.
The census figures of 1850 and 1860 are shown to be
wilfully false; and the escape of thousands of persons seems
established beyond cavil. Into the constitutional question
of the right to take fugitives, the book goes with less
minuteness, since it is intended to be a contribution to
knowledge, and not an addition to the abundant literature
on the legal side of slavery.
It has been the effort of Professor Siebert to furnish the
means for settling the following questions: the origin of the
system of aid to the fugitives, popularly called the Underground
Railroad; the degree of formal organization; methods
of procedure; geographical extent and relations; the leaders
and heroes of the movement; the behavior of the fugitives
on their way; the effectiveness of the settlement in Canada;
the numbers of fugitives; and the attitude of courts and
communities. On all these questions he furnishes new light;
and he appears to prove his concluding statement that "the
Underground Railroad was one of the greatest forces which
brought on the Civil War and thus destroyed slavery."
| The underground railroad from slavery to freedom, | |