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GENEALOGY EXPRESS

 

Welcome to
Black
History & Genealogy

 

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
FROM
SLAVERY TO FREEDOM

By
WILBUR H. SIEBERT
Associate Professor of European History
in Ohio State University
With an Introduction by
Albert Bushnell Hart
Professor of History in Harvard University

New York
The McMillan Company
London: MacMillan & Co., Ltd.
1898

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CHAPTER VI
ABDUCTION OF SLAVES FROM THE SOUTH
Pg. 150

     MOST persons that engaged in the underground service were opposed either to enticing or to abducting slaves from the South.  This was no less true along the southern border of the free states than in their interior.  The principle generally acted upon by the friends of fugitives was that which they held to be voiced in the Scriptural injunction to feed the hungry and clothe the naked.  The quaking negro at the door in the dead of night seeking relief from a condition, the miseries of which he found intolerable and for which he was in no proper sense responsible, was a figure to be pitied, and to be helped without delay.  Under such circumstances there was no room for casuistry in the mind of the abolitionist.  The response of his warm nature was as decisive as his favorite passage of Scripture was imperative.  The fugitive was fed, clothed if necessary, and guided to another friend farther on.  But abolitionists were unwilling, for the most part, to involve themselves more deeply in danger by abducting slaves from thraldom.  The Rev. John B. Mahan, one of the early anti-slavery men of southern Ohio, expressed this fact when he said, “I am confident that few, if any, for various reasons, would invade the jurisdiction of another state to give aid and encouragement to slaves to escape from their owners.  .  .  . ”1  And in northern Ohio, in so radical a town as Oberlin, a famous station of the Underground Road, we are told that there was no sentiment in favor of enticing slaves away, and that this was never done except in one case —by Calvin Fairbank, a student.2

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    1 History of Brown County, Ohio, p. 315.
     2
Conversation with ex-President James H. Fairchild, Oberlin, O., Aug. 3, 1892.

[Page 151 - ABDUCTIONS BY NEGROES

     The general disinclination to induce escapes of slaves, either by secret invitation or by persons serving as guides, renders the few cases conspicuous, and gives them considerable interest.  When instances of this kind became known to the slave-owners, as for example, by the arrest and imprisonment of some over-venturesome offender, the irritation resulting on both sides of Mason and Dixon’s line was apt to be disproportionate to the magnitude of the cause.  Nevertheless the aggravation of sectional feeling thus produced was real, and was valued by some Northern agitators as a means to a better understanding of the system of slavery.1
     The largest number of abduction cases occurred through the activities of those well-disposed towards fugitives by the v attachments of race.  There were many negroes, enslaved and free, along the southern boundaries of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, whose opportunities were numerous for conveying fugitives to free soil with slight risk to themselves.  These persons sometimes did scarcely more than ferry runaways across a stream or direct them to the homes of friends residing near the line of a free state.  In the vicinity of Martin’s Ferry, Ohio, there lived a colored man who frequented the Virginia shore for the purpose of persuading slaves to run away.  He was in the habit of imparting the necessary information, and then displaying himself in an intoxicated condition, feigned or real, to avoid suspicion.  At last he was found out, but escaped by betaking himself to Canada.2  In the neighborhood of Portsmouth, Ohio, slaves were conveyed across the river by one Poindexter, a barber of the town of Jackson.3  In Baltimore, Maryland, two colored women, who engaged in selling vegetables, were efficient in starting fugitives on the way to Philadelphia.4  At Louisville, Kentucky, Wash Spradley, a shrewd negro, was instrumental in helping many of his enslaved brethren out of bondage.5  These few instances

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     1 See the Annual Reports of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.
     2 Conversation with Mrs. Joel Woods, at Martin’s Eerry, Aug. 19, 1892.
     3 Conversation with Judge Jesse W. Laird, Jackson, O., June, 1895.
     4 Conversation with Mr. Robert Purvis, at Philadelphia, Dec. 23, 1895.
     5 Conversation with John Evans, at Windsor, Ont., C. W., Aug. 2, 1896;

[Page 152 -
will suffice to illustrate the secret enterprises conducted by colored persons on both sides of the sectional line once dividing the North from the South.
     Another class of colored persons that undertook the work of delivering some of their race from the cruel uncertainties of slavery may be found among the refugees of Canada.  Describing the early development of the movement of slaves to Canada, Dr. Samuel G. Howe says of these persons, “Some, not content with personal freedom and happiness, went secretly back to their old homes and brought away their wives and children at much peril and cost.”1  It has been Stated that the number of these persons visiting the South annually was about five hundred.2  Mr. D. B. Hodge, of Lloydsville, Ohio, gives the case of a negro that went to Canada by way of New Athens, and in the course of a year returned over the same route, went to Kentucky, and brought away his wife and two children, making his pilgrimage northward again after the lapse of about two months.3  Another case, reported by Mr. N. C. Buswell, of Neponset, Illinois, is as follows: A slave, Charlie, belonging to a Missouri planter living near Quincy, Illinois, escaped to Canada by way of one of the underground routes.  Ere long he decided to return and get his wife, but found she had been sold South.  When making his second journey eastward he brought with him a family of slaves, who preferred freedom to remaining as the chattels of his old master.  This was the first of a number of such trips made by the fugitive Charlie.4  Mr. Seth Linton,5 who was familiar with the work on a line of this Road running through Clinton County, Ohio, reports that a fugitive that had passed along the route returned after some months, saying he had come back to rescue his wife.  His absence in the slave state continued so long that it was feared he had been captured, but after some weeks he reappeared, bringing John Evans was a slave near Louisville, hut was given his liberty in 1850, when his master became financially involved.

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     1 Howe, The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West, p. 11.
     2 Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown, p. 229.
     3 Letter from Mr. D. B. Hodge, Oct. 9, 1894.
     4 Letter from Colonel N. C. Buswell, March 13, 1896.
     5 Letter from Seth Linton

[Page 153 - ABDUCTIONS BY WHITES -

his wife and her father with him. He told of having seen many slaves in the country and said they would be along as soon as they could escape.  The following year the Clinton County line was unusually busy.  A brave woman named Armstrong escaped with her husband and one child to Canada in 1842.  Two years later she determined to rescue the remainder of her family from the Kentucky plantation where she had left them, and, disguised as a man, she went back to the old place.  Hiding near a spring, where her children were accustomed to get water, she was able to give instructions to five of them, and the following night she departed with her flock to an underground station at Ripley, Ohio.1
     Equally zealous in the slaves’ behalf with the groups of persons mentioned in the last two paragraphs were certain individuals of Southern birth and white parentage, who found the opportunity to conduct slaves beyond the confines of the plantation states. Robert Purvis tells of the son of a planter, who sometimes travelled into the free states with a retinue of body-servants for the purpose of having them fall into the hands of vigilant abolitionists.  The author has heard similar stories in regard to the sons of Kentucky slave-owners, but the names of the parties concerned were withheld for obvious reasons.
     John Fairfield, a Virginian, devoted much time and thought to abducting slaves. Levi Coffin, who knew him intimately, describes him as a person full of contradictions, who, although a Southerner by birth, and living the greater part of the time in the South, yet hated slavery; a person lacking in moral quality, but devoted to the interests of the slave.
2  John Fairfield’s ostensible business was, at times, that of a poultry and provision dealer; and his views, when he was among planters, were pro-slavery.  Nevertheless his abiding interest seems to have been to despoil slaveholders of their human property.  He made excursions into various parts of the South, and led many companies safely through to Canada.  While Laura Haviland was serving as a mission teacher in Canada West (1852-1853), Fairfield arrived at Windsor,

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    1 The Firelands Pioneer, July, 1888, p. 39.
     2 Coffin, Reminiscences, pp. 304, 305; letter of Miss H. N. Wilson, College Hill, O., April 14, 1892.

[Page 154 -
bringing with him twenty-seven slaves.  Mrs. Haviland, who witnessed the happy conclusion of this adventure, testifies that it was but one of many, and that the abductor often made expeditions into the heart of the slaveholding states to secure his companies.  On the occasion of the arrival of the Virginian with the twenty-seven a reception and dinner were given in his honor by appreciative friends in one of the churches of the colored people, and a sort of jubilee was celebrated.  The ecstasies of some of the guests, among them an old negro woman over eighty years of age, touched the heart of their benefactor, who exclaimed, “This pays me for all dangers I have faced in bringing this company, just to see these friends meet.”1
     Northern men residing or travelling in the South were sometimes tempted to encourage slaves to flee to Canada, or even to plan and execute abductions.  Jacob Cummings, a slave belonging to a small planter, James Smith, of southeastern Tennessee, was befriended by a Mr. Leonard, of Chattanooga, who had become an abolitionist in Albany, New York, before his removal to the South.  Cummings was occasionally sent on errands to Mr. Leonard’s store.  This gave the Northerner the desired opportunity to show his slave customer where

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     1 Laura S. Haviland, A Woman's Life Work, Publ. 1889, p. 199. (Sharon Wick has copy of this book)
     In a letter dated Lawrence, Kan., March 23, 1893, Mr. Fitch Reed gives some of the circumstances connected with the progress of this company through the last stages of its journey.  He says: “In 1853, there came over the road twenty-eight in one gang, with a conductor by the name of Fairfield, from Virginia, who had aided in liberating all his father’s and uncle’s slaves, and there was a reward out for him of five hundred dollars, dead or alive.  They had fifty-two rounds of arms, and were determined not to be taken alive.  Four teams from my house [in Cambridge, Mich.] started at sunset, drove through Clinton after dark, got to Ypsilanti before daylight.  Stayed at Bro. Ray’s through the day.  At noon, Bro. M. Coe, from our station, got on the cars and went to Detroit, and left Ray to drive his team.  Coe informed the friends of the situation, and made arrangements for their reception.  The friends came out to meet them ten miles before we came to Detroit, piloted us to a large boarding-house by the side of the river.  Two hundred abolitionists took breakfast with them just before daylight.  We procured boats enough for Fairfield and his crew.  As they pushed off from shore, they all commenced singing the song, 'I am on my way to Canada, where colored men are free,’ and continued firing off their arms till out of hearing.  At eight o’clock, the ferry-boats started, and the station-keepers went over and spent most of the day with them.”

[Page 155 - ABDUCTIONS BY WHITES -
Ohio and Indiana are on the map, and to advise him to go to Canada. As Cummings had a “ hard master ” he did not long delay his going.1
     The risks and costs of a long trip were not too great for the enthusiastic abolitionist who felt that immediate rescue must be attempted. One remarkable incident illustrates the determination sometimes displayed in freeing a slave.  Two brothers from Connecticut settled in the District of Columbia about the year 1848.  They became gardeners, and employed among their hands a colored woman, who was hired out to them by her master.  Soon after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law (1850) she came weeping to her employers with the news that she was to be sold “down South.”  Stirred by her impending misfortune, one of the brothers had a large box made, within which he nailed the slave-woman and her young daughter.  With the box in his market-wagon he set out on a long, arduous trip across Maryland and Pennsylvania into New York.  After three weeks of travel he reached his journey’s end at Warsaw.  Here he delivered his charge to the care of friends, among whom they found a permanent home.2
     There were ardent abolitionists living almost within sight of slave territory that had no scruples about helping slaves across the line and passing them on to freedom.  In 1886, Dr. David Nelson, a Virginian, who had freed his slaves and moved to Marion County, Missouri, and had there founded Marion College, was driven into Illinois on account of his anti-slavery views.  He settled at Quincy, and soon established the Mission Institute, which was chiefly a school for the education of missionaries.  Mr. N. A. Hunt, now eighty-five years old but apparently of clear mind, was a student in Mission Institute in its early years.  He relates an incident showing the spirit existing in the school, a spirit that manifested itself a little later in the actions of Messrs Burr, Work and Thompson.  His story is that Dr. Nelson came to him one day in the

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     1 Conversation with Jacob Cummings, Columbus, O., April, 1894.
     2 Conversation with the daughter mentioned, now the wife of William Burgbardt, Warsaw, N.Y., June, 1894. Article on the Underground Railroad in the History of Warsaw, New York, Pg. 364

[Page 156 -
spring of 1839 or 1840, and asked him to go with another student across the Mississippi River and patrol the shore opposite Quincy.  The students were to make signals at intervals by tapping stones together, and if their signals were answered they were to help such as needed help by conducting them to a place of safety, a station on the Underground Railroad, sixteen miles east of Quincy.  The station could be easily recognized, for it was a red barn.  The time chosen for crossing the river was always a Sunday night, a time known to be the best for the persons sometimes found waiting on the other side.  This detailing of a watch from the school was regularly done, although with what results is not known.1
     Among the students attending this Institute in 1841 were James E. Burr and George Thompson.  These young men, together with a villager, Alanson Work, arranged with two slaves to convey them from bondage in Missouri.  The abductors found themselves surrounded by a crowd of angry Missourians, and were speedily committed to jail in Palmyra.  To insure the conviction of the prisoners three indictments were brought against them, one charging them with “ stealing slaves, another with attempting to steal them, and the other with intending to make the attempt.”2  Conviction was a foregone conclusion.  Work and his companions were pronounced guilty and sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonment.  These men were not required, however, to serve out their terms.  Mr. Work was pardoned after three and a half years on the unjust condition that he return with his wife and children to the State of Connecticut, his former residence.  Mr. Burr was released at the end of a little more than four years and six months, and Mr. Thompson after nearly five years’ imprisonment.  The anti-slavery character of Mission Institute at length brought down upon it the wrath of the Missourians.  One winter night a party from Marion County crossed the Mississippi River on the ice, stealthily marched to the Institute, and set it on fire.3

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     1 Letter from N. A. Hunt, of Riverside, Cal., Feb. 12, 1891.
     2 Quoted by Wilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Vol. II, p. 71.
     3 Asbury, History of Quincy, p. 74.  The account of the Burr, Work and Thompson case occupies pp. 72, 73 and 74 of Asbury’s volume.

[Pg. 157 - CALVIN FAIRBANK -

     In southern Indiana operations similar to those of the students of the Mission Institute were carried on by a supposedly inoffensive pedler of notions, Joseph Sider.  With his large convenient wagon Sider traversed some of the border counties of Kentucky, supplying goods to his customers; one of his boxes was reserved for disguises for negroes that wished to cast off the garments of slavery.  Sider’s method involved the use of his vehicle for long trips to the Ohio River, where the passengers were conveyed by boat to a place of safety, and told to remain concealed until the wagon and team could be transported by ferry the following morning.  So simple a plan did not excite suspicion, and served to carry fugitives rapidly forward to some line of underground traffic.1
     Among those invasions of the South that caused considerable excitement at the time of their occurrence, the cases of Calvin Fairbank, Seth Concklin and John Brown are notable; and accounts of them cannot well be omitted from these pages, even though they may be more or less familiar to the reader.  Mr. Calvin Fairbank came of English stock, and was born in Wyoming County, New York, in 1816.  His home training as well as his attendance at Oberlin College furnished him with anti-slavery views, but the circumstance: to which he traced his hearty hatred of the Southern institution arose by chance, when as a boy he was attending quarterly meeting with his parents.  “It happened that my family was assigned,” he relates, “to the good, clean home of a pair of escaped slaves.  One night after service I sat on the hearthstone before the fire, and listened to the woman’s story of sorrow. . . . My heart wept, my anger was kindled, and antagonism to slavery was fixed upon me.”2  In the spring of 1837 young Fairbank was sent by his father down the Ohio River in charge of a raft of lumber.  A little below Wheeling he saw a large, active-looking, black man on the Virginia shore, going to the woods with his axe.  He found

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     1 E. Hicks Trueblood, “Reminiscences of the Underground Railroad,” in the Republican Leader, Salem, Ind., March 16, 1894.
     2 Rev. Galvin Fairbank During Slavery Times, or How the Way was Prepared. Edited from his manuscript. Pp. 1-7.

[Pg. 158 -
the woodsman to be a slave, soon gained his confidence, and set him across the river on the raft.  A few days later Mr. Fairbank moored his rude craft, and landed on the Kentucky shore opposite the mouth of the Little Miami River.  Here he was approached by an old slave-woman, who sought the liberation of her seven children.  The matter was easily arranged, and after dark the seven were speedily conveyed across the river.1
     The rescue of Lewis Hayden and his family was the means of bringing Mr. Fairbank to the penitentiary, while it opened to his friend Hayden an honorable career in New England.  Mr. Hayden became a respected citizen of Boston, and helped to organize the Vigilance Committee for the purpose of protecting the refugees that were settling in the city; in course of time he came to serve in the legislature of the State of Massachusetts.  His wife, who survived him, made a bequest of an estate of about five thousand dollars to Harvard University to found a scholarship for the benefit of deserving colored students.2  The story of Hayden's delivery and of his own imprisonment is best told in Mr. Fairbank's words:
"Lewis Hayden .  .  . was, when a young man, .  .  . the property of Baxter and Grant, owners of the Brennan House, in Lexington.  Hayden's wife, Harriet, and his son, a lad of ten years when I first knew them, were the slaves of Patrick Baine.  On a September evening in 1844, accompanied by Miss D. A. Webster, a young Vermont lady, who was associated with me in teaching, I left Lexington with the Haydens, in a hack, crossed the Ohio River on a ferry at nine the next morning, changed horses, and drove to an Underground Railroad depot at Hopkins, Ohio, where we left Hayden and his family.  .  .  . When Miss Webster and I returned to Lexington, after two days' absence, we were both arrested, charged by their master with helping Hayden's wife and son to escape.  We were jointly indicted, but Miss Webster was tried first and sentenced to two years' imprisonment in the penitentiary at Frankfort.  .  .  . While my case was still pending I learned that the governor was inclined to pardon Miss

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     1 Rev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times, pp. 12-14.
     2 Boston Weekly Transcript, Dec. 29, 1893.

[Pg. 159 - CALVIN FAIRBANK -

Webster, but first insisted that I should be tried.  When called up for trial in February, 1845, I pleaded guilty, and received a sentence of fifteen years.  I served four years and eleven months, and then, Aug. 23, 1849, was released by Governor John J. Crittenden, the able and patriotic man who afterwards saved Kentucky to the Union."
     In spite of his incarceration for aiding slaves to escape, and in the face of the heavier penalties laid by the new Fugitive Slave Law, passed shortly after his release from prison, Calvin Fairbank was soon engaged in similar enterprises.  He declares, "I resisted its [the law's] execution whenever and wherever possible."2   A little more than two years after his pardon Mr. Fairbank was again arrested, this time in Indiana, for carrying off Tamar, a young mulatto woman, who was claimed as property by A. L. Shotwell, of Louisville, Kentucky.  Without process of law Mr. Fairbank was taken from the State of Indiana to Louisville, where he was tried in February, 1853.  He was again sentenced to the state prison for a term of fifteen years, and while there was frequently subjected to the most brutal treatment.  Altogether Mr. Fairbank spent seventeen years and four months of his life in prison for abducting slaves; he says that during his second term he received at the hands of prison officials thirty-five thousand stripes.3  Having served more than twelve years of his second sentence, he was pardoned by acting Governor Richard T. Jacob.  It was a singular occurrence that finally enabled Mr. Fairbank to regain his liberty.  Among the friends upon whose favor he could rely was the lieutenant governor of Kentucky, Richard T. Jacob, the son-in-law of Thomas H. Benton, of Missouri.  Mr. Jacob was a man of strong anti-slavery tendencies, notwithstanding his political
prominence and his private interests as a wealthy planter.  The governor, Thomas E. Bramlette, was opposed to extending the executive clemency to so notorious an offender as Mr. Fairbank.  Early in 1864 General Speed S. Fry was detailed by President Lincoln to enroll all the negroes of

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     1 The Chicago Tribune, Sunday, Jan. 29, 1893.
     2 Ibid.
    
3 Rev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times, pp. 138, 144.

[Pg. 160 -
Kentucky, but he came into collision with Governor Bramlette, who sought to prevent General Fry from carrying out his orders.  Upon receiving information to this effect the President summoned the executive of Kentucky to Washington to answer to charges; and thereupon Mr. Jacob became acting governor.  On his first day in office the new executive of Kentucky was accosted by General Fry with the remark, "Governor, the President thinks it would be well to make this Fairbank's day."  On the morning following, the prisoner received a full and free pardon.1
     Mr. Fairbank gives many interesting devices that he employed in his work to throw off pursuit.  "Forty-seven slaves I guided toward the north star, in violation of the state codes of Virginia and Kentucky.  I piloted them through the forests, mostly by night; girls, fair and white, dressed as ladies; men and boys, as gentlemen, or servants; men in women's clothes, and women in men's clothes; boys dressed as girls, and girls as boys; on foot or on horseback, in buggies, carriages, common wagons, in and under loads of hay, straw, old furniture, boxes and bags; crossing the Jordan of the slave, swimming or wading chin deep; or in boats, or skiffs; on rafts, and often on a pine log.  And I never suffered one to be recaptured."2
     About 1850, Seth Concklin, a resident of Philadelphia, learned of the remarkable escape of Peter Still from Alabama to the Quaker City.  Here the runaway was most happily favored in finding friends.  William Still, his brother, from whom he had been separated by kidnappers long years before, was discovered almost immediately in the office of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society; and Seth Concklin soon proffered himself as an agent to go into the South and bring away Peter Still's family.  The fugitive himself first visited Alabama to see what could be done for his wife and children; but failing to accomplish anything he gratefully accepted the offer of the daring Philadelphian.  Mr. Concklin expected to assume the character of a slave-owner and

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     1 Rev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times, pp. 11, 104-143.  See also the Chicago Tribune, Sunday, Jan. 29, 1893, p. 33.
     2. Rev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times, pp. 10 and 11.

[Pg. 161 - SETH CONCKLIN -

bring the Stills away as his servants; he found, however, that the steamboats on the Tennessee River were too irregular to be depended on.  He therefore returned north to Indiana, and arranged for the escape of the slave family across that state to Canada.  The story of his second attempt at the South has a tragic ending, notwithstanding its favorable beginning.  Having made a safe start and a long journey of seven days and nights in a rowboat the whole party was captured in southwestern Indiana.  A letter from the Rev. N. R. Johnston to William Still, written soon after the catastrophe, gives the following account of the affair:  "On last Tuesday I mailed a letter to you, written by Seth Concklin.  I presume you have received that letter.  It gave an account of the rescue of the family of your brother.  If that is the last news you have had from them I have very painful intelligence for you.  They passed on (north) from near Princeton, where I saw them. . . . I think twenty-three miles above Vincennes, Ind., they were seized by a party of men, and lodged in jail.  Telegraphic despatches were sent all through the South.  I have since learned that the marshal of Evansville received a despatch from Tuscumbia to look out for them.  By some means, he and the master, so says report, went to Vincennes and claimed the fugitives, chained Mr. Concklin, and hurried all off.  .  .  ."1  In a postscript, the same letter gave the rumor of Seth Concklin's escape from the boat on which he was being carried South; but the newspapers brought reports of a different nature.  Their statements represented that the man "Miller" - that is, Concklin - "was found drowned, with his hands and feet in chains and his skull fractured."2  The version of the tragedy given by the claimant of the fugitives, McKiernon, was as follows: "Some time last march a white man by the name of Miller appeared in the nabourhood and abducted the above negroes, was caught at vincanes, Indi. with said negroes and was thare convicted of steling and remanded back to Ala. to Abide the penalty of the law and on his return

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     1 Letter dated Evansville, Ind., Mar. 31, 1851.  Printed in Still's Underground Railroad Records, pp. 30, 31.
     2 Still, Underground Railroad Records, p. 31.

[Pg. 162 -
met his Just reward by getting drowned at the mouth of Cumberland River on the Ohio in attempting to make his escape."1 Just how Concklin met his death will probably always remain a mystery.  McKiernon's letter offered terms for the purchase of the poor slaves, but they were so exorbitant that they could not be accepted.  Besides, it was not deemed proper to jeopardize the life of another agent on a mission so dangerous.
     It is well known that John Brown aided fugitive slaves whenever the opportunity occurred, as did his Puritan-bred father before him.  We have no record, however, of his abducting slaves from the South except in the case of his famous raid into Missouri in 1858.  This exploit has a peculiar interest for us, not only as one of the most notable abductions, but as being, in a special way, the prelude of that great plan in behalf of the enslaved that he sought to carry out at Harper's Ferry.  After Captain Brown's return from the Eastern states to Kansas in 1858, he and his men encamped for a few days at Bain's Fort.  While here, Brown was appealed to by a slave, Jim Daniels, the chattel of one James Lawrence, of Missouri.  Daniels had heard of Captain Brown, and, securing a permit to go about and sell brooms, had used it in making his way to Brown's camp.''  His prayer was "For help to get away," because he was soon to be sold, together with his wife, two children and a negro man.3  Such a supplication could not be made in vain to John Brown.  On the following night (December 20) Brown's raid into Missouri was made.  Brown himself gives the account of it:"Two small companies were made up to go to Missouri and forcibly liberate the five slaves, together

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     1 Still, Underground Railroad Records, p. 35.  Letter dated south Florence, Ala., Aug. 6, 1851.
     2 Conversation with Samuel Harper and his wife, Jane Harper, the two surviving members of the company of slave escorted to Canada by Brown in March, 1859.  Their home since has been in or about Windsor.  I found them there in the early part of August, 1895.
     3 Halloway, History of Kansas.  Quoted from John Brown's letters, January, 1859 (pp. 539-545).
     4 In a letter written by Brown, January, 1859, to the NewYork Tribune, in which paper it was published.  It was also published in the Lawrence (Kansas) Republican.  See Sanborn's Life and Letters of John Brown, p. 481.


SAMUEL HARPER AND WIFE,
of Windsor, Ontario


ELLEN CRAFT.

[Pg. 163 - JOHN BROWN'S RAID INTO MISSOURI -

with other slaves.  One of these companies I assumed to direct.  We proceeded to the place, surrounded the buildings, liberated the slaves, and also took certain property supposed to belong to the estate.
     "We, however, learned before leaving that a portion of the articles we had taken belonged to a man living on the plantation as a tenant, and who was supposed to have no interest in the estate.  We promptly returned to him all we had taken.  We then went to another plantation, where we found five more slaves; took some property and two white men.  We moved all slowly away into the territory for some distance and then sent the white men back, telling them to follow us as soon as they chose to do so.  The other company freed one female slave, took some property, and, as I am informed, killed one white man (the master) who fought against liberation. . . ."1
     The company responsible for the shooting of the slaveowner, David Cruse, was in charge of Kagi and Charles Stephens, also known as Whipple.  When this party came to the house of Mr. Cruse the family had retired.  There was no hesitation, however, on the part of the strangers in requesting quarters for the night.  Mrs. Cruse, her suspicions fully aroused, handed her husband his pistol.  Jean Harper, the
slave-woman that was taken from this house, asserts that her master would certainly have fired upon the intruders had not Whipple used his revolver first, with deadly effect.  When the two squads came together the march back to Bain's Fort was begun.  On the way thither Brown asked the slaves if they wanted to be free, and then promised to take them to a free country.  Thus was Brown led to undertake one of his
boldest adventures, one of the boldest indeed in the history of the Underground Road.  With a mere handful of men he purposed to escort his band of freedmen on a journey of twenty-five hundred miles to Canada, in the dead of winter, and surrounded by the dangers that the publicity of his foray and the announcement of a reward of three thousand dollars for his arrest were likely to bring upon him.  Brown and his

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     1 Sanborn, Life and Letters of John Brown, pp. 482, 483; also Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown, pp. 219, 220.

[Pg. 164 -

company tarried only one day at Bain's Fort; then proceeded northward by way of Topeka to the place of his friend, Dr. Doyle, five miles beyond, and then by way of Osawattomie, Holton and the house of Major J. B. Abbot near Lawrence, into Nebraska.  Lawrence was reached Jan. 24, 1859.  At Holton a party of pursuers, two or three times as large as Brown's company, was dispersed in instant and ridiculous flight, and four prisoners and five horses were taken.  The trip, after leaving Holton, was made amidst great perils.  Under an escort of seventeen "Topeka boys" Brown pressed rapidly on to Nebraska City.  At this point the passage of the Missouri was made on the ice, and the liberators with their charges arrived at Tabor in the first week of February.  Here, Brown met with rebuff, "contrary to his expectation, and contrary to the whole former attitude of the people," we are told, "he was not welcomed, but, at a public meeting called for the purpose, was severely reprimanded as a disturber of the peace and safety of the village.  Effecting a hasty departure from Tabor, and taking advantage of the protection offered by a few friendly families on the way, he and his party of fugitives came, on Feb. 20, 1859, to Grinnell, Iowa, where they were cordially received by the Hon. J. B. Grinnell, who entertained them in his house.  Brown's next stop was made at Springdale, which place he reached on February 25.  Here the fugitives were distributed among the Quaker families for safety and rest before continuing the journey to Canada.  But soon rumors were afloat of the coming of the United States marshal, and it became necessary to secure for the negroes railroad transportation to Chicago.  Kagi and Stephens, disguised as sportsmen, walked to Iowa City, enlisted the services of Mr. William Penn Clark, an influential anti-slavery citizen of that place, and by his efforts, supplemented by those of Hon. J. B. Grinnell, a freight car was got and held in readiness at West Liberty.  The negroes were then brought down from Springdale (distant but six miles) and, after spending a night in a grist-mill near the railway station, were ready to embark."1  They were

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     1 Irving B. Richman, John Brown among the Quakers, and Other Sketches, pp. 46, 47, 48.

[Pg. 165 - EFFECT OF BROWN'S RAID -

stowed away in the freight-car by Brown, Kagi and Stephens, and the car was made fast to a train from the West on the Chicago and Rock Island Road. "On reaching Chicago, Brown and his party were taken into friendly charge by Allen Pinkerton, the famous detective, and started for Detroit.  On March 10 they were in Detroit and practically at their journey's end."1 On the twelfth the freedmen were, under Brown's direction, ferried across the Detroit River to Windsor, Canada.
     The trip from southern Kansas to the Canadian destination had consumed three weeks.  The restoration of twelve persons to "their natural and inalienable rights with but one man killed"2 was a result which Brown seems to have regarded as justifiable, but one the tragedy of which he certainly deplored.The manner in which this result had been accomplished was highly dramatic, and created great excitement throughout the country, especially in Missouri.  Brown's biographer, James Redpath, writing in 1860, speaks thus of the consternation in the invaded state: "When the news of the invasion of Missouri spread, a wild panic went with it, which in a few days resulted in clearing Bates and Vernon counties of their slaves.  Large numbers were sold south; many ran into the Territory and escaped; others were removed farther inland.  When John Brown made his invasion there were five hundred slaves in that district where there are not fifty negroes now."4 The success of the expedition just narrated was well fitted to increase confidence in John Brown's determination, and to arouse enthusiasm among his numerous refugee friends in Canada.  The story of the adventure was not unlikely to penetrate the remote regions of the South, and perhaps find lodgment in the retentive memories of many slaves.  The publication in the New York Tribune of his letter defending his abduction of the Missouri chattels just as he was begin-

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     1 Irving B. Richman, John Brown among the Quakers, and Other Sketches, pp. 46, 47, 48.
     2 Sanborn, The Life andLetters of John Brown, p. 483.  See the letter of 'The Parallels."
     3. Hinton, John Brown and His Men, p. 221.
     4. RedpathThe Public Life of Captain John Brown, p. 221.

[Pg. 166 -

 

[Pg. 167 - BROWN'S PLAN OF LIBERATION -

 

[Pg. 168 -

 

[Pg. 169 - CHARLES T. TORREY -

 

[Pg. 170 -

 

[Pg. 171 - CAPTAIN JONATHAN WALKER -

 

[Pg. 172 -

 

[Pg. 173 - DRAYTON'S EXPEDITION WITH THE "PEARL" -

 

[Pg. 174 -

 

[Pg. 175 - RICHARD DILLINGHAM AND WILLIAM L. CHAPLIN -

 

[Pg. 176 -

 

[Pg. 177 - JOSIAH HENSON -

 

[Pg. 178 -

 

[Pg. 179 - RIAL CHEADLE -

 

[Pg. 180 -

 

[Pg. 181 - ALEXANDER M. ROSS -

 

[Pg. 182 -

 

[Pg. 183 - HARRIET TUBMAN THE MOSES OF HER PEOPLE -

 

[Pg. 184 -

 

[Pg. 185 - HARRIET TUBMAN THE MOSES OF HER PEOPLE -

resisted, but both his arms were broken, and his body otherwise abused. . . .  Though he had changed his name, as most slaves do on running away, he told his master’s name and to him he was delivered.  He was eventually sold and was taken to New Orleans. . . .  Yet in one year, five months, and twenty days, I received a letter from this man, John Mason, from Hamilton, Canada West.  Let a man walk abroad on Freedom’s Sunny Plains, and having once drunk of its celestial ‘stream whereof maketh glad the city of our God,’ afterward reduce this man to slavery, it is next to an impossibility to retain him in slavery.” 1
     Harriet Tubman, like John Mason, did not reckon the value of her own liberty in comparison with the liberty of
others who had not tasted its sweets.  Like him, she saw in the oppression of her race the sufferings of the enslaved Israelites, and was not slow to demand that the Pharaoh of the South should let her people go.  She was known to many of the anti-slavery leaders of her generation; her personality and her power were such that none of them ever forgot the high virtues of this simple black woman.  Governor William H. Seward, of New York, wrote of her: “I have known Harriet long, and a nobler, higher spirit or a truer, seldom dwells in human form.”2  Gerrit Smith declared: “I am convinced that she is not only truthful, but that she has a rare discernment, and a deep and sublime philanthropy.”3  John Brown introduced her to Wendell Phillips in Boston, saying, “I bring you one of the best and bravest persons on this continent— General Tubman as we call her.”4   Frederick Douglass testified: “Excepting John Brown, of sacred memory, I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people than you have.  Much that

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    1 Mitchell, The Underground Railroad, p. 20 et seq.
    2 Sarah H. Bradford, Harriet the Moses of Her People, p. 76. See also Appendix, p. 137. These testimonials were given in 1868 and were printed in connection with a short biography of Harriet in the year mentioned.  The first edition of this biography has not been accessible to me, hut it is mentioned by the Rev. Samuel J. May in his Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict, published the following year.  The second edition of the book appeared in 1886.
     3
Ibid., p. 139.
     4
Hinton, John Brown and His Men, p. 173

[Pg. 186 -
you have done would seem improbable to those who do not know you as I know you. . . -”1  Mr. F. B. Sanborn said: “She has often been in Concord, where she resided at the houses of Emerson, Alcott, the Whitneys, the Brooks family, Mrs. Horace Mann, and other well-known persons.  They all admired and respected her, and nobody doubted the reality of her adventures. . . .”
 2  The Rev. S. J. May knew Harriet personally, and speaks with admiration, not only of the work she did in emancipating numbers of her own people, but also of the important services she rendered the nation during the Civil War both as a nurse and as “the leader of soldiers in scouting-parties and raids.  She seemed to know no fear and scarcely ever fatigue.  They called her their Moses.”3
     The name, Moses, was that by which this woman was commonly known.  She earned it by the qualities of leadership displayed in conducting bands of slaves through devious ways and manifold perils out of their “land of Egypt.”  She first learned what liberty was for herself about the year 1849.  She made her way from Maryland, her home as a slave, to Philadelphia, and there by industry gathered together a sum of money with which to begin her humane and self-imposed labors.  In December, 1850, she went to Baltimore and abducted her sister and two children.  A few months later she brought away another company of three persons, one of whom was her brother.  From this time on till the outbreak of the War of the Rebellion her excursions were frequent.  She is said to have accomplished nineteen such trips, and emancipated over three hundred slaves.
4  As may be surmised, she had encouragement in her undertakings; but her main dependence was upon her own efforts.  All her wages were laid aside for the purpose of emancipating her people.  Whenever she had secured a sufficient sum, she would disappear from her Northern home, work her passage South, and meet the band of expectant slaves, whom she had forewarned of her coming in some mysterious way.

---------------
     1 Mrs. Bradford, Harriet the Moses of Her People, p. 135.
     2 Ibid., pp. 136, 137.
     3 Ibid., p. 406.
     4 James Freeman Clarke, Anti-Slavery Days, pp. 81, 82. Also M. G. McDougall, Fugitive Slaves, p. 62.

[Pg. 187 - HARRIET TUBMAN THE MOSES OF HER PEOPLE -

     Her sagacity was one of her most marked traits; it was displayed constantly in her management of her little caravans.  Thus she would take the precaution to start with her pilgrims on Saturday night so that they could be well along on their journey before they were advertised.  Posters giving descriptions of the runaways and offering a considerable reward for their arrest were a common means of making public the loss of slave property.  Harriet often paid a negro to follow the man who posted the descriptions of her companions and tear them down.  When there were babies in the party she sometimes drugged them with paregoric and had them carried in baskets.  She knew where friends could be found that would give shelter to her weary freedmen.  If at any stage of the journey she were compelled to leave her companions and forage for supplies she would disclose herself on her return through the strains of a favorite song: —

Dark and thorny is de pathway,
   Where de pilgrim makes his ways;
But Behond dis vale of sorro,
   Lie de fields of endless days.

     Sometimes when hard pressed by pursuers she would take a train southward with her companions; she knew that no one would suspect fugitives travelling in that direction.  Harriet was a well-known visitor at the offices of the anti-slavery societies in Philadelphia and New York, and at first she seems to have been content if her protégés arrived safely among friends in either of these cities; but after she comprehended the Fugitive Slave Law she preferred to accompany them all the way to Canada.  “I wouldn’t,” she said, “trust Uncle Sam wid my people no longer.”1  She knew the need of discipline in effecting her rough, overland marches, and she therefore required strict obedience of her followers.  The discouragement of an individual could not be permitted to endanger the liberty and safety of the whole party; accordingly she sometimes strengthened the fainting heart by threatening to use her revolver, and declaring, “Dead niggers tell no tales, you go on or die.”  She was

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     1 Mrs. Bradford, Harriet the Moses of Her People, p. 39.

[Pg. 188 -
not less lenient with herself. The safety of her companions was her chief concern; she would not allow her labors to be lightened by any course likely to increase the chances of their discovery. On one occasion, while leading a company, she experienced a feeling that danger was near; unhesitatingly she decided to ford a river near by, because she must do so to be safe. Her followers were afraid to cross, but Harriet, despite the severity of the weather (the month was March), and her ignorance of the depth of the stream, walked resolutely into the water and led the way to the op¬ posite shore. It was found that officers were lying in wait for the party on the route first intended.
     Like many of her race Harriet was a thorough-going mystic.  The Quaker, Thomas Garrett, said of her: “ . . . I never met with any person, of any color, who had more confidence in the voice of God, as spoken to her soul.  She has frequently told me that she talked with God, and he talked with her, every day of her life, and she has declared to me that she felt no more fear of being arrested by her former master, or any other person, when in his immediate neighborhood, than she did in the State of New York, or Canada, for she said she never ventured only where God sent her.  Her faith in the Supreme Power truly was great.”1  This faith never deserted her in her times of peril.  She explained her many deliverances as Harriet Beecher Stowe accounted for the power and effect of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  She insisted it was all God’s doing.  “Jes so long as he wanted to use me,” said Mrs. Tubman, “ he would take keer of me, an’ when he didn’t want me no longer, I was ready to go.  I always tole him, I’m gwine to hole stiddy on to you, an’ you’ve got to see me trou.” 2
     In 1857, Mrs. Tubman made what has been called her most venturesome journey.  She had brought several of her brothers and sisters from slavery, but had not hit upon a method to release her aged parents.  The chief difficulty lay in the fact that they were unable to walk long distances.  At length she devised a plan and carried it through.  A home-

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     1 Mrs. Bradford, Harriet the Moses of Her People, pp. 83, 84.
     2 Ibid., p. 61,

[Pg. 189 -  HARRIET TUBMAN THE MOSES OF HER PEOPLE -
made conveyance was patched together, and an old horse brought into use.  Mr. Garrett describes the vehicle as consisting of a pair of old chaise-wheels, with a board on the axle to sit on and another board swinging by ropes from the axle on which to rest their feet.  This rude contrivance Harriet used in conveying her parents to the railroad, where they were put aboard the cars for Wilmington; and she followed them in her novel vehicle.  At Wilmington, Friend Garrett was sought out by the bold abductor, and he furnished her with money to take all of them to Canada.  He afterwards sold their horse and sent them the money.  Harriet and her family did not long remain in Canada; Auburn, New York, was deemed a preferable place; and here a small property was bought on easy terms of Governor Seward, to provide a home for the enfranchised mother and father.
     Before Harriet had finished paying for her bit of real estate, the Civil War broke out.  Governor Andrew of Massachusetts, appreciating the sagacity, bravery and kindliness of the woman, soon summoned her to go into the South to serve as a scout, and when necessary as a hospital nurse.  That her services were valuable was the testimony of officers under whom she served; thus General Rufus Saxton wrote in March, 1868: “I can bear witness to the value of her services in South Carolina and Florida.  She was employed in the hospitals and as a spy.  She made many a raid inside the enemies’ lines, displaying remarkable courage, zeal and fidelity.”1
     At the conclusion of the great struggle Harriet returned to Auburn, where she has lived ever since.  Her devotion to her people has never ceased.  Although she is very poor and is subject to the infirmities of old age, infirmities increased in her case by the effects of ill treatment received in slavery, she has managed to transform her house into a hospital, where she provides and cares for some of the helpless and deserving of her own race.2

---------------
     1 Mrs. Bradford, Harriet the Moses of Her People, Appendix, p. 142.
     2 Lillie B. C. Wyman, in the New England Magazine, March, 1876, pp. 117, 118.  Conversation with Harriet Tubman, Cambridge, Mass., April 8, 1897.

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