CHAPTER III

THE METHODS OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

By the enactment of the first Fugitive Slave Law, February 12, 1793, the aiding of fugitive slaves became a penal offence. This measure laid a fine of five hundred dollars upon any one harboring escaped slaves, or preventing their arrest. The provisions of the law were of a character to stimulate resistance to its enforcement. The master or his agent was authorized to arrest the runaway, wherever found; to bring him before a judge of the circuit or the district court of the United States, or before a local magistrate where the capture was made; and to receive, on the display of satisfactory proof, a certificate operating as a full warrant for taking the prisoner back to the state from which he had fled. This summary method of disposing of cases involving the high question of human liberty was regarded by many persons as unjust; they freely denounced it, and, despite the penalty attached, many violated the law. Secrecy was the only safeguard of these persons, as it was of those they were attempting to succor; hence arose the numerous artifices employed.

The uniform success of the attempts to evade this first Fugitive Slave Law, and doubtless, also, the general indisposition of Northern people to take part in the return of refugees to their Southern owners, led, as early as in 1823, to negotiations between Kentucky and the three adjoining states across the Ohio. It is unnecessary to trace the history of these negotiations, or to point out the statutes in which the legislative results are recorded. It is notable that sixteen years elapsed before the legislature of Ohio passed a law to secure the recovery of slave property, and that the new enactment remained on the statute books only four years. The penalties imposed by this law for advising or for enticing a slave to leave his master, or for harboring a fugitive, were a fine, not to exceed five hundred dollars, and, at the discretion of the court, imprisonment not to exceed sixty days. In addition, the offender was to be liable in an action at the suit of the party injured.[113] It can scarcely be supposed that a state Fugitive Slave Law like this would otherwise affect persons that were already engaged in aiding runaways than to make them more certain than ever that their cause was just.

[113] The date of the act is February 26, 1839.

The loss of slave property sustained by Southern planters was not diminished, and the outcry of the South for a more rigorous national law on the subject was by no means hushed. In 1850 Congress met the case by substituting for the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 the measure called the second Fugitive Slave Law. The penalties provided by this law were, of course, more severe than those of the act of 1793. Any person hindering the claimant from arresting the fugitive, or attempting the rescue or concealment of the fugitive, became "subject to a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, or imprisonment not exceeding six months," and was liable for "civil damages to the party injured by such illegal conduct in the sum of one thousand dollars for each fugitive so lost." These provisions of the new law only added fresh fuel to the fire. The determination to prevent the recovery of escaped slaves by their owners spread rapidly among the inhabitants of the free states. Many of these persons, who had hitherto refrained from acting for or against the fugitive, were provoked into helping defeat the action of a law commanding them "to aid and assist in the prompt and efficient execution" of a measure that would have set them at the miserable business of slave-catching. Clay only expressed a wish instead of a fact, when he maintained in 1851 that the law was being executed in Indiana, Ohio and other states. Another Southern senator was much nearer the truth when he complained of the small number of recaptures under the recent act.

The risk of suffering severe penalties by violating the Fugitive Slave laws was less wearing, probably, on abolitionists than was the social disdain they brought upon themselves by acknowledging their principles. During a generation or more they were in a minority in many communities, and were forced to submit to the taunts and insults of persons that did not distinguish between abolition of slavery and fusion of the white and the black races. "Black abolitionist," "niggerite," "amalgamationist" and "nigger thief" were convenient epithets in the mouths of pro-slavery champions in many Northern neighborhoods. The statement was not uncommonly made about those suspected of harboring slaves, that they did so from motives of thrift and gain. It was said that some underground helpers made use of the labor of runaways, especially in harvest-time, as long as it suited their convenience, then on the pretext of danger hurried the negroes off without pay. Unreasoning malice alone could concoct so absurd an explanation of a philanthropy involving so much cost and risk.[114] Abolitionists were often made uncomfortable in their church relations by the uncomplimentary attentions they received, or by the discovery that they were regarded as unwelcome disturbers of the household of faith.[115] Even the Society of Friends is not above the charge of having lost sight, in some quarters, of the precepts of Anthony Benezet and John Woolman. Uxbridge monthly meeting is known to have disowned Abby Kelly because she gave anti-slavery lectures.[116] The church certificate given to Mrs. Elizabeth Buffum Chace when she transferred her membership from Swanzey monthly meeting to Providence (Rhode Island) monthly meeting was without the acknowledgment usually contained in such certificates that the bearer "was of orderly life and conversation."[117] A popular Hicksite minister of New York City, in commending the fugitive Thomas Hughes for consenting to return South with his master, said, "I had a thousand times rather be a slave, and spend my days with slaveholders, than to dwell in companionship with abolitionists."[118] In the Methodist Church there came to be such stress of feeling between the abolitionists and the other members, that in many places the former withdrew and organized little congregations apart, under the denominational name, Wesleyan Methodist. The truth is, the mass of the people of the free states were by no means abolitionists; they cherished an intense prejudice against the negro, and permitted it to extend to all anti-slavery advocates. They were willing to let slavery alone, and desired that others should let it alone. In the Western states the character of public sentiment is evidenced by the fact that generally the political party considered to be most favorable to slavery could command a majority, and "black laws" were framed at the behest of Southern politicians for the purpose of making residence in the Northern states a disagreeable thing for the negro.[119]

[114] See an article entitled "An Underground Railway," by Robert W. Carroll, of Cincinnati, O., in the _Cincinnati Times-Star_, Aug. 19, 1890; also Smedley, _Underground Railroad_, p. 182; and J. B. Robinson, _Pictures of Slavery and Anti-Slavery_, pp. 293, 294.

[115] _History of Henry County, Indiana_, p. 126 _et seq._

[116] Elizabeth Buffum Chace, _Anti-Slavery Reminiscences_, p. 19.

[117] _Ibid._, p. 18.

[118] Lydia Maria Child, _Life of Isaac T. Hopper_, pp. 388, 389.

[119] See President Fairchild's pamphlet, _The Underground Railroad_.

Abolitionists were frequently subjected to espionage; the arrival of a party of colored people at a house after daybreak would arouse suspicion and cause the place to be closely watched; a chance meeting with a neighbor in the highway would perhaps be the means by which some abolitionists' secrets would become known. In such cases it did not always follow that the discovery brought ruin upon the head of the offender, even when the discoverer was a person of pro-slavery views. Nevertheless, accidents of the kind described served to fasten the suspicions of a locality upon the offender. Gravner and Hannah Marsh, Quakers, living near Downington, in Chester County, Pennsylvania, became known to their pro-slavery neighbors as agents on the Underground Road. These neighbors were not disposed to inform against them, although one woman, intent on finding out how many slaves they aided in a year, with much watching counted sixty.[120] The Rev. John Cross, a Presbyterian minister living in Elba Township, Knox County, Illinois, about the year 1840, had neighbors that insisted on his answering to the law for the help he gave to some fugitives. Mr. Cross made no secret of his principles and accordingly became game for his enemies. One of these was Jacob Kightlinger, who observed a wagon-load of negroes being taken in the direction of Mr. Cross's house. Investigation by Mr. Kightlinger and several of his friends proved their suspicions to be true, and by their action Mr. Cross was indicted for harboring fugitive slaves.[121]

[120] Smedley, _Underground Railroad_, p. 139.

[121] _History of Knox County, Ill._, pp. 213, 214. Mr. Kightlinger's account of this affair is published under his own name.

## Parties in pursuit of fugitives were compelled to make careful

and often long-continued search to find traces of their wayfaring chattels. During such missions they were, of course, inquisitive and vigilant, and when circumstances seemed to warrant it, they set men to watch the premises of the persons most suspicioned, and to report any mysterious actions occurring within the district patrolled. The houses of many noted abolitionists along the Ohio River were frequently under the surveillance of slave-hunters. It was not a rare thing that towns and villages in regions adjacent to the Southern states were terrorized by crowds of roughs eager to find the hiding-places of slaves, recently missed by masters bent on their recovery. The following extracts from a letter written by Mr. William Steel to Mr. David Putnam, Jr., of Point Harmar, Ohio, will show the methods practised by slave-hunters when in eager pursuit of fugitives:--

WOODSFIELD, MONROE CO., O.

Sept. 5, 1843.

MR. DAVID PUTNAM, JR.:

_Dear Sir_,--I received yours of the 26th ult, and was very glad to hear from it that Stephen Quixot had such good luck in getting his family from Virginia, but we began to be very uneasy about them as we did not hear from them again until last Saturday, ... we then heard they were on the route leading through Summerfield, but that the route from there to Somerton was so closely watched both day and night for some time past on account of the human cattle that have lately escaped from Virginia, that they could not proceed farther on that route. So we made an arrangement with the Summerfield friends to meet them on Sunday evening about ten miles west of this and bring them on to this route ... the abolitionists of the west part of this county have had very difficult work in getting them all off without being caught, as the whole of that part of the country has been filled with Southern blood hounds upon their track, and some of the abolitionists' houses have been watched day and night for several days in succession. This evening a company of eight Virginia hounds passed through this place north on the hunt of some of their two-legged chattels.... Since writing the above I have understood that something near twenty Virginians including the eight above mentioned have just passed through town on their way to the Somerton neighborhood, but I do not think they will get much information about their lost chattels there....

Yours for the Slave,

WILLIAM STEEL.[122]

[122] The original letter is in the possession of the author of this book.

A case that well illustrates the method of search employed by pursuing parties is that of the escape of the Nuckolls slaves through Iowa, the incidents of which are still vivid in the memories of some that witnessed them. Mr. Nuckolls, of Nebraska City, Nebraska, lost two slave-girls in December, 1858. He instituted search for them in Tabor, an abolitionist centre, and did not neglect to guard the crossings of two streams in the vicinity, Silver Creek and the Nishnabotna River. As the slaves had been promptly despatched to Chicago, this search availed him nothing. A second and more thorough hunt was decided on, and the aid of a score or more fellows was secured. These men made entrance into houses by force and violence, when bravado failed to gain them admission.[123] At one house where the remonstrance against intrusion was unusually strong the person remonstrating was struck over the head and injured for life. The outcome of the whole affair was that Mr. Nuckolls had some ten thousand dollars to pay in damages and costs, and, after all, failed to recover his slaves.[124]

[123] The _Tabor Beacon_, 1890, 1891,