The Great Stain

by Noel Rae

  Most stories about the Underground Railroad were written well after the Civil War by white people keen to have played a heroic part. The railroad certainly did exist, but was most active in the free states; the closer fugitives got to Canada, and the less they needed help, the more it was available. Levi Coffin no doubt helped a number of fugitives, but fewer than the thousands he claimed, and surely sometimes without the clichés that larded his account—the gentle rap at the door in the dark of night, the wagon loaded with rain-soaked fugitives, the precautions against prying eyes, the noble disregard of his own interests.

  Another white man who claimed to have done valuable and dangerous work for the Underground Railroad was Dr. Alexander Ross, a Canadian who long after the Civil War described this incident in Delaware in the summer of 1859. A good-looking young slave woman was about to be sent for sale to New Orleans “where prices ranged in proportion to the beauty and personal charms possessed by the victims of man’s inhumanity.” Determined to save her from this fate, Ross obtained a horse and light carriage and arranged to meet her outside her owner’s house. The hour was midnight.

  “She was standing near a fence, well shaded from the light of the moon. I drove near the sidewalk, and taking her into the carriage drove rapidly away on the road to Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. I kept the horse at a rapid gait until I got out of sight of Wilmington. After four o’clock in the morning I heard the sound of a carriage rapidly following me. Upon reaching the top of a small hill I looked back and saw a horse coming at full gallop—behind him a buggy with two men in it. I directed the girl to crouch down in the bottom of the vehicle. I then put the horse to its utmost speed, hoping to cross the Pennsylvania line before the pursuers came up to me.

  “The piteous sobs and stifled cries of the poor slave at my feet made me resolve to defend her to the last extremity. I had two good navy revolvers with me, and got them ready for action. Looking back I saw that my pursuers were gaining upon me. They were not more than two hundred yards distant, and I could hear shouts for me to stop; but the more vigorously I urged on my horse. In another moment I heard the report of fire-arms, and the whizzing sound of a bullet near my head. I then drew a revolver, and fired four times in quick succession at my pursuer’s horse. I saw their horse stagger and fall to the ground. One of my pursuers then fired several times at me without effect. I was soon out of danger from them, and safe with my charge at the house of kind Hannah Cox.”

  An exciting story, to be sure, but, apart from the fact that there really was a Quaker abolitionist called Hannah Cox, almost certainly untrue. As with his other accounts of his heroic deeds, not only did Dr. Ross fail to provide any corroboration—not even the name of the young woman he says he rescued—but how likely is it that he would have managed to disable one of his pursuers with a pistol shot fired in the dark at a distance of some two hundred yards while also driving a galloping horse? Similar doubts have been cast on his stories of foiling a Confederate plot to invade Maine from New Brunswick during the Civil War, and of his several meetings with John Brown, an event never mentioned in Brown’s voluminous papers. But it is not so much Ross’s boasts that are offensive as his depiction of runaway slaves as the passive objects of the white man’s charity, courage and leadership—the whimpering young woman cowering in the bottom of the carriage while he whips on the horses and guns down the pursuers.

  Levi Coffin and Alexander Ross had the advantage of writing their own versions of events, but the most intrepid of the railroad conductors, Harriet Tubman, was illiterate, and most of what we know of her comes from the pen of her friend Sarah Bradford, a genteel New England writer. Her book, written in a style typical of that period, was published in 1886. Here is how it begins:

  “On a hot summer’s day, perhaps sixty years ago, a group of merry little darkies were rolling and tumbling in the sand in front of the large house of a Southern planter. Their shining skins gleamed in the sun as they rolled over each other in their play, and their voices, as they chattered together or shouted in glee, reached even to the cabins of the negro quarter, where the old people groaned in spirit as they thought of the future of those unconscious young revelers; and their cry went up, ‘O Lord, how long!’

  “Apart from the rest of the children, on the top rail of a fence, holding tight on to the tall gate post, sat a little girl of perhaps thirteen years of age; darker than any of the others, and with a more decided woolliness in the hair; a pure unmitigated African. She was not so entirely in a state of nature as the rollers in the dust beneath her; but her only garment was a short woolen skirt, which was tied around her waist, and reached about to her knees. She seemed a dazed and stupid child, and as her head hung upon her breast, she looked up with dull blood-shot eyes towards her young brothers and sisters without seeming to see them. Bye and bye the eyes closed, and still clinging to the post, she slept. The other children looked up and said to each other, ‘Look at Hatt, she’s done gone off agin!’ Tired of their present play-ground they trooped off in another direction, but the girl slept on heavily, never losing her hold on the post, or her seat on her perch. Behold here, in the stupid little Negro girl, the future deliverer of hundreds of her people; the spy and scout of the Union armies; the devoted hospital nurse; the protector of hunted fugitives; the eloquent speaker in public meetings; the cunning eluder of pursuing man-hunters; the heaven-guided pioneer through dangers seen and unseen; in short, as she has been well called, ‘The Moses of her People.’

  “Here in her thirteenth year she is just recovering from the first terrible effects of an injury inflicted by her master, who in an ungovernable fit of rage threw a heavy weight at the unoffending child, breaking in her skull and causing a pressure upon her brain, from which in her old age she is suffering still. This pressure it was which caused the fits of somnolency so frequently to come upon her, and which gave her the appearance of being stupid and half-witted in those early years. But that brain which seemed so dull was full of busy thoughts, and her life problem was already trying to work itself out there.

  “She had heard the shrieks and cries of women who were being flogged in the Negro quarter; she had listened to the groaned-out prayer, ‘Oh, Lord, have mercy!’ She had already seen two older sisters taken away as part of a chain gang, and they had gone no one knew whither; she had seen the agonized expression on their faces as they turned to take a last look at their ‘Old Cabin Home;’ and had watched from the top of the fence as they went off weeping and lamenting, till they were hidden from her sight forever. She saw the hopeless grief of the poor old mother and the silent despair of the aged father, and already she began to revolve in her mind the question, ‘Why should such things be?’ ‘Is there no deliverance for my people?’”

  For a while Harriet was hired out as a maid of all work to a local lady, who was quick to whip her for any perceived shortcoming—“that poor neck is even now covered with the scars which sixty years of life have not been able to efface.” Eventually she was returned to her owner, “a poor, scarred wreck, nothing but skin and bone, with the words that ‘She wasn’t worth a sixpence.’ The poor old mother nursed her back to life, and her naturally good constitution asserted itself,” but “as soon as she was strong enough for work she was hired out to a man whose tyranny was worse, if possible, than that of the woman she had left. Now it was out-of-door drudgery which was put upon her. The labor of the horse and the ox, the lifting of barrels of flour and other heavy weights were given to her; and powerful men often stood astonished to see this woman perform feats of strength from which they shrank incapable.” But “still the pressure upon the brain continued, and with the weight half lifted she would drop off into a state of insensibility from which even the lash in the hand of a strong man could not rouse her.” And so once again she was returned, sick and exhausted, to her owner, who decided to sell her.

  Throughout her life Harriet was guided by her religious beliefs. “Brought up by parents possessed of strong faith in God, she had never known th
e time when she did not trust Him, and cling to Him, with an all-abiding confidence. She seemed ever to feel the Divine Presence near, and she talked with God ‘as a man talketh with his friend.’ Hers was not the religion of a morning and evening prayer at stated times, but when she felt a need she simply told God of it, and trusted Him to set the matter right. ‘And so,’ she said to me [the author, Sarah Bradford], ‘as I lay so sick on my bed, from Christmas till March, I was always praying for poor ole master. ’Pears like I didn’t do nothing but pray for ole master. “Oh, Lord, convert ole master—Oh, dear Lord, change that man’s heart and make him a Christian.” And all the time he was bringing men to look at me, and they stood there saying what they would give, and what they would take, and all I could say was, “Oh, Lord, convert ole master!” Then I heard that as soon as I was able to move I was to be sent with my brothers in the chain-gang to the far South. Then I changed my prayer, and I said, “Lord, if you ain’t never going to change that man’s heart, kill him, Lord, and take him out of the way, so he won’t do no more mischief.” Next thing I heard, ole master was dead; and he died just as he had lived, a wicked, bad man.’”

  A few years later, when Harriet was in her early twenties, she was warned that her new owner was planning to sell her and two of her brothers. She immediately decided they should escape to the north. They set off, but her brothers soon lost heart and turned back; but not Harriet. “After watching the retreating forms of her brothers, she turned her face toward the north, and fixing her eyes on the guiding star, and committing her way unto the Lord, she started again upon her long, lonely journey.

  “After many long and weary days of travel, she found that she had passed the magic line which then divided the land of bondage from the land of freedom … No one could take her now, and she would never call any man ‘Master’ more. ‘I looked at my hands,’ she said, ‘to see if I was the same person now I was free. There was such a glory over everything, the sun came like gold through the trees and over the fields, and I felt like I was in heaven.’

  “But then came the bitter drop in the cup of joy. She was alone, and her kindred were in slavery … ‘I had crossed the line of which I had so long been dreaming. I was free, but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land, and my home after all was down in the old cabin quarter, with the old folks, and my brothers and sisters. But to this solemn resolution I came: I was free, and they should be free also. I would make a home for them in the North, and the Lord helping me, I would bring them all there. Oh, how I prayed then, lying all alone on the cold, damp ground! ‘Oh, dear Lord,’ I said, ‘I ain’t got no friend but you. Come to my help, Lord, for I’m in trouble!’

  “It would be impossible here to give a detailed account of the journeys and labors of this intrepid woman for the redemption of her kindred and friends during the years that followed. Those years were spent in work, almost by night and day, with the one object of the rescue of her people from slavery. All her wages were laid away with this sole purpose, and as soon as a sufficient amount was secured, she disappeared from her Northern home, and as suddenly and mysteriously she appeared some dark night at the door of one of the cabins on a plantation, where a trembling band of fugitives, forewarned as to time and place, were anxiously awaiting their deliverer. Then she piloted them North, traveling by night, hiding by day, scaling the mountains, fording the rivers, threading the forests, lying concealed as the pursuers passed them, she carrying the babies, drugged with paregoric, in a basket on her arm. So she went nineteen times, and so she brought away over three hundred pieces of living and breathing ‘property,’ with God-given souls.”

  As well as providing herself with opium to drug babies into silence, Harriet also carried a loaded pistol. This was for those occasions when some of the men “would drop on the ground, groaning that they could not take another step. They would lie there and die, or, if their strength came back, they would return on their steps and seek their old homes again. Then the revolver carried by this bold and daring pioneer would come out, and while pointing it at their heads she would say ‘Dead niggers tell no tales. You go on or die!’ And by this heroic treatment she compelled them to drag their weary limbs along on their northward journey.”

  For the first few years, Harriet’s destination was New York State, where she had established a home for her parents and relatives after helping them escape. But then, as part of the Compromise of 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, which greatly strengthened the hand of the slave-catchers. Under the earlier law, passed in 1793, owners could retrieve slaves who had escaped to a free state by having them arrested, usually by slave-catchers, and brought before a local magistrate; by affidavit or in person, the master would then assert his ownership and ask the court to restore his property. But from the owners’ viewpoint this law was inadequate: it was they who had to bear the trouble and expense of recapturing the runaways. Also, “personal liberty laws” passed by many states made the hearings less arbitrary and often required trial by jury, with the consequent risk of coming before justices or jurors with abolitionist sympathies. So, in 1850, Congress decided that it would be “desirable for the peace, concord and harmony of the Union of these States, to settle and adjust amicably all existing questions of controversy between them arising out of the institution of slavery upon a fair, equitable and just basis.” To achieve these desirable ends, resolutions were passed admitting California as a free state to the Union, settling the boundaries of Texas and New Mexico, and discontinuing the slave trade (but not slavery itself) in the District of Columbia. Congress also resolved to make “more effectual provision … for the restitution and delivery of persons bound to service or labor in any State who may escape into any other State or Territory in the Union.”

  In essence, the Fugitive Slave Act forced everyone in the free states to assist in the arrest and return of runaways. Officials executing warrants of arrest were authorized to “summon and call to their aid the bystanders, or posse comitatus of the proper county … and all good citizens are hereby commanded to aid and assist in the prompt and efficient execution of this law whenever their services may be required.” Special commissioners were appointed to hear cases, with fees of $5 if the accused was released, and $10 if convicted. Moreover “in no trial or hearing under this act shall the testimony of such alleged fugitive be admitted in evidence.” Also “any persons who shall knowingly and willingly obstruct, hinder or prevent” the execution of this law, or “shall aid, abet or assist” a fugitive to escape, or “shall harbor or conceal such fugitive,” would be liable to “a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, and imprisonment not exceeding six months.”

  As a sop to the slaveholders, the law was a success. As a gift to the abolitionists, it was an even greater success. “The Fugitive Slave Bill,” wrote Frederick Douglass, “has especially been of positive service to the anti-slavery movement,” revealing “the horrible character of slavery” and “the arrogant and overbearing spirit of the slave States towards the free States.” As a means of recapturing fugitives it was not very effective, accounting for fewer than three hundred, though it did increase the number of those who went to “shake the paw of the British lion”—that is, flee to Canada. Another consequence was to set off some first-class riots, such as this one reported by the Troy Whig on April 28, 1859:

  “Yesterday afternoon the streets of this city and West Troy were made the scenes of unexampled excitement. For the first time since the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, an attempt was made here to carry its provisions into execution, and the result was a terrific encounter between the officers and the prisoner’s friends, the triumph of mob law, and the final rescue of the fugitive.” This was Charles Nalle, “about thirty years of age, tall, quite light-complexioned and good-looking.” Nalle had been a slave in Virginia, but had escaped and come to live near Troy, where he was employed as a coachman. He had been spotted by an informer, who denounced him to his owner, who “s
ent on an agent, by whom the necessary papers were got out to arrest the fugitive.

  “Yesterday morning about 11 o’clock, Charles Nalle was sent to procure some bread for the family by whom he was employed. He failed to return. At the baker’s he was arrested by Deputy United States Marshal J. W. Holmes, and immediately taken before United States Commissioner Miles Beach. The son of Mr. Gilbert, [Nalle’s employer] thinking it strange that he did not come back, sent to the house of William Henry on Division Street where he boarded, and his whereabouts was discovered.

  “The examination before Commissioner Beach was quite brief. The evidence of the agent was taken, and the Commissioner decided to remand Nalle to Virginia. The necessary papers were made out and given to the Marshal.

  “By this time it was two o’clock, and the fact began to be noised abroad that there was a fugitive slave in Mr. Beach’s office, corner of State and First Streets. People in knots of ten or twelve collected near the entrance, looking at Nalle, who could be seen at an upper window. William Henry, a colored man with whom Nalle boarded, commenced talking from the curb-stone in a loud voice to the crowd. He uttered such sentences as, ‘There is a fugitive slave in that office—pretty soon you will see him come forth. He is going to be taken down South …’ A number of women kept shouting, crying, and by loud appeals excited the colored persons assembled.

  “Still the crowd grew in numbers. Wagons halted in front of the locality and were soon piled with spectators. An alarm of fire was sounded, and hose carriages dashed through the ranks of men, women, and boys; but they closed again, and kept looking with expectant eyes at the window where the Negro was visible. Meanwhile, angry discussions commenced. Some persons agitated a rescue, and others favored law and order. Mr. Brockway, a lawyer, had his coat torn for expressing his sentiments, and other melees kept the interest alive.