The Underground Railroad

by Bonnie Bader

  As the woman traveled, she heard bloodhounds barking and knew that the dogs were tracking her down. Trying to evade them, she found streams to walk in. But still she heard the bloodhounds coming closer. At last she had nowhere to go—she was trapped. She feared the dogs would bite her and leave her bleeding on the forest floor. As the dogs padded closer, the woman reached into her pocket and held out her last crumbs of food. The dogs sniffed her hand, licked up the food, and left.

  Safe for now, the woman continued on her journey, which lasted several more months. Along the way, she was helped by conductors of the Underground Railroad until she reached freedom in Canada.

  “Me and Momma got nobody guiding us to freedom. We alone. But we done face the dangers together. Now we standing at a river, and the water fast, rolling. It look angry. Sam, he showed me how to swim, but Momma don’t know how. She scared of water. I’m scared, not of the water, but because Momma is. Still, we got no choice—we got to cross that river.

  “We hold on to each other tight, but I can feel Momma trembling as we step into the water. Carefully, I try to step ’cross the slippery rocks on the bottom of the river. We ’bout half way ’cross when the water get real fast. It pick up me and Momma and drag us sideways. Momma start to go down, gagging and spitting water from her mouth and nose. A big gush of water hit us. It pull Momma’s hand away from mine. Momma is gone! I want to scream, but I take in a huge gulp of air and dive under the dark water. I can’t see nothing. I come back up, gulping for air. I call for Momma, but she don’t say nothing. I pull in a whole bunch of air and go back under. When I kick out, I feel something soft. It’s Momma, trapped in some tree branches under the water. I push and push my feet steady on the branch and wrench Momma free. I pull her to the surface of the water and we both take a gulp of air. Coughing, we make it to the other side of the river. We shaking, wet and cold and tired, but we are together, and we go on.”

  Station houses were safe places for runaway slaves to stop and rest along their journey. Some station house owners put a lantern in a window or raised a lantern to the top of a pole as a sign that their house was a safe place. They gave the slaves food and sometimes a change of clothing or a bit of money. There were many different kinds of station houses: barns, attics, cellars, secret rooms in houses, churches, and more.

  One of the most famous station houses along the Underground Railroad was the home of Quakers Levi and Catharine Coffin in Newport, Indiana. When Levi Coffin was seven years old, he saw a long line of slaves marching up the road near his house in North Carolina. The slaves were chained together and led by a man holding a whip. Levi’s father asked one of the slaves why they were chained. The slave explained that they had been taken away from their wives and children and were chained together so that they couldn’t escape and return to their families. Young Levi Coffin was shocked at the way the slaves were being treated. He never forgot what he saw that day.

  By 1826, Levi Coffin was married, and he and his wife moved to Newport, Indiana. Coffin worked as a shopkeeper and his business did very well. When he discovered that his two-story, eight-room brick house stood where three routes of the Underground Railroad met—one from Cincinnati, Ohio, one from Madison, Indiana, and one from Jeffersonville, Indiana, he and his wife decided to take action. They opened their home to runaway slaves. Levi Coffin later wrote, “I soon become extensively known to the friends of the slaves, at different points on the Ohio River, where fugitives generally crossed, and to those northward of us on the various routes leading to Canada . . . The roads were always in running order, the connections were good, the conductors active and zealous, and there was (no) lack of passengers. Seldom a week passed without our receiving passengers by the mysterious road . . .”

  Levi and Catharine Coffin’s house in Indiana

  Anywhere from two thousand to three thousand slaves stopped at the Coffin house on their way north. Slave hunters could track slaves to Newport, but then their trails somehow disappeared. Levi and Catharine’s house was often called “Grand Central Station” and Levi Coffin as the “President of the Underground Railroad.” They never lost a passenger.

  Thomas Garrett was another white abolitionist and Quaker who secretly worked on the Underground Railroad. Born in 1789 in a town called Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, young Thomas witnessed his parents hiding runaway slaves in their home. This was long before the Underground Railroad was established. When Thomas became a grown man, he turned his home in Wilmington, Delaware, into one of the last stations on the Underground Railroad before escaped slaves reached freedom in Pennsylvania. Delaware was a border state that allowed slavery. Thomas Garrett is believed to have given between two thousand and three thousand slaves a safe haven and safe passage.

  Thomas Garrett

  People who were pro-slavery hated, and feared, Thomas Garrett. Authorities in the neighboring state of Maryland, which also allowed slavery, offered a $10,000 reward for Thomas Garrett’s arrest—a huge sum at that time. Thomas was eventually brought before a federal court, where he admitted to helping slaves escape. This time, he did not get off without punishment—he had to pay a heavy fine that took all his money. But he continued to help slaves on their path to freedom. Upon Thomas Garrett’s death in 1871, former slaves drew his casket through the streets of Wilmington in an open carriage inscribed with the words “Our Moses.”

  Many slaves on the run to freedom were afraid to ask strangers for help. They knew that if they knocked on someone’s door, they would risk capture. The reward for returning a slave could be more money than a family earned in an entire year. Like everything else on the Underground Railroad, a safe place to stay was found through word of mouth. Slaves sometimes felt safer knocking on the door of a station house owned by a free black or former slave. But no matter which door they knocked on, runaway slaves were always taking a risk that they would be turned in and returned to slavery.

  “Me and Momma are walking along the train tracks when we spot a white house with red shutters up on a little hill. That the house Poppa told us about! Miss Caroline’s house. But is it really safe to go there? Me and Momma know we got to take a chance and knock on the door. This old white woman, ’bout the same size as me, open the door a crack. She ain’t smiling. She look angry. She tell me to go away. She say, ‘Boy, I told you not to come here. Now go back and tell those Confederate soldiers I won’t help them.’ She think I’m a boy with the Confederate camp, same as the soldier did! I take off my hat and shake out my braids. I tell her that Momma and me running away to freedom, and Uncle Solomon sent us. Miss Caroline’s face let go of the anger. She take us inside and give us food, hot baths, and fresh clothes. I get to sleep on a real mattress, not one filled with itchy corn husks. I try to stay awake to think about how good it feels to be clean and safe, but I’m too tired. I just lie in Momma’s arms and sleep.”

  The Civil War began on April 12, 1861, just one month after Abraham Lincoln took office as the sixteenth president of the United States. Lincoln was firmly against slavery, an issue that ultimately separated the states and helped trigger the war.

  Over the next four years, soldiers from the North (the Union army) and the South (the Confederate army) fought each other. The Civil War was one of the bloodiest wars fought in American history. But throughout the war, the Underground Railroad kept running. The conductors kept on guiding runaways, and the station houses continued providing shelter. And gradually, the runaways who made it to freedom started new lives.

  President Abraham Lincoln and soldiers on the battlefield near Sharpsburg, Maryland, in October 1862

  On January 1, 1863, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared all slaves in Confederate states free. Although this was a first step in ending slavery, slavery wasn’t officially abolished until 1865, when the United States Congress approved the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude … shall exist within the United States.” With these words, slavery in the Unite
d States was abolished, and the Underground Railroad was no longer needed.

  It is hard to know exactly how many people traveled on the Underground Railroad. Some say as many as 100,000 slaves sought their freedom this way. With the help of conductors, station masters, and station houses, these slaves found their way out of slave states. The brave passengers and workers on the Underground Railroad were some of the earliest American freedom fighters. They believed that freedom was the right of every human being. Although the Underground Railroad ended with the Civil War, there are still freedom fighters in the world today carrying on the fight with the belief that all men, women, and children have the right to be free.

  “Boom! Boom! Boom! I wake and sit straight up in bed. There are loud noises coming from outside. Poppa (he found his way back to us!) says it’s cannon fire coming from the harbor. Has the war come here to Philadelphia? But there are also more noises. People cheering, whistles blowing, and church bells ringing. My heart beats faster and faster. I know what’s happening! I jump out of bed and race to the window. Down below, the street is filled with people. The war must be over! Momma and Poppa is crying. I know they crying out of joy. We get dressed right quick and rush downstairs. Someone in the crowd yelling the North done won the war. All around me, people laughing, crying, hugging. Some are beating pots and pans and pie tins. Firecrackers pop all round us. It feel like a dream. I lift my face to the sky and see banners waving in the breeze. ‘Lincoln and Liberty! One People, One Country,’ someone tell me they say. My heart fill up with joy. Our country united again. Now our whole family can be united again. Poppa said he gonna find Esther and Sam and bring them to Philadelphia. We’ll be together, and we will be free.”

  Connie Porter, the author of the original American Girl Addy historical fiction series as well as the Addy entries in this book, consulted historical studies, slave narratives, and experts to learn how a young enslaved person from South Carolina may have spoken during the antebellum period or before the Civil War.

  The language Addy uses is similar to the way many slaves spoke in the 1860s, although it is not exactly the same. You can read real slave narratives from the Civil War era at the Library of Congress website:

  Federal Writers’ Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 11, North Carolina, Part 1, Adams-Hunter

  https://www.loc.gov/item/mesn111

  You can also check out these books:

  Stolen Childhood: Slave Youth in Nineteenth Century America by Wilma King

  Growing Up in Slavery Edited by Yuval Taylor

  Abolitionist – a person in favor of abolishing, or getting rid of, slavery

  Auction – a sale at which things are sold to the person willing to pay the most money

  Baying – a low barking or howling

  Blacksmith – someone who shapes iron with heat and a hammer

  Bounty – money given as a reward

  Colony – a settlement in a new country or region

  Emancipation Proclamation – President Lincoln’s declaration on January 1, 1863, that all slaves in the Confederate states were free

  Federal court – the court of the United States government

  Flog – to beat with a rod or whip

  Founding Fathers – name for the group of men that started the United States of America

  Fugitive – someone who runs away

  Hebrew – a member of a specific group of ancient people from the areas that are now Israel and Palestine

  Middle Passage – the journey slaves were forced to take from Africa across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas

  Mistress – the woman in control of a house

  Overseer – a person that directs or manages others

  Plantation – a large farm with crops and many workers

  Quaker – a member of a specific Christian religious group

  Ravine – a small, narrow valley

  Reinforcements – extra people sent to strengthen a fighting force

  Safe house – a secret place to hide people in danger

  Till – to plow

  Vigilance committee – a group of people that form an unofficial police force

  United States prior to the Civil War; slave states vs. free states in 1854

  1619 – Twenty Africans are brought to Jamestown, Virginia, and sold as slaves

  1797 – Sojourner Truth is born into slavery and given the name Isabella Baumfree

  1804 – By this year, slavery is outlawed in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont

  1808 – It becomes illegal to bring slaves into the United States from different countries

  1830 – Josiah Henson follows the North Star from Maryland to Canada

  1831 – Tice Davids escapes from Kentucky to Ohio; William Lloyd Garrison publishes a newspaper called The Liberator

  1833 – William Lloyd Garrison co-founds the Anti-Slavery Society

  1841 – Frederick Douglass speaks at an Anti-Slavery Society meeting in Nantucket, Massachusetts

  1842 – Sixteen-year-old Caroline Quarlls makes a daring escape north from Missouri

  1845 – Frederick Douglass publishes his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave

  1849 – Harriet Tubman escapes to freedom; Henry Brown travels to Philadelphia inside a box to be free

  1850 – Fugitive Slave Act is passed

  1853 – Solomon Northup is declared free after spending twelve years as a slave

  1854 – Anthony Burns is returned to slavery in West Virginia

  1860 – Lucy Bagby is thought to be the last escaped slave returned to slavery

  1861 – The Civil War begins

  1863 – President Lincoln delivers the Emancipation Proclamation

  1865 – The Civil War ends; the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is passed, ending slavery

  Adler, David A. Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. New York, New York: Holiday House, 2013.

  Africans in America: Judgment Day. Boston, Massachusetts. WGBH Educational Foundation/PBS Online, 1998.

  Bial, Raymond. The Underground Railroad. Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995.

  Carson, Mary Kay. Which Way to Freedom? And Other Questions About … The Underground Railroad. New York, New York: Sterling Children’s Books, 2014.

  Fradin, Dennis Brindell. The Underground Railroad. New York, New York: Marshall Cavendish Benchmark, 2009.

  Isaacs, Sally Senzell. Life on the Underground Railroad. Chicago, Illinois: Heinemann Library, 2002.

  McDonough, Yona Zeldis. What Was the Underground Railroad? New York, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 2013.

  Porter, Connie. American Girl Beforever: A Heart Full of Hope, A classic featuring Addy, Volume 2. Middleton, Wisconsin: American Girl Publishing, 2014.

  Porter, Connie. American Girl Beforever: Finding Freedom, A classic featuring Addy, Volume 1. Middleton, Wisconsin: American Girl Publishing, 2014.

  Raatma, Lucia. The Underground Railroad. New York, New York: Scholastic Inc., 2012.

  Stein, R. Conrad. Escaping Slavery on the Underground Railroad. Berkeley Heights, New Jersey: Enslow Publishers, Inc., 2008.

  Stein, R. Conrad. The Underground Railroad. New York, New York: Children’s Press, 1997.

  Stowe, Harriet Beecher. A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Presenting the Original Facts and Documents Upon Which the Story Is Founded. New York, New York: Dover Publications, 2015.

  Bonnie Bader grew up in Queens, New York. As a child, she loved reading books and writing stories, never dreaming that she would one day become an author! She has written over twenty-five books, including biographies about Martin Luther King Jr. and Jacqueline Kennedy. Today, she lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, two daughters, and cute little dog.

  Connie Porter (coauthor, Addy’s Stories) grew up near Buffalo, New York, where the winters are long and hard. As girls, she and her sisters trudged through deep snow to borr
ow books from the bookmobile that came to the neighborhood twice a week. After the girls finished their homework at night, they crawled into their beds and read the books aloud to each other. Ms. Porter still loves to read books. Today, she lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, with her daughter.

  Read on for a sneak peek at the next book in the Real Stories From My Time series: Titanic

  Titanic was a British cruise ship that set sail on April 10, 1912, from Southampton, England, to New York City. At that time, Titanic was the largest—and widely believed to be the safest—ship in the world.

  Thousands of passengers boarded the luxury ship to begin a journey. Some were returning home to America after traveling in Europe. Others were starting a new life in a country that held the promise of opportunity. Fifteen-year-old Edith Brown was one of those passengers, and she was excited to travel with her parents on Titanic. The Browns were a well-to-do family from South Africa. Edith’s father wanted to open a hotel in America. As Edith walked up the gangway with her mother and father, she could see the rows and rows of glittering portholes above her. The enormous ocean liner was brand new and beautiful. Until they reached New York, it would be their home.

  As the rest of the passengers boarded the ship, each one carried his or her own story. They knew they were making history by sailing on Titanic’s very first voyage across the sea. It was the biggest, grandest, most modern ship ever built. Passengers were told that Titanic was unsinkable, and they believed it. But the ship’s owners were eager to prove that Titanic was faster and better than any other vessel. That ambition put every person on board in terrible danger.