Abolitionism taught the country that the problem of race was not on the margins but at the center of its national story. In the underground, blacks and whites discovered each other for the first time as allies in a common struggle, learning to rely on each other not as master on slave, or child on parent, but as fellow soldiers in a war that most Americans did not yet even know had begun. Apart from the lives saved, the underground’s greatest achievement may have been its creation of a truly free zone of interracial activity where blacks not only directed complex logistical and financial operations, but also, in some places, supervised support networks that included white men and women who were accorded no special status owing to their skin color. Perhaps more than any other aspect of our mostly disheartening racial heritage, the story of the Underground Railroad thus stands as an answer to slavery’s legacy of hurt and shame, reminding us that our ancestors were not always enemies across an unbridgeable chasm of color, and that even a century and a half ago, we were capable of heroic collaboration.
By understanding how Americans participated in and reacted to the Underground Railroad, we can better understand the difficulties that a society based on law rather than on passions and power has always had in coping with political movements that challenge its most basic assumptions. The underground was the greatest movement of civil disobedience since the American Revolution, engaging thousands of citizens in the active subversion of federal law and the prevailing mores of their communities. Isaac Hopper, David Ruggles, Levi Coffin, Jermain Loguen, and the others were the forerunners of twentieth-century labor organizers, civil rights activists, antiwar protestors of the Vietnam era, and for that matter such contemporary provocateurs as Earth First! and those who take to the streets to protest globalization. Not least, they were also the progenitors of the modern women’s movement. As part of the struggle to free the slaves, Northern women began to discover the nature of their own servitude as women, and in speaking out on behalf of enslaved African Americans, they discovered their own voices and began for the first time to challenge the preconceptions and laws that governed their place in society.
While the Underground Railroad and the larger abolitionist movement clearly made a profound contribution to progressive politics by attacking racial discrimination and asserting for the first time that each individual had a personal responsibility for others’ human rights, it is less obvious that it was also the seedbed of religious activism in American politics. Most members of the underground uncompromisingly regarded their work as answering only to a law higher and more sacred than those enacted by mere men. In this, they were hardly different from modern activists who today cite the same “higher law” to justify their attacks against abortion clinics. Indeed, as a lawyer representing the “pro-life” organization Project Rescue declared in court a few years ago, asserting his clients’ moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws, “The slave-holding industry had the law on its side, just as today the abortion industry has the law on its side.” The story of the Underground Railroad thus sheds light on, if it fails to answer, uneasy questions about what happens when revealed religion collides with a secular society that shares neither its politics nor its reading of the Scriptures.
The deeply pious activists of the underground would surely find much to disappoint them in the materialistic, not to say hedonistic, United States of the present-day. But their faith was also balanced by generous idealism, and by an uncompromising devotion to the rights of others. In their hearts and their actions, they were democrats of the deepest sort, for whom the nation’s highest ideals were a living spirit that required almost daily personal self-sacrifice in order to be made real. The moral machinery that they set in motion would continue to power the ongoing effort to ensure fairness and equality for all Americans: a century later, their descendants would see the ultimate fruits of the struggle they began, in the triumph of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Though ridiculed, persecuted, and sometimes murdered for their efforts, the men and women of the underground strove always to compel government to take the moral measure of its decisions. Doing do, they set a standard of principle that few governments are able to reach, but nonetheless one that only the cynical and the foolhardy would dare to mock: that temporizing and unprincipled compromise on civil rights can be risked only at the peril of damaging the nation’s soul.
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
The barber has done: Interview with George DeBaptiste, “Underground Railroad: Reminiscences of the Days of Slavery,” Detroit Post, May 16, 1870.
White vigilantes sometimes attack: Diane Perrine Coon, “Reconstructing the Underground Railroad Crossings at Madison, Indiana” (unpublished paper, 1998, University of Louisville, copy made available by its author); Drusilla Cravens, “African-Americans in and Around Jefferson County, Ind.,” typescript compilation of articles and transcribed notes (Madison, Ind.: Jefferson County Historical Society, n. d.), pp. 31 ff.; and W. W. Woolen, letter to the editor, Madison (Indiana) Weekly Courier, February 18, 1880.
George DeBaptiste, the man: Coon, “Reconstructing the Underground Railroad Crossings”; also in Diane Perrine Coon, “Southeastern Indiana’s Underground Railroad Routes and Operations” (unpublished study for the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Indianapolis, 2001); Cravens, scrapbook, pp. 12–13, and interview with George DeBaptiste, “Underground Railroad,” Detroit Post, May 16, 1870.
“slavery has become a language”: Ira Berlin, “Overcome by Slavery,” New York Times, July 13, 2001, op-ed page.
The method of operating: Isaac Beck, interview with Wilbur H. Siebert, December 26, 1892, Wilbur H. Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio.
“Woman [is] more fully identified”: quoted in Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (New York: Knopf, 1999), p. 92.
CHAPTER 1: AN EVIL WITHOUT REMEDY
Josiah Henson’s earliest memory: The description of Henson’s youth is based on Josiah Henson, The Life of Josiah Henson (Boston: Arthur D. Phelps, 1849), pp. 1–9, and Josiah Henson, Uncle Tom’s Story of His Life from 1789 to 1879 (Boston: B. B. Russell, 1879), pp. 1–17.
Isaac Riley, who was to shape Josiah: Henson file, Montgomery County tax records, Montgomery County Historical Society, Rockville, MD.
Like most of Montgomery County: Ray Eldon Hiebert and Richard K. MacMaster, A Grateful Remembrance: The Story of Montgomery County (Rockville, Md.: Montgomery County Historical Society, 1976).
North American slavery was born: Peter Kolchin, American Slavery 1619 to 1877 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), pp. 8–11.
As tobacco production expanded: Ibid., pp. 26–27.
black slaves in Connecticut: “Connecticut as a Slave State,” Connecticut Western News, May 23, 1916.
“The Negro Business”: Mills Lane, introduction to A South-Side View of Slavery, by Nehemiah Adams (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1974), p. x.
Commercial trade in all kinds: Daniel P. Mannix and Malcolm Cowley, Black Cargoes: A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (New York: Viking Compass, 1965), pp. 56–58, 32–33.
Slaves came in many varieties: Ibid., pp. 14–19.
Olaudah Equiano: Olaudah Equiano, “The Life of Olaudah Equiano,” in The Classic Slave Narratives, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed. (New York: Mentor, 1987), p. 33.
The slave trade could be immensely profitable: Anthony Burton, The Rise and Fall of King Cotton (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1984), pp. 57–58; and Mannix and Cowley, Black Cargoes, p. 74.
By the time of the American Revolution: John C. Miller, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and American Slavery (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991), p. 9.
Slave ships sailing from Charleston: Mannix and Cowley, Black Cargoes, p. 160; Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440–1870 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), pp. 260–61, 271.
the Brown family of Providence: Sash
a Polakow-Suransky, “Sins of Our Fathers,” Brown Alumni Magazine (July/August 2003), pp. 36–42; Thomas, Slave Trade, p. 261.
“We left Anamaboe”: George Francis Dow, Slave Ships and Slaving (Mineola, N. Y.: Dover, 2002), p. 257.
On board ship: Mannix and Cowley, Black Cargoes, p. 106; and Joseph Story, “A Charge Delivered to the Grand Jury of the Circuit of the United States…for the Judicial District of Maine, May 8, 1820,” in Against Slavery: An Abolitionist Reader, Mason Lowance, ed. (New York: Penguin, 2000), pp. 35–36; and Dow, Slave Ships and Slaving, p. 206.
Olaudah Equiano, who was transported: Equiano, “Life of Olaudah Equiano,” pp. 34–35.
Normal mortality: Mannix and Cowley, Black Cargoes, p. 123; and Story, “Charge Delivered to the Grand Jury,” pp. 35–36.
If there was an emergency: Mannix and Cawley, Black Cargoes, pp. 125–26; and Dow, Slave Ships and Slaving, p. 206.
During the entire span: Kolchin, American Slavery, p. 22–23.
“Abraham Seixes”: quoted in Burton, Rise and Fall of King Cotton, p. 59.
Part of Brown’s job: William Wells Brown, “Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave,” in I Was Born a Slave: An Anthology of Classic Slave Narratives, vol. 1, Yuval Taylor, ed. (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1999), pp. 693–94.
When demand was high: Mannix and Cowley, Black Cargoes, p. 169.
One auction: Anonymous travel journal of a New Yorker in the South, Southern History Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
George Whitfield: Lane, introduction to South-Side View of Slavery, by Nehemiah Adams, p. ix.
Philadelphia botanist William Bartram: William Bartram, Travels of William Bartram (New York: Dover, 1955), p. 257.
In 1790: Mason Lowance, ed., Against Slavery: An Abolitionist Reader (New York: Penguin, 2000), p. 8.
Within the common denominator: Kolchin, American Slavery, p. 105; and Charles S. Sydnor, Slavery in Mississippi (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1933), p. 120.
In the estuaries: David S. Cecelski, The Waterman’s Song: Slavery and Freedom in Maritime North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), p. 136.
Hired-out slaves: John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweniger, Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 35; and Henry Box Brown, Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 30.
As far north as New England: Kolchin, American Slavery, pp. 26–27.
Slaves might be property: Burton, Rise and Fall of King Cotton, pp. 60–61.
Disciplining slaves: Ibid., p. 127; Austin Steward, Twenty-two Years as a Slave and Forty Years a Freeman (Syracuse, N. Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2002), p. 9; and Sydnor, Slavery in Mississippi, pp. 122–23.
planter William Byrd: Kolchin, American Slavery, pp. 57–59.
Boston King: Edward Ball, Slaves in the Family (New York: Ballantine, 1999), p. 225.
Equiano was terrified: Equiano, “Life of Olaudah Equiano,” p. 39.
a Georgia plantation: Lane, introduction to South-Side View of Slavery, by Nehemiah Adams, p. xvii.
William Dunbar: Bernard Bailyn, Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution (New York: Vintage, 1988), p. 491.
flogging was also widely practiced: Stephen B. Oates, To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984), pp. 8, 24.
The punishment of slaves: Kolchin, American Slavery, pp. 7, 57–59; Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (New York: Vintage, 1956), pp. 182–88.
Moses Roper’s owner: Moses Roper, “A Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper, from American Slavery,” in I Was Born a Slave, pp. 686–87.
The harshest punishments: Bailyn, Voyagers to the West, p. 491.
The French-American farmer and author: J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 163–64.
Late-eighteenth-century advertisements: Virginia Gazette, Williamsburg, April 17, 1752; June 5, 1752; September 22, 1774; October 10, 1774; May 10, 1776; May 11, 1776; May 18, 1776; May 24, 1776; September 22, 1774; September 29, 1774; November 10, 1774; December 1, 1774; December 8, 1774; “Fugitive Slave Advertisements 1737–1776,” compiled by Thomas Costa, University of Virginia at Wise, viewed on-line at http://etext.lib.virginia.edusubjectsrunawaysall-records.
The United States Constitution: Wilbur H. Siebert, The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom (London: Macmillan, 1898), pp. 293–94; and Marion G. McDougall, Fugitive Slaves (1619–1865) (Boston: Ginn & Co., 1891), pp. 14, 105.
Slavery in some form: Lane, introduction to South-Side View of Slavery, by Nehemiah Adams, p. x; and Kolchin, American Slavery, p. 30.
The story of James Mars: The Mars family’s story is drawn from James Mars, “The Life of James Mars, a Slave Born and Sold in Connecticut,” in I Was Born a Slave: An Anthology of Classic Slave Narratives, vol. 2, Yuval Taylor, ed. (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1999), pp. 726–37; Horatio T. Strother, “The Underground Railroad in Connecticut” (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1962), pp. 14–18, 126; Theron Wilmot Crissey, History of Norfolk (Everett: Massachusetts Publishing Co., 1900), pp. 81, 129, 370; and Norfolk town historians Richard Byrne and Kay Fields, interview with the author, Norfolk, Conn., July 23, 2002.
CHAPTER 2: THE FATE OF MILLIONS UNBORN
Montgomery County’s local newspaper: National Intelligencer, March 2, March 4, and March 6, 1801.
A little before noon: Alf Mapp, Jr., Thomas Jefferson: Passionate Pilgrim (Lanham, Md.: Madison Books, 1991), p. 2; Bernard Mayo, Jefferson Himself (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1942), p. 219; Fawn M. Brodie, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974), p. 336–37; Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People, vol. 2 (New York: Mentor, 1972), p. 85; and David L. Lewis, District of Columbia: A Bicentennial History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976), pp. 3 ff.
a simple rural nation: George Dangerfield, The Awakening of American Nationalism, 1815–1828 (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p. 17.
the worst defeat: Allan W. Eckert, That Dark and Bloody River: Chronicles of the Ohio River Valley (New York: Bantam, 1995), pp. 567–68.
The prospect of Jefferson’s election: Mayo, Jefferson Himself, p. 220; and Morison, Oxford History, p. 85.
an “absolute terrorist”: Jean Edward Smith, John Marshall: Definer of a Nation (New York: Henry Holt, 1996), p. 19.
When he began to speak: Brodie, Thomas Jefferson, pp. 336–37.
“We are all Republicans”: Thomas Jefferson, “First Inaugural Address,” in Thomas Jefferson: Writings, Merrill D. Peterson, ed. (New York: Library of America, 1984), pp. 492–94.
“mild and pleasing countenance”: E. M. Halliday, Understanding Thomas Jefferson (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), p. 46.
He was an aristocrat: Miller, Wolf by the Ears, p. 2.
Slavery was woven: Jefferson, “Notes on the State of Virginia,” in Peterson, Thomas Jefferson: Writings, pp. 264ff; Brodie, Thomas Jefferson, pp. 228–34; and Halliday, Understanding Thomas Jefferson, pp. 86 ff.
Jefferson’s enemies accused: Miller, Wolf by the Ears, p. 162.
“Of all the damsels”: H. W. Brands, “Founders Chic,” Atlantic Monthly, September 2003, pp. 101–10.
Hemings’s descendants cited: Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997), pp. 210 ff.; Halliday, Understanding Thomas Jefferson, pp. 86 ff, Miller, Wolf by the Ears, p. 169; and Lucia Stanton, Slavery at Monticello (Monticello, VA: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, 1996), pp. 21–22.
Jefferson held no illusions: Miller, Wolf by the Ears, p. 95.
“The whole commerce”: Jefferson, “Notes on the State of Virginia,” in Peterson, Thomas Jefferson: Writings, pp. 289 ff.
an ingrained repugnance: Ibid., p. 270, 264–67; and Miller, Wolf by the Ears, p. 52, 64.
Jefferson was by no means alone: Henry Steele Commager, The Empire of Reason: How Europe Imagined and America Realized the Enlightenment (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1978), p. 24.
a pseudo-scientific approach: Leon Polyakov, The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe (New York: New American Library, 1974), p. 241.
David Hume: Miller, Wolf by the Ears, p. 51.
Even John Locke: Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), p. 31.
“the child can demonstrate”: Polyakov, Aryan Myth, p. 145.
James Otis argued: Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 237.
Tom Paine wrote: Thomas Paine, Rights of Man (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), p. 88.
Alexander Hamilton, who: Miller, Wolf by the Ears, p. 24.
In 1641 Massachusetts: Mannix and Cowley, Black Cargoes, pp. 171–72.
Quakers were beginning: John M. Moore, ed., Friends in the Delaware Valley: Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, 1681–1981 (Haverford, Pa.: Friends Historical Association, 1981), pp. 31–32.
Lord Chief Justice Mansfield: Thomas, Slave Trade, p. 476.
British abolitionists: Ibid., pp. 493–94, 507; Mannix and Cowley, Black Cargoes, pp. 176–79; and Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (New York: Capricorn Books, 1966), pp. 178–80.
Patrick Henry regarded: Beverly B. Munford, Virginia’s Attitude Toward Slavery and Secession (New York: Longmans, Green, 1910), p. 83.
Richard Henry Lee: Ibid., p. 82.
No man had been more consistent: Miller, Wolf by the Ears, pp. 5, 8.
“We hold these truths”: Declaration of Independence, in Against Slavery: An Abolitionist Reader, Mason Lowance, ed. (New York: Penguin, 2000), p. 28.
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