Underground to Canada

by Barbara Smucker

  There died in the city of Detroit, on October 27, 1897, a man whose services in the abolition movement and during the Civil War were of so self-sacrificing and daring a character they gained for him the tributes not only of the abolition leaders but of Lincoln himself. Alexander Milton Ross, M.D., Canadian by birth…had a career that deserves to be better known…Wendell Phillips declared, “No higher heroism, courage or tenacity of purpose was ever displayed than by you in your chivalric efforts to help the slaves to freedom.”3

  He was a distinguished ornithologist, cited by European governments and learned societies for original and painstaking work on birds of North America….His Canadian accent made him supposedly a neutral in internal affairs of the U.S. and letters of introduction established him as a naturalist of international standing …Wandering through fields and woods in the South, he had a rare opportunity to talk to slaves, to provide them with a little money, and information on how to travel and where to stop.4

  * * *

  Notes

  1. Memoirs of a Reformer by Alexander M. Ross. p. 41

  2. The Blacks in Canada by Robin W. Winks, p. 260

  3. “A Daring Canadian Abolitionist” by Fred Landon, librarian at London, Ontario, article in the Michigan History Magazine, 1921, p. 364

  4. Make Free—The Story of the Underground Railroad by William Breyfogle, p. 190

  MR. LEVI COFFIN

  Levi Coffin, a businessman, Quaker leader and Abolitionist, was born in 1798 in New Garden, N. Carolina, and died in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1877.

  I am opposed to the whole system of slavery, and conscientiously believe it to be a sin against God and a crime against man to channelize a human being and reduce God’s image to the level of a brute, to be bought and sold in the market as cattle or swine.1

  Levi Coffin

  Levi Coffin, by his devotion to the cause of the fugitive from boyhood to old age, gained the title of President of the Underground Railroad, but he was not at the head of a formal organization. In truth the work was everywhere spontaneous. Unfaltering confidence among members of neighbouring stations served better than a code of rules … decision and sagacity of the individual was required rather than the less rapid efforts of an organization.2

  He and his wife aided more than 3,000 slaves in flight.3

  For 33 years, he and his wife, Catherine, received into their home in Newport, Ind., and Cincinnati, O., more than 100 slaves every year.4

  * * *

  Notes

  1. From a letter quoted in The Underground Railroad—From Slavery to Freedom by Wilbur Siebert, p. 592

  2. Ibid., p. 69

  3. Ibid., p. 87

  4. Ibid., p. 111

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Beattie, Jessie L., Black Moses, the Real Uncle Tom, The Ryerson Press, Toronto, 1957

  Bolka, B. A. (ed.), Lay My Burden Down—A Folk History of Slavery, University of Chicago Press, 1969

  Breyfogle, William, Make Free—The Story of the Underground Railroad, Lippincott, 1958

  Browin, Frances Williams, Looking for Orlando, Criterion Books, 1961

  Buckmaster, Henrietta, Flight to Freedom, Crowell, 1958

  Coffin, Levi, Reminiscences, Arno Press and The New York Times, 1968 (reprinted from a copy in the Moorland-Springarn Collection, written in 1876)

  Drew, Benjamin, The Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada, John P. Jewett and Co., Cleveland, 1856. Facsimile edition by Coles Publishing Co., Toronto, 1972

  Gara, Larry, The Liberty Line—The Legend of the Underground Railroad, University of Kentucky Press, Lexington, 1967

  Garrighan, Sally, The Glass Door, Doubleday, 1962

  Lester, Julius, To be a Slave, Dial Press, 1968

  Ross, Alexander Milton, Recollections and Experiences of an Abolitionist, Rowsell and Hutchison, Toronto 1875

  Ross, Alexander Milton, Memoirs of a Reformer, Hunter, Rose & Co., Toronto, 1893 “The Search for a Black Past,” Life Magazine, November 22, 1968

  Siebert, Wilbur H., The Underground Railroad—From Slavery to Freedom, Macmillan Co., 1898

  Smedley, R. C., History of the Underground Railroad, Arno Press and The New York Times, 1969

  Walker, Margaret, Jubilee, Houghton Mifflin, 1966

  Winks, Robin W., The Blacks in Canada, A History, Yale University Press, 1971

  Winks, Robin W. (gen. ed.), Four Fugitive Slave Narratives, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Reading, Mass., 1969

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The quotation from Martin Luther King Jr. is taken from p. 1 of Conscience for Change, published by CBC Learning Systems in 1967—the printed form of the 1967 Massey Lectures. Reprinted by permission of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

  The spirituals on pages 9 and 26 appear respectively on p. 107 of To be a Slave by Julius Lester (Dial Press, 1968) and on p. 315 of Jubilee by Margaret Walker (Houghton Mifflin, 1966).

  The idea for the incident on pp. 114 to 121 was found in a description of the slave Magog on p. 134 of Make Free—The Story of the Underground Railroad by William Breyfogle (Lippincott, 1958).

  I am indebted for the information on St. Catharines’ history to The Negroes of the Niagara Peninsula, written by Ivan Grok, a retired history teacher in St. Catharines, Ontario.

  Ezra Wilson’s statement about “salt and potatoes in Canada” on p. 181 is a direct quotation from The Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada by Benjamin Drew, p. 39. (Facsimile edition published by Coles Publishing Co., Toronto, 1972.)

  Underground to Canada

  About the Book

  About Barbara Smucker

  Discussion Questions

  Additional Resources

  A Puffin Readers Guide

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  June Lilly, known to everyone as Julilly, is a twelve-year-old slave girl living with her mother on a plantation in Virginia during the 1850s. At the beginning of the story, the owner of the plantation, Massa (Master) Hensen, must sell some of his slaves to raise money, and everyone is worried about who will have to go. When the slave trader arrives, Julilly is separated from her mother and, along with many other younger children, is forced onto the rickety old wagon bound for the plantation of Massa Riley, in Mississippi. The slave trader also takes three strong male slaves—Ben, Lester, and Adam—and chains them to the wagon, forcing them to keep up as the chains cut into the skin around their ankles. During the long trip to the Deep South, Julilly rides in the wagon with the small children, and even though she is scared and very upset, she does her best to keep their spirits up and look after them in the nighttime cold, the scorching sun, and constant hunger. When the long trip and harsh conditions become too much for Adam, Ben, and Lester, Julilly finds the courage to climb out of the wagon and help them too, which earns her Lester’s respect.

  When she arrives at the new plantation, Julilly realizes that she and her mother had been relatively fortunate back in Virginia. The slaves on the Riley plantation are treated like animals— they are whipped regularly by the cruel overseer, Sims, are fed only enough to enable them to work all day, and sleep on dirt floors in poorly constructed shacks.

  Julilly is heartbroken and discouraged, but she is quickly befriended by another young slave named Liza who gives her strength and hope. Liza was savagely beaten when she tried to escape from the plantation, and suffers from constant pain and a bad back, but her spirit is still defiant, and the two girls discuss the possibility of escaping to Canada, where they have heard there is no slavery. Julilly hopes that her mother too—wherever she is now—might escape to Canada, and she dreams of being reunited with her there.

  One day, a man named Alexander Ross (a real-life character) arrives on the plantation. He is an ornithologist (someone who studies birds), and Massa Riley lends him a couple of slaves to accompany him as he searches for various bird species. Julilly and Liza are fascinated by the man because he is from Canada, the land they dream about. They later find out from Lester that Ross is in fact travelling through the South in order to fre
e slaves. Lester invites Julilly and Liza to a meeting in the woods in the middle of the night to discuss the escape plan. A week later, Lester leads Julilly, Liza, and Adam as they escape from the plantation. They follow the directions given by Alexander Ross to the various “stations” of the Underground Railroad. Travelling at night and sleeping during the day, they manage to avoid the authorities who are looking for them. Their travels eventually take them to an uninhabited barn in the wilderness. When Lester and Adam go out fishing, they are captured and put back in chains. Julilly and Liza are left to carry on alone, following the North Star. The two girls have a difficult journey through the wild Appalachian Mountains, are refused food by a gun-toting woman, and live in ever-present fear of being tracked down by slave catchers and their bloodhounds. They are helped on their journey by a kindly group of Mennonite women and by an elderly slave who gives them his food ration. They eventually arrive at the home of Jeb Brown and his wife, Ella, where they receive a warm welcome. They have to leave early, though, when the Sheriff arrives, looking for runaway slaves. The girls hide on the roof, and when the Sheriff has left, Jeb rows them across the Ohio River. They are now out of the South and in the “free” North—but if they are captured they can still be returned to their plantation.

  They are taken to the home of Levi Coffin in Cincinnati (another real-life character), who is known as the President of the Underground Railroad, but again they have to leave quickly when the authorities arrive to search the house. The girls are loaded into a freight car in cloth sacks and sent to Cleveland, where they are met by Alexander Ross. He puts them aboard a boat called the Mayflower but cannot accompany them to Canada, as he is heading back to the South to free more slaves. There is one last scare for the girls when a slave hunter comes to search the ship, but they hide in a lifeboat and are not discovered. They remain there for the trip across Lake Erie.

  In Canada, Julilly and Liza are met by a black man, Ezra, who takes them in his cart to St. Catharines, where they are reunited with Lester, who managed to escape after his capture by the slave hunters. Sadly, Adam died a day after arriving in Canada, from blood poisoning as a result of the chains biting into his skin. When Julilly sees her mother, Mammy Sally, coming out of the hotel where she now works, Julilly’s happiness is complete. She and her mother, together with Liza, Lester, and Ezra, head down the road to Mammy Sally’s house to begin their new lives of freedom.

  ABOUT BARBARA SMUCKER

  Barbara Smucker was born Barbara Claassen in Newton, Kansas, in 1915. She graduated from Kansas State University in 1936 with a degree in journalism. After marrying in 1939, she and her husband lived throughout the United States. She worked as a newspaper reporter and high school teacher before publishing her first book, Henry’s Red Sea, in 1955.

  She and her husband, together with their three children, moved to Waterloo, Ontario, in 1969, where Barbara worked as a children’s librarian and continued to write novels for children. Most of her novels are inspired by real-life historical events, which she wanted to bring alive for young readers. A number of her books deal with the Mennonite people, as Barbara Smucker herself was a Mennonite and her husband, Donovan Smucker, was a Mennonite minister. Underground to Canada, her most famous book, was originally published in 1977. The multi-award-winning Days of Terror (1979) is the story of a Mennonite family escaping from Russia at the time of the Russian Revolution. Her other titles include Amish Adventure (1983), White Mist (1985), Jacob’s Little Giant (1987), Incredible Jumbo (1990), and Garth and the Mermaid (1992).

  She and her husband retired to his hometown of Bluffton, Ohio, in 1994. Barbara Smucker died there in 2003, at the Mennonite Memorial Home, aged 87.

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. On page 22, on their way to the Riley plantation, the overseer Sims warns Julilly, Lester, and the others not to listen to the Quaker man and the black boy who give them water. He says, “They got evil in their words and destruction in their ways.” Do you think Sims believes what he says? If not, why does he describe the Abolitionist and the free black boy this way? If he really does believe they are evil and destructive, can you explain why he might think that?

  2. Music plays an important part in this story. In fact, the very first sentence in the book is about music. It inspires the slaves, comforts them, and acts as coded information. Have you ever felt really strongly about a particular piece of music? Why was it so important to you? Can you think of situations where music is used to make people feel a certain way? Now that we have music everywhere we go—in our iPods, on the radio, in our cars, in stores—do you think it can have the same impact it would have had at the time of this story?

  3. Nowadays we have laws that prevent most of the serious injustices portrayed in this story: long hours of work with insufficient breaks, physical abuse in the workplace, child labour. Do you think we’ve done enough to protect workers from exploitation? If not, what more could be done? And what should we in wealthy countries do about exploitation in countries that do not have our laws protecting workers?

  4. When Julilly and Liza talk about Canada at the Riley plantation (page 46), they discover that the other girls have some strange ideas about it: in Canada, they eat black people; the only thing that can be grown there is black-eyed peas. Can you think of some things you’ve heard about other countries or regions that turned out not to be true? How do you think such ideas start, and how and why do they spread?

  5. Throughout Underground to Canada, even in the midst of the most terrible scenes of cruelty and poverty, there are descriptions of natural beauty—such as the branches of the cotton trees at the Riley plantation that “shot out in all directions with blossoming white bolls, popping out like pure white feathers from a thousand swans” (page 45). Do you think a description like this is appropriate when the story concerns such horrendous cruelty and ugliness? Why might the author have chosen to include such details?

  6. Lester is frequently described as being angry, and during the journey from Virginia to the Riley plantation we are told that Julilly “drew strength from Lester’s high-held head and angry eyes” (page 26). Do you think anger is the best reaction to injustice? Are Julilly and Liza angry? What about Alexander Ross? And the majority of the slaves at the Riley plantation—how do they react to their condition? Is there a correct or appropriate response in a situation like the one these people find themselves in?

  7. On page 58, Julilly thinks about what it means to be free: “Free must be like a whippoorwill that could fly here and there and settle where it pleased … free could mean to get paid for your work like white folks … free was like the free black boy who … gave her water … if you were free, you wouldn’t be whipped.” What do you think of her definition? Does freedom mean something different in different circumstances? Is a character like Sims, the overseer, free? And when the escaped slaves get to Canada, are they entirely free? Is everyone either free or not free, or are there degrees of freedom? When Julilly and Liza get to Canada, both Ezra Wilson and Mammy Sally warn them that “Freedom isn’t easy” (page 187). What do you think they mean?

  8. What do Liza and Julilly mean when they say they are “afraid and not afraid” (page 59) to try to escape from the Riley plantation? Do they mean the same thing? What role, if any, does Liza’s deep religious faith play in her willingness to risk being caught and severely beaten again? Could religious faith equally produce an entirely different reaction?

  9. During their escape from the Riley plantation, Julilly helps Liza in many small (and not so small) ways—holding her upright when they are struggling through the swamp, taking over Liza’s watch in order to let her sleep. Does Liza provide Julilly with anything in return, or would Julilly be better off on her own? Why does Julilly help Liza so much, often at risk to herself? When Liza faints at Jeb Brown’s cabin, what does Julilly mean when she says to Liza, “I need you” (page 142)?

  10.The password used by escaping slaves and those who help them on the Underground Railroad is “Fri
ends with a friend.” Why is this an appropriate password on the Underground Railroad? How does the idea of friendship show itself throughout the story? Do you think people have to know each other for a long time to be true friends, or can strangers be friends?

  11.Julilly is repeatedly impressed by the enthusiasm and commitment of the Abolitionists, who offer their time freely, and at the risk of great personal loss and even imprisonment, to help slaves to freedom. As the farmer who hides the four runaways in his wagon says: “I just wish I could take you right to the border of Canada … Slavery is a horrible evil” (page 96). Are there issues in the world today that could inspire this same kind of commitment? Do you think people today are more or less involved in trying to correct injustices? What do you think is different in our society today in terms of how we approach such issues?

  12.Shortly before they reach Jeb Brown’s cabin, a dog drives Julilly and Liza to take refuge in a tree. A black man comes along and gives them directions to Brown’s cabin but makes it clear he doesn’t want to be any more involved. Julilly says, “That man’s got no more courage than a mouse” (page 131). Do you think it is a sign of weakness to refuse to take action that would put yourself at risk? Think about the different people in this book and the varying degrees of risk they take. Is there a “correct” approach to dealing with injustice in society? Is the most activist approach—that of Alexander Ross, for example—necessarily the best one, especially if it leads to imprisonment?

  ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

  Books

  Fradin, Dennis Brindell, Bound for the North Star: True Stories of Fugitive Slaves Twelve true stories of slaves who escaped via the Underground Railroad, with help from Levi Coffin in a couple of instances. Includes photos and illustrations.