Читать книгу The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom - Wilbur Henry Siebert - Страница 17

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Persons opposed to slavery were, naturally, the friends of the fugitive slave, and were ever ready to respond to his appeals for help. Shelter and food were readily supplied him, and he was directed or conveyed, generally in the night, to sympathizing neighbors, until finally, without any forethought or management on his own part, he found himself in Canada a free man. These helpers, in the course of time, came to be called agents, station-keepers, or conductors on the Underground Railroad. Of the names of those that belonged to this class of practical emancipationists, 3,211 have been catalogued;[241] change of residence and death have made it impossible to obtain the names of many more. Considering the kind of labor performed and the danger involved, one is impressed with the unselfish devotion to principle of these emancipators. There was for them, of course, no outward honor, no material recompense, but instead such contumely and seeming disgrace as can now be scarcely comprehended.

Nevertheless, they were rich in courage, and their hospitality was equal to all emergencies. They gladly gave aid and comfort to every negro seeking freedom; and the numbers befriended by many helpers despite penalties and abuse show with what moral determination the work was carried on. It has been said that the Hopkins, Salsbury, Snediger, Dickey and Kirkpatrick families, of southern Ohio, forwarded more than 1,000 fugitives to Canada before the year 1817.[242] Daniel Gibbons, of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, was engaged in helping fugitive slaves during a period of fifty-six years. "He did not keep a record of the number he passed until 1824. But prior to that time, it was supposed to have been over 200, and up to the time of his death (in 1853) he had aided about 1,000."[243] It has been estimated that Dr. Nathan M. Thomas, of Schoolcraft, Michigan, forwarded between 1,000 and 1,500 fugitives.[244] John Fairfield, the abductor, "piloted not only hundreds, but thousands."[245] The Rev. Charles T. Torrey went to Maryland and "from there sent—as he wrote previous to 1844—some 400 slaves over different routes to Canada."[246] Philo Carpenter, of Chicago, is reported to have escorted 200 fugitives to vessels bound for Canada.[247] In a letter to William Still, in November, 1857, Elijah F. Pennypacker, of Chester County, Pennsylvania, writes, "we have within the past two months passed forty-three through our hands."[248] H. B. Leeper, of Princeton, Illinois, says that the most successful business he ever accomplished in this line was the helping on of thirty-one men and women in six weeks' time.[249] Leverett B. Hill, of Wakeman, Ohio, assisted 103 on their way to Canada during the year 1852.[250] Mr. Van Dorn, of Quincy, in a service of twenty-five years, assisted "some two or three hundred fugitives."[251] W. D. Schooley, of Richmond, Indiana, writes, "I think I must have assisted over 100 on their way to liberty."[252] Jonathan H. Gray, Milton Hill and John H. Frazee were conductors at Carthage, Indiana, and are said to have helped over 150 fugitives.[253] "Thousands of fugitives found rest" at Ripley, Brown County, Ohio.[254] During the lifetime of General McIntire, a Virginian, who settled in Adams County, Ohio, "more than 100 slaves found a safe retreat under his roof." Other helpers in the same state rendered service deserving of mention. Ozem Gardner, of Sharon Township, Franklin County, "assisted more than 200 fugitives on their way in all weathers and at all times of the day and night."[255] It is estimated by a friend of Dr. J. A. Bingham and George J. Payne, two operators of Gallia County, that the line of escape with which these men were connected was travelled by about 200 slaves every year from 1845 to 1856.[256] From 1844 to 1860 John H. Stewart, a colored station-keeper of the same county, kept about 100 fugitives at his house.[257] Five hundred are said to have passed through the hands of Thomas L. Gray, of Deavertown, in Morgan County.[258] Ex-President Fairchild speaks of the "multitudes" of fugitives that came to Oberlin, and says that "not one was ever finally taken back to bondage."[259] Many other stations and station-agents that were instrumental in helping large numbers of slaves from bondage to freedom cannot be mentioned here.

Reticent as most underground operators were at the time in regard to their unlawful acts, they did not attempt to conceal their principles. On the contrary, they were zealous in their endeavors to make converts to a doctrine that seemed to them to have the combined warrant of Scripture and of their own conscience, and that agreed with the convictions of the fathers of the Republic. The Golden Rule and the preamble of the Declaration of Independence they often recited in support of their position. When they had transgressed the Fugitive Slave Law of Congress they were wont to find their justification in what ex-President Fairchild of Oberlin has aptly called the Fugitive Slave Law of the Mosaic institutions:[260] "Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which hath escaped unto thee; he shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall choose in one of thy gates where it liketh him best; thou shalt not oppress him."[261] They refused to observe a law that made it a felony in their opinion to give a cup of cold water to famishing men and women fleeing from servitude. Their faith and determination is clearly expressed in one of the old anti-slavery songs:—

"'Tis the law of God in the human soul,

'Tis the law in the Word Divine;

It shall live while the earth in its course shall roll,

It shall live in this soul of mine.

Let the law of the land forge its bonds of wrong,

I shall help when the self-freed crave;

For the law in my soul, bright, beaming, and strong,

Bids me succor the fleeing slave."

Theodore Parker was but the mouthpiece of many abolitionists throughout the Northern states when he said, at the conclusion of a sermon in 1850: "It is known to you that the Fugitive Slave Bill has become a law. … To law framed of such iniquity I owe no allegiance. Humanity, Christianity, manhood revolts against it. … For myself I say it solemnly, I will shelter, I will help, and I will defend the fugitive with all my humble means and power. I will act with any body of decent and serious men, as the head, or the foot, or the hand, in any mode not involving the use of deadly weapons, to nullify and defeat the operation of this law. … "[262]

Sentiments of this kind were cherished in almost every Northern community by a few persons at least. There were some New England colonies in the West where anti-slavery sentiments predominated. These, like some of the religious communities, as those of the Quakers and Covenanters, became well-known centres of underground activity. In general it is safe to say that the majority of helpers in the North were of Anglo-American stock, descendants of the Puritan and Quaker settlers of the Eastern states, or of Southerners that had moved to the Northern states to be rid of slavery. The many stations in the eastern and northern parts of Ohio and the northern part of Illinois may be safely attributed to the large proportion of New England settlers in those districts. Localities where the work of befriending slaves was largely in the hands of Quakers will be mentioned in another connection. Southern settlers in Brown County and adjoining districts in Ohio are said to have been regularly forwarding escaped slaves to Canada before 1817.[263] The emigration of a number of these settlers to Bond County, Illinois, about 1820, and the removal of a few families from that region to Putnam County in the same state about a decade later, helps to explain the early development of secret routes in the southern and north central parts of Illinois.[264]

In the South much secret aid was rendered fugitives, no doubt, by persons of their own race. Two colored market-women in Baltimore were efficient agents for the Vigilance Committee of Philadelphia.[265] Frederick Douglass's connection with the Underground Railroad began long before he left the South.[266] In the North, people of the African race were to be found in most communities, and in many places they became energetic workers. Negro settlements in the interior of the free states, as well as along their southern frontier, soon came to form important links in the chain of stations leading from the Southern states to Canada.

In the early days running slaves sometimes sought and received aid from Indians. This fact is evidenced by the introduction of fugitive recovery clauses into a number of the treaties made between the colonies and Indian tribes. Seven out of the eight treaties made between 1784 and 1786 contained clauses for the return of black prisoners, or of "negroes and other property."[267] A few of the colonies offered rewards to induce Indians to apprehend and restore runaways. In 1669 Maryland "ordered that any Indian who shall apprehend a fugitive may have a 'match coate' or its value. Virginia would give '20 armes length of Roanake,' or its value, while in Connecticut 'two yards of cloth' was considered sufficient inducement."[268] The inhabitants of the Ottawa village of Chief Kinjeino in northwestern Ohio were kindly disposed towards the fugitive;[269] and the people of Chief Brant, who held an estate on the Grand River in Ontario west of Niagara Falls, were in the habit of receiving colored refugees.[270]

The people of Scotch and Scotch-Irish descent were naturally liberty loving, and seem to have given hearty support to the anti-slavery cause in whatever form it presented itself to them. The small number of Scotch communities in Morgan and Logan counties, Ohio, and in Randolph and Washington counties, Illinois, were centres of underground service.

The secret work of the English, Irish and German settlers cannot be so readily localized. In various places a single German, Irishman, or Englishman is known to have aided escaped slaves in coöperation with a few other persons of different nationality, but so far as known there were no groups made up of representatives of one or another of these races engaged in such enterprises. At Toledo, Ohio, the company of helpers comprised Congressman James M. Ashley, a Pennsylvanian by birth; Richard Mott, a Quaker; James Conlisk, an Irishman; William H. Merritt, a negro; and several others.[271] Lyman Goodnow, an operator of Waukesha, Wisconsin, says he was told that "in cases of emergency the Germans were next best to Quakers for protection."[272] Two German companies from Massachusetts enlisted for the War only when promised that they should not be required to restore runaways to their owners.[273]

Some religious communities and church societies were conservators of abolition ideas. The Quakers deserve, in this work, to be placed before all other denominations because of their general acceptance and advocacy of anti-slavery doctrines when the system of slavery had no other opponents. From the time of George Fox until the last traces of the evil were swept from the English-speaking world many Quakers bore a steadfast testimony against it.[274] Fox reminded slaveholders that if they were in their slaves' places they would consider it "very great bondage and cruelty," and he urged upon the Friends in America to preach the gospel to the enslaved blacks. In 1688 German Friends at Germantown, Pennsylvania, made an official protest "against the traffic in the bodies of men and the treatment of men as cattle." By 1772 New England Friends began to disown (expel) members for failing to manumit their slaves; and four years later both the Philadelphia and the New York yearly meetings made slaveholding a disownable offence. A similar step was taken by the Baltimore Yearly Meeting in 1777; and meetings in Virginia were directed, in 1784, to disown those that refused to emancipate their slaves.[275] Owing to obstacles in the way of setting slaves free in North Carolina, a committee of Quakers of that state was appointed in 1822 to examine the laws of some of the free states respecting the admission of people of color therein. In 1823 the committee reported that there was "nothing in the laws of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois to prevent the introduction of people of color into those states, and agents were instructed to remove slaves placed in their care as fast as they were willing to go." These facts show the sentiment that prevailed in the Society of Friends. Many Southern Quakers moved to the North on account of their hatred of slavery, and established such important centres of underground work as Springboro and Salem, Ohio, and Spiceland and New Garden, Indiana. Quakers in New Bedford and Lynn, Massachusetts, and Valley Falls, Rhode Island, engaged in the service. The same class of people in Maryland coöperated with members of their society in the vicinity of Philadelphia. The existence of numerous Underground Railroad centres in southeastern Pennsylvania and in eastern Indiana is explained by the fact that a large number of Quakers dwelt in those regions.

The Methodists began to take action against slavery in 1780. At an informal conference held at Baltimore in that year the subject was presented in the form of a "Question—Ought not this conference to require those travelling preachers who hold slaves to give promises to set them free?" The answer given was in the affirmative. Concerning the membership the language adopted was as follows: "We pass our disapprobation on all our friends who keep slaves; and advise their freedom." Under the influence of Wesleyan preachers, it is said, not a few cases of emancipation occurred. At a conference in 1785, however, it was decided to "suspend the execution of the minute on slavery till the deliberations of a future conference. … " Four years later a clause appeared in the Discipline, by whose authority is not known, prohibiting "The buying or selling the bodies or souls of men, women, or children, with an intention to enslave them." This provision evidently referred to the African slave-trade. In 1816 the General Conference adopted a resolution that "no slaveholder shall be eligible to any official station in our Church hereafter, where the laws of the state in which he lives will admit of emancipation, and permit the liberated slave to enjoy freedom." Later there seems to have been a disposition on the part of the church authorities to suppress the agitation of the slavery question, but it can scarcely be doubted that the well-known views of the Wesleys and of Whitfield remained for some at least the standard of right opinion, and that their declarations formed for these the rule of action. In 1842 a secession from the church took place, chiefly if not altogether on account of the question of slavery, and a number of abolitionist members of the uncompromising type founded a new church organization, which they called the "Wesleyan Methodist Connection of America." Slave-holders were excluded from fellowship in this body. Within two or three years the new organization had drawn away twenty thousand members from the old.[276] In 1844 a much larger secession took place on the same question, the occasion being the institution of proceedings before the General Conference against the Rev. James O. Andrew, D.D., a slave-holding bishop of the South. This so aggravated the Methodist Episcopal societies in the slave states that they withdrew and formed the Methodist Episcopal Church South. Among the members of the Wesleyan Methodist Connection and of the older society of the North there were a number of zealous underground operators. Indeed, it came to be said of the Wesleyans, as of the Quakers, that almost every neighborhood where a few of them lived was likely to be a station of the secret Road to Canada. It is probable that some of the Wesleyans at Wilmington, Ohio, coöperated with Quakers at that point. In Urbana, Ohio, there were Methodists of the two divisions engaged.[277] Service was also performed by Wesleyans at Tippecanoe, Deersville and Rocky Fort in Tuscarawas County,[278] and at Piqua, Miami County, Ohio.[279] In Iowa a number of Methodist ministers were engaged in the work.[280]

The third sect to which a considerable proportion of underground operators belonged was Calvinistic in its creed. All the various wings of Presbyterianism seem to have had representatives in this class of anti-slavery people. The sinfulness of slavery was a proposition that found uncompromising advocates among the Presbyterian ministers of the South in the early part of this century. In 1804 the Rev. James Gilliland removed from South Carolina to Brown County, Ohio, because he had been enjoined by his presbytery and synod "to be silent in the pulpit on the subject of the emancipation of the African."[281] Other ministers of prominence, like Thomas D. Baird, David Nelson and John Rankin, left the South because they were not free to speak against slavery. In 1818 the Presbyterian Church declared the system "inconsistent with the law of God and totally irreconcilable with the gospel of Christ." This teaching was afterwards departed from in 1845 when the Assembly confined its protest to admitting rather mildly that there was "evil connected with slavery," and declining to countenance "the traffic in slaves for the sake of gain; the separation of husbands and wives, parents and children, for the sake of filthy lucre or the convenience of the master; or cruel treatment of slaves in any respect." The dissatisfaction caused by this evident compromise led to the formation of a new church in 1847 by the "New School" Presbytery of Ripley, Ohio, and a part of the "Old School" Presbytery of Mahoning, Pennsylvania. This organization was called the Free Church, and by 1860 had extended as far west as Iowa.[282] It is not strange that the region in Ohio where the Free Presbyterian Church was founded was plentifully dotted with stations of the Underground Railroad, and that the house of the Rev. John Rankin, who was the leader of the movement, was known far and wide as a place of refuge for the fugitive slave.[283] At Savannah, Ashland County, Iberia, Morrow County, and a point near Millersburgh, Holmes County, Ohio, the work is associated with Free Presbyterian societies once existing in those neighborhoods.[284] In the northern part of Adams County, as also in the northern part of Logan County, Ohio, fugitives were received into the homes of Covenanters. Galesburg, Illinois, with its college was founded in 1837 by Presbyterians and Congregationalists, who united to form one religious society under the name of the "Presbyterian Church of Galesburg." Opposition to slavery was one of the conditions of membership in this organization from the beginning. This intense anti-slavery feeling caused the church to withdraw from the presbytery in 1855.[285] From the starting of the colony until the time of the War fugitives from Missouri were conducted thither with the certainty of obtaining protection. Thus Galesburg became, probably, the principal underground station in Illinois.[286] Joseph S. White, of New Castle, in western Pennsylvania, notes the circumstance that all the men with whom he acted in underground enterprises were Presbyterians.[287]

The religious centre in Ohio most renowned for the aid of refugees was the Congregational colony and college at Oberlin. The acquisition of a large anti-slavery contingent from Lane Seminary in 1835 caused the college to be known from that time on as a "hotbed of abolitionism." Fugitives were directed thither from points more or less remote, and during the period from 1835 to 1860 Oberlin was a busy station,[288] receiving passengers from at least five converging lines.[289] So notorious did the place become that a guide-board in the form of a fugitive running in the direction of the town was set up by the authorities on the Middle Ridge road, six miles north of Oberlin, and the sign of a tavern, four miles away, "was ornamented on its Oberlin face with a representation of a fugitive slave pursued by a tiger."[290] On account of the persistent ignoring of the law against harboring slaves by those connected with the institution, the existence of the college was put in jeopardy. Ex-President Fairchild relates that, "A Democratic legislature at different times agitated the question of repealing the college charter. The fourth and last attempt was made in 1843, when the bill for repeal was indefinitely postponed in the House by a vote of thirty-six to twenty-nine."[291] The anti-slavery influence of Oberlin went abroad with its students. Ex-President W. M. Brooks, of Tabor College, Iowa, a graduate of Oberlin, says, "The stations on the Underground Railroad in southwestern Iowa were in the region of Civil Bend, where the colony from Oberlin, Ohio, settled, which afterwards settled Tabor. … From this point (Civil Bend, now Percival) fugitives were brought to Tabor after 1852; here the entire population was in sympathy with the escaped fugitives; … there was scarcely a man in the community who was not ready to do anything that was needed to help fugitives on their way to Canada."[292] The families that founded Tabor were "almost all of them Congregationalists."[293] Professor L. F. Parker of Grinnell, Iowa, names Oberlin students in connection with Quakers as the chief groups in Iowa whose houses were open to fugitives.[294] Grinnell itself was first settled by people that were mainly Congregationalists.[295] From the time of its foundation (1854) it was an anti-slavery centre, "well known and eagerly sought by the few runaways who came from the meagre settlements southwest … in Missouri."[296]

There were, of course, members of other denominations that befriended the slave; thus, it is known that the Unitarian Seminary at Meadville, Pennsylvania, was a centre of underground work,[297] but, in general, the lack of information concerning the church connections of many of the company of persons with whom this chapter deals prevents the drawing of any inference as to whether these individuals acted independently or in conjunction with little bands of persons of their own faith.

There seems to have been no open appeal made to church organizations for help in behalf of fugitives except in Massachusetts. In 1851, and again in 1854, the Vigilance Committee of Boston deemed it wise to send out circulars to the clergymen of the commonwealth, requesting that contributions be taken by them to be applied in mitigation of the misery caused by the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law. The boldness and originality of such an appeal, and more especially the evident purpose of its framers to create sentiment by this means among the religious societies, entitle it to consideration. The first circular was sent out soon after the enactment of the odious law, and the second soon after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The results secured by the two circulars will be seen in the following letter from Francis Jackson, of Boston, to his fellow-townsmen and co-worker, the Rev. Theodore Parker.

Boston, Aug. 27, 1854.

Theodore Parker:

Dear Friend—The contributions of the churches in behalf of the fugitive slaves I think have about all come in. I herewith inclose you a schedule thereof, amounting in all to about $800, being but little more than half as much as they contributed in 1851.

The Mass. Register published in January, 1854, states the number of Religious Societies to be 1,547 (made up of 471 Orthodox, 270 Methodist, and all others 239). We sent circulars to the whole 1,547; only 78 of them have responded—say 1 in 20—from 130 Universalist societies, nothing, from 43 Episcopal $4, and 20 Friends $27—the Baptists—four times as many of these societies have given now as gave in 1851, this may be because Brynes was a Baptist minister.

The average amount contributed by 77 societies (deducting Frothingham of Salem) is $10 each; the 28th Congregationalist Church in this city did not take up a contribution, nevertheless, individual members thereof subscribed upwards of $300; they being infidel have not been reckoned with the churches.

Of the cities and large towns scarce any have contributed. Of the 90 and 9 in Boston all have gone astray but 2—I have not heard of our circular being read in one of them; still it may have been. Those societies who have contributed, I judge were least able to do so.

Francis Jackson.[298]

The political affiliations of underground helpers before 1840 were, necessarily, with one or the other of the old parties—the Whig or the Democratic. As the Whig party was predominantly Northern, and as its sentiments were more distinctly anti-slavery than those of its rival, it is fair to suppose that the small band of early abolitionists were, most of them, allied with that party.[299] The Missouri Compromise in 1820, one may surmise, enabled those that were wavering in their position to ally themselves with the party that was less likely to make demands in the interests of the slave power. In 1840 opportunity was given abolitionists to take independent political action by the nomination of a national Liberty ticket. At that time, and again in 1844, many underground operators voted for the candidates of the Liberty party, and subsequently for the Free Soil nominees.[300]

But it is not to be supposed that all friends of the fugitive joined the political movement against slavery. Many there were that regarded party action with disfavor, preferring the method of moral suasion. These persons belonged to the Quakers, or to the Garrisonian abolitionists. The Friends or Quakers refused as far as possible to countenance slavery, and when the political development of the abolition cause came they regretted it, and their yearly meetings withheld their official sanction, so far as known, from every political organization. Nevertheless, there were some members of the Society of Friends that were swept into the current, and became active supporters of the Liberty party.[301] The most noted and influential of these was the anti-slavery poet, Whittier.[302] When, in 1860, the Republican party nominated Lincoln, "a large majority of the Friends, at least in the North and West, voted for him."[303]

The followers of Garrison that remained steadfast to the teachings and the example of their leader shunned all connection with the political abolitionist movement. Garrison never voted but once,[304] and by 1854 had gone so far in his denunciation of slavery that he burned the Constitution of the United States at an open-air celebration of the abolitionists at Framingham, Massachusetts.[305] To his dying day he seems to have believed "that the cause would have triumphed sooner, in a political sense, if the abolitionists had continued to act as one body, never yielding to the temptation of forming a political party, but pressing forward in the use of the same instrumentalities which were so potent from 1831 to 1840."[306]

The abolitionists were ill-judged by their contemporaries, and were frequently subjected to harsh language and occasionally to violent treatment by persons of supposed respectability. The weight of opprobrium they were called upon to bear tested their great strength of character. If the probity, integrity and moral courage of this abused class had been made the criteria of their standing they would have been held from the outset in high esteem by their neighbors. However, they lived to see the days of their disgrace turned into days of triumph. "The muse of history," says Rhodes, "has done full justice to the abolitionists. Among them were literary men, who have known how to present their cause with power, and the noble spirit of truthfulness pervades the abolition literature. One may search in vain for intentional misrepresentation. Abuse of opponents and criticism of motives are common enough, but the historians of the abolition movement have endeavored to relate a plain, honest tale; and the country has accepted them and their work at their true value. Moreover, a cause and its promoters that have been celebrated in the vigorous lines of Lowell and sung in the impassioned verse of Whittier will always be of perennial memory."[307]

Contempt was not the only hardship that the abolitionist had to face when he admitted the fleeing black man within his door, but he braved also the existing laws, and was sometimes compelled to suffer the consequences for disregarding the slaveholder's claim of ownership. In 1842 the prosecution of John Van Zandt, of Hamilton County, Ohio, was begun for attempting to aid nine slaves to escape. The case was tried first in the Circuit Court of the United States, and then taken by appeal to the Supreme Court. The suits were not concluded when the defendant died in May, 1847. The death of the plaintiff soon after left the case to be settled by administrators, who agreed that the costs, amounting to one thousand dollars, should be paid from the possessions of the defendant.[308] The judgments against Van Zandt under the Fugitive Slave Law amounted to seventeen hundred dollars.[309] In 1847 several members of a crowd that was instrumental in preventing the seizure of a colored family by the name of Crosswhite, at Marshall, Michigan, were indicted under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793. Two trials followed, and at the second trial three persons were convicted, the verdict against them amounting, with expenses and costs, to six thousand dollars.[310] In 1848 Daniel Kauffman, of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, sheltered a family of thirteen slaves in his barn, and gave them transportation northward. He was tried, and sentenced to pay two thousand dollars in fine and costs. Although this decision was reversed by the United States Supreme Court, a new suit was instituted in the Circuit Court of the United States and a judgment was rendered against Kauffman amounting with costs to more than four thousand dollars. This sum was paid, in large part if not altogether, by contributions.[311] In 1854 Rush R. Sloane, a lawyer of Sandusky, Ohio, was tried for enabling seven fugitives to escape after arrest by their pursuers. The two claimants of the slaves instituted suit, but one only obtained a judgment, which amounted to three thousand dollars and costs.[312] The arrest of the fugitive, Anthony Burns, in Boston, in the same year, was the occasion for indignation meetings at Faneuil and Meionaon Halls, which terminated in an attempt to rescue the unfortunate negro. Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips and T. W. Higginson took a conspicuous part in these proceedings, and were indicted with others for riot. When the first case was taken up the counsel for the defence made a motion that the indictment be quashed. This was sustained by the court, and the affair ended by all the cases being dismissed.[313]

These and other similar cases arising from the attempted enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act in various parts of the country led to the proposal of a Defensive League of Freedom. A pamphlet, issued soon after the rendition of Burns, by Ellis Gray Loring, Samuel Cabot, Jr., Henry J. Prentiss, John A. Andrew and Samuel G. Howe, of Boston, and James Freeman Clarke, of Roxbury, Massachusetts, stated the object of the proposed league to be "to secure all persons claimed as fugitives from slavery, and to all persons accused of violating the Fugitive Slave Bill the fullest legal protection; and also indemnify all such persons against costs, fines, and expenses, whenever they shall seem to deserve such indemnification." The league was to act as a "society of mutual protection and every member was to assume his portion of such penalties as would otherwise fall with crushing weight on a few individuals." Subscriptions were to be made by the members of the organization, and five per cent of these subscriptions was to be called for any year when it was needed.[314] How much service this association actually performed, or whether, indeed, it got beyond the stage of being merely proposed is not known; in any event, the fact is worth noting that men of marked ability, distinction and social connection were forming societies, like the Defensive League of Freedom, and the various vigilance committees, for the purpose of defeating the Fugitive Slave Act.

Among the underground helpers there are a number of notable persons that have admitted with seeming satisfaction their complicity in disregarding the Fugitive Slave Law. A letter from Frederick Douglass, the famous Maryland bondman and anti-slavery orator, says: "My connection with the Underground Railroad began long before I left the South, and was continued as long as slavery continued, whether I lived in New Bedford, Lynn [both in Massachusetts], or Rochester, N.Y. In the latter place I had as many as eleven fugitives under my roof at one time."[315] In his autobiography Mr. Douglass declares concerning his work in this connection: "My agency was all the more exciting and interesting because not altogether free from danger. I could take not a step in it without exposing myself to fine and imprisonment, … but in face of this fact, I can say, I never did more congenial, attractive, fascinating, and satisfactory work."[316] Dr. Alexander M. Ross, a Canadian physician and naturalist, who has received the decorations of knighthood from several of the monarchs of Europe in recognition of his scientific discoveries, spent a considerable part of his time from 1856 to 1862 in spreading a knowledge of the routes leading to Canada among the slaves of the South.[317] Dr. Norton S. Townshend, one of the organizers of the Ohio State University and for years professor of agriculture in that institution, acted as a conductor on the Underground Railroad while he was a student of medicine in Cincinnati, Ohio.[318] Dr. Jared P. Kirtland, a distinguished physician and scientist of Ohio, kept a station in Poland, Mahoning County, where he resided from 1823 to 1837.[319]

Harriet Beecher Stowe gained the intimate knowledge of the methods of the friends of the slave she displays in Uncle Tom's Cabin through her association with some of the most zealous abolitionists of southern Ohio. Her own house on Walnut Hills, Cincinnati, was a refuge whence persons whose types are portrayed in George and Eliza, the boy Jim and his mother, were guided by her husband and brother a portion of the way towards Canada.[320] Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the essayist and author, while stationed as the pastor of a free church in Worcester, Massachusetts, from 1852 to 1858, often had fugitives directed to his care. In a recent letter he writes of having received on one occasion a "consignment of a young white slave woman with two white children" from the Rev. Samuel J. May, who had put her "into the hands, for escort, of one of the most pro-slavery men in Worcester." The pro-slavery man, of course, did not have a suspicion that he was acting as conductor on the Underground Railroad.[321]