Читать книгу Colored girls and boys' inspiring United States history and a heart to heart talk about white folks - William Henry Harrison - Страница 10

Table of Contents

No thundering trains on iron laid tracks:

No steel made cars with cushioned backs:

No tickets punched by uniformed crews:

Yet a railroad it was: I’ll soon show you.

Fleet-footed horses on soft dirt roads

Stole by in nights with slavery loads

To stations anew further on the way

Where all were hid throughout the day.

Engineers, Conductors and Agents most

Were of Quaker stock—that Godly host,

Who through their silent night-dark roads

Transported blacks from slavery goads.

—Harrison.

MANY years before the Civil War there was organized among the Northern white and Christian people, mostly Quakers, a secret society to help runaway slaves to escape from the South into the free states and Canada. This society, on account of its hidden, winding and rapid ways of carrying its fleeing and hunted passengers into places of freedom and safety, was known as the “Underground Railroad”.

“As early as 1786, there are evidences of an underground road. A letter of George Washington, written in that year, speaks of a slave escaping from Virginia to Philadelphia, and being there aided by a society of Quakers formed for the purpose of assisting in liberating slaves. It was not, however, until after the War of 1812, that escaped slaves began to find their way by the underground roads in considerable numbers to Canada.”

“From Maine to Kansas, all the northern States were dotted with the underground stations and covered with a network of the underground roads. It is estimated that between 1830 and 1860 over 9,000 slaves were aided to escape by way of Philadelphia. During this same period in Ohio, 40,000 fugitives are said to have escaped by way of the underground railroad.”

Reference (Work’s Negro Year Book; page 167, 1918-1919 edition).

Without doubt, among the greatest workers in that society and truest white friends to the freedom seeking slaves were; Calvin Fairbanks who was arrested and kept for over fifteen years in Southern jails where he was daily whipped until blood flowed from his back, just because he helped human beings to get their freedom; Thomas Garrett who was jailed and had to sell all his personal property and real estate to pay the fines imposed upon him by the Southerners for doing the works of Jesus Christ by aiding the weak and comforting the suffering. And when penniless Thomas Garrett got out of jail he continued to help runaway slaves to find their freedom; Samuel May whose Christianity helped thousands of Colored people to enjoy the freedom due all human beings instead of suffering yokes and chains belonging to dumb beasts of burden; and Levi Coffin, who was recognized as the central electrical force that so powerfully and silently drove on, and the chief consulting engineer who so watchfully kept in motion the ever welloiled and frictionless machinery of the underground railroad systems.

The following names are those of some of the leading free Colored people who in every way possible were foremost in helping to liberate from slavery their less fortunate race brothers and sisters in the South:

“Brown, William Wells.—Anti-slavery agitator. Agent of the underground railroad. Born a slave in St. Louis, Mo., 1816.”

“Douglass, Frederick.—Noted American anti-slavery agitator and journalist. Born a slave at Tuckahoe, near Easton, Maryland, February.., 1817. Died February 2, 1895.”

“Whipper, William.—Successful business man, anti-slavery agitator, editor of The National Reformer.”

“Forten, James.—Negro abolitionist. Born in Philadelphia, September 6, 1776; died March 4, 1842. Forten was a sail-maker by trade.”

“Harper, Mrs. Frances E. Watkins.—Distinguished anti-slavery lecturer, writer and poet. Born of free parents, 1825, Baltimore, Maryland; died February 22, 1911.”

“Hayden, Lewis.—Born 1815, died 1889. Runaway slave from Kentucky to Boston, Abolitionist.”

“Ray, Charles B.—Anti-slavery Agitator. Agent Underground Railroad. Born Falmouth, Mass., December 25, 1807; died New York City, August 15, 1886. Congregational minister and editor of the Colored American from 1839 to 1842.”

“Nell, William C.—Anti-slavery agitator and author of Boston. In 1840 was a leader in the agitation for public schools to be thrown open to Negro children.”

“Lane, Lunsford.—Born a slave at Raleigh, N. C. He is placed in Prof. Bassett’s “History of the Anti-Slavery Leaders of North Carolina” among the four prominent abolitionists of that State.”

“Purvis, Robert.—Anti-slavery agitator; chairman of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee of the Underground Railroad, and member of the first Anti-slavery Convention in 1833.”

“Redmond, Charles Lenox.—Born at Salem, Massachusetts, 1810, died 1873. First Negro to take lecture platform as an anti-slavery speaker.”

“Russwurm, John Brown.—Born in Jamaica, 1799; died in Liberia, 1851. Editor of the first Negro newspaper published in the United States, the “Freedmen’s Journal,” published in New York City, 1827.”

“Tubman, Harriet.—Fugitive slave and one of the most famous of the underground railroad operators, died March 10, 1913.”

“Truth, Sojourner.—A noted anti-slavery speaker, born about 1775, in Africa. Brought when a child, to America, she was sold as a slave in the State of New York.”

“Still, William.—Secretary of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee of the Underground Railroad. Born October 7, 1821, in Burlington County, New Jersey.”

“Walker, David.—First Negro to attack slavery through the press. Born free at Wilmington, North Carolina, 1785.”

“Gibbs, Miffin Wistar.—Lawyer and anti-slavery agitator; born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April, 1823. He died in Little Rock, Ark., July 11, 1915.”

“Knights of Liberty.—In 1846 Moses Dickson and eleven other free Negroes organized at St. Louis, The Knights of Liberty for the purpose of overthrowing slavery. Ten years was to be spent working slowly and secretly making their preparations and extending the society.”

Reference: (Work’s Negro Year Book; pages 168-69-70-71, 1918-1919 edition)

To the Colored boys and girls who desire to learn more about such mysterious underground railroad trains, that with their nervy and plucky passengers holding on with all their might, were constantly diving into and running under rivers as well as climbing upon and rolling down mountain sides without ever being wrecked or seldom losing a passenger, the writer begs to offer the following suggestion:

Any evening when such boys and girls suddenly get a burning thirst to visit the “movies” and drink in the red-blooded and heroic screen capers of a Wm. S. Hart, a Pearl White or a Douglass Fairbanks; let those boys and girls go to the nearest library instead, secure a copy of William Still’s “Underground Railroad Records”, and return home with it. In its stories they will find just as hair-raising adventures and exciting escapes as are to be found in any of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes detective cases; between its leaves they will find the same kind of serious wit and humor that smile up from a Walt Mason newspaper article; from cover to cover they will find the same kind of heart-rending and flesh-suffering word pictures that Longfellow and other authors have so vividly painted in telling of the expulsions and wanderings of the doomed Arcadians; but, last and most important of all they will find every one of its pages to contain as true and valuable American history as ever appeared in the writings of a Bancroft, a Fiske, a Higginson, a Prescott or a Ridpath.