Underground Railroad

[redleggeddevil]

A discussion on another thread (on quilts) got me thinking about what I consider one of the least understood, most mythologized aspects of antebellum America, the Underground Railroad.

I have harbored a suspicion for a long time that the Underground Railroad is the American equivalent of the French Resistance. That is, I believe that it was a very small organization which, once the fighting was all done and the results clear, "grew" exponentially in the popular mind.

A perfect example-- Try to think of a pre-1860 house north of the Mason-Dixon Line (and some south of it, I am sure) that DOESN'T claim that the root cellar/closet/storeroom was a hiding place for escaped slaves. My particular favorite in this realm is the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion in Norwalk, Connecticut. My tour guide proudly told us that the closet in the front hall was used for hiding escaped slaves. Date of the construction for the house? Begun in 1864, completed 1868.

Hmmmm.

If even a fair portion of these sites were truly used for helping fugitive slaves then I suppose the south would have been stripped of enslaved laborers long before hostilities were commenced.

I think the Underground Railroad loomed so large in our national conciousness because of residual guilt. Just as most Frenchmen did not actively oppose the Nazis during the occupation, most Americans did not actively assist in the flight of slaves in antebellum America.

This being my thought, can anyone recommend a good resource for me to consult to get some concrete numbers on the Underground Railroad? I am a bit gun-shy, as my hometown historical society undertook a study of local involvement in the Underground Railroad that ended up being a heady mix of lore, guesswork and wishful thinking.

[hanktrent]

I totally agree. And there's the fixation on the word "underground," as if the hiding place or route had to somehow be connected with an underground area, or vice versa, that any underground area must have been part of the underground railroad. One other common stereotype is of the white conductor leading the slaves to freedom, when the free helper was as apt to be black.

Unfortunately, I don't know of any good books overall, since I've only been interested in research on a very small area. I live about an hour from Lawrence County, Ohio, which was a hotbed of UGRR activity. No, really!

What's funny is that there's no need to rely solely on post-war accounts or oral history. It's documentable from primary sources, right there in the newspaper:

December 16, 1860, Ironton Register

FUGITIVE SLAVE CASE
On Tuesday of last week, Deputy US Marshal Roadarnour, of Ironton, arrested a young man and woman, brother and sister fugitive slaves from Floyd Co, KY. The fugitives were under the guidance of Jim Ditcher, a free mulatto, who has lived about Ironton for several years, and as they were about to get aboard of the cars a Washington Switch, on the Scioto and Hocking Valley Railroad. Roadarmour, who was on board with the owner of the fugitives, laid hands on them, and took them back to Kentucky. Jim Ditcher made good his escape at "2:40 Time" and has not since been heard of hereabouts.

The mother of these fugitives left with them and remains in this county, the owner not choosing to take her back, on account of her advanced years. The reclaimed fugitives are cousins of the famous Polly Negroes, who right to freedom has been in litigation now for some ten years, between Ohio and Virginia.

When Jim Ditcher, the most well known local conductor, was interviewed post-war about his activities, that kind of contemporary newspaper account gives credibility.

Here's another contemporary account, this one with a white conductor:

December 27, 1855, Ironton Register
FUGITIVE SLAVES DROWNED
On Sunday night, the 16th inst., as we learn from the Maysville Eagle, seven slaves, three men, three women, and a child, left Millersburg, Bourbon Co., KY. under the charge of a white man, in the family carriage of their masters. They made their way toward Maysville, and in passing the toll-gates on the pike, the white man who drove, represented the inmates of the carriage as a runaway match bound for Aberdeen to get married. They left the carriage at Washington, four miles back of Maysville. About daylight two men on the Ohio shore getting out logs heard cries of distress from some one in the river; they took a skiff and went through the dense fog in the direction of the sound, and when near the KY shore found a bundle floating on the water, and a skiff bottom upwards, and on landing they found two of the Negro men who had swam ashore. It appeared that these two men, two of the women, and the child, had attempted to cross the river in the skiff, got lost in the fog, in the alarm upset the skiff, and the two women and the child were drowned. The two Negroes who swam ashore were taken to jail in Maysville, together with the other woman afterwards found. The white man and the other Negro man, a free Negro, made their escape.

I'd also be interested in a recommendation of a book that leans heavily on contemporary court cases, newspaper accounts, letters from slave owners, and other period documentation that's more impartial or biased against the UGRR, to corroborate the postwar oral history.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[sbl]

All the 1700s-1800s cellars, tunnels, and hiding places in my neighborhood for smuggled goods or "hiding from the indians."

[huntdaw]

I once had a visitor to my historic site tell me that he had visited an underground railroad site and what amazed him is that you could still see the tracks in the tunnel! He was dead serious too.

Also at my facility there is an ongoing myth that there was a tunnel from the root cellar to the family cemetary a couple hundred yards away that was used to smuggle slaves out. When I hear that I always ask them two questions: This was a slave holding family so why were they smuggling slaves out? What good was a 200 yard tunnel when you still had hundreds of miles to go after you got out of it? People just don't think about what they say half the time and I am convinced that some folks going on vacation, take their brain out and leave it in a drawer at home for safekeeping while they are gone.

[reb4lee]

I have harbored a suspicion for a long time that the Underground Railroad is the American equivalent of the French Resistance. That is, I believe that it was a very small organization which, once the fighting was all done and the results clear, "grew" exponentially in the popular mind.

Reminds me of the holocaust. People trying to help other people hid from the nazi's.

[redleggeddevil]

Ah, the infamous "escape tunnels"! From 1986 to 2002 I worked in a series of 17th, 18th and 19th century buildings in several states. What these sites all shared, interestingly enough, was that visitors to each building SWORE to me that, at some time in the past, they had visited the building and "seen" the famous escape tunnel.

Nobody was ever clear on what exactly the inhabitants were escaping from, nor exactly where they were escaping to. Sometimes it was escaped slaves, other times it was to hide from hostile indians, and another was to get away from both pirates and the British (that must have been some neighborhood in the 18th century!)

I suppose that somewhere there really, truly is an old house with an escape tunnel, but I haven't seen it yet. I certainly never worked there.

[redleggeddevil]

What about The holocaust. People trying to help other people hid from the nazi's.

One of the great, lingering shames of Mankind is that, when any form of injustice rears its ugly head, most otherwise good people do little or nothing to stop it.

A few good people served on the Underground Railroad, but most did not. A few good people worked to save their countrymen from the Holocaust, but most did not. A few good Frenchmen served in the Resistance, but most did not. It was ever thus, alas.

[reb4lee]

One of the great, lingering shames of Mankind is that, when any form of injustice rears its ugly head, most otherwise good people do little or nothing to stop it.

A few good people served on the Underground Railroad, but most did not. A few good people worked to save their countrymen from the Holocaust, but most did not. A few good Frenchmen served in the Resistance, but most did not. It was ever thus, alas.

All to true

[bill watson]

I cringe every time someone shows up at the newspaper office with "news" that they've discovered their newly bought property was a station on the Underground Railroad. Usually it's folks who don't know what a spring house is. Sometimes it's people who want some of the distinction to rub off on them 150 years later.

Hank, here's a twist. New Jersey, 1803. The sloop "Nancy" puts in at Egg Harbor, coming from Boston with four free black men as crew. It's owned by Reuben PItcher of Martha's Vineyard, and he's headed for Savannah, Ga. He tricked the black men into thinking they were going with him to get a job. When he put in at Egg Harbor to refit, he told his captain, Nicholas Booker, that he intended to make more stops and pick up more blacks, whom he intended to sell when he got to Savannah. When his plot became known to the black freemen, they ran way and locals helped round them up, thinking they were escaping slaves. Booker quit, not wanting any part of it, and authorities stepped in. They seized the "Nancy," forcing Pitcher to pay $70 to redeem the boat. And the blacks were freed from him and sent back to Boston.

That's recounted in "Freedom Not Far Distant," by Clement Alexander Price, billed as A Documentary History of Afro-Americans in New Jersey, 1980, and it's based on collections in the New Jersey Historical Society. Unfortunately I didn't jot down the cites when I read it, probably about 1985.

Meanwhile: it pays to be wary when reading sources hostile to things like the Underground Railroad; they can exaggerate, too, to mobilize opposition. It's entirely possible that's what was behind some of the accounts, on the other side, of the "heavily armed Negroes" in Lee's army in 1862, people on the abolitionist side of things exaggerating to bolster their own attempts to get the federal army to enlist blacks as fighters. (On the other hand, 35 years of newspaper work make me take just about everything with a boulder-size grain of salt.)

[bill watson]

All the New Jersey thinking made me remember James Still and his brother, William. William wrote a book in 1872, the Underground Railroad, and it's 600 pages of anecdotes and narratives. In Medford the Stills are still strong medicine, with William described as one of the "founders" of the Underground Railroad. Book is a bit pricey, though. But it's close to the time things happened.

http://www.medfordnj.com/history/still.html

http://204.200.222.239/mm5/merchant....tegory_Code=UR

Not sure the second URL will work; there's a link on the first one to the book.

Probably helps to keep in mind that the Stills were located in southern New Jersey, which was heavily under Quaker influence, and therefore much more anti-slavery than the more populated northern part of the state. That's one of the themes in the previously mentioned book.