Making Freedom: The Underground Railroad and the Politics of Slavery

1. Making Their Way to Freedom

7 “I find myself in a Position to address you a few lines and I hope that they may find you in as good health as I am myself in.” There is nothing unconventional about this opening salutation except that it was written by a slave to his master soon after he had escaped . It is unusual in another way: the author clearly meant to thumb his nose at his master, to demonstrate his capacity for independent action, and to make clear his desire for freedom. But this sort of communication, written so soon after an escape, ran the risk of destroying the best laid plans. That it did not says something about the individual who executed what was a masterful plan of escape from slavery in 1853. The letter was written by Henry W. Banks to William M. Buck, a forty-three-year-old slave master of Front Royal in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and postmarked from New York City February 15, 1853. Banks, who was described by contemporaries as a mulatto, had been hired by Buck in 1849 from his owner, Edward W. Massey, who lived a short distance from Front Royal. Evidently, Banks had requested the move so he could be near his wife. But he may have had other plans. Less than two years after the transfer, Massey got word that Banks was 1. Making Their Way to Freedom 8 :: MAKING THEIR WAY TO FREEDOM planning to escape. Massey had him jailed, but Buck intervened and had him released, confident that the rumors were baseless. In April 1852, Massey got wind of another planned escape and this time sold Banks to a local slave trader. Again, Buck came to Banks’s defense: family connections, he predicted confidently, would keep Banks close to home. To convince Massey that there was nothing to the rumor, Buck agreed to post a security of $800 should Banks escape before the expiration of the contract they had first signed in 1849 and renewed every year since. In less than a year, Banks was gone—where to no one knew. Massey was convinced he had fled with his brother Landon and despaired of ever retaking him. His “smartness,” Massey predicted, was a “sure guarantee for his escape.” Two days after the escape, William Buck received his first letter from Banks, ostensibly from New York City. In it Banks spoke of plans to go to either Albany or Buffalo and, curiously, informed Buck of the escape route he had taken. First, he had gone north to Washington County, Maryland, a few miles short of the Pennsylvania line. But rather than cross into free territory at that point, he instead turned southeast to Baltimore, where he spent two days. From there, he headed north to Philadelphia, where he rested for one night before moving on to New York City. These details, it seems, were meant to throw off any likely pursuers. If Banks had escaped, as he states in his letter, on the 13th, then he could not have arrived in New York two days later, given the stops he says he had made on the way. But Buck was not fooled; he suspected Banks had gone directly to Philadelphia. In fact, he sent an advertisement announcing the escape to Kinzell and Doyle, slave traders in Clear Spring, Washington County, Maryland, in the hope they could cut Banks off before he reached free territory. Unfortunately for Buck, both were away on business in Pennsylvania at the time. Among slaveholders at least, it was believed that Banks had not acted alone. Edward Massey suspected he had left in the company of his brother. While it is not clear that Banks had worked with MAKING THEIR WAY TO FREEDOM :: 9 others, there seemed to have been a number of other escapes from the area around the same time, suggesting a degree of collusion and planning among the slaves. Two weeks after Banks left the area, Thomas Ashby, William Buck’s stepbrother, was in Philadelphia searching for a slave named George who had escaped about the same time Banks did. George had written a number of letters to family and friends back home from an address in Philadelphia that Ashby described as “one of the receptacles for fugitives and their correspondence.” Ashby tracked him to the address from which the letters were written, but George had already moved on. He hired a policeman with...