Oberlin, Hotbed of Abolitionism: College, Community, and the Fight for Freedom and Equality in Antebellum America

EIGHT: That Railroad Center at Which All Branches Converged: Oberlin and the Underground Railroad

187 c h a p t e r e i g h t That Railroad Center at Which All Branches Converged Oberlin and the Underground Railroad Nearly a half century after he first arrived as an undergraduate at Oberlin, James Fairchild remembered in his old age that the “irrepressible conflict between freedom and slavery in our land first appeared, in practical form, along the geographical line between free and slave territory.” On one side of that line, the Ohio River, could be found slaves desperate to escape their bondage. On the opposite shore was the prospect of freedom, “shadowy and uncertain indeed, but sufficient to excite the hopes of an imaginative and impressible race.”1 Besides a small handful of slave rebellions in the South, only acts of individuals and small groups of bondsmen and the operation of the Underground Railroad offered physical resistance to the laws that enslaved men and women. Though the “railroad” had existed for decades before Oberlin itself, once the community became a legendary beacon for all freedom seekers, it was, by all accounts, responsible for a great deal of the success of the “underground” phenomenon. Scholars have long disputed the myth of the Underground Railroad as a well-organized benevolent operation of mostly white heroes and passive African Americans, but the legend has died slowly, especially outside of 188 oberlin and the underground railroad academia.2 Though it is probably the most well known aspect of the abolitionist movement, it was also the rarest by far. As historian Stacey Robertson points out, signing one’s name to an antislavery petition or attending a meeting was one thing, but actively breaking federal and state laws in helping a fugitive was something entirely different and something few antislavery men or women were willing to do.3 Also contributing to a general misunderstanding of the Underground Railroad are well-documented cases of extraordinary episodes, such as the cunning escapes of Henry Box Brown or William and Ellen Craft.4 Yet, to a remarkable extent, the history of the Oberlin community conforms to its exceptional billing. To be sure, there are some accounts of Oberlin’s branch of the Underground Railroad that are too vague or clichéd to be fully believed, but there are perhaps even more firsthand accounts that are easily verified by multiple sources.5 Even those various thinly documented stories in which similar elements or details appear, the kernel of truth they contain informs the tales with more solid backing. The most common confirmations of the lively Oberlin Underground are simple comments like that of Hiram Wilson to Oberlin treasurer Hamilton Hill in 1848: “Those six fugitives who were in Oberlin when we left all got over safe into Canada by the next Monday.”6 Another five “travelers” presented Professors James Monroe and Henry Peck with a succinct note from a Medina man who had written, “Gents, here are five Slaves from the House of Bondage, which I need not say to you that you will see to them—they can tell their own story.”7 Their “own story,” it seems, was not recorded for posterity, nor were those of countless others who passed through Oberlin under similar circumstances.8 These frequent but brief allusions offer few details regarding the escaping slaves themselves or exactly what events marked their passage through Oberlin. They do, however, confirm Oberlin as a busy depot on the “Liberty Line” and silently vouch for the more exceptional cases and remarkable circumstances that are described in this chapter. Though Oberlin was but a part of a vast network of participants who will never be known, the relatively well documented involvement of its townspeople in the Underground Railroad demonstrated its fundamentally practical and independent approach to abolitionism, as well as the vital importance of African Americans in the great freedom struggle. ★ ★ ★ one early historian of oberlin suggests that the townspeople’s open defiance of the Fugitive Slave Law placed them in a practical state of rebellion against the national government after 1850.9 Of course, these oberlin and the underground railroad 189 men and women had been on record for their opposition longer than most Americans since they had been subjected to the restrictions of an Ohio fugitive law twelve years earlier. As he had regarding that Ohio bill, Charles Grandison Finney refused even to recognize the 1850 federal enactment by calling it a fugitive slave law.10 The only...