The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad

5. Friends of the Fugitive

Chapter Five FRIENDS OF THE FUGITIVE THE UNDERGROUND Railroad appears to be quite a flourishing institution," reported the National AntiSlavery Standard in the fall of 1856. The occasion for the comment was the arrival of a notice from a Negro vigilance committee in Albany. The committee reported that in a period of ten months 287 fugitives had passed through the city on their way to Canada.l The story called attention to the contribution of free Negroes in the matter of assisting fugitive slaves. Significant , too, was its emphasis on a local vigilance committee, for the history of the underground railroad primarily concerns persons and events in local organizations. The existence of a number of locally systematized efforts to aid fugitive slaves has contributed to the legend of a national underground organization . Not all of the legend is false; some of it is well grounded in fact. At times and in some areas the underground railroad was indeed a flourishing institution. Although the abolitionists could not agree about the relative importance to their cause of fugitive aid work, there were those among them who made a specialty of rendering assistance to fugitive slaves. Levi Coffin of Newport (Fountain City), Indiana , and later of Cincinnati, J. Miller McKim and William Still of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee, and Thomas Garrett of Wilmington, Delaware, all enjoyed a well-deserved reputation for underground railroad service. Some others within the abolitionist ranks also gained special distinction for 94 The Liberty Line such aCtIVlty. When Lydia Maria Child wanted to assure a warm welcome in Boston for Joseph Carpenter and his wife, she reminded William Lloyd Garrison of their record in helping fugitive slaves. "You know what a thorough abolitionist Joseph has been for thirty years," she said, "and what regiments of fugitives he has sheltered."2 For more than twenty years, Levi Coffin lived at Newport, Indiana, and while there he enlisted a number of antislavery workers in fugitive aid work. Later he helped organize a similar group in Cincinnati. Both communities had sheltered fugitives before Coffin's arrival, and in both places the work had been done largely by free Negroes. When he moved to Newport in 1826, Coffin learned that fugitives often went through the town and usually stopped with Negroes, who were not very skillful in hiding them and sending them on to Canada. Coffin organized the work and assisted those who had previously done it. In Cincinnati, too, the Quaker abolitionist found "that the fugitives generally took refuge among the colored people." There, too, he soon decided that there were only "a few wise and careful managers among the colored people." The majority were too careless and a few could not be trusted; once again Coffin systematized the local work which had been done on a haphazard basis.3 The organized efforts of Levi Coffin and some neighboring antislavery sympathizers constituted, on a limited basis, what southern partisans viewed· as part of a nationwide system for assisting fugitive slaves. To a great extent, stories of such activity provide the basis for the popular legend. Friends of the fugitive soon learned of Coffin's work. While he lived at Newport , slaves were conducted to his home from Cincinnati and Madison and Jeffersonville, Indiana. The "depots" were usually twenty-five or thirty miles apart. Coffin and his friends 1 National Anti-Slavery Standard, November 8,1856. 2 Lydia Maria Child to William Lloyd Garrison, May 13, 1858, Garrison Papers, Boston Public Library. 3 Levi Coffin, Remmiscences of Levi Coffin, the Reputed President of the Underground Railroad (2d ed., Cincinnati, 1880) , 107-108,297-98. Friends of the Fugitive 95 transported fugitives in wagons from one town to another, and on occasion they had to elude persons who were hunting the slaves in their care. They provided some of the ex-slaves with clothing and other necessities, and boarded them occasionally until they could be sent further north.4 Levi Coffin carried on much of his work openly. His reputation was widely known, and his home a center of antislavery activity which he made no effort to hide. He once took a woman fugitive to a Quaker meeting at West Elkton and chided one of his neighbors for speaking cautiously. Coffin asked if there was anyone in the village who would capture a slave. "If there is," he said, "hunt him up.... I think we could make an abolitionist of him." As...