The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad

4. A Deep-Laid Scheme

Chapter Four A DEEP-LAID SCHEME EJOKING BACK across the years, a veteran of the underground railroad described it as a "deep-laid scheme, having in view the restoration of God-given rights to helpless, hunted fugitives, ... resulting in gradual emancipation, and finally in total abolition with the consent of the slaveholders themselves."! The concept of a "deep-laid scheme" is an important part of the underground railroad legend, for the road is assumed to have had a highly organized network of regular stations dotting the North and even penetrating into the South. Occasionally passengers were even enticed aboard the freedom train by its zealous conductors. However, there is little evidence to support the idea of a welldeveloped conspiracy. Certainly the abolition movement produced no such institution. Writing in 1892, Frederick Douglass referred to seven different antislavery groupS.2 There was a basic division between the moral suasionists, who rejected all political action, and those who favored it. Out of each of these groups developed a number of distinct splinter factions. The abolitionists differed among themselves on nearly every matter connected with their antislavery labors, and the underground railroad was no exception. Many who were active in the cause had only a limited interest in assisting fugitive slaves. Very few of them approved of luring slaves from the South, and those who did operated on their own, without the benefit of any intricate organization, as did the slave stealers who abducted slaves for profit. 70 The Liberty Line In the early nineteenth century, abolitionists gave little attention to underground railroad activity. Instead, they confined their efforts almost exclusively to legal measures. They emphasized persuasion and refrained from violating even those laws which seemed to them to support slavery. Their publications and resolutions seldom alluded to proposals which, even by a liberal stretch of the imagination, could have been considered underground railroad work. Abolitionists who attended the second annual convention of the Vermont AntiSlavery Society in 1836 supported a resolution "that the only eligible and sure means of overthrowing the system of slavery is by enlightening the public mind, by free discussion, and the operation of a correct public sentiment upon the consciences and hearts of the whole nation." As with many similar meetings of that period, this convention's thirteen resolutions did not mention fugitive slaves. An earlier publication of the New York Anti-Slavery Society attempted to quiet the fears of some that abolitionists were appealing to the slaves to rebel or run away. The abolitionists emphasized: "We do not address ourselves to the oppressed; but with hearts of benevolence to both master and slave, we beseech the master to grant to his slave, what humanity, justice, interest, conscience and God demand .'" Pioneer abolitionists like the Quaker Isaac Hopper gave aid to fugitives when there was no other way for them to obtain freedom, but they preferred legal means.. Hopper advised a slave coachman who came to him for help in Philadelphia to stay six months in Pennsylvania with his master's consent, and thus take advantage of a state law which freed such persons. "It is desirable to obtain thy liberty in a legal way, if possible," 1 Eber M. Pettit, Sketches in the History 0/ the Underground Railroad Comprising Many Thrilling Incidents of the Escape 0/ Fugitives from Slavery, and the Perils of Those Who Aided Them (Fredonia, N.Y.• 1879), xv. 2 Frederick Douglass to Marshall Pierce, February 18, 1892, Nathaniel P. Rodgers Collection, Haverford College Library. 8 Second Annual Report of the Vermont Anti-Slavery Society; with an Account 0/ the Annual Meeting, Holden in Middlebury, February 16 i:r 17, 1836 (Middlebury , 1836), 5-6; Address of the New York City Anti-Slavery Society, to the People 0/ the City 0/ New York (New York. I8!!3) •5. A Deep-Laid Scheme 71 said Hopper, "for otherwise thou wilt be constantly liable to be arrested, and may never again have such a good opportunity to escape from bondage."4 The abolitionists did much to protect the rights of Negroes and to prevent the kidnapping of free Negroes into slavery. A Delaware abolition society active in the years 1801 to 1804 tried to insure the enforcement of Delaware laws which prohibited the removal of slaves out of the state for resale. This society took the position that nothing could be done if the owner in question could prove his legal right to hold...