The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom: A comprehensive historySiebert, Wilbur Henry
History
The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom: A comprehensive history
Siebert, Wilbur Henry
Fugitive slaves -- United States; Underground Railroad
The identity of a few of the tracings with steam railway lines
signifies, of course, transportation by rail when the situation
admitted of it. Sometimes, when there was not the usual eagerness
of pursuit, and when the intelligence or the Caucasian cast of
features of the fugitive warranted it, the traveller was provided
with the necessary ticket and instructions, and put aboard the
cars for his destination. The Providence and Worcester and the
Vermont Central railroads furnished quick transportation from
New Bedford, Massachusetts, to Canada.[443] In southeastern
Pennsylvania the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad carried many
slaves on their way to freedom, and according to Smedley, "All who
took the trains at the Reading Railroad stations went directly
through to Canada."[444] E. F. Pennypacker often forwarded negroes
from Schuylkill to Philadelphia over this road, and William Still
sent them on their northward journey.[445] Fugitives arriving at
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, sometimes took passage over the Northern
Central Railroad to Elmira, New York. Mr. Jervis Langdon and John
W. Jones, of Elmira, took care that underground passengers secured
transportation from Elmira to their destination. The fugitives were
always put in the baggage-car at four o'clock in the morning,[446]
and went through without change to the Niagara River. The old Mad
River Railroad bore many dark-skinned passengers from Urbana, if
not also from Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio, to Lake Erie.[447] In
eastern Ohio the Cleveland and Western Railroad, from Alliance to
Cleveland, was much patronized during several years by instructed
runaways. Mr. I. Newton Peirce, then living in Alliance, had "an
understanding with all the passenger-train conductors on the C.
and W. R. R." that colored persons provided with tickets bearing
the initials I. N. P. were to be admitted to the trains without
question, unless slave-catchers were thought to be aboard the
cars.[448] Indiana and Michigan are known to have had their steam
railway lines in the secret service system: in the former state
the Louisville, New Albany and Chicago Railroad was utilized by
operators at Crawfordsville;[449] in the latter the Michigan
Central supplied a convenient outlet to Detroit from stations
along its course.[450] The Chicago and Rock Island Railroad from
Peru, Lasalle County, Illinois, to Chicago was incorporated in the
service, so also was the Illinois Central from Cairo and Centralia
to the same terminus. The Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad
sometimes conveyed fugitives from Quincy on the Mississippi River to
Chicago. Two men of prominence connected with this road, who secured
transportation over its rails for many Canada-bound passengers, were
Dr. C. V. Dyer, of Chicago, and Colonel Berrien, chief engineer of
the road.[451]
[443] See p. 80, Chapter III.
[444] _Underground Railroad_, p. 174. See also pp. 176, 177.
[445] _Ibid._, pp. 364, 365.
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