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
[202] Still's _Underground Railroad Records_, p. 613.
[203] _Ibid._, p. 598. In the fragment of a letter from which
Mr. Still quotes, Mr. Douglass says, "They [the fugitives]
usually tarry with us only during the night, and are forwarded to
Canada by the morning train. We give them supper, lodging, and
breakfast, pay their expenses, and give them a half-dollar over."
The use of steam railroads as a means of transportation of
this class of passengers began with the completion of lines of
road to the lakes. This did not take place till about 1850. It
was, therefore, during the last decade of the history of the
Underground Road that surface lines, as they were sometimes called
by abolitionists, became a part of the secret system. There were
probably more surface lines in Ohio than in any other state. The old
Mad River Railroad, or Sandusky, Dayton and Cincinnati Railroad, of
western Ohio, (now a part of the "Big Four" system), began to be
used at least as early as 1852 by instructed fugitives.[204] The
Sandusky, Mansfield and Newark Railroad (now the Baltimore and Ohio)
from Utica, Licking County, Ohio, to Sandusky, was sometimes used
by the same class of persons.[205] After the construction of the
Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati Railroad[206] as far as Greenwich
in northern Ohio, fugitives often came to that point concealed in
freight-cars. In eastern Ohio there were two additional routes by
rail sometimes employed in underground traffic: one of these appears
to have been the Cleveland and Canton from Zanesville north,[207]
and the other was the Cleveland and Western between Alliance and
Cleveland.[208] In Indiana the Louisville, New Albany and Chicago
Railroad from Crawfordsville northward was patronized by underground
travellers until the activity of slave-hunters caused it to be
abandoned.[209] Fugitives were sometimes transported across the
State of Michigan by the Michigan Central Railroad. In Illinois
there seems to have been not less than three railroads that carried
fugitives: these were the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy,[210] the
Chicago and Rock Island[211] and the Illinois Central.[212] When
John Brown made his famous journey through Iowa in the winter of
1858-1859 he shipped his company of twelve fugitives in a stock
car from West Liberty, Iowa, to Chicago, by way of the Chicago and
Rock Island route.[213] In Pennsylvania and New York there were
several lines over which runaways were sent when circumstances
permitted. At Harrisburg, Reading and other points along the
Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, fugitives were put aboard the
cars for Philadelphia.[214] From Pennsylvania they were forwarded
by the Vigilance Committee over different lines, sometimes by way
of the Pennsylvania Railroad to New York City; sometimes by way of
the Philadelphia and Reading and the Northern Central to Elmira,
New York, whence they were sent on by the same line to Niagara
Falls.
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