Date(s): escaped October 1847, final trial in 1852
Location(s): Williamsport, Maryland; Boiling Springs, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania
Outcome: Freedom, $4,000 judgement against abolitionist Daniel Kaufman
Summary:
Daniel Kaufman (House Divided Project)
Fearing they were about to be sold, 13 people enslaved by widow Mary Oliver escaped from Williamsport, Maryland and headed for Pennsylvania on the night of October 9 or 10, 1847. A free Black Underground Railroad operative named George Cole guided the group from Chambersburg to the Boiling Springs farm of white abolitionist Daniel Kaufman, who regularly sheltered freedom seekers. Later that same night, Kaufman and other local Underground Railroad activists transported the freedom seekers by wagon safely beyond the reach of slave catchers. Unable to recapture the freedom seekers, the Olivers went after Kaufman instead. The Olivers pressed charges under section four of the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed slaveholders to sue Underground Railroad operatives who harbored freedom seekers for the value of their lost human property. The case began in state courts, where an initial trial found Kaufman guilty and ordered him to pay $2,000 in damages. But Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court argued that the abolitionist could not be tried for breaking federal fugitive slave legislation in state courts and overturned Kaufman’s initial conviction. The case resumed in federal court, where the second trial resulted in a hung jury, only for a third and final trial in 1852 to go the slaveholders’ way. It was the last case tried under the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act (Congress had passed a much tougher Fugitive Slave Act in 1850) and marked a rare but fleeting victory for slaveholders. Slaveholders did not win many penalty cases, and even when they did the punishments were hardly enough to deter Underground Railroad activism. Kaufman was one of the few Underground Railroad operatives ever forced to pay penalties for his clandestine aid to freedom seekers, and even then fellow abolitionists (and his brother-in-law) helped Kaufman foot the final $4,000-plus judgement.
Newspaper reports of Kaufman’s trials, accessible at the House Divided search engine, [WEB]
Maryland slave catcher kills freedom seeker William Smith at Columbia, Pennsylvania on April 29, after Smith resists arrest under the Fugitive Slave Act. Smith may be the only freedom seeker killed by a slave catcher on Northern soil under the federal law.
[This post is still under construction, more forthcoming in 2023]
Date(s): escaped federal custody September 3, 1853
Location(s): Fauquier County, Virginia; Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania
Outcome: Freedom
Summary:
Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania House Divided Project)
Virginia slave catchers had the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act on their side, but knew they still had to tread carefully in Pennsylvania, where antislavery vigilance forces could rally powerful local opposition to fugitive slave renditions. Slave catchers and three US deputy marshals traveled to Wilkes Barre undercover and stayed overnight in the hotel where their target, freedom seeker William Thomas, was working as a waiter. The next morning, the Virginians and federal officers ambushed Thomas in the dining room while he served breakfast. But Thomas grabbed a carving knife and fought back. Local residents and the local sheriff, William Palmer, refused to help officers secure Thomas. After a bloodied Thomas escaped, local residents and vigilance leaders in Philadelphia charged the three US deputy marshals, George Wynkoop, John Jenkins, and John Cresson, with assault and battery under Pennsylvania state law. The three federal officers were in and out of state jail until the charges were finally dismissed in May 1854. But US district court judge John Kane remained worried that if federal officers enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act were “compelled constantly to suffer and combat with annoyances like this,” few would be willing to enforce the controversial legislation in the future.
Date(s): escaped July 18, 1855
Location(s): Philadelphia
Outcome: Freedom
Summary:
Jane Johnson (House Divided Project)
North Carolinian John Wheeler had just been appointed the new US ambassador to a rump proslavery government in Nicaragua, and he intended to bring three enslaved people along with him: Jane Johnson and her two sons, Daniel (aged around 10-11) and Isaiah (aged around six to seven). The diplomat planned to travel through Washington, DC and Philadelphia, en route to New York City, where he would board a ship for Nicaragua. But Wheeler knew that traveling through the North with enslaved people was risky. Many Northern states denied slaveholders the right of sojourn (to hold enslaved people as property while visiting), and the federal 1850 Fugitive Slave Act only applied to enslaved people who escaped, not those brought north with their slaveholder’s consent. As a result, Wheeler forbade Johnson from speaking to Black people in the Northern cities they were passing through. But Jane Johnson also understood that Northern state laws worked in her favor. Soon after arriving in Philadelphia, Johnson contacted Black hotel workers who alerted Philadelphia’s antislavery vigilance committee. Right before Wheeler’s party was set to disembark for New York, vigilance leaders Passmore Williamson and William Still boarded the boat and escorted Jane and her two children back to shore over Ambassador Wheeler’s angry protests. Unable to reenslave Johnson and her children, Wheeler and US authorities targeted the Underground Railroad activists who helped her escape. Wheeler pressed charges against Still and five Black dockworkers for assault and battery, but Johnson (now free by state law) returned to Philadelphia and testified on their behalf. Johnson’s deposition that she left willingly and was not forced by Still and others helped lead to the Black activists’ acquittal. Federal district court judge John Kane was unable to convict Passmore Williamson under the federal fugitive slave law, but did find the abolitionist guilty of contempt of court. Instead of deterring future Underground Railroad activism, however, Williamson’s three-month prison sentence for contempt of court made him a martyr for the movement.
1855 rescue of Jane Johnson and her children in Philadelphia (House Divided Project)
Jane Johnson’s deposition reprinted in William Still, The Underground Railroad (1872), 94-95, [WEB]
Abolitionist Passmore Williamson’s account published as Narrative of the Facts in the case of Passmore Williamson (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, 1855), [WEB]
Cartoon depicting Johnson’s escape published as The Follies of the Age, Vive La Humbug! Lithograph. (Philadelphia, ca. 1855), [WEB]
Date(s): escaped October 19, 1858; rescued from federal custody April 27, 1860
Location(s): Culpepper County, Virginia; Columbia, Pennsylvania; Troy, New York
Outcome: Freedom
Summary:
Plaque marking the site of Charles Nalle’s rescue (House Divided Project)
Freedom seeker Charles Nalle could not write, so he dictated his correspondence to his employer, a Troy, New York layer named Horace Averill. In the process of taking down Nalle’s letters, Averill came to suspect that Nalle was a fugitive slave and alerted his Virginia slaveholder. Based on Averill’s tip, slave catchers and federal authorities seized Nalle on Friday morning, April 27 and carried him to the downtown office of US Commissioner Miles Beach. There, Commissioner Beach began a hearing under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, but local vigilance forces led by Harriet Tubman (who just happened to be visiting relatives in Troy that day) massed outside the commissioner’s office and threatened to rescue Nalle by force. At the crowd’s urging, Nalle jumped out a second-story window and escaped with help from vigilance activists on the street below. Yet another prominent fugitive slave rescue, the case added to slaveholder’s sense that Northern resistance was getting the better of the federal statute that was supposed to solve the fugitive slave crisis.
Abolitionist William Still publishes vigilance committee records in his book The Underground Railroad.
[This post is still under construction, more forthcoming in 2023]
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