Underground Railroad Online Handbook

From the National Park Service and Dickinson College

Category: Newby-Alexander

(1775) Dunmore Proclamation

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On November 9, 2022

In Newby-Alexander

Citation

A Proclamation, November 7, 1775, FULL TEXT via Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

Excerpt

newspaper text

Dunmore’s Proclamation (Gilder Lehrman Institute)

As I have ever entertained hopes that an accommodation might have taken place between Great-Britain and this colony, without being compelled, by my duty, to this most disagreeable, but now absolutely necessary step, rendered so by a body of armed men, unlawfully assembled, firing on his Majesty’s tenders, and the formation of an army, and that army now on their march to attack his Majesty’s troops, and destroy the well disposed subjects of this colony: To defeat such treasonable purposes, and that all such traitors, and their abetters, may be brought to justice, and that the peace and good order of this colony may be again restored, which the ordinary course of the civil law is unable to effect, I have thought fit to issue this my proclamation, hereby declaring, that until the aforesaid good purposes can be obtained, I do, in virtue of the power and authority to me given, by his Majesty, determine to execute martial law, and cause the same to be executed throughout this colony; and to the end that peace and good order may the sooner be restored, I do require every person capable of bearing arms to resort to his Majesty’s STANDARD, or be looked upon as traitors to his Majesty’s crown and government, and thereby become liable to the penalty the law inflicts upon such offences, such as forfeiture of life, confiscation of lands, &c. &c. And I do hereby farther declare all indented servants, Negroes, or others (appertaining to rebels) free, that are able and willing to bear arms, they joining his Majesty’s troops, as soon as may be, for the more speedily reducing this Colony to a proper sense of their duty, to his Majesty’s crown and dignity. I do father order, and require all his Majesty’s liege subjects to retain their quitrents, or any other taxes due, or that may become due, in their own custody, till such time as peace may be again restored to this at present most unhappy country, or demanded of them for their former salutary purposes, by officers properly authorized to receive the same.

Given on board the ship William, off Norfolk, the 7th of Nov.

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(1825) William Grimes, Narrative

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On October 3, 2022

In Newby-Alexander

Relentlessly pursued by slaveholders, William Grimes pays for his own freedom by writing one of the first slave narratives in US history

Date(s): escaped 1814, self-purchase 1824

Location(s): King George Country, Virginia; Culpepper Virginia; Maryland; Savannah, Georgia; New York; New England; New Haven, Connecticut

Outcome: Freedom

Summary:

Grimes seated wearing tophat holding basket

William Grimes (New Georgia Encyclopedia)

William Grimes was born to a rich slaveholder named Benjamin Grymes and an enslaved woman (left unnamed in his autobiography) on a Virginia plantation. Slaveholders sold and resold Grimes at least ten different times until he ended up in Savannah, Georgia. There, Grimes seized the opportunity to escape when his latest slaveholder, planning a vacation with his family, allowed Grimes to find work on his own during their absence. Instead, Grimes befriended sailors who helped him escape by boat to New York. Once in the North, Grimes found work as a barber, but enjoyed little peace of mind as slaveholders constantly dogged him. The freedom seeker encountered one former slaveholder in New York and promptly moved to Connecticut, only to come face to face with another former enslaver there. Fearing reenslavement, Grimes purchased his own freedom for $500 in 1824. The move plunged Grimes into bankruptcy and pushed him to publish his own story to make ends meet. Some scholars consider the result, Life of William Grimes, The Runaway Slave (1825), to be the first slave narrative published in the United States.

 

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(1837) Charles Ball, Narrative

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On October 1, 2022

In Foner, Newby-Alexander

Repeatedly sold from the Chesapeake to the Deep South, Charles Ball witnessed the beginnings of the internal slave trade

Date(s): recaptured June 1830, published narrative in 1837

Location(s): Maryland; South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; Baltimore, Maryland; Philadelphia

Outcome: Freedom

Summary:

painting, man in navy uniform with black tophat reading Flotilla

Charles Ball (National Park Service)

Born into slavery in Maryland around 1781, Charles Ball was sold to a series of different slaveholders and separated from his family. Still, Ball found some independence through being hired out (or rented) as a cook for the US Navy. Ball escaped with the aid of a free Black sailor, only to be recaptured and sold to South Carolina. Ball managed to flee South Carolina and return to Maryland and his family. When the War of 1812 erupted, Ball chose to enlist in the US Navy rather than flee to British lines. But more than a decade later in 1830, slave catchers tracked down the War of 1812 veteran and took him to Georgia. Ball escaped one final time and relocated to Philadelphia, where he dictated his life story to white abolitionist Isaac Fisher, published as Slavery in the United States (1837), which was widely reprinted. But Fisher heavily edited Ball’s story, and some scholars suspect that an abridged version published in 1859 came closer to conveying Ball’s own voice.

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(1849) Harriet Tubman Escape

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On November 12, 2022

In Barker, Blackett, Bordewich, Cohen, Crew, Foner, Larson, Newby-Alexander, Sinha

Harriet Tubman escapes from Maryland fearing that her slaveholder is planning to sell her. Tubman returns to the Eastern Shore throughout the 1850s to rescue other enslaved people, becomes active on the antislavery lecture circuit, and takes up residence in New York and Canada.

[This post is still under construction, more forthcoming in 2023]

(1856) Benjamin Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery

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On December 17, 2022

In Barker, Cohen, Newby-Alexander

Citation

Benjamin Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery: The Refugee, Or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada (Boston: Jewett, 1856), FULL TEXT via Documenting the American South

Excerpt

man, beareded, shoulders and head

Abolitionist Benjamin Drew traveled to Canada and interviewed freedom seekers, resulting in an 1856 book (Ohio History Connection)

THE colored population of Upper Canada, was estimated in the First Report of the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada, in 1852, at thirty thousand. Of this large number, nearly all the adults, and many of the children, have been fugitive slaves from the United States; it is, therefore, natural that the citizens of this Republic should feel an interest in their fate and fortunes. Many causes, however, have hitherto prevented the public generally from knowing their exact condition and circumstances. Their enemies, the supporters of slavery, have represented them as “indolent, vicious, and debased; suffering and starving, because they have no kind masters to do the thinking for them, and to urge them to the necessary labor, which their own laziness and want of forecast, lead them to avoid.” Some of their friends, anxious to obtain aid for the comparatively few in number, (perhaps three thousand in all,) who have actually stood in need of assistance, have not, in all cases, been sufficiently discriminating in their statements: old settlers and new, the rich and the poor, the good and the bad, have suffered alike from imputations of poverty and starvation–misfortunes, which, if resulting from idleness, are akin to crimes. Still another set of men, selfish in purpose, have, while pretending to act for the fugitives, found a way to the purses of the sympathetic, and appropriated to their own use, funds intended for supposititious sufferers.

Such being the state of the case, it may relieve some minds from doubt and perplexity, to hear from the refugees themselves, their own opinions of their condition and their wants. These will be found among the narratives which occupy the greater part of the present volume.

Further, the personal experiences of the colored Canadians, while held in bondage in their native land, shed a peculiar lustre on the Institution of the South. They reveal the hideousness of the sin, which, while calling on the North to fall down and worship it, almost equals the tempter himself in the felicity of scriptural quotations.

The narratives were gathered promiscuously from persons whom the author met with in the course of a tour through the cities and settlements of Canada West. While his informants talked, the author wrote: nor are there in the whole volume a dozen verbal alterations which were not made at the moment of writing, while in haste to make the pen become a tongue for the dumb.

Many who furnished interesting anecdotes and personal histories may, perhaps, feel some disappointment because their contributions are omitted in the present work. But to publish the whole, would far transcend the limits of a single volume. The manuscripts, however, are in safe-keeping, and will, in all probability, be given to the world on some future occasion.

For the real names which appear in the manuscripts of the narratives published, it has been deemed advisable, with few exceptions, that letters should be substituted….

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(1859) Harpers Ferry Raid

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On November 12, 2022

In Harrold, Johnson, Newby-Alexander, Sinha

John Brown launches his abortive Harpers Ferry insurrection on October 16-18 before US marines surround Brown and his followers. Virginia authorities execute Brown in December, but his death transforms him into a martyr among many antislavery Northerners.

[This post is still under construction, more forthcoming in 2023]

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