Underground Railroad Online Handbook

From the National Park Service and Dickinson College

Category: Sinha Page 1 of 3

(1772) Somerset Case

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On November 9, 2022

In Baker, Barker, Finkelman, Sinha

Citation

Somerset v. Stewart, June 22, 1772, FULL TEXT via CommonLII

Excerpt

portrait man in wig, turned to side

Lord Mansfield ruled in freedom seeker James Somerset’s favor (National Portrait Gallery, UK)

…The power of a master over his slave has been extremely different, in different countries. The state of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political; but only positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory : it’s so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from a decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged.

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(1826) Levi and Catherine Coffin

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On November 19, 2022

In Baker, Barker, Blackett, Bordewich, Churchill, Crew, Larson, Sinha

Quakers Levi and Catharine Coffin relocate from North Carolina to Indiana, and then to Cincinnati in 1847, assisting hundreds of freedom seekers. The couple’s prolific activism earns Levi the moniker “President of the Underground Railroad.”

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

(1831) The Liberator

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On November 9, 2022

In Foner, Grover, Sinha

William Lloyd Garrison founds The Liberator which becomes a leading abolitionist newspaper and an influential voice for immediate abolition and moral suasion for the next three decades.

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

(1834) Jermain Loguen Escape

By

On November 19, 2022

In Barker, Blackett, Bordewich, Crew, Foner, Jackson, LaRoche, Sinha

Jermain Loguen escapes from Tennessee to Canada and eventually settles in Syracuse, New York, where he openly boasts about aiding freedom seekers and earns a reputation as the “Underground Railroad king.”

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

(1837) Maine-Georgia Extradition Controversy

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On November 9, 2022

In Baker, Sinha

Maine authorities’ refusal to extradite abolitionist sailors who helped a Georgia freedom seeker escape reveals the deepening breakdown of comity between slave and free states

Date(s): escaped May 4, 1837

Location(s): Savannah, Georgia; Maine

Outcome: Reenslavement of Atticus, refusal to extradite Maine sailors

Summary:

Dunlap illustration seated

Maine governor Robert P. Dunlap refused to extradite two Maine sailors to face slave stealing charges in Georgia (Digital Maine)

In May 1837, an enslaved carpenter named Atticus crafted his own way to freedom aboard the vessel Susan. Owned and operated by Maine sailors, the Susan (also known as the Boston) was lying in port in Savannah, Georgia for repairs. The Mainers hired Savannah carpenter and slaveholder James Sagurs to finish repairs to the ship, and Sagurs brought Atticus along to work. Knowing the Susan would set sail on May 4, Atticus stowed away on board. Once the Susan reached Maine, Captain Daniel Philbrook and Edward Kelleran assisted the freedom seeker. But other local men, learning of the reward Sagurs had offered for Atticus’s recapture, seized the freedom seeker and sent him back into slavery by boat. But the case was far from over. Georgia governor William Schley demanded the extradition of Philbrook and Kelleran to face slave stealing charges in Georgia. Maine governor Robert Pinckney Dunlap refused to extradite the two sailors, and Maine’s legislature continued to stand its grown as late as 1841, four years after Atticus’s escape. The case was a sign of the deepening breakdown of comity between slave and free states and foreshadowed a similar confrontation over extraditions sailors between Virginia authorities and New York governor William Seward in 1839.

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(1839) New York-Virginia Extradition Controversy

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On November 9, 2022

In Baker, Sinha

New York governor William Seward refuses to extradite three Black sailors to Virginia on slave stealing charges, signaling Northern states’ growing resolve to protect their free Black residents

Date(s): escaped 1839

Location(s): Norfolk, Virginia; New York

Outcome: Freedom, Refusal to Extradite

Summary:

profile engraving man with collar

New York governor William Seward refused to extradite three Black sailors to face slave stealing charges in Virginia (House Divided Project)

During the summer of 1839, an enslaved carpenter named Isaac escaped from Norfolk, Virginia aboard the Robert Center, a New York ship. Isaac had apparently relied on the assistance of three Black sailors from New York, Isaac Gansey, Peter Johnson, and Edward Smith. But Isaac’s slaveholder caught on and alerted authorities about the escape. Virginia’s lieutenant governor, Henry L. Hopkins, demanded the extradition of Gansey, Johnson, and Smith to face slave stealing charges in Virginia, but New York governor William Seward refused. Seward argued that because New York state laws did not recognize slavery, there was no comparable charge to slave stealing to provide grounds for extradition. The case prompted a lengthy standoff, with Virginia’s legislature targeting New York vessels with special inspection fees, and also helped launch Seward’s career as a darling of the political antislavery movement. In the end, Gansey, Johnson, and Smith never faced extradition, a sign of Northern states’ growing resolve to protect free Black residents on their own soil. 

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(1842) Prigg v. Pennsylvania

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On November 12, 2022

In Finkelman, Oakes, Pinsker, Sinha

Citation

Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 1842, FULL TEXT via Justia

Excerpt

…The clause of the Constitution of the United States relating to fugitives from labor manifestly contemplates the existence of a positive unqualified right on the part of the owner of the slave which no state law or regulation can in any way qualify, regulate, control, or restrain. Any state law or regulation which interrupts, limits, delays, or postpones the rights of the owner to the immediate command of his service or labor operates pro tanto a discharge of the slave therefrom. The question can never be how much he is discharged from, but whether he is discharged from any by the natural or necessary operation of the state laws or state regulations. The question is not one of quantity or degree, but of withholding or controlling the incidents of a positive right.

The owner of a fugitive slave has the same right to seize and take him in a State to which he has escaped or fled that he had in the State from which he escaped, and it is well known that this right to seizure or recapture is universally acknowledged in all the slaveholding States. The Court have not the slightest hesitation in holding that, under and in virtue of the Constitution, the owner of the slave is clothed with the authority in every State of the Union to seize and recapture his slave wherever he can do it without any breach of the peace or illegal violence. In this sense and to this extent, this clause in the Constitution may properly be said to execute itself, and to require no aid from legislation, state or national….

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(1843) Latimer Law

By

On November 12, 2022

In Baker, Grover, Sinha

Citation

An Act to Further Protect Personal Liberty, March 24, 1843, FULL TEXT via State Library of Massachusetts

Excerpt

Latimer headshot

Freedom seeker George Latimer’s arrest prompted the passage of Massachusetts’s 1843 personal liberty law (House Divided Project)

Sec. 1. No judge of any court of record of this Commonwealth, and no justice of the peace, shall hereafter take cognizance or grant a certificate in cases that may arise under the third section of an act of Congress, passed February twelfth, seventeen hundred and ninety-three, and entitled “an Act respecting fugitives from justice and persons escaping from the service of their masters,” to any person who claims any other person as a fugitive slave within the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth.

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(1844) Charles Torrey Case

By

On November 12, 2022

In Harrold, Sinha

An abolitionist reporter’s arrest and trial reveals the severity of Southern states’ slave-stealing statutes

Date(s): arrested June 1844, convicted December 3, 1844

Location(s): Washington, DC; Baltimore, Maryland

Outcome: Conviction

Summary:

Torrey headshot suit facial hair head slightly tilted

Charles Torrey (House Divided Project)

Massachusetts-born Charles Torrey first came to Washington, DC in 1842 as an antislavery reporter. Torrey’s journalism made plenty of enemies, but it was his covert work assisting freedom seekers that most disturbed slaveholders. Together with formerly enslaved man Thomas Smallwood and his wife Elizabeth Smallwood, Torrey coordinated escapes from the nation’s capital. After several close calls with authorities, Torrey relocated with his wife and children to Albany, New York, while Smallwood fled to Canada. But Torrey continued to return to the capital area, and Maryland authorities arrested him in Baltimore in June 1844. A jury convicted Torrey after deliberating only twenty minutes, sentencing the abolitionist to six years in the Maryland state penitentiary. Torrey’s died behind bars of tuberculosis on May 9, 1846, the same day Maryland governor Thomas Pratt pardoned him due to his failing health. 

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(1844) Lewis and Harriet Hayden Escape

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On October 3, 2022

In Barker, Blackett, Cohen, Grover, LaRoche, Larson, Miller, Sinha

Lewis and Harriet Hayden escape slavery in Kentucky with the help of Underground Railroad operatives and spend the next decade assisting freedom seekers as part of Boston’s antislavery vigilance committee

Date(s): escaped 1844

Location(s): Lexington, Kentucky; Detroit, Michigan; Canada West; Boston

Outcome: Freedom

Summary:

headshot man

Lewis Hayden (National Park Service)

Lewis Hayden lost his family to the internal slave trade in the 1830s. Kentucky statesman Henry Clay reportedly sold Hayden’s first wife, Esther Harvey and their son. Fearing that the same fate awaited him, Hayden and his new wife, Harriet Bell, decided to run away. In 1844, the Haydens (Lewis, Harriet, and Harriet’s son from a previous marriage) escaped using a carriage and driver provided by white abolitionists Calvin Fairbank and Delia Webster. The Haydens successfully reached Detroit and later Canada, but Kentucky officials caught up with the two abolitionists and convicted them under the state’s harsh slave-stealing statutes. Neither Fairbank or Webster stopped their Underground Railroad activism, even though Fairbank spent four years and Webster spent two months in prison for assisting the Haydens. Meanwhile, the Haydens relocated to Boston, where they became active members of the city’s antislavery vigilance committee and regularly sheltered freedom seekers in their home at 66 Phillips Street. In 1850, Lewis and Harriet sheltered freedom seekers William and Ellen Craft and threatened to blow up their house if the slave catchers pursuing the couple dared enter. Lewis Hayden also entered politics, winning political patronage as messenger for Massachusetts’s Republican secretary of state and serving a single term in the Massachusetts legislature in 1873.

engraving of woman, with name typed at bottom

Harriet Hayden (National Park Service)

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