Underground Railroad Online Handbook

From the National Park Service and Dickinson College

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(1848) Pearl Escape

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On November 12, 2022

In Crew, Harrold, Oakes, Pinsker, Sinha

Pearl mass escape rattles Washington, DC slaveholders on April 15, as 77 freedom seekers attempt to flee the nation’s capital by boat. Armed whites overtake the group, and slaveholders sell many of the freedom seekers south. Later, local authorities convict two white allies, Daniel Drayton and Edward Sayres, on charges of slave stealing. Unable to pay their fines, Drayton and Sayres remain in jail until President Millard Fillmore pardons them in 1852.

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

(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]

(1849) Henry “Box” Brown Escape

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On October 27, 2022

In Crew, Foner, Sinha

Henry “Box” Brown’s daring escape reveals that state-level slave-stealing statutes prove far more draconian than federal fugitive slave legislation

Date(s): 1849

Location(s): Richmond, Virginia; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Outcome: Freedom

Summary:

Brown detail head

Henry “Box” Brown (House Divided Project)

Henry Brown made up his mind to escape after another slaveholder sold his wife and children away to North Carolina. The freedom seeker determined to mail himself via the new Adams Express service all the way from Richmond to Philadelphia. Brown’s daring escape plan involved help from antislavery activists in both Virginia and Pennsylvania. In Richmond, Samuel Smith mailed Brown and advised Philadelphia vigilance leaders James Miller McKim and William Still to be on the lookout for the crate in Philadelphia. It took Brown 26 hours inside the box to reach Philadelphia, and he traveled with only a bladder filled with water and a few biscuits to eat. Afterwards, Brown became a highly demanded speaker on the antislavery lecture circuit, before eventually relocating to England, where he presented lectures and performed magic and hypnotism to his audiences. Importantly, Brown’s escape underscored that Underground Railroad activists in Northern states faced far fewer risks than activists in the South, where state-level slave stealing statutes proved far more punitive. None of the Philadelphia-based activists who assisted Brown were ever charged with violating the federal 1793 Fugitive Slave Act. But Virginia authorities arrested Smith and sentenced him to six years in the state penitentiary.

box brown engraving

Philadelphia’s vigilance committee opens the box containing freedom seeker Henry Brown (House Divided Project)

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(1850) Fugitive Slave Act

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On October 3, 2022

In Baumgartner, Blackett, Finkelman, Oakes, Pinsker, Sinha

Citation

1850 Fugitive Slave Act, September 18, 1850, FULL TEXT via The Avalon Project, Yale Law School

Excerpt

cartoon showing people fighting, caricatures

Political cartoon attacking the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law (Library of Congress)

SECTION 7. And be it further enacted, That any person who shall knowingly and willingly obstruct, hinder, or prevent such claimant, his agent or attorney, or any person or persons lawfully assisting him, her, or them, from arresting such a fugitive from service or labor, either with or without process as aforesaid, or shall rescue, or attempt to rescue, such fugitive from service or labor, from the custody of such claimant, his or her agent or attorney, or other person or persons lawfully assisting as aforesaid, when so arrested, pursuant to the authority herein given and declared; or shall aid, abet, or assist such person so owing service or labor as aforesaid, directly or indirectly, to escape from such claimant, his agent or attorney, or other person or persons legally authorized as aforesaid; or shall harbor or conceal such fugitive, so as to prevent the discovery and arrest of such person, after notice or knowledge of the fact that such person was a fugitive from service or labor as aforesaid, shall, for either of said offences, be subject to a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, and imprisonment not exceeding six months, by indictment and conviction before the District Court of the United States for the district in which such offence may have been committed, or before the proper court of criminal jurisdiction, if committed within any one of the organized Territories of the United States; and shall moreover forfeit and pay, by way of civil damages to the party injured by such illegal conduct, the sum of one thousand dollars for each fugitive so lost as aforesaid, to be recovered by action of debt, in any of the District or Territorial Courts aforesaid, within whose jurisdiction the said offence may have been committed.

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(1851) Christiana Resistance

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On November 5, 2022

In Finkelman, Jackson, Oakes, Pinsker, Sinha

Vigilance leaders and freedom seekers resist the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act at Christiana, killing a Maryland slaveholder and evading punishment from federal authorities

Date(s): escaped 1849, resistance September 11, 1851

Location(s): Christiana, Pennsylvania

Outcome: Freedom, slaveholder Edward Gorsuch killed

Summary:

In 1849, four enslaved men, Noah Buley, Nelson Ford, George Hammond, and Joshua Hammond, escaped from Maryland slaveholder Edward Gorsuch and settled near Christiana in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Two years later in September 1851, Gorsuch discovered the whereabouts of his runaways with the help of a local spy and made arrangements in Philadelphia with the fugitive slave commissioner to organize a posse that would try to apprehend the four freedom seekers under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. But operatives from the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee learned of these plans and quickly notified a vigilance group in Christiana, led by Black couple William and Eliza Parker.

Colorized Christiana

Illustration of the 1851 Christiana Resistance, colorized by Gabe Pinsker (House Divided Project)

Gorsuch’s posse arrived at the Parker stone farmhouse (where at least some of the runaways were hiding) just after dawn on September 11, 1851, but William Parker stubbornly refused them entrance.  Eliza Parker then blew a horn to help alert their neighbors and local vigilance supporters to the unfolding confrontation. Violence erupted.  Black activists shot Gorsuch dead and wounded his son.  The federal officers fled the scene. Pro-slavery forces from across the country immediately denounced the resistance but government officials moved too slowly and the Parkers and the four young freedom seekers escaped to Canada.  Federal prosecutors eventually charged 38 local men with treason, to send a stern political message, but the trial, held in Philadelphia in late November and early December, proved to be a political catastrophe for the Fillmore Administration.  The jury acquitted the first defendant, a white farmer named Castner Hanway, in about fifteen minutes.  Prosecutors then released the rest of the accused.    There were other violent fugitive slave rescues in 1851, most notably in Boston, Massachusetts and Syracuse, New York, but the Christiana resistance was the most dramatic and decisive victory for the abolitionist forces in their escalating campaign to undermine the federal Fugitive Slave Law.

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The Parker “riot” house in Christiana, as it was originally known, is no longer standing, but there are some existing structures and historic sites within the NPS Network to Freedom which can help commemorate this episode, including the Gorsuch Tavern in Verona, Maryland, Eliza Parker’s escape site at Belle Vue Farm in Havre de Grace, Maryland, and Zercher’s Hotel in the town of Christiana, Pennsylvania, where government authorities first conducted the inquest in the aftermath of the violence on September 11, 1851.  To view more details about these sites and their level of accessibility to the public, consult our various Network to Freedom maps in this online handbook.

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(1851) Jerry Rescue

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On November 12, 2022

In Barker, Finkelman, Foner, Sinha

Jerry Rescue occurs in Syracuse, New York on October 1, when Black and white activists storm a federal hearing room to rescue Missouri freedom seeker Jerry Henry. The dramatic rescue further embarrasses the US government’s efforts to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, as Henry escapes to Canada and federal prosecutors only manage to convict one of the abolitionists.

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

(1852) Uncle Tom’s Cabin

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On November 12, 2022

In Blackett, LaRoche, Larson, Sinha

Citation

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Or Life Among the Lowly (Cleveland, OH: Jewett, 1852), FULL TEXT via Project Gutenberg

Excerpt

title page Uncle Tom's

Uncle Tom’s Cabin (House Divided Project)

A thousand lives seemed to be concentrated in that one moment to Eliza. Her room opened by a side door to the river. She caught her child, and sprang down the steps towards it. The trader caught a full glimpse of her just as she was disappearing down the bank; and throwing himself from his horse, and calling loudly on Sam and Andy, he was after her like a hound after a deer. In that dizzy moment her feet to her scarce seemed to touch the ground, and a moment brought her to the water’s edge. Right on behind they came; and, nerved with strength such as God gives only to the desperate, with one wild cry and flying leap, she vaulted sheer over the turbid current by the shore, on to the raft of ice beyond. It was a desperate leap—impossible to anything but madness and despair; and Haley, Sam, and Andy, instinctively cried out, and lifted up their hands, as she did it.

The huge green fragment of ice on which she alighted pitched and creaked as her weight came on it, but she staid there not a moment. With wild cries and desperate energy she leaped to another and still another cake; stumbling—leaping—slipping—springing upwards again! Her shoes are gone—her stockings cut from her feet—while blood marked every step; but she saw nothing, felt nothing, till dimly, as in a dream, she saw the Ohio side, and a man helping her up the bank.

“Yer a brave gal, now, whoever ye ar!” said the man, with an oath.

Eliza recognized the voice and face for a man who owned a farm not far from her old home.

“O, Mr. Symmes!—save me—do save me—do hide me!” said Elia.

“Why, what’s this?” said the man. “Why, if ’tan’t Shelby’s gal!”

“My child!—this boy!—he’d sold him! There is his Mas’r,” said she, pointing to the Kentucky shore. “O, Mr. Symmes, you’ve got a little boy!”

“So I have,” said the man, as he roughly, but kindly, drew her up the steep bank. “Besides, you’re a right brave gal. I like grit, wherever I see it.”

When they had gained the top of the bank, the man paused.

“I’d be glad to do something for ye,” said he; “but then there’s nowhar I could take ye. The best I can do is to tell ye to go thar,” said he, pointing to a large white house which stood by itself, off the main street of the village. “Go thar; they’re kind folks. Thar’s no kind o’ danger but they’ll help you,—they’re up to all that sort o’ thing.”

“The Lord bless you!” said Eliza, earnestly.

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(1857) Dred Scott Decision

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On November 12, 2022

In Barker, Johnson, Sinha

Citation

Majority opinion by Chief Justice Roger Taney in Scott v. Sanford, March 6, 1857, FULL TEXT via National Archives

Excerpt

Scott Family colorized

Scott family (Colorized by House Divided Project)

In the opinion of the court, the legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show, that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument.

It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion in relation to that unfortunate race, which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted. But the public history of every European nation displays it in a manner too plain to be mistaken.

They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it. This opinion was at that time fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race. It was regarded as an axiom in morals as well as in politics, which no one thought of disputing, or supposed to be open to dispute; and men in every grade and position in society daily and habitually acted upon it in their private pursuits, as well as in matters of public concern; without doubting for a moment the correctness of this opinion.

And in no nation was this opinion here firmly fixed or more uniformly acted upon than by the English Government and English people. They not only seized them on the coast of Africa, and sold them or held them in slavery for their own use; but they took them as ordinary articles of merchandise to every country where they could make a profit on them, and were far more extensively engaged in this commerce, than any other nation in the world.

The opinion thus entertained and acted upon in England was naturally impressed upon the colonies they founded on this side of the Atlantic. And, accordingly, a negro of the African race was regarded by them as an article of property, and held, and bought and sold as such, in every one of the thirteen colonies which united in the Declaration of Independence, and afterwards formed the Constitution of the United States. The slaves were more or less numerous in the different colonies, as slave labor was found more or less profitable. But no one seems to have doubted the correctness of the prevailing opinion of the time.

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(1858) Oberlin-Wellington Rescue

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On November 12, 2022

In Blackett, Finkelman, Jackson, Sinha

The rescue of freedom seeker John Price from federal custody signals Northerners’ increasingly open defiance of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act

Date(s): escaped 1856; recaptured and rescued September 13, 1858

Location(s): Kentucky; Oberlin, Ohio; Wellington, Ohio

Outcome: Freedom

Summary:

Oberlin-Wellington Rescuers (Ohio History Connection)

John Price escaped from slavery in Kentucky in 1856 and settled in Oberlin, Ohio, a staunchly antislavery town in central Ohio. Federal officers and Kentucky slave catchers caught up with Price on September 13, 1858 and spirited Price away to nearby Wellington. Outraged Oberlin residents quickly mobilized to rescue Price. Within a few hours, a large crowd of Black and white Oberlin residents had surrounded the slave catchers, who were holed up inside a Wellington hotel, ultimately overpowering the Kentuckians and freeing Price. Federal authorities charged 37 Ohio residents for their roles in Price’s rescue, but only managed to convict two abolitionists to relatively light sentences. 

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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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