Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad (12 page)

Yet sometimes, the unexpected happened. Even before the legislature revoked the right of slave transit, Robert H. Morris, who had succeeded the notorious Richard Riker as city recorder after the latter’s retirement in 1838, freed a slave woman brought to the city on a vessel from Puerto Rico. The owner of the elegant Mansion House Hotel on Broadway, a member of the Whig party not known for antislavery views, secretly notified the committee when slaves who accompanied their owners wished to escape, although only “in cases where he supposed the owners were cruel.” In 1842, a fugitive slave who approached a member of the night watch for assistance was “given a meal and shelter, clothing” and sent to the Vigilance Committee.
27

The committee’s influence extended beyond New York’s borders. In 1837, Philadelphia abolitionists established their own Vigilant Committee, modeled on New York’s. Two years later, the black abolitionist Robert Purvis, an admirer of David Ruggles, became its president. Philadelphia’s committee began life as an interracial organization, but by 1840 it was composed entirely of blacks. Like its New York counterpart it operated openly and secretly at the same time, fighting legal cases on behalf of apprehended fugitives but also sheltering runaways and sending them farther north, generally to the Vigilance Committee in New York City. Committees in upstate New York soon followed. Stephen Myers, a black abolitionist and editor of the short-lived
Northern
Star
, published in 1842 and 1843, became the key figure in the Albany Committee of Vigilance, described by Ruggles as “the most efficient organization in the State of New York, in the business of aiding the way-worn and weather-beaten refugee” from slavery.
28

At its annual meeting of 1838, the AASS had urged abolitionists “to appoint committees of vigilance, whose duty it shall be to assist fugitives from slavery, in making their escape, or in legal vindication of their rights.” By 1842, the
National
Anti
-
Slavery
Standard
could report the existence of such organizations “in most of our cities and large towns.” New York City had taken the lead, but a broader infrastructure was now in place, a network of local individuals and groups, in frequent contact with one another, committed to assisting fugitive slaves. In the 1840s, their efforts would expand, and collectively they would become known as the underground railroad.
29

II

Even as internecine warfare broke out in the New York Vigilance Committee, the national abolitionist movement fell to pieces. Trouble had been brewing for years over a number of issues pitting Garrisonians, centered in Boston, against the New York leaders of the AASS. William Lloyd Garrison’s vehement attacks on American churches for complicity in slavery and his calls for abolitionists to withdraw from all institutions connected in any way with the South’s peculiar institution offended many devout foes of slavery. The Tappans believed the movement must be conducted by men “of evangelical piety,” a category that excluded the decidedly non-evangelical “Universalists or Unitarians” prominent in Boston. Garrison insisted that abolitionists could not in good conscience participate in a political system whose constitution protected slavery. Most New York abolitionists came to see politics as a promising arena for attacking the institution. The issue of women’s rights proved even more contentious. Agitation on behalf of the slave had awakened some women to their own inequality. By the late 1830s, these women and male allies, including Garrison, were insisting on the right of women to speak in public and hold positions in abolitionist organizations.
30

Garrison spoke for a minority of abolitionists, but Tappan and his followers believed his increasing radicalism alienated potential recruits to the antislavery cause. The division came to a head at the AASS’s annual meeting in New York in May 1840. When the gathering elected the prominent abolitionist lecturer and fund-raiser Abby Kelley to the AASS business committee, Lewis Tappan rose and invited those who had voted in the minority to withdraw to another building to form their own abolitionist organization.
31

Nearly all New York abolitionists, including the entire AASS executive committee except for Garrison’s friend James S. Gibbons, followed the Tappans into the new American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. The American and Foreign took control of the
Emancipator
, in order to “keep it out of the hands of Mr. Garrison and his friends.” The newspaper did not thrive and soon moved to Boston. A month after the split, the AASS established its own newspaper in New York City, the
National
Anti
-
Slavery
Standard
. A third group, which held aloof from both national organizations, soon emerged as the Liberty party, the first antislavery political party. Although New York City remained the site of the AASS headquarters and its annual meeting, the organization would henceforth be centered in New England, with pockets of support in Pennsylvania and Ohio. After 1840, as the two national societies limped along, the center of gravity in abolitionism shifted to a sprawling patchwork of local groups and, increasingly, to political action. In retrospect, the heated exchanges among people deeply committed to the same goal of ending slavery and improving the condition of free blacks exemplify what Sigmund Freud later called “the narcissism of small differences.”
32
The task of assisting fugitive slaves, however, would remain a frequent point of cooperation among persons otherwise loath to work with one another.

Among New York City’s black abolitionists, who admired both Garrisonians and Tappanites, the breakup of the AASS caused consternation. One participant in a large meeting two weeks after the split called it “a solemn crisis for the people of color.” Initially, many declared their intention to remain neutral. Soon, however, most black leaders cast their lot with the local white abolitionists they had worked with on a daily basis—the American and Foreign in New York City, the AASS in Boston. Garrison remained immensely popular with ordinary black New Yorkers; James McCune Smith, a black physician, remarked that it was hard to know who loved the other more, Garrison the colored people, or the colored people Garrison. But because of their close ties with the Tappans, the presence of so many ministers among them, and their desire to engage in electoral politics, the city’s black antislavery leaders almost unanimously went with the new organization. Henceforth, the New York Vigilance Committee would be almost interchangeable with the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.
33

During the 1840s, local vigilance committees became more numerous and more adept at communicating with one another—“increasingly efficient,” according to a writer in the
Liberator
, “particularly on the Philadelphia and New York route.” The term “underground railroad” came into widespread use to describe activities on behalf of fugitive slaves. As counterparts proliferated in other cities, New York, in the words of Charles B. Ray, the Vigilance Committee’s corresponding secretary, served as “a kind of receiving depot” at which fugitives arrived from Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia and were dispatched to Albany and other towns in upstate New York, New Bedford, Boston, and Canada.
34

In the 1840s, the New York Vigilance Committee continued to hold small monthly meetings and larger annual gatherings to report on its activities in aid of what it called “self-emancipated slaves.” It made no apologies for flouting the law and the property rights of owners—slaves, it declared, had “a right to flee from bondage.” The numbers seeking assistance, the committee reported in 1842, “increase every year.” But money remained a problem. The annual report for 1840 could not be published for lack of funds—a serious setback, since the committee’s leadership believed it would have “exhibited to the world . . . the good already accomplished” and inspired new contributions. In 1841, William Johnston, the treasurer, reported a debt of $1,150, “which presses heavily on the committee, and greatly retards its progress.” He appealed to the “friends of human rights” for contributions, asserting that the number of fugitives the committee had assisted since its inception now surpassed 1,000. That year, the New York Colored Female Vigilance Committee was formed as an auxiliary to the all-male executive committee. It organized fund-raising events, including a penny-a-week system of contributions similar to the one that had helped finance the committee at its inception. Theodore S. Wright, the Vigilance Committee’s president, expressed frustration that his group found itself in “increasing debt” while large amounts of money had been raised to aid the Africans who rebelled on the Spanish slave ship
Amistad
in 1839 and two years later gained their freedom in the United States. “What,” he wondered, “was there in that case that does not occur in the case of every fugitive from southern slavery?”
35

In 1842, convinced that secrecy about its activities impeded fund raising, the Vigilance Committee managed to publish another annual report. For the first time, it offered details about some of the individuals it had assisted, without identifying them by name. The stories offered glimpses of the cruel treatment that inspired slaves to run away, their means of escape, the fugitives’ courage and tenacity, and the network of which the committee was a part. They also made clear that the Vigilance Committee’s reputation reached far beyond New York and that many persons knew how to put fugitives in contact with the organization.

One fugitive slave, born in the French West Indies, had been sold to a planter near Baton Rouge who whipped him frequently. After one unsuccessful escape attempt, he made his way north on foot on a six-month journey, suffering “incredible hardships” before reaching New York. In the city he asked for help in “broken English,” was brought to a member of the committee, and forwarded to Canada. A fugitive from Richmond hid on a ship carrying lumber to New York. He had been given the name of a man who could offer help, who in turn directed him to the committee. A runaway from the eastern shore of Maryland fought off slave catchers and managed to get to Philadelphia, from which that city’s Vigilance Committee forwarded him to New York. A slave on an Alabama cotton plantation ran away after frequent whippings but was tracked down by bloodhounds. On his next attempt he took his owner’s horse, outran the dogs, and ended up in Charleston, where friends paid a crew member to hide him on a ship bound for New York. There, a “colored servant” sent him to the Vigilance Committee. A female slave who secured passage on a ship to New York was directed to the committee by one of the sailors.
36

In its 1842 annual report, the Vigilance Committee described itself as “a perfect anti-slavery institution . . . although connected with no organized anti-slavery society.” In fact, however, after the abolitionist split of 1840 a remarkable degree of overlap existed between the committee and the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, the group led by the Tappan brothers. The American and Foreign, commonly known among abolitionists as the “new organization,” held an annual meeting in New York City, published occasional books and pamphlets, and acted as a liaison with British evangelical abolitionists. Overall, however, it failed to flourish. Unlike the AASS, it had no traveling agents and few local affiliates, and it never developed an effective newspaper. William Lloyd Garrison exaggerated only slightly when he commented in 1846 that the American and Foreign existed “in the person of Lewis Tappan.”
37

Tappan, moreover, while a man of formidable energy, had other claims on his time and fortune. By the mid-1840s, he decided to aid the Liberty party “in every way in which I can.” In addition, Tappan in 1846 helped to bring into being the American Missionary Association, an interracial organization of antislavery churchmen, including virtually every prominent black minister in New York. The association set up schools and religious missions in Africa, in the Caribbean, and among fugitive slaves in Canada. It even sent missionaries into the Upper South, hoping to “inculcate an anti-slavery gospel.” It also sought to win antislavery converts among evangelical Christians and to counteract the Garrisonians’ strident attack on the churches for their complicity with slavery. Tappan became its treasurer and henceforth devoted much of his activity to the organization.
38

Despite the numerous demands on his time and pocketbook, Tappan, along with other members of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in New York City, continued to devote themselves to assisting fugitive slaves. Tappan frequently attended the Vigilance Committee’s monthly meetings, contributed money, raised donations from his contacts in Great Britain, and worked with Charles B. Ray to help fugitives in the city escape capture. When the Vigilance Committee issued an appeal for funds in 1844, it asked that contributions be sent to William Johnston, Ray, or Tappan, all members of the American and Foreign’s executive committee. The Irish abolitionist Richard Webb noted that the American and Foreign existed as an organization only for “three hours of a single day”—during its annual meeting each May. “The rest of the year,” he added, “it is the [New York] Vigilance Committee.”
39

The committee’s key leaders exemplified this linkage. The group’s president until his death in 1847, Theodore S. Wright, was the first black graduate of an American religious seminary (the Princeton Theological Institute) and minister of the First Colored (later Shiloh) Presbyterian Church on Frankfort Street. The son of a free black barber in Providence, Rhode Island, Wright had moved with his family to New York City as a youth and was educated in the African Free School. In the 1830s, he joined the AASS, became active in the Vigilance Committee, and helped found the Phoenix Literary Society, which promoted intellectual self-improvement in the black community. Wright was a founding member of the American and Foreign and, later, the American Missionary Association, and was also actively involved in the Liberty party.
40