Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad (27 page)

By the time the group reached Wilmington, the owners had preceded them, posting placards offering unusually generous rewards for their return—$1,500 for Josiah Bailey, $800 for Pennington, and $300 for William Bailey. Even though local blacks tore down the notices, many persons, including the Wilmington police, were on the lookout for the fugitives. Thomas Garrett, however, managed to get black bricklayers to convey them, concealed in a wagon, to William Still’s office in Philadelphia on the night of November 24. Still immediately sent them, separately, to New York, where they arrived on November 26 and 27. Gay then dispatched them to Troy and Syracuse. In Syracuse they encountered an unexpected obstacle. William E. Abbott, treasurer of the local Fugitive Aid Society, who was well acquainted with Tubman, normally forwarded runaway slaves directly to Canada via the Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge. But now, he wrote, “our funds fail us and we are obligated to send them forward to the different half way houses that are on the route.” Nonetheless, Tubman got the group to Canada.
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I

These exploits of Harriet Tubman are related in the Record of Fugitives, a document compiled by Gay in 1855 and 1856, as well as in scattered notes on runaway slaves that he also penned. In these two years, Gay meticulously recorded the arrival of well over 200 fugitives in New York City: 137 men, 44 women, 4 adults whose sex he failed to mention, and 29 children. Gay set down information about their owners, motives for leaving, mode of escape, who assisted them, where he sent them, and how much money he expended. Gay’s Record is the most detailed account in existence of how the underground railroad operated in New York City, and of the fugitives who passed through the city. He chronicled the experiences of slaves who escaped individually and in groups, by rail, by sea, on foot, and in carriages appropriated from the owners. Some reached the free states within a day or two of their departure; others hid out for weeks or months in swamps or woods before moving on. Most of those whose tales Gay transcribed then disappeared from the historical record. But when supplemented with information compiled about many of the same individuals by William Still in Philadelphia, Gay’s Record is a treasure trove of riveting stories and a repository of insights into both slavery and the underground railroad.

Gay’s account of Tubman’s passage through the city in May 1856 is the longest entry in his journal, a reflection of the high regard in which he held her. Gay also seems to have been the only person at that time who referred to her as “Captain” Tubman, which suggests that he knew her, or of her activities, before 1856.
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In many ways, Tubman’s activities were unique. But in others, the escapes she engineered were typical of many in these years. Like Tubman’s charges, nearly half the slaves who appear in Gay’s Record originated in Maryland and Delaware, the eastern slave states closest to free soil (see table). The Maryland fugitives mostly came from Baltimore, with its railand sea connections with the North; the northern counties of the eastern shore; or the region of the state farther

ORIGINS OF INDIVIDUALS IN RECORD OF FUGITIVES

west that bordered on Pennsylvania. Ten of the eleven from Delaware hailed from New Castle, the county closest to Pennsylvania. Here, slavery was all but extinct; on the eve of the Civil War, 97 percent of its black population was free. Perhaps more surprising is the number of fugitives who arrived in New York City from Virginia and North Carolina, states considerably more distant (although most of those who escaped over land, rather than by boat, from Virginia originated in the northernmost part of the state, closer to free soil than Washington, D.C.). Slaves of every age absconded, but most were in their twenties (the average age of the adults was 25.5), their prime working years, when their economic value to their owners was at its peak. Only a handful were above the age of forty. Three-fourths of the adult fugitives were men, a figure in line with previous studies of runaway slaves.
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In occupation, the fugitives who passed through New York City reflected how slavery permeated every corner of the southern economy. They ran the gamut from plantation hands and laborers on small farms to household domestics, hotel porters and cooks, and skilled urban craftsman—carpenters, blacksmiths, and William Bailey himself, who operated a steam engine. Among one group of fugitives, William Still commented, “were some good mechanics—one excellent dress-maker, some ‘prime’ waiters and chambermaids—men and women with brains, some of them evincing remarkable intelligence and decided bravery, just the kind of passengers that gave the greatest satisfaction to the Vigilance Committee.”
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Many of the slaves had “hired their own time,” living apart from their owners in urban centers and passing along their earnings, while usually being able to keep some money for themselves. This was a growing practice in the Upper South. Such slaves clearly had greater opportunities to learn of possibilities for escape than those on isolated farms and plantations. Many were able to pay for assistance in departing.

The owners of these fugitives also illustrated how every kind of enterprise in the South employed slave labor. A few were men of considerable prominence and wealth, notably John Branch, the son of a revolutionary war hero and a former governor of North Carolina and Florida who owned large plantations in both states and more than 100 slaves. Other well-to-do owners included Freeman Woodland of Chestertown, Maryland, who possessed $40,000 worth of real estate and nineteen slaves; Joshua Pusey of Leesburg, Virginia, a farmer with nine slaves and land valued at over $100,000; William Brisbane, a South Carolina planter with thirty-one slaves; and Thomas Warren, a physician and farmer in Edenton, North Carolina, whose holdings included fifty slaves and $162,000 in real estate. A larger number of owners were small farmers with only a handful of slaves, for whom the escape of even one would be a significant financial loss. And many had nonagricultural occupations, including the proprietors of Haxall and Company (one of Richmond’s two flour mills), the president of the Chestertown Bank, merchants, ministers, lawyers, an employee of the U.S. Treasury Department, a U.S. naval officer, a tailor, and a tavern keeper. Even slave traders suffered the loss of absconding slaves. George Sperryman, who escaped from Richmond, had been owned by H. N. Templeman, whose account book notes handsome profits derived from slaves, including children, “taken South” for sale.
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To a Glasgow audience in 1853, the abolitionist James Miller McKim described the fugitives who arrived at the antislavery office in Philadelphia, many of them headed for New York: “These were not ill-treated slaves who had braved death and suffered so much to get their liberty. . . . It is those which have indulgent masters . . . that escape from slavery.” McKim’s point was that the desire for freedom, not the brutality of individual owners, led to escapes. “He wanted to be free, he says,” Gay recorded of one fugitive, “and has wished to be for years.” Several runaways mentioned to Gay that they had tried unsuccessfully to escape and were severely punished, but nonetheless they tried again and managed to reach the North.

Some fugitives who passed through New York fit McKim’s description, such as James Jones of Alexandria, who, Gay recorded, “had not been treated badly, but was tired of being a slave.” Charles Carter, the slave of a flour inspector in Richmond, spoke of his owner “rather favorably in comparison with slaveholders generally . . . he has not been so badly abused as many others.” But these were exceptions. Few fugitives interviewed by Still and Gay had anything good to say about their treatment. Even if the desire for freedom was the underlying motive, the decision to escape usually arose from an immediate grievance. And among the causes mentioned for running away, by far the most common was physical abuse.
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The fugitives who arrived in New York told stories replete with accounts of frequent whippings and other brutality; their words of complaint included “great violence,” “badly treated,” “ruff times,” “hard master,” “very severe,” “a very cruel man,” and “much fault to find with their treatment.”
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Frank Wanzer called his owner Luther Sullivan, who operated a plantation in Fauquier County, “the meanest man in Virginia.” Franklin Wilson, who escaped from Smyrna, Delaware, had “plenty of scars” from whippings by his owner, a physician. Samuel Hill reported that John Appleton, a farmer in Duck Creek, Delaware, “worked him hard, clothed him poorly, and beat him.” John Haywood related how his brother had been shot dead by owner after physically resisting a whipping, and another slave was hanged after being discovered “playing soldier . . . with a parcel of other boys in the woods.” James Morris of Norfolk, who referred to his owner, Ann McCourt, as “a heel of a woman,” wrote a brief account for Gay of the sadistic treatment to which he had been subjected: “One meal a day for 8 years. . . . Sold 3 times and threten to be sold the fourth. . . . Struck 4 hundred lashes by overseer choped cross the head with a hatchet and bled 3 days. Tied hands and feet and knocked down with a stick, made to stand out in the cold 4 ours for punishment without shoes on.”
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Second only to physical abuse as a motive for escape was the ever-present threat of sale. The marketing of slaves to the Lower South had long since become a lucrative enterprise for Upper South owners. Many of the slaves mentioned by Gay ran away to avoid being placed on the auction block or fled after members of their families had been sold. In an advertisement seeking his capture that ran six times in the
Baltimore
Sun
, William Elliott claimed that his slave William Brown had run off “without the slightest provocation.” Brown, however, told Gay that he absconded because “he was to have been sold to go to Georgia.” Nathaniel Bowser, a slave in North Carolina, decided to escape after hearing his owner talk of buying a plantation in Louisiana and “selling all of his negroes who were not willing to go with him.” Despite a history of harsh treatment, Franklin Wilson told Gay, he left Delaware only after he “overheard his master chattering with a stranger for his sale.” Phillis Gault, a widow who worked for a Norfolk woman as a dressmaker, “had witnessed the painful sight of seeing four of her sister’s children sold on the auction block, on the death of their mother,” and feared that she herself would soon be sold.
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Slave sales could take place for all sorts of reasons. Thomas Jones, a Virginia house servant, decided to abscond after his wife and four children “were all sent to Richmond to be sold” because, he told William Still, “she had resisted the lustful designs of her master.” After fighting back against a whipping, Charles Hall, the slave of the wealthy Maryland farmer Atwood Blunt, was handcuffed and incarcerated in Blunt’s house, to be taken to Baltimore for sale the following day. He somehow managed to “tear up the hearth” and escape. Blunt placed an advertisement in successive issues of the
Baltimore
Sun
:

One Hundred Dollars Reward. Ran away from the subscriber, living in Baltimore county, Md., during the night of the 24th inst., his servant man Charles Hall, aged about 25 or 30 years; of dark color, nearly black; about 5 feet six inches, and well set. He has a fresh wound over the left eye—other marks or clothing not known. I will give the above reward if arrested and delivered to me, or secured in jail so that I get him.
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The fugitives’ experiences also made clear the danger of relying on an owner’s promises, even if well intentioned. Three related how a will providing for manumission had been disregarded by heirs or creditors. Laura Lewis of Kentucky told Gay that her owner, who died twenty-five years previously, provided for the emancipation of his slaves on the death of his wife. The widow passed away in March 1855, but her creditors moved to have the will set aside and the slaves sold to satisfy her debts. Jacob Hall of Maryland had been verbally promised his freedom when he reached the age of twenty-one, but when his owner died before that date the heirs reneged on the commitment and sold him. Joseph Rittenham, a fugitive from Maryland’s eastern shore, “was always promised by his master to be emancipated at his death; but believing that his heirs would not carry this intention into effect, ran away.”
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In powerful, contradictory ways, family ties affected slaves’ decisions about running away. Escape from slavery generally involved wrenching choices about whether family members should leave or stay. As in the case of Tubman’s rescues, when slaves escaped in groups, these frequently included relatives—husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, even, as in the case of eleven women or married couples and one man in Gay’s records, small children. Nonetheless, most of the fugitives listed by Gay left relatives behind in the South. William Henry Larrison abandoned his wife of one month; Major Latham, his wife and three children (he later married an Irish-born woman and was living with her in Etobicoke, a town adjacent to Toronto, in 1861). On one of Captain Albert Fountain’s voyages, four young fugitives had each left a wife in slavery. Most of the women on Gay’s list were either unmarried or brought children with them, but occasionally, mothers left children behind when they escaped. Even when children were not involved, escape often meant severing ties with an extended family. William Brown, who ran away because he feared being sold, left in Maryland his grandmother, father, four sisters, and two brothers; Anna Scott, also from Maryland, her father and nine brothers and sisters.
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