Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad (35 page)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Like all works of history, this book rests on a foundation created by others. My greatest debt is to the numerous scholars who have come before me studying fugitive slaves, the underground railroad, and the origins of the Civil War. But I am delighted to be able to take this opportunity to thank those individuals who directly assisted th
is project.

I begin with Madeline Lewis, a history major at Columbia College, who in 2007 was employed part-time to walk my family’s dog, the celebrated cocker spaniel Sammy. She was writing her senior thesis about Sydney Howard Gay’s journalistic career and one day mentioned that I might find interesting a document relating to fugitive slaves that she had seen in the Gay Papers at Columbia University. I filed this away for future reference as I was then engaged in work on a book about Abraham Lincoln and slavery. But one day, many months later, when I happened to be at Columbia’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library, I asked to see the relevant box. I found the Record of Fugitives so riveting that it led me to embark on the research project that resulted in this book. Thank you, Madeline, and I wish you every success in your career as a lawyer. Thanks also to Sarah Bridger, then a graduate student in history at Columbia, who transcribed the manuscript, and to the Rare Book and Manuscript Library staff, who accommodated my many requests, especially Eric Wakin, who provided me with a photographic reproduction of the Record of Fugitives and in other ways aided my research in the Gay, Jay Family, and other collections.

I also thank the historians who generously shared insights and the results of their own research. Tom Calarco and Don Papson, who are engaged in their own project relating to Gay, generously shared ideas and information. Prithi Kanakamedala passed along the impressive study she compiled on black abolitionism in Brooklyn for a major exhibition at the Brooklyn Historical Society. David Blight allowed me to read a draft of the chapter on Frederick Douglass’s escape from slavery in his forthcoming biography of Douglass. Jeffrey Bolster helped unravel the story of a fugitive’s husband who worked for the U.S. Navy. Kate Larson shared her deep knowledge of the career of Harriet Tubman and helped me make sense of the entries related to Tubman in Gay’s records. Graham Hodges provided insights derived from work on his important biography of David Ruggles. Other scholars who responded to my requests for information and advice included Richard J. Blackett, Andrew Cohen, Norman Dann, Paul Finkelman, David Gellman, Kathryn Grover, W. Caleb McDaniel, Dwight Pitcaithley, Paul Stewart, Marie Tyler-McGraw, and Judith Wellman.

Librarians and archivists provided valuable assistance in locating and utilizing material, especially Bruce Abrams and Kenneth Cobb of the Municipal Archives, New York City; Christopher Densmore of the Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College; and Allan Weinreb of the John Jay Homestead. Thanks, too, to researchers who located materials in other repositories: Julia Moser at Cornell University; Elizabeth Skilton at the Amistad Research Center; Matthew Spooner at the Virginia Historical Society; and Ashley Towle at the National Archives.

I am deeply indebted to five outstanding scholars who took the time to read the entire manuscript of this book and offered valuable corrections and suggestions: Elizabeth Blackmar, Graham Hodges, James Oakes, Matthew Pinsker, and Manisha Sinha. Portions of the book were presented as the Littlefield Lectures at the University of Texas, Austin, and as the Nathan I. Huggins Lectures at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Harvard University.

As always, I thank my literary agent and all-around advocate Sandra Dijkstra, and the staff at W. W. Norton & Company, especially Steve Forman, an insightful and supportive editor, and his colleagues Justin Cahill and Penelope Lin.

My greatest debt is to my wife, Lynn Garafola, and daughter, Daria Rose Foner, who displayed remarkable patience and fortitude in listening to stories and ideas about the underground railroad. Lynn, a writer and editor extraordinaire, read the manuscript and improved it immensely.

In a few years I will retire after a long career of teaching. I dedicate this book to my students, past and present, undergraduate and graduate, from whom I have learned so much.

NOTES

Abbreviations Used in Notes

AC
Antislavery Collection, Boston Public Library

AMA
American Missionary Association Archives, Amistad Research Center, Tulane University

ANHS
American Negro Historical Society Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

BAP
C. Peter Ripley, ed.,
The Black Abolitionist Papers
(5 vols.; Chapel Hill, 1985–92)

BE
Brooklyn Eagle

BS
Baltimore Sun

CA
Colored American
(New York)

CG
Congressional Globe

FDP
Frederick Douglass’ Paper
(Rochester)

FHL
Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College

FJ
Freedom’s Journal
(New York)

FOM
Friend of Man
(Utica)

GP
Sydney Howard Gay Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University

HSPa
Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

JFP
Jay Family Papers, Rare Book and Manuscripts Library, Columbia University

JJH
John Jay Homestead, Bedford, N.Y.

JL
Oliver Johnson Letters, Miscellaneous American Letters and Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library

JP
John Jay Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University

MAC
Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection, Cornell University

MB
Minute Book, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Amistad Research Center, Tulane University

MC
Maloney Collection of McKim-Garrison Family Papers, New York Public Library

MOL
Mirror of Liberty
(New York)

NAS
National Anti-Slavery Standard
(New York)

NS
North Star
(Rochester)

NYE
New York Evangelist

NYEP
New York Evening Post

NYH
New York Herald

NYHS
New-York Historical Society

NYO
New York Observer

NYPL
New York Public Library

NYS
New York Spectator

NYT
New York Times

NYTrib
New York Tribune

PF
Provincial Freeman
(Toronto)

PL
Elijah Pennypacker Letters, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College

PP
Wendell Phillips Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University

RG 21
Records of the Clerk of the Court, 1746–1932, and of the U.S. Commissioners, 1837–1860, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Record Group 21, National Archives

SC
Wilbur H. Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus

SP
Gerrit Smith Papers, Syracuse University

TP
Lewis Tappan Papers, Library of Congress

1. Introduction

1.
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass Written by Himself
(rev. ed.: Boston, 1892), 97, 153; David Blight,
Frederick Douglass: A Life
(forthcoming), ch. 5.

2.
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
, 249; Blight,
Frederick Douglass
, ch. 5; William G. Thomas,
The Iron Way: Railroads, the Civil War, and the Making of Modern America
(New Haven, 2011), 17–20.

3.
Solomon Northup,
Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853
(Auburn, N.Y., 1853).

4.
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
, 253; Graham Russell Gao Hodges,
David Ruggles: A Radical Black Abolitionist and the Underground Railroad in New York City
(Chapel Hill, 2010), 1–2; Blight,
Frederick Douglass
, ch. 5.

5.
Pennington’s account of his life in slavery and his escape takes up most of his memoir,
The Fugitive Blacksmith
(London, 1849); see also Christopher Webber,
American to the Backbone: The Life of James W. C. Pennington, the Fugitive Slave Who Became One of the First Black Abolitionists
(New York, 2011), 1–40.

6.
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
, 253–55; Kathryn Grover,
The Fugitive’s Gibraltar: Escaping Slaves and Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts
(Amherst, Mass., 2001), 1–28.

7.
Louis A. Chamerovzow,
The Slave’s Underground Railroad to Freedom
(Edinburgh, n.d.), 1; J. Blaine Hudson,
Encyclopedia of the Underground Railroad
(Jefferson, N.C., 2006), 9, offers a highly speculative estimate of 135,000 slave escapes in the half century before the Civil War.

8.
Stanley Harrold,
Border War: Fighting over Slavery before the Civil War
(Chapel Hill, 2010), 39–40;
De Bow’s Review
, 11 (September 1851), 331; Frederick Law Olmsted,
A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States
(New York, 1856), 226; John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger,
Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation
(New York, 1999), 210; Pennington,
Fugitive Blacksmith
, 11.

9.
Harrold,
Border War
, 47–49; Fergus M. Bordewich,
Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America’s First Civil Rights Movement
(New York, 2005), 109–13;
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself
(Boston, 1845), 85, 106.

10.
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
, 253–54; Eber M. Pettit,
Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad
(Fredonia, N.Y., 1879), 35–36;
Tocsin of Liberty
(Albany) in
NYO
, September 28, 1842;
NYT
, September 7, 1853;
Raleigh Daily Register
, May 14, 1853;
Cleveland Daily Herald
, July 22, 1854.

11.
NYH
, January 5, 1860.

12.
Philip S. Foner,
Business and Slavery: The New York Merchants and the Irrepressible Conflict
(Chapel Hill, 1941), 1–6; Linda K. Kerber, “Abolitionists and Amalgamators: The New York City Race Riots of 1834,”
New York History
, 48 (January 1967), 28–39.

13.
William Still,
The Underground Railroad
(rev. ed.: Philadelphia, 1878), 674–75.

14.
Record of Fugitives, GP. A transcription of this document will be published, with annotations, in
Secret Lives of the Underground Railroad in New York City
, a forthcoming book by Don Papson and Tom Calarco.

15.
Wilbur H. Siebert,
The Underground Railroad f
rom Slavery to Freedom
(New York, 1898), 10–11; Robert Purvis to Wilbur H. Siebert, December 23, 1895, SC.

16.
The New York State Vigilance Committee, successor of the New York Committee of Vigilance, claimed in 1849 that the earlier organization had helped 2,000 fugitives gain “personal liberty.” Subsequent reports by the second committee claim a total for the two of 3,200 to the year 1856.
NS
, May 18, 1849; Tom Calarco,
Places of the Underground Railroad
(Santa Barbara, 2011), xxi. Sydney Howard Gay’s group assisted more than 200 fugitives in 1855 and 1856 and an unknown number in other years.

17.
Julie Roy Jeffrey,
Abolitionists Remember: Antislavery Autobiographies and the Unfinished Work of Emancipation
(Chapel Hill, 2008); [Levi Coffin],
Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, the Reputed President of the Underground Railroad
(Cincinnati, 1876); Homer U. Johnson,
From Dixie to Canada; Romance and Realities of the Underground Railroad
(Orwell, Ohio, 1894), 13.

18.
Still,
Underground Railroad
; Stephen G. Hall, “To Render the Private Public: William Still and the Selling of ‘The Underground Railroad,’ ”
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
, 127 (January 2003), 41; R. C. Smedley,
History of the Underground Railroad in Chester and the Neighboring Counties of Pennsylvania
(Lancaster, Pa., 1883). The original records Still used to compile his book are now available online at the website of the HSPa as Journal C of Station No. 2.

19.
Siebert,
Underground Railroad
, esp. 62, 67–68, 71, 120; Stephen Kantrowitz,
More than Freedom: Fighting for Black Citizenship in a White Republic, 1829–1889
(New York, 2012), 421; David W. Blight, “Why the Underground Railroad, and Why Now? A Long View,” in David W. Blight, ed.,
Passages to Freedom: The Underground Railroad in History and Memory
(Washington, D.C., 2004), 233–47.

20.
Larry Gara,
The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad
(Lexington, Ky., 1961), esp. vii, 92–95.

21.
Stanley Harrold, “Freeing the Weems Family: Another Look at the Underground Railroad,”
Civil War History
, 42 (December 1996), 290–92; Franklin and Schweninger,
Runaway Slaves
, 98–101.