Underground Railroad

“ There are a few volumes that supply us with numerous illustrations of the Underground Railroad in operation. These books are not general treatises on the underground system, but give us an insight into the clandestine work of several limited localities; they are important because they exhibit the methods and devices of operators, show the sacrifices made by them in behalf of the midnight seekers after liberty, and supplement with valuable matter the unpublished reminiscences. ”

“ If in any way we have erred in the task of furnishing facts and important information touching the Underground Rail Road, it has not been in overstating the sufferings, trials, perils, and marvellous escapes of those described, but on the contrary. In many instances after hearing the most painful narratives we had neither time nor inclination to write them out, except in the briefest manner, simply sufficient to identify parties, which we did, not dreaming that the dark cloud of Slavery was so soon to give way to the bright sunlight of Freedom. ”

“ To many of the leading colored men of the North, and the old abolitionists, this was comparatively an easy task,—having originated that great scheme known as the Underground Railroad, which, for nearly forty years had baffled the comprehension of their foes—a scheme so well devised and skilfully conducted, that from one to forty were continually being passed out of every part of the far South to Texas, Massachusetts, and Canada. ”

“ The railroad isn’t wealthy and we have to put up with some discomforts.”
“This beats sleeping on the ground without blankets, as we sometimes bivouac out to Captaing Brown’s camp, all holler,” replied Maybee, sleepily. “Declar’, I’m dead beat.”
“As I understand it, this isn’t a railroad; it is only hiding fugitives as they pass to Canada.”
“Exactly. But many people believe in an underground railroad, with regular trains running on time, stopping points, and everything in railroad style?” ”

“ BEVERLY GOOD and GEORGE WALKER, alias Austin Valentine. These passengers came from Petersburg, per steamship Pennsylvania. Richard Perry was lording it over Beverly, who was a young man of twenty-four years of age, dark, medium size, and possessed of a quick intellect—just the man that an Underground Rail Road agent in the South could approach with assurance with questions such as these—"What do you think of Slavery?" "Did you ever hear of the Underground Rail Road?" "How would you like to be free?" "Would you be willing to go to Canada if you could get off safely," etc., etc. ”

“ The safety of fugitives while travelling by conveyance lay mainly in their concealment, and many were the stratagems employed. Characteristic of the service of the Underground Railroad were the covered wagons, closed carriages and deep-bedded farm-wagons that hid the passengers. There are those living who remember special day-coaches of more peculiar construction. Abram Allen, a Quaker of Oakland, Clinton County, Ohio, had a large three-seated wagon, made for the purpose of carrying fugitives. He called it the Liberator. ”

“ Upon the general question of the political effects of the Underground Railroad, the book adds much to our information, by its discussion of the probable numbers of fugitives, and of the alarm caused in the slave states by their departure. The census figures of 1850 and 1860 are shown to be wilfully false; and the escape of thousands of persons seems established beyond cavil. ”

“ The underground railroad system is intended to relieve the traffic upon the main thoroughfares, affording a rapid method of transportation between the residential and business portions, and in addition to form a communicating link between the terminals of the roads referred to. ”

“ The trader, the slave-pen, the auction-block, the coffle gang, the rice swamp, the cotton plantation, bloodhounds, and cruel overseers loomed up before him, as they had never done before. Without stopping to consider the danger, he immediately made up his mind that he would make a struggle, cost what it might. He knew of no other way of escape than the Underground Rail Road. He was shrewd enough to find an agent, who gave him private instructions, and to whom he indicated a desire to travel North on said road. ”

“ You can’t conceal him here, for the old man will be down on you before morning. He’s a valuable feller, and they are sharp on his tracks.”
We had a live engine in the barn, with a light car on runners, and the first impulse was to fire up and run to the next station, where friend Andrew and his good wife had a way of circumventing slave catchers in a manner peculiar to themselves, of which more may be said at another time. ”

“ He was well-known to the colored people far and near, and was especially sought with regard to business pertaining to the Underground Rail Road, as a friend who would never fail to assist as far as possible in every time of need. Through his agency many found their way to freedom, both by land and water.
The slave-holders regarding him with much suspicion, watched him closely, and were in the habit of "breathing out threatenings and slaughter" very fiercely at times. ”

“ Still it remains, to the infinite credit of a national persistence, that there is no record in the annals of American engineering where the workers have finally given up a tunnel job. Lives have been sacrificed, good-sized fortunes swept away, but in the end the resistless railroad has always found its underground path.
The tunnel-workers can tell you of the accident when the subway was being driven under the East River from Manhattan to Brooklyn, three years ago. ”

“ It was written by an Englishman apparently as a popular exposition of the hidden methods of the abolitionists.
To these books should be added a pamphlet of thirty pages, entitled The Underground Railroad, by James H. Fairchild, D.D., ex-President of Oberlin College, published in 1895 by the Western Reserve Historical Society. [6] The author had personal knowledge of many of the events he narrates and recounts several underground cases of notoriety; he thus affords a clear insight into the conditions under which secret aid came to be rendered to runaways. ”

“ As the number of refugees increased, and women and children were more frequently seen upon the Road, and pursuit was more common, the practice of transporting fugitives on horseback, or by vehicle, was introduced. The steam railroad was a new means furnished to abolitionists by the progress of the times, and used by them with greater or less frequency as circumstances required, and when the safety of passengers would not be sacrificed. ”

“ We also know that there were many centres round about Philadelphia, some of whose work was certainly done independently of that place.
That the resources of some of the operators in centres in the West were being drained almost to exhaustion by the demands of the heavy traffic towards the close of the underground period, distinctly appears in the following letter from Col. J. Bowles, of Lawrence, Kansas, to Mr. F. B. Sanborn:—
Lawrence April 4th 1859
Mr. ”

“ It enters into the construction of rails, locomotives, box cars, passenger coaches, telegraph wires, block signal devices, and all the countless other things that, in this age of steel and wheels, go into that great expression of the triumph of mind over matter—the modern railroad. ”

“ All the passengers are requested to walk. In single file we march over the bridge, and then await the train. It comes across, lightened of its load, slowly and safely. It is quite likely that in America the engineer would have put on all steam, and dashed across in a second, or, if not, he would have gone down a hundred feet, into a frightful chasm, and the verdict, if any were sought, would have been, “nobody to blame.” Fret as we do about the railroad management in Europe, it is safer and surer than ours. ”

“ Culverts have been laid for each small run or kill or creek; the bridge-builders along the new line finish their work and cart off their kits; the day comes when there is an unbroken railroad from one end of the new line to the other. It links new rails and new towns; its localities produce for new markets, commerce from strange quarters pours down upon the land that has known it not. Passenger trains begin regular operation, the fresh-painted depots are brilliant in their newness, the shriek of the locomotive sounds where it has never before sounded. ”

“ On shot the locomotive, like an arrow from the bow, the men throwing over the ties until the train was well nigh unloaded, when just as they were close to the curve by which the train arrives at the station, they saw the dreaded cars strike a tie, or something equally of service, and with a desperate plunge rush down the embankment, some fifteen feet, to the little valley, and creek below. ”

“ The Detroit Christian Herald says, "The Under-ground Railroad is pre-eminently qualified and well adapted to do business for a long time, we hope as long as a Slave remains in his chains to weep, "Lord, Thou hast heard the desire of the humble, Thou wilt prepare their heart ”

“ In hundreds of instances, the parts were as cleverly played as if the fugitives had had special training in the drama of running away from their masters. In nearly all cases these black men and women took desperate chances. The conductors of the Underground Railway were everywhere, and at all times on the alert. They knew every path, the byways and highways in which slaves might hide or on which they might travel to reach freedom. ”

“ For its time it was the most audacious essay in railway building the world had known, for be it known it was begun barely twenty years after the first railroad had been built in the United States and before either railroad engineers or railroad labor had a recognized place in industry. ”

“ In many places the walls of the tunnels have been founded from ten to twenty feet lower than the foundations of adjacent buildings, and in some places the foundations of these adjacent buildings, many being very old and of decayed material, have been underpinned from six to sixteen feet in depth. But in all these cases, through the admirable plans of the English Engineers, the Underground Railway has been constructed with complete success, and without causing any injury whatever to the buildings. ”

“ The breaking of rails has been the cause of much attention on the part of railroad and steel engineering experts ever since the tendency toward the construction of heavy locomotives and greater train loads became evident. ”

“ So they kicked off tramps with a proud kick, and they coupled freight cars with a self-satisfied air, and they received deaths with complaisance as defective couplings broke and box cars crashed together, and they made up passenger trains and ran locomotives with the haughty air of men belonging to the most prominent road in that great country which centred in Chicago, to which the rest of America, especially the East, was but an attachment.
"Oh, you are a railroad man—a Western railroad man. Perhaps you can tell me about the Rocky Mountains?" ”

“ No one would travel in that manner who could help it—who had time to go leisurely over hills and between hedges, instead of through tunnels and between banks: at least those who would, have no sense of beauty so acute as that we need consult it at the station. The railroad is in all its relations a matter of earnest business, to be got through as soon as possible. ”

“ Men living at convenient distances along the route were in communication with one another. The fugitives were passed secretly and with great skill along this line. These societies were known as the Underground Railway. ”

“ As West Point was the nursery of the early constructing engineers, many of the early roads were built and operated by military men, whose impress in railway methods has survived to this day. When the civil war was over the railroads gained for their service thousands of men whose ability had stood the stern test of camp and battle, men who could meet unexpected conditions. These men bore the brunt in the wonderful railroad development that secured forever the commercial greatness of our country. ”

“ The little locomotive, purchased second-hand from the big railroad, which had used it almost up to the point of worthlessness, the battered cars, the bridges and trestles so long suffering from a lack of proper maintenance as to render it positively unsafe to run heavy cars over them, all are gasping for their very breath. ”

“ The railroad which connects the two coils about this rugged ascent like a steel lariat thrown by a dextrous hand, now winding in and out where some bottomless abyss is encircled like a huge letter U upon the landscape, or anon clinging upon the rim of some sharp-pointed rock, where the same train creeps around the angle, showing mortal fear by its snail-like pace. ”

“ Our business is a peculiar one. It is very much more difficult for an engineer from another road to take hold of a heavy coal train on a down grade, than to handle a passenger or a common freight train on an ordinary grade. ”

“ Our drives from up-country are sometimes held up a whole season when a bad jam forms in dry times. Every year in dynamiting these jams thousands of feet of logs are shattered. More are split on the ledges. We have agreed that we need a railroad. Considering our losses, we can afford to pay well for having our logs hauled to the smooth water. If you and your friends will finance and build such a road, we'll give you free right of way, turn over to you annually twenty million feet of timber for your log trains, and give you the haul of all our crews and camp supplies. ”

“ The railroad was more than a means of transportation to Gopher Prairie. It was a new god; a monster of steel limbs, oak ribs, flesh of gravel, and a stupendous hunger for freight; a deity created by man that he might keep himself respectful to Property, as elsewhere he had elevated and served as tribal gods the mines, cotton-mills, motor-factories, colleges, army. ”