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Underground Railroad Activists in Washington, D.C This abolitionistsong sheet depicts the undergroundrailroad as a freedom train. Abolitionists demanded"Immediate Emancipation" and warnedopponents to "GetOff the Track." Courtesy, Libraryof Congress. 28 UndergroundRailroad Activists in Washington,D.C. by Hilary Russell Underground Railroad was a existed except in legend, but more localized series of efforts, whether highly networks did. Theiroperations were partic- organized, spontaneous, successful, ularly important in the border states or failed, to assist those fleeing from slav- between slave and free lands. Men and ery by providing them with forged passes, women from almost all walks of life partici- transportation,shelter, and other necessary pated in these local networks, though the resources.Such efforts, in violation of state participation of African Americans, both and federal laws, occurred everywhere free and enslaved, was especially crucial to slavery existed. An estimated 100,000 their success. In the antebellum period, the bondsmen and women successfully assistance that such networks provided to escaped to freedom between the Revolu- runaways undermined the institution of tionaryEra and the Civil War,though some slavery and profoundly unsettled slave- did so with little or no covert assistance. holders, contributingto widening divisions The metaphor "undergroundrailroad" between North and South and the passage came into being in the 1830s as a potent of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850. Such weapon in the propaganda war to win underground railroad operations also pro- hearts and minds to the cause of abolition. duced a diverse pantheon of American It conjured up a clandestine and highly heroes, one that extends from millionaires organized national network of "conduc- like GerritSmith and Louis Tappan to for- tors" and "station masters" ever ready to mer runaways like Harriet Tubman and offer assistance to the runaways who were FrederickDouglass. the railroad's "passengers." A powerful The District of Columbia was a center and centralized network may not have of abolitionist activity during the decades before the Civil War. While most of these efforts centered on to Hilary Russell moved to Washington after a long influencing Congress careeras an historianwith Parks Canada. This article abolish chattel slavery and the slave trade is part of her recently completedstudy of the under- in the nation's capital, some courageous a ground railroad in Washington, D.C., funded by local abolitionists sought more concrete cooperative agreement between the National Park and immediate results. undermined Service and the Historical Society of Washington, They D.C and attacked slavery by assisting escapes, 29 WashingtonHistory, Fall/Winter 2001-2002 runaways and to undermine the slave sys- tem. The best known of Washington's underground railroad activists were two white men, Charles T. Torrey and William L. Chaplin, who successively attractedcon- siderable national attention after each was jailed for assisting escapes from slavery. In the early 1840s and 1850s, each master- minded hundreds of such escapes, with the help of a far-flungbiracial network and the financial backing of radical abolitionist GerritSmith of Peterboro,New York. Torreywas the most active and influen- tial of the two. Born in Massachusettsand educated at Yale and as a Congregationalist minister, he had helped to organize the biracial Boston Vigilance Committee and the New Yorkwing of the LibertyParty. He relocated to from in CharlesTurner radicalabolitionist, who Washington Albany Torrey, to become editor and local claimedto have helped 400 people escape from slavery 1841, ostensibly in theWashington, D.C., area between his arrival in correspondent of the Albany Patriot. 1841and his arrest in 1844.From L.C. Lovejoy, Almost immediately, he attracted press Memoirof Rev.Charles T. Torrey, 1847. attention when he was jailed for disrupting a slaveholders' convention in Annapolis.2 This publicity attracted Thomas Small- engaged in dangerous and covert actions, wood, who would soon become a key asso- and risked their own freedom. These local ciate for Torrey's covert underground rail- activists attempted to remain hidden fig- road work. ures, known perhaps only to those commit- Smallwood had been freed from slav- ted to the same goals. Their full picture has ery in Prince George's County, Maryland, not emerged from the historicalrecord, but in about 1831, and was working as a shoe- they were clearly a diverse group - men maker in the District in 1842.3He asked his and women, black and white, free and wife Elizabeth, a free-born Virginian, to enslaved. introduce him to Torrey, as she was the Among them were freed men like laundress for Mrs. Padgett's boarding Thomas Smallwood and Anthony Bowen; house on 13th Street, N.W., where Torrey free-born African Americans like Leonard resided. Smallwood described their collab- Grimes, Elizabeth Smallwood, and John oration in a narrativepublished in Toronto Bush; a Mrs. Padgett and Mrs. Ann Sprigg, in 1851. He claimed that his wife Elizabeth two white women who ran anti-slavery and "the lady with whom [Torrey]board- boarding houses; and such respected local ed" were "the only assistance we had for white men as retired lawyer Jacob Bigelow some time in the execution of our under- and Interior Department clerk Ezra L. ground railroad plans."4 Their network Stevens.1They did not all work together, later expanded to include another local nor were they necessarily aware of one African-Amercan couple, John Bush and another, but all played a part in the local his wife, as well as William Nichols, a history of the underground railroad and preacher at Israel Bethel AME Church,5 contributed to the public perception of a Ohio CongressmanJoshua R. Giddings and vast continentalconspiracy to aid and abet his landlady Mrs. Ann Sprigg,6 Thomas 30 UndergroundRailroad Activists in Washington,D.C. Garret, the famous white abolitionist of Wilmington, Delaware, and James J. G. Bias, a black dentist in Philadelphia.7They also had valuable contacts in Troy and Albany, New York, and across the border in Toronto, where the Smallwoods settled in 1843. Between Marchand November of 1842, Smallwood estimated that the "Washington branch" of the underground railroad had helped as many as 150 runaways. Torrey later claimed responsibility for about 400. According to Smallwood, some escaped in groups of ten or fifteen, and he outlined the "mode of our operations" for such large numbers. On the eve of the departure, a unique location would be chosen "on the suburbs of the city." Would-be runaways were instructed to arrive there singly or in groups of no more than two, and from dif- ferent directions. Timing was also a strate- gic concern because any person of color on the streets of Washington risked being Ex-slave ThomasSmallwood described in his pub- apprehended and locked up between 10 lished narrativehis workas an railroad and 4 a.m. the watch underground p.m. (when night conductorin Washingtonduring the early 1840s: retired).8 Runaways then traveled to an would-berunaways were instructedto arrivealone or unidentified "place of deposit" 37 miles in groups of no more then two to secretdeparture from reached another spots selectedthe night before. Thoseassembled head- Washington. They ed at the such 40 miles distant, the for Pennsylvania,stopping safe places along place, following way. Courtesy,Library of Congress. night, and Philadelphia by the third night. The group might be transportedby wagon, especially if it included women and chil- dren. Smallwood complained that team- and wagon through Washington lawyer sters had to be paid "a very high price in David A. Hall, whom he hired to defend order to induce them to risk themselves Bush (and who won his acquittal).10 and [their]teams in so dangerous an enter- In January 1844, Torrey reported that prise," and that he and Torrey had soon he was working with "a shrewd woman" been obliged to purchase a wagon and to free some of the people captured in team of horses.9 Bush's stable.11In June of that year he also In November 1843, the Washington engaged in another plot with a woman- police seized 14 runaways in this wagon at "a most respectablelady of Baltimore"- to John Bush's residence located "in low effect the successful escape of three slaves grounds" east of City Hall. It proved to be in that city. He had already determined to Torrey and Smallwood's last joint under- expand his operations deeper into Virginia ground railroad mission, and the pair nar- and Maryland, using the Philadelphia rowly escaped arrest.That Torreyremained home of James Bias as a base, but his reach out of the clutches of the authorities in exceeded his grasp. Following more nar- Washington is all the more remarkable row escapes, in March 1844 Torrey was because he filed a claim to recover the team arrested in Baltimore. He perished in the 31 Washington History, Fall/Winter 2001-2002 This "Listof Negroes capturedon boardthe Pearl"shows the names of the runawaysand those holding them to service.Several families had attemptedto escapetogether, including Mary and Emily Edmonsonand theirsib- lings, who are listed abovewith "Miss Culver."Alfred Pope, whose nameappears on the right page, remainedin 32 UndergroundRailroad Activists in Washington,D.C. slavery in Washingtonuntil 1851, when he wasfreed by the termsof ColonelCarter's will. After the Civil War, Pope was a successfulbusinessman in Georgetown;in the 1870s he sold to Mt. Zion United Methodist Church the land on which it now stands. Courtesy,National Archives. 33 WashingtonHistory, Fall/Winter 2001-2002 The most audacious of these mass escape attempts became known nationally as "ThePearl Affair"in April 1848.Chaplin conceived of the plot after meeting a free African-American carpenternamed Daniel Bell, who feared that his enslaved wife and children would be sold away by heirs who were contesting their promised manumis- sions. Chaplin worked with Bell to plot the escape of his family, hiring Philadelphia supercargoDaniel Drayton and the trading schooner Pearlfor this purpose.
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