National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior Petersburg National Battlefield Petersburg, Virginia Slavery and the Underground Railroad at the Eppes Plantations, Petersburg National Battlefield Cover: Appomattox Manor at City Point, Virginia. Photo courtesy National Park Service. SLAVERY AND THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD At the Eppes Plantations Petersburg National Battlefield Special History Study by Marie Tyler-McGraw Prepared for Organization of American Historians Under cooperative agreement with Northeast Region National Park Service U. S. Department of the Interior Printed December 2005 Contents Acknowledgements 10 Executive Summary Research Methods and Summary of Findings 11 Chapter 1 Frontiers and Boundaries (1640s – 1765) 15 Landscape and settlement on the James River and Appomattox colonial frontier. Origins of slavery and early resistance Chapter 2 Revolutions (1765 – 1816) 20 Revolutions in Agricultural Production, Government, Religious Practice and Belief in Eastern Virginia Escape to the British and service in the Continental Armies during the Revolution Slavery in early Federal Virginia Chapter 3 The Great Divide (1816 – 1844) 26 East Virginia slavery, fugitives and free blacks in the national political divisions over slavery Chapter 4 Calculating the Costs (1848 – 1862) 31 Leaving and staying in the age of sectional hostility Shrinking distances and a nearby Underground Railroad Daily life on the late antebellum Eppes plantations Chapter 5 Contraband: Escape During the Civil War (1861 – 1867) 42 Escape and return in the Civil War era Chapter 6 The Underground Railroad in Petersburg 46 In the region of the Eppes plantations Footnotes 57 Appendices I. Richard Eppes’s Code of Laws for the Island Plantation 66 II. Enslaved Families on the Eppes Plantations 70 III. Census Data for Virginia 75 Bibliographic Essay 76 Bibliography 82 8 National Park Service Acknowledgements This study of the Underground Rail- ously allowed us to incorporate the road at Petersburg National Battlefield population chart that he sent and that and the region around it originated with now appears as Appendix III. the desire on the part of Tara Morrison, Underground Railroad Coordinator for At Petersburg National Battlefield, all the Northeast Region of the National staff members made helpful suggestions Park Service (NPS) and Kathy about resources. Jimmie Blankenship, Dilonardo, Interpretive Program Man- Historian, and Chris Calkins, Chief of ager for the Northeast Region, to do a Interpretation, took time from their set of interlocking studies of NPS sites very busy schedules to talk with me and and the Underground Railroad. to visit sites and landmarks related to Morrison and Dilonardo were particu- the antebellum Eppes plantations. larly interested in creating a usable Their enthusiasm for and interest in model of research methodology and in their work is inspiring and admirable. making that research easily available to interpreters. Their reiteration of that vi- Clifford Tobias, Park History Program sion of the final product has kept the Leader at the NPS Philadelphia Sup- study on track in ways that are apparent port Office, and Paul Weinbaum, His- and will become more apparent over tory Program Manager, Northeast Re- time. gion, did a very close reading of the third draft. They not only caught nu- The cooperative agreement between merous small errors, but they made ex- the NPS and the Organization of cellent suggestions for reordering the American Historians (OAH), negoti- text toward a better narrative flow. ated and maintained under the direc- They share with the other NPS staff a tion of NPS Chief Historian Dwight commitment to combining scholarship Pitcaithley, allowed a peer review sys- with a text that allows readers to grasp tem that strengthened the study’s schol- main points quickly and extract illus- arship. trative anecdotes for interpretation. Susan Ferentinos, OAH Public History I am grateful to all these persons for the Coordinator, has been both an efficient professional courtesies and sincere in- administrator and an interested reader. terest they have shown over the course Through OAH, the study found two of this research and writing. careful and informed outside readers who offered thoughtful critiques. One of those readers, Philip Schwarz of Vir- ginia Commonwealth University, gener- Marie Tyler-McGraw Historian Consultant to the Organization of American Historians Slavery and the Underground Railroad at the Eppes Plantations 9 Executive Summary Research Methods and Summary of Findings With the passage of the National Un- (Chapter 4) and the residents of Peters- derground Railroad Network to Free- burg (Chapter 6) who comprised an ef- dom Act in 1998, the National Park Ser- fective network of assistance to fugi- vice (NPS) undertook a national tives. This study of the four Eppes initiative to identify and preserve Un- farms or plantations, with the Appomattox and Hopewell farms now [Eppes’s] methods of derground Railroad resources and to interpret the story of the Underground comprising part of the Petersburg Na- control, while they Railroad for visitors to NPS sites. Even tional Battlefield, is the first in-depth could never eliminate before passage of the Act, it was clear examination of antebellum African resistance to enslave- that research on the Underground Rail- American life at that site. If we con- sider, as recent scholars have, that “run- ment, were effective to road would not be limited to NPS sites, but would inevitably connect commu- aways” were those who stayed in the the extent that few, if nities and peoples across state and na- area and were soon caught or returned any, slaves were fugi- tional borders and would yield much and “fugitives” were those who made a tives from his proper- new information about the varied sys- real attempt to leave slaveholding re- 1 ties. tems of slavery from which fugitives gions, then the Eppes plantations had made their escape. no fugitives, as yet uncovered, until the Civil War, although there were many This study of slavery and runaways short-term runaways over the decades. from the Eppes plantations near City Point and Petersburg, VA, was originally On balance, in the decades before the planned as one part of a three-part his- Civil War when the Underground Rail- tory study of the Underground Rail- road was at its most active, research in- road that would include three NPS sites dicates that the Eppes bondsmen within the Northeast Region of the weighed their options and found the ef- NPS. Those sites were Boston African fort to strike out for permanent free- American National Historic Site (MA), dom too difficult, too emotionally Hampton National Historic Site (MD), wrenching or too dire in consequences and Petersburg National Battlefield to attempt. Richard Eppes, the last an- (VA). The primary goal of this multi-site tebellum owner, ran a highly-organized study was to demonstrate the wide- and closely-scrutinized group of plan- spread activity of the Underground tations, and escape would not have Railroad and its connections from re- been easy, especially by land. Eppes set gion to region and nation to nation. A himself the difficult task of moderniz- secondary goal was to place the Under- ing his plantations by utilizing the latest ground Railroad within the context of technology and by studying agricultural African American life at those three journals while keeping the enslaved la- sites, two of which were upper South bor force that was originally acquired plantations using enslaved labor. for a tobacco economy. His desire to economize and show a profit caused Various delays made it impossible for him to monitor the activities of his en- research at the three sites to move for- forced labor more closely than was ward together, but the Petersburg NB typical for Virginia planters. His meth- study, by including the town of Peters- ods of control, while they could never burg in its research, fulfills the goals of eliminate resistance to enslavement, linking regions, nations, and individuals were effective to the extent that few, if in the Underground Railroad. At the any, servants were fugitives from his heart of this study are the enslaved properties. families on the Eppes plantations 10 National Park Service With a code of laws that offered pre- pay a boatman or ship’s captain to hide dictable rewards and punishments and them aboard. with a domestic system that encouraged marriages of enslaved persons and of- Just as important as resistance was the fered stability for extended families, he post-Civil War interpretation of slavery resolved two of the greatest anxieties as benign and the plantation as a place among enslaved African Americans — of happy enslaved family life. Closer ex- the fear of arbitrary and unpredictable amination of individual lives shows vio- punishment and the fear of separation lence, coercion, and children of uncer- from family. By not selling, he was tain origin, even among those who were eliminating one of the main reasons for favored slaves. For example, religious ...resistance was occa- running away: to reconnect with family. ceremonies and Eppes’s desire for sional and opportunis- It seems to have been part of his scien- peaceful domestic relationships not- tific farm strategy, as well as his reli- withstanding, slave marriage had no sta- tic. Deviance from gious principles, to encourage strong tus in the law. Harriet Ruffin appears to Eppes’s expectations family relationships among his bonds- have had three children by two other was constant, but usu- men and thus make running away too men before she married Madison ally performed in a emotionally painful for many. Because Ruffin. Jim Booker’s “marriage” to a Richard Eppes encouraged marriage woman in Essex County appears to minor key. within the plantation household, most have been easily dissolved when it be- of the enslaved families were related. came somehow inconvenient, and he There are fragmentary lists from 1819 was able to marry Jane Oldham very and the early 1840s that, combined with quickly.