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Vigilance in Pennsylvania: Underground Railroad Activities in the Keystone State, 1837-1861

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Vigilance in Pennsylvania: Underground Railroad Activities in the Keystone State, 1837-1861 PRESENTED AT THE PHMC ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON BLACK HISTORY HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA APRIL 27, 2000 VIGILANCE IN PENNSYLVANIA: UNDERGROUND RAILROAD ACTIVITIES IN THE KEYSTONE STATE, 1837-1861 By Matthew Pinsker Copyright 2000 PHMC TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction p. 2 Acknowledgements p. 8 Section One: Historical Context p. 9 Section Two: Participants and Operations p. 54 Section Three: Research and Preservation p. 96 Appendix A: Nationally Recognized Sites Appendix B: State Recognized Sites Appendix C: Traditionally Associated Sites Appendix D: Selected Routes General Bibliography UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IN PA CONTEXT STUDY INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION If you've never heard of William Still, then you're missing one of the great stories in Pennsylvania history. The youngest of eighteen children, Still was a son of former slaves who started working as a clerk in the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society during the 1840s and became the principal organizer of the state's Underground Railroad network during the years before the Civil War. Still's passion for aiding fugitives really blossomed after he had the extraordinary experience of being reunited with his own brother who had arrived in the Anti-Slavery offices as one of many former slaves looking for assistance, unaware at first that the clerk he was addressing was actually his youngest brother. Energized by this dramatic and tearful reunion, Still soon took command of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee, a semi-public organization which acted as a kind of clearinghouse for runaway slaves who arrived in Pennsylvania looking for help relocating either within one of the Northern free states or Canada. Along with other members of the committee, Still interviewed the runaways and kept an invaluable journal documenting their frequently terrifying escapes and experiences in bondage. He also corresponded with various participants in the underground network who regularly assisted those runaways and carefully warned him whenever "boxes" or "packages" were due to arrive in Philadelphia. There were many unsung heroes like William Still during the years when slavery existed in this country, people whose moral outrage and personal bravery compelled them to risk their lives and careers to help the unfortunate victims of a wicked system. But Page 3 of 143 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IN PA CONTEXT STUDY INTRODUCTION what separated him from nearly any other figure from this period was that Still meticulously preserved the evidence of their struggles, hiding the Vigilance Committee records in a cemetery during the Civil War, and finally publishing them to wide acclaim in 1872. Yet people today often remark that the Underground Railroad was secret and therefore no documents exist to verify its existence, at least by traditional means. This is just not quite true. For Pennsylvania alone, using Vigilance Committee records, newspaper advertisements and press accounts of runaways, court cases involving the recovery of fugitives and other selected diaries and letters, it is possible to document nearly 2,000 escapes between 1830-1861 --using only contemporary evidence. This impressive data set doesn't even include the numerous oral traditions and local folklore that suggest thousands more legitimate escape stories from across the Commonwealth. That is one of the most important conclusions contained within the following study. It turns out that Pennsylvania It turns out that Pennsylvania offers offers the best documentation of the the best documentation of the Underground Railroad anywhere in Underground Railroad anywhere in the nation. the nation. For those who are familiar with the state's African-American history, this judgment will come as no great surprise. Pennsylvania's free black population was one of the nation's largest, richest, and most socially active in the years before the Civil War. Self-made free black strivers like William Still were not only common in cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, but also in small towns such as Columbia, Mercersburg, and Norristown. Page 4 of 143 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IN PA CONTEXT STUDY INTRODUCTION Their churches, newspapers, fraternal organizations, political societies and extended family networks provided the principal institutional support that clothed, fed, and relocated most escaping slaves. Popular accounts often depict fugitives hiding in secret passageways under the homes of white abolitionists, but anyone who stops to consider the issue will understand immediately why it made much more sense for most runaways to stay within black neighborhoods. This is not meant to deny that some whites helped fugitives. They did. Especially within this state, a small network of abolitionist Quakers (called Hicksites) provided invaluable aid, both monetary and physical. However, the bulk of the work and money for Underground Railroad activities came from free blacks like Vigilance Committee chairman Still. The state government's interest in documenting such activities comes during a period of renewed public interest in the topic. Thousands of newspaper features, magazine articles and documentaries have appeared in the last several years, discussing topics connected to the Underground Railroad and runaway slaves. In 1998, after nearly a decade of study, Congress passed the National Underground Network to Freedom Act, which authorizes $500,000 annually to protect the legacy of the Underground Railroad. With that goal in mind, plans are currently underway to construct the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, an estimated $80 million heritage museum project. Major heritage tourism efforts, such as those in Lancaster County, are becoming commonplace in regions that once harbored fugitives. Yet amidst this explosion of public attention, there has been relatively few signs of academic engagement. After generations of scholarship and folklore that celebrated a legendary network of heroic white abolitionists, there has been a growing realization in historical circles that most fugitives escaped on their own and relied mainly on the Page 5 of 143 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IN PA CONTEXT STUDY INTRODUCTION kindness of black strangers to achieve their freedom. At least among academic historians, this striking revisionism, coupled with a lingering impression that there is relatively no contemporary evidence, has created an unusual degree of wariness about reaching any further conclusions. "Among historians," one scholar has suggested recently, "the underground railroad has become a dead issue."1 As if to confirm that judgment, the most ambitious study of runaway slaves yet undertaken, published in 1999, contains only two index entries for the Underground Railroad. The authors of that widely acclaimed monograph, John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, are candid about the reasons for this decision. “Although historians continue to disagree about various aspects of the Underground Railroad,” they write, “few deny that even today it is shrouded in myth and legend.”2 For residents of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, this judgment offers a particular challenge, since arguably no state was more vital to the fugitive aid networks that existed across the antebellum North. Local studies invariably exaggerate the role of their own region, but the case for Pennsylvania is strong and rests upon such fundamental matters as geography and demographics. The state was not only the largest positioned along the Mason-Dixon line (which historically demarcates North from South) but also it was the closest to the slave states which contained the highest percentage of urban and literate slaves, or in other words, the ones likeliest to flee. Nonetheless, it was the state's own antebellum demographics which explains why Pennsylvania, an otherwise conservative place on issues concerning slavery and race, became such an unlikely haven for fugitives. While many people are familiar with the region's unique Quaker heritage 1 Stanley Harrold, "Freeing the Weems Family: A New Look at the Underground Railroad," Civil War History 42 (December 1996), 290. Page 6 of 143 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IN PA CONTEXT STUDY INTRODUCTION and that sect's historic (but sometimes overstated) association with abolitionism, there is less awareness regarding the state's extraordinarily rich black heritage. In many ways, the story of the Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania chronicles the struggles of those free black residents as much as the dramatic escapes of the fugitives. This study offers a set of starting points and strategies for scholars, teachers and preservationists who want to use the evidence from Pennsylvania sources in order to achieve a better understanding of how the Underground Railroad operated in antebellum America. From the outset, it should be acknowledged that this study is largely based upon discoveries and insights from generations of other scholars in Pennsylvania history and relies especially on some excellent recent work in the state's antebellum social and political culture. Although many readers will be surprised by the information contained in these pages, the truth is that most Pennsylvania historians have been aware of these developments for quite some time. Nonetheless, there is a clear need --even among those professional scholars-- for a monograph that synthesizes all of the disparate elements that have been unearthed over the last several years. To begin this process, the study has been divided into three sections. The first section offers a thematic overview of the Underground Railroad,
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