A crisis in the affairs of the Society of Friends in the State of Indiana was reached in 1843 when the radicals seceded and organized an independent "Anti-Slavery Friends Society."Immediately there appeared in numerous localities duplicate Friends' meeting-houses.In and around one of these, distinguished as "Liberty Hall," were gathered those whose supreme religious interest was directed against the sin of slavery.Never was there a church division which involved less bad blood or sense of injury or injustice.Members of the same family attended separate churches without the least difference in their cordial relations.No important principle was involved;there were apparently good reasons for both lines of policy, and each party understood and respected the other's position.After the adoption of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and the passing of the Whig party, these differences disappeared, the separate organization was disbanded, and all Friends' meetinghouses became "liberty halls."The disposition to aid the fugitive was by no means confined to the North nor to Quakers in the South.Richard Dillingham, a young Quaker who had yielded to the solicitations of escaped fugitives in Cincinnati and had undertaken a mission to Nashville, Tennessee, to rescue their relatives from a "hard master," was arrested with three stolen slaves on his hands.He made confession in open court and frankly explained his motives.
The Nashville Daily Gazette of April 13, 1849, has words of commendation for the prisoner and his family and states that "he was not without the sympathy of those who attended the trial."Though Dillingham committed a crime to which the death penalty was attached in some of the States, the jury affixed the minimum penalty of three years' imprisonment for the offense.As Nashville was far removed from Quaker influence or any sort of anti-slavery propaganda, Dillingham was himself astonished and was profoundly grateful for the leniency shown him by Court, jury, and prosecutors.This incident occurred in the year before the adoption of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.It is well known that in all times and places which were free from partizan bitterness there was a general natural sympathy for those who imperiled their life and liberty to free the slave.Throughout the South men of both races were ready to give aid to slaves seeking to escape from dangers or burdens which they regarded as intolerable.While such a man as Frederick Douglass, when still a slave, was an agent of the Underground Railroad, Southern anti-slavery people themselves were to a large extent the original projectors of the movement.Even members of the families of slaveholders have been known to assist fugitives in their escape to the North.
The fugitives traveled in various ways which were determined partly by geographical conditions and partly by the character of the inhabitants of a region.On the Atlantic coast, from Florida to Delaware, slaves were concealed in ships and were thus conveyed to free States.Thence some made their way towards Canada by steamboat or railroad, though most made the journey on foot or, less frequently, in private conveyances.Stalwart slaves sometimes walked from the Gulf States to the free States, traveling chiefly by night and guided by the North Star.Having reached a free State, they found friends among those of their own race, or were taken in hand by officers of the Underground Railroad and were thus helped across the Canadian border.
>From the seacoast the valley of the Connecticut River furnished a convenient route for completing the journey northward, though the way of the fugitives was often deflected to the Lake Champlain region.In later years, when New England became generally sympathetic, numerous lines of escape traversed that entire section.Other courses extended northward from the vicinity of Philadelphia, Delaware, and Maryland.Here, through the center of American Quakerdom, all conditions favored the escape of fugitives, for slavery and freedom were at close quarters.The activities of the Quakers, who were at first engaged merely in preventing the reenslavement of those who had a legal right to freedom, naturally expanded until aid was given without reservation to any fugitive.From Philadelphia as a distributing point the route went by way of New York and the Hudson River or up the river valleys of eastern Pennsylvania through western New York.
In addition to the routes to freedom which the seacoast and river valleys afforded, the Appalachian chain of mountains formed an attractive highway of escape from slavery, though these mountain paths lead us to another branch of our subject not immediately connected with the Underground Railroad--the escape from bondage by the initiative of the slaves themselves or by the aid of their own people.Mountains have always been a refuge and a defense for the outlaw, and the few dwellers in this almost unknown wilderness were not infrequently either indifferent or friendly to the fugitives.The escaped slaves might, if they chose, adopt for an indefinite time the free life of the hills; but in most cases they naturally drifted northward for greater security until they found themselves in a free State.Through the mountainous regions of Virginia many thus escaped, and they were induced to remain there by the example and advice of residents of their own color.The negroes themselves excelled all others in furnishing places of refuge to fugitives from slavery and in concealing their status.For this reason John Brown and his associates were influenced to select this region for their great venture in 1859.
But there were other than geographical conditions which helped to determine the direction of the lines of the Underground Railroad.
