A Walk On The Underground Railroad
By Anthony Cohen
* This is article was published in American Educator Magazine (Winter 2000-2001).
I first heard about the Underground Railroad when I was an impressionable 10-year old. My fourth-grade social studies teacher told our class about Harriet Tubman, the fugitive slave from Maryland, who used its "underground rails" to guide hundreds of other slaves to freedom. I didn't understand, at the time, that the railroad was a metaphor, and I envisioned a subway train transporting slaves hundreds of miles to Canada. I later realized that my teacher had not been talking about a literal rail system, but as I grew older (and more concerned with my future than with the distant past), the Underground Railroad, and all the other tales that belonged to my childhood, faded from memory.
But in 1994, while studying history at American University in Washington, D.C., I again stumbled onto the Underground Railroad, this time as the subject for a research paper. My task was to document some aspect of history that had gone largely unrecorded, and the Underground Railroad seemed as elusive a topic as one could find.
After all, it was the staple of ghost stories and children's books, part fact, part fiction, and part inspiring legend. An informal travel network stretching from the plantation South to the free states of the North and ultimately to Canada, the Underground Railroad was not a single path but many. It used the terminology of the railroad, which was then nearly as high tech as the Information Superhighway is today. Those involved in helping runaway slaves spoke of escape "routes" and "terminals" and secret "station houses" where "passengers" (runaways) were fed and sheltered by "stationmasters" (abolitionists) and from which they might be led to a new station by "conductors" (guides).
It's impossible to establish the precise number of runaways guided to freedom by this network, and there is considerable disagreement over the probable number. Only the bravest and most highly motivated slaves attempted to flee. Many runaways never left the vicinity of the places where they were enslaved, and many were recaptured. However, my research shows that during the years of the Underground Railroad's heyday - from roughly 1830 to 1865 - as many as 100,000 slaves took advantage of this network to reach free soil in Canada, Mexico, the Bahamas, Europe, and Africa.
I began my own search for the Underground Railroad in my hometown of Rockville, MD, and its vicinity by searching for clues in archives, museums, libraries, and historical societies. When I examined 19th-century newspapers, I found numerous notices for runaway slaves, often vivid descriptions placed by masters offering rewards for the capture of their slaves. The ads sometimes mentioned possible escape routes and accomplices as well as disguises the slaves might have assumed and supplies they took with them. Courthouse records revealed names of local citizens who were tried and convicted of harboring slaves. And slave narratives-autobiographies written by escaped slaves themselves-frequently gave details of their passage north as well as naming the towns they stopped at on the way.
In addition to the documents I found, I conducted interviews with descendants of free blacks, abolitionists, and fugitive slaves. My informants, most of them 80 or 90 years old, had, as children in the early 20th century, learned stories firsthand from the people who had been directly involved in these escapes. Others I met had diaries and letters written by relatives who had worked on the Underground Railroad. After three months of research, I had documented five routes of escape through the region and identified dozens of local landmarks connected with the Underground Railroad. And I had plenty of material for my research paper.
A year later, intrigued by the possibility of finding more of this kind of information, I got the idea of retracing one of the routes formerly traveled by fugitive slaves. I planned to use their means of transportation - foot, boat, and rail - to make my own journey. I would also stop in each town along the way to ask local people about information they might have on the Underground Railroad. I hoped that some would know of safe houses, roads, and hiding places that tradition said had been used by runaways, or perhaps direct me to the descendants of those families that had harbored the fleeing slaves. I planned also to seek out historical societies and libraries in each town in hopes of finding clues in their collections of artifacts, diaries, and manuscripts.
So in May 1996, I struck out from the Friends Meeting House in Sandy Spring, MD, on the long trail north, trudging six and a half weeks through five states and over 800 miles to Canada. I carried with me a backpack holding three changes of clothing, research notes, and just a few provisions since I had determined to beg my daily rations from people I'd meet along the way. This would allow me to travel lightly - and compel me to depend on the kindness of strangers as run-away slaves had done a century and a half earlier.
Despite my attempts at authenticity, I had some major conveniences that were not available to slaves: comfortable shoes, a cell phone in case of an emergency, and a Walk to Canada Web site on which to log progress reports. The Web site enable people to trace my location, e-mail me questions, and offer clues as to which roads I should take and who on the trail might have knowledge of the Underground Railroad. Along with numerous leads and tips, I received daily invitations from people who lived in towns I was passing through and offers to host me for the night. Throughout the weeks, as I walked through Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York, the new Information Superhighway helped me uncover the old network for runaway slaves. I couldn't help but contrast my circumstances with those of the fugitives 150 years ago. Instead of being hunted, I was the hunter-and my quest was turning out to be very fruitful.
The path I followed revealed traces of the Underground Railroad in a number of towns. In Baltimore, I visited the Orchard Street Church in the Druid Hill section of the city, which according to legend, was a sanctuary for slaves traveling on the Underground Railroad. In Wilmington, Del., I found the Old Town Hall on Market Street with its dungeon-like prison where fugitive slaves who had been captured were held while waiting to be reclaimed or sold again. In Pottstown, Pa., another stop on the railroad, I visited the Pine Forge Academy, a private school on the site of an 18th-century iron furnace. In the cellar of the headmaster's house were the remnants of subterranean tunnels used to shelter the building's first occupants from Indian attacks. I was told that when the home was owned by abolitionists in the 19th century, slaves were harbored in these tunnels during their harrowing exodus north.
With many of these stories, I faced the problem-common for historians-of confirming the oral record as history. But they all offered valuable leads that I hoped to follow up later with additional research.
When I reached Philadelphia, I decided to stop for a rest. By then, having walked as much as 25 miles each day, I had discovered firsthand a little about the physical strains of traveling on the Underground Railroad. And for the first time, I began to see my journey from a human perspective instead of from a primarily historical one. Above and beyond the clues that slaves had left behind as to their escape routes and hiding places, I now longed to know about their feelings as they escaped and found themselves in a great unknown.
But exploring the minds and hearts of runaway slaves posed a problem. None of them were alive to describe their experiences, and despite the miles I had walked on an escape trail many of them had used, no slave-catchers or bloodhounds were hunting me down. Nevertheless, I soon discovered a way to come closer to experiencing the act of escape.
I had been asked, on my second day in Philadelphia, to speak at a local school and tell a fifth-grade history class the story of my journey thus far. In addition to questions about the supplies I'd carried and the number of miles I'd walked, I got one from a student who asked what I considered the Underground Railroad's greatest escape story. I told him about the flight of Henry "Box" Brown, a slave from Richmond, Va., who in March of 1849 was boxed up and shipped express to Philadelphia. He traveled for 26 hours by boat and train. After his box was turned upside down, he spent several agonizing hours on his head before being set free. Suddenly, I had my answer.
Why not get myself boxed up and smuggled onto an Amtrak train in Philadelphia, I thought. Although I would not run the same risk as a fugitive slave if my presence were discovered, I would suffer from the same kind of physical danger and sense of fear. So with the aid of three friends, I constructed a wooden crate and arranged to have myself shipped to New York City. What follows is a step-by-step account of how I made my "escape" and what my 20th-century experience revealed about the flight of a fugitive slave.
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