O Canada

During America's 250 years of slavery, Canada was the ultimate destination for freedom seekers.

“The Underground Railroad,” Charles T. Webber, artist. 1893

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of research on a topic of great interest to me – the Underground Railroad. Part of that interest is the fear that many of us may need to escape to Canada once again, and this is not a political piece, although there are disturbing parallels here pertaining to current events.

For quite a while now, scholars and historians have been digging through records, reading slave narratives, the diaries and letters of those who were agents on the railroad, and getting access to secret rooms and passages in all manner of buildings. All are looking for answers to those most elusive of questions about the Railroad – How did they do it in a time of limited communication methods, where are the locations, who were the leaders, and how was it mapped out?

Historians love a good mystery and the Underground Railroad certainly is that. Helping fugitives flee the farms, cities and plantations of the South to make their way to freedom in the North and Canada was a profoundly illegal act. Stealing an owner’s valuable property (one’s self) was major theft and helping a “thief” escape made the helper a criminal too and violated federal law.

The first Fugitive Slave Law was passed in 1793 and was renewed and beefed up in 1850. The latter was worse than the first, with harsher penalties. Both laws tell us that for over 50 years, and even longer, enslaved people were freeing themselves in numbers that necessitated passing two strict laws. That alone contradicts the fantasy that the kidnapping of Africans and sending them around the world as slaves was some sort of “immigration,” and that plantation owners loved and cared about their slaves like they were their slow children who were content to never leave Massa and Missy. All those horror stories about rape, cruelty and mutilation were just outliers and fake news. Slavery could be seen as something, if not good, necessary. Right.

Even before slavery was abolished in many Northern states, including New York (1827), people were making their way north and losing themselves in cities, farms and towns where they could blend into existing black communities, even small ones, and have new lives, albeit always looking over their shoulders.

The escape of fugituve slaves from Norfolk Virginia, 1856 via National Park Service (probably not anymore)

So how did they get north? Most slaves couldn’t read or write, that was highly illegal and could be a death sentence. Many had never been off the plantation or farm and knew nothing about the area they lived in, let alone distant cities or towns. States like New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio were almost mythical, and which way was north, anyway? Here’s where both internal communication among the enslaved (“Follow the drinking gourd,”) and the Underground Railroad come in.

Part of the reason our knowledge of the routes and safe houses and the people who ran them is so sketchy, it’s because the network was run like a line in the movie “Fight Club.” The first rule of Fight Club was to not talk about Fight Club. The same was true about the URR. People were at great risk in helping others. You could be arrested or even killed. If everyone knew what you were doing, the bounty hunters would be breaking down your door and they weren’t going to be polite about it.

The earliest mentions of the name “Underground Railroad” were in the mid-1830s, which makes sense, since the first commercial railroad train in the US left its depot in 1830. At the time, people used to line up along the tracks to watch these iron horses, belching smoke and sparks pass by, with passengers or freight in the wooden cars behind them. How wonderful was that? By the time the Civil War started, there were multiple passenger and freight lines in every state, and one could travel to other states in a matter of hours or days, not weeks.

When escaped slaves started to disappear without a trace, one planter, after an unsuccessful attempt to find a fugitive was said to have complained that it was “like he disappeared underground.” As the loose network of those helping fugitives escape expanded, it made sense to use the railroad as an analogy, an Underground Railroad with routes, conductors, stations, station masters and passengers.

As attempts to erase American history continue, the Underground Railroad and its most famous passengers and conductors stay with us because their lives and deeds can’t be pushed under the rug. Frederick Douglass would have remained Frederick Bailey, slave, had he not escaped via the Railroad, and the world would have been deprived of one of its most eloquent and important speakers and writers. Many, many others would have remained enslaved for the rest of their lives and would be merely statistics today.

Seventy-some people would have died in servitude had it not been for Harriet Tubman, the most famous figure associated with the Railroad. She escaped herself, and then went back 13 times to rescue others, and was never caught and never lost a passenger. The authorities could never find her in part because they didn’t know what she looked like. This tiny woman, barely five feet tall, would pass unnoticed as a field hand, a bent-over old woman who threatened no one, or just another slave boy with downcast eyes and a humble demeanor. She was awesome.

So why did people, both black and white, risk their own freedom to help the enslaved get away from their owners and north to freedom? For many, it was their religious duty. At the time, Quakers were one of the major Christian denominations of the day. Both in North America and in England, Quakers led the fight to abolish slavery. They believed, rightly, that it was an abomination to God.

Quakers were in the forefront of the fight to abolish slavery in the British Empire too, which occurred in 1834. That law freed slaves in England and its colonies around the world, including the Caribbean and Canada, a lifetime ahead of the United States. Quakers in America lived everywhere, in cities and in rural communities. Many of them were prominent wealthy people, merchants and farmers.

People of other denominations and faiths and no faith were equally active. Agents, both black and white, were an invisible army, shepherding tired, terrified, hungry and cold people to safety and getting them to their next stop up the line. Many people think the Underground Railroad only existed as an overland journey, with fugitives of all ages hiding in the woods and swamps, running toward safety in a barn, or hiding in secret rooms, attics and tunnels.

The genius of the railroad was that it was not just that. The journey could also take place on rivers, boats and trains. It just depended on where you were. Those escaping were not all field hands, either. Some of the boldest stories are about slaves who were used to being around white people, and could play roles. Someone could be dressed like a house slave, carry packages and just look like they were doing some master or mistress’s errands and walk right past the authorities. With a white abolitionist in a carriage, a black coachman could simply ride away and at some point, connect to the next station further north. There was a lot of sneaky stuff going on that played on many slaveholders’ prejudices about how intelligent or resourceful their slaves were.

Up until the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, it was possible for those fugitives to escape to NY state and New England and make new lives for themselves, especially in cities and towns where they could be lost in the crowds. Slave catchers still hunted people down, and after the passage of the law, the northern states were overrun with professional bounty hunters. To be a slave catcher was to be part of a growing industry, peopled by those who eagerly embraced their jobs, and had no problem with the morality of what they were doing. Fugitives were just merchandise, with a bounty on their heads, being returned to their owners.

It didn’t even matter if they captured the wrong person, often never-enslaved free people. After all, the descriptions on the wanted posters were usually vague enough to include just about any black person, In their eyes, they all looked alike, and once in custody, the prisoners had no rights, and were not allowed to speak or give evidence in court. Those in custody had no right to a lawyer, and the court was not obliged to listen to any white person who advocated on their behalf. These hearings often took place so quickly, it was over before a lawyer could appear in court with a writ of habeas corpus. (This is horribly prescient.)

Sometimes the only way to escape was to hope that your friends or relatives could buy you back before you were dragged off in chains forever. Thanks to the movie, many people know the story of Solomon Northrup, a free man from Saratoga Springs who was sold into slavery. Two white “gentlemen” approached the musician and offered to hire him to play violin in Washington DC. That’s not what they wanted at all. His narrative “Twelve Years a Slave” was not fiction. There were many Solomon and Sally Northrups. Most were not lured, they were just grabbed off the street.

If no American city or town was truly safe for fugitives, then the only place that was not bound by the Fugitive Slave Law was in another country – Canada. While the final goal of placing people on Canada’s soil had long been a part of the Railroad, after 1850, it was the ultimate goal. Canada could be a place where someone could live free and not have to look over their shoulder as they got an education, started or continued a family and found jobs. They could establish churches, beneficial societies and so much more, to do all the things that free people in a free society could do. Someday, maybe, they could return home as free people.

Now, that’s not to say that everyone in Canada was glad to see them or even treated many of the former fugitives well. Canada was not without its bigots and pro-slavery cheerleaders, and its treatment of First Nation people was often as bad as slavery. But this isn’t about Canada’s faults, this is about the fact that once the stationmasters of the Railroad led people to the border of Canada they were closer to freedom than ever before in their lives. It may not have been the heavenly Promised Land, but it was the next best thing. Thank you Canada!

Today, everyone in cities, towns and farms that might have been along the path of the Underground Railroad claim it as their own. Every root cellar, basement and attic is a possible site. Historians and archivists are finding new sites, documented in some way as to claim authenticity. Unfortunately, many people don’t have their dates and facts straight. Your lovely Second Empire house built in 1870 with an extra deep cellar room was not a place where fugitives took refuge. The Civil War had ended before the house was built. But how great would that have been if it were true!

Proving your home or another building in your community was truly a stop on the Railroad is now a source of pride and celebration. These places commemorate those who defied federal law and looked higher to a moral certitude – that holding fellow human beings in slavery was wrong and helping them get to freedom was a duty.

The people in the Abolitionist movement wrote letters to newspapers and politicians and raised and donated funds to aid the cause. They gathered in churches, temples and meeting halls to denounce the evil of slavery and sent forth some of the most eloquent people of their day to speak wherever they could. The most powerful voices were those who had once been enslaved. Not everyone in the mid-19^th century agreed with them, there were plenty of people everywhere who didn’t care about something that didn’t affect them or had no problem with slavery within the nation’s borders.

Many powerful people in the North made their fortunes from the crops on Southern plantations, and didn’t want that income stream to cease. At the beginning of the Civil War there was actually a movement of men in New York City who wanted the city to secede from the Union, so that financial support by and for the South could continue.

Those people will always exist. So too those who will stand against injustice, wherever and whatever that injustice might be. The Underground Railroad should always be celebrated, and its stationmasters, conductors and passengers should forever be a valuable and true part of American history. We shouldn’t have to escape to Canada again to be free.