While writing my latest
novel, Mountain Laurel, I had cause to research the grassroots beginnings
of what would become the Underground Railroad, a secret network of routes
established during the early 19th century, used by slaves in the
southern United States to escape into free states, or Canada. Because Mountain
Laurel, set in the 1790s, has much to do with slavery and freedom, I wanted
to look farther back, to discover—if I could—the earliest documented account of
someone helping a slave to freedom. Most readers with an interest in Civil War
history and the decades leading up to the 1860s have likely heard of Harriet
Tubman and Frederick Douglas, two of the most famous participants in the
Underground Railroad. But who was the first? We will likely never know, secrecy
being a key component to the success of such actions, but I can imagine how it
might have transpired.
Once upon a time, somewhere
in a southern state or colony, a man or woman whose name is lost to history
found the courage and humanity to aid an escaped slave along his desperate road
to freedom. Perhaps he hid the fugitive in his hay loft. She might have offered
food, or told of a friend, miles to the north, willing to shelter the runaway
for the night. Perhaps he simply turned a blind eye to the fugitive when the
laws of his day dictated otherwise.
Whoever was the first to
aid a runaway slave, by the mid-1800s an organized network of such people
extended from the central United States into Canada. Those who guided the fugitives
were called conductors. Places where slaves sheltered were dubbed stations.
Those who sheltered them were stationmasters. For the most part they were
farmers, business owners, ministers. Ordinary folk.
Levi and Vestal Coffin,
North Carolina Quakers, established the earliest known system for conveying
fugitives north to the free states, beginning around 1813. Josiah Henson, once
a slave in Maryland, became a conductor for other fleeing slaves. Giles
Pettibone, justice of the peace and state assemblyman, helped hide a family of
slaves for weeks. Isaac Hopper, a tailor’s apprentice in Philadelphia, assisted
fugitives to freedom with letters of introduction and directions to a sympathetic
Quaker’s house. Whether or not these individuals—and hundreds like them—imagined
themselves part of a national movement, they acted out of uncompromising
conviction, courage, or compassion, recognizing in the face of a fugitive their
shared humanity.
If this brief mention of
some of those who put action to their convictions has you curious to know more,
I highly recommend beginning with Fergus M. Bordewich’s Bound for Canaan,
The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America.
Lori Benton was raised in
Maryland, with southern Virginia and Appalachian frontier roots generations
deep. Her historical novels transport readers to the eighteenth century, where
she brings to life the colonial and early federal periods of American history.
Her books have received the Christy Award, the Inspy Award, and have been
honored as finalists for the ECPA Book of the Year. Lori is most at home
surrounded by mountains, currently those of the Pacific Northwest where, when
she isn’t writing, she’s likely to be found in wild places behind a camera.
Visit https://loribenton.com/about
