Editor's Note: This
article is excerpted from the book
In the Shadow of the Civil War: Passmore Williamson and the Rescue
of Jane Johnson and appears here through the courtesy of the
authors. Nat Brandt will be speaking to the CCWRT at its
March 10, 2010 meeting.
It was "very warm," William Still
thought, "intensely hot" in fact for a mid-July day in Philadelphia.
Still was wearing a top hat as a shield against the blazing
late-afternoon sun, but otherwise he had chosen to don the jacket of
the suit he wore to work. It couldn't have been comfortable in the
heat, for Still was striding quickly down Fifth Street, an urgent
note in his hand. A "colored boy" he had never seen before had
handed him the note at the office of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery
Society.
Still was the society's clerk, a
title that belied his critical duties. He was entrusted with running
the storefront operation at the society's headquarters at 31 North
Fifth, where he distributed abolitionist literature and sold books,
tracts, and subscriptions to newspapers dedicated to the
abolitionist cause. But more importantly, he was the society's
"receiving agent." He kept in touch by mail with
abolitionists in other northern states as well as with sympathizers
in the South, becoming widely known in abolition circles as a
go-between, forwarder of information, and arranger of escapes. A
journalist would describe him as "somewhat tall, neat in figure and
person" with, as the journalist added, "a smiling face."
It is doubtful that Still was smiling
that day. The note he was carrying demanded immediate attention.
Still served as secretary of the society's General Vigilance
Committee. One of its functions-a controversial one that brought it
into direct conflict with the federal government-was to inform
slaves brought by their owners into Pennsylvania, a free state, that
they were entitled to their freedom "without another moment's
service." The committee would assist them and even provide "counsel
without charge" if' requested.
Significantly, Still was also
chairman of the Vigilance Committee's special Acting Committee. It
was responsible not only for telling a slave about his or her
opportunity for freedom, but also for providing food, shelter, and
transportation north on what was known as the Underground Railroad.
The so-called railroad was a conglomeration of literally dozens of
undefined "routes"-trails, roads, rivers north, even coastal
waterways-leading to states as far-flung as those in New England and
to communities such as Toronto, Kingston, and Port Stanley in
Canada, as well. The railroad's participants developed their own set
of signals. "The wind blows from the South today" alerted
sympathizers to the presence of fugitive slaves in a particular
area. Its "conductors," "ticket agents," and "station masters" -
blacks and whites - numbered in the thousands. A total of 348
"conductors" were said to handle "passengers" throughout
Pennsylvania, and as many as nine thousand "passengers" would pass
through Philadelphia alone in the years between 1830 and 1860. No
complete roster of names exists of those who risked imprisonment to
help escaped slaves, and only a few of them-such as Levi Coffin in
Cincinnati, Dr. John Rankin in Ripley, Ohio, Thomas Garrett in
Wilmington, Delaware, Isaac Hopper in Philadelphia – ever became
known publicly. "There was no regular organization, no constitution,
no officers, no laws or agreement or rule except the 'Golden Rule,'"
said "stationmaster" Isaac Beck, "and every man did what seemed
right in his own eyes." Which, of course, was strictly forbidden by
the Fugitive Slave Law. For that matter, any assistance whatsoever
was forbidden.
The law was one of a crazy quilt of
measures that made up the Compromise of 1850. It was an attempt in
Congress to keep the continuing dispute between slave states and
free states from boiling over. And compromise it was, seesawing
between the demands of the North and the South and, as it would turn
out, satisfying neither. One bill permitted the admission of
California as a free state. That pleased northerners. Another bill,
establishing the territories of New Mexico and Utah, left it to the
settlers to determine whether they wanted slavery when the
territories became states. The measure, embodying a formula known as
popular sovereignty, was for the benefit of southerners. Yet another
bill outlawed slave trading in the District of Columbia-a source of
profound embarrassment to northerners-but it did not make it illegal
to own slaves in the nation's capital. Provisions of these laws,
whatever their intention, did little to soothe either the fifteen
states that permitted slavery or the sixteen states, including newly
admitted California, where slavery was illegal.
The Compromise of 1850 was just one
more in a series of repeated attempts to resolve the question of
slavery, a problem that harked back to the founding of the nation
itself. The word "slavery" was never mentioned in the United States
Constitution, hammered out in Philadelphia's State House in 1787,
but it was the great unspoken word in it. It was clear what was
meant by Clause 3, Section 2, Article IV, an acknowledgment that the
"peculiar institution" did exist, that it was tolerated, that it
would not be abolished: "No Person held to Service or Labour in one
State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in
Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from
such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the
Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due." And it was clear
that Clause 3, Section 2, Article I of the Constitution also spoke
tacitly of slavery. It read that in the apportionment of
representatives to Congress based on population, free individuals
but only "three fifths of all other Persons"-meaning, of course,
slaves-would be counted as part of a state's entire population. In
addition, in order to fortify the constitutional provision regarding
the return of escaped slaves, Congress in 1793 passed legislation
spelling out what a slave owner could do to get back a slave. This
law clearly recognized slaves as property chattel that could be
bought and sold.
In 1797 yet a second law dealing with
the recovery of fugitive slaves was fueled in great part by fears of
the impact of two major events: the French Revolution, when a
subjected populace rose up in bloody revolt against authority, and a
successful and bloody slave uprising in Haiti. This second law
specified that runaways were not entitled to a legal defense or jury
trial. The only restriction on the slave trade was the prohibition
against the importation of slaves after 1808. Nothing, however, was
done to stem the practice of slavery within the nation, nor the
trade in slaves between states. Virginia and Maryland, in
particular, became breeding grounds for black men, women, and
children who were subsequently sold and shipped to slave owners
south and west, to Alabama, the Carolinas, Florida, Georgia,
Mississippi, Texas. The District of Columbia, the nation's capital
itself, became the center of the domestic traffic, its slave pens
flourishing, until 1850, when the trading in human lives there was
outlawed. By then, there were well over three million blacks
enslaved in the South, most of them treated inhumanly, without any
of the "unalienable Rights" or any chance whatsoever for the
"Pursuit of Happiness" promised in the Declaration of Independence.
In the North, beginning almost as
soon as independence from England was declared, one state after
another, Pennsylvania included, legislated against slavery, either
abolishing the practice outright or, as in Pennsylvania's case in
1780, establishing a gradual emancipation program. In the South,
however, the need for cheap labor to work the cotton, rice, sugar,
and tobacco plantations buttressed the institution, and as the new
nation expanded westward the issue often grew divisive. So it seemed
inevitable that in the first half of the nineteenth century the
nation would be tom by battles over the admission of new states to
the Union-should they be free or slave? Sectionalism grew more
divisive each passing year. Divisions within political parties were
reflected in the nation's major religious denominations as well;
disputes over slavery and theology divided Baptists, Methodists, and
Presbyterians into separate branches, North and South.
Every attempt to resolve the issue
seemed doomed. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 drew a territorial
line across the continent, barring slavery north of it and including
the territories of the Louisiana Purchase from the expansion of
slavery. But the issue arose again in 1846 when war with Mexico
broke out. Abolitionists interpreted the war as an effort by the
South to extend slavery into America's southern neighbor. In fact,
many southern politicians favored the annexation of all of Mexico as
slave territory. The southerners' advocacy of annexation proved
ineffective, but they were able to stymie the so-called Wilmot
Proviso, an amendment to an appropriations bill that would have
prohibited slavery in any territory that the United States acquired
as a result of the war. For their part, anti-slavery speakers
fulminated against the war, exploiting the conflict as a
freedom-or-bondage issue. John Greenleaf Whittier declared that the
plaza "of every conquered Mexican village" was becoming "a
market-place for human flesh," while fellow poet James Russell
Lowell condemned the war as a "national crime committed in behoof
[sic] of Slavery, our common sin."
The Compromise of 1850 did little to smooth over the growing
division in the nation. And of all its provisions, the Fugitive
Slave Law was the most controversial. In actual practice, it
incensed both sides-the North when it was enforced, the South when
it was ignored. The law was intended to appease southerners who
pressured for more stringent legislation to prevent what had become
a continual flight of slaves to states in the North. The runaways
were not only costly, but their escapes dramatically mocked southern
claims of a paternal system of contented slaves unconcerned with
freedom. From the time of the law's enactment in the fall of 1850,
its provisions only intensified the animosity of abolitionists to
slavery and, portending perhaps the final bloody conflict in the
years ahead, swayed other northerners who had remained indifferent
about the issue to finally take a stand. To them, it was a repugnant
law with horrific consequences.
Under the Fugitive Slave Law, federal
circuit courts were authorized to appoint commissioners to adjudge
the claims of slave owners and grant certificates for the removal of
a runaway to the state from which he or she had escaped. However,
the kidnapping of free blacks was commonplace at the time; there
were gangs that scoured northern states, snaring and carting off
free men and women when they could catch them unawares. At one
point, for example, a number of young black men, some of an
estimated twenty youths aged eight to fifteen who disappeared one
year from Philadelphia, were believed to have drowned in the
Delaware River. But rumors spread in the black community that they
had been kidnapped by bounty hunters. Actually, the Fugitive Slave
Law never legalized such abductions, but it eliminated whatever
legal recourse a kidnapped slave enjoyed. Even without a warrant,
the owner of an alleged slave, or his agent, could seize any person
they claimed was a slave and take the individual immediately before
a federal judge or one of the commissioners. The alleged slave was
denied the benefit of a trial or even the chance to testify in his
or her own behalf.
The commissioners, by the way,
received ten dollars for every slave they ordered remanded to his or
her owner, but only five dollars for every person they decided to
free. While it is impossible to determine how much the difference in
compensation influenced their decisions, within fifteen months of
the law's taking effect, judges and commissioners sent eighty-four
alleged runaways back south, while releasing only five. In the ten
years between 1850 and 1860, the judges and commissioners released
only eleven alleged fugitives; they remanded south a total of 332
blacks.
Another provision of the law gave a
slave owner the right to enlist a federal marshal or his deputies to
capture an alleged runaway, and if they refused or were derelict in
carrying out a warrant, each faced a fine of one thousand dollars, a
substantial amount then. Each also faced a thousand-dollar penalty
if a fugitive in their custody somehow got away.
What particularly infuriated
northerners was the provision in the law that the commissioners
appointed to adjudge the claims of slave owners had the power to
call upon any citizen for help in capturing a runaway. It didn't
matter what that citizen thought about the institution of slavery,
whether he or she condoned it or opposed it. He, or she, could be
ordered to participate in a fugitive's capture. Failure to do so
could result in a fine as high as one thousand dollars and
imprisonment for up to six months. By its enactment, the Fugitive
Slave Law made slavery a national commitment, forcing northerners to
be actively complicit and supportive of the system. It mocked
southern idealizations by making it clear that southerners
considered slaves in monetary terms rather than as human beings. It
was a law that almost begged to be disobeyed. Perhaps no legislation
enacted by Congress in the nineteenth century stirred up such heated
passion as the Fugitive Slave Law. It was a law based solely on
property rights-the rights of the slave owner. It totally
disregarded human rights, and its passage spurred a revival of
abolitionists' commitment to aiding runaways.
Following the Compromise of 1850
there was another controversial congressional effort to soothe
tempers, though it, too, proved futile: the Kansas-Nebraska Act of
1854. It nullified the provisions of the Missouri Compromise and
substituted in its stead popular sovereignty, the idea that the
citizens of a territory could choose for themselves what kind of
state it would become, slave or free, when admitted to the Union.
The act divided Kansas from Nebraska with the expectation that its
citizens would vote Kansas to be a slave state. Warring factions
would turn it into "Bloody Kansas."
It was a time of trouble, and adding
to the turmoil was a human element that had been festering for
years, attracting increasing attention, adding fuel to the
controversy over the issue of the extension of slavery: tragic
incidents and stories of brutality told by former slaves or the fate
of free blacks such as Solomon Northup who were shanghaied into
slavery. Abolitionists were outraged.
Pennsylvania sat on the Mason-Dixon
Line, which symbolically came to divide North from South, and
Philadelphia was within a few days' walk from Maryland, a slave
state. Hundreds of runaways, the majority of them from the
Chesapeake area, passed through the city each year, attracted to it
by Pennsylvania's policy on emancipation. Some even settled in the
city. The fugitives often were barefoot, in rags, hungry. They had
been passed along from farmplace to farmplace, from village to
village, mostly at night, assisted chiefly by other blacks, who were
the prime "conductors" of the Underground Railroad. They were active
aiders and abettors, spiriting runaways through and out of
Philadelphia, though their actions drew little public notice at the
time and sparse credit historically for more than a century. In one
black neighborhood alone in Philadelphia, all the residents along
Paschall's Alley, just south of Coates Street in the Northern
Liberties section of the city, were known to open their doors to
runaways. The escaped slaves came bearing stories of whippings, of
being shackled, forced to work from dawn to dusk. Light-skinned
children were mute testimony to the rape of black women. Women, men,
children – they all spoke of families tom apart when a spouse was
sold or a child parted from parents. They needed help.
If the fugitive was fortunate, he or
she came to the attention of William Still. He was in many ways an
unusual black man. For one thing, he was one of the few blacks in
the city who worked intimately with white abolitionists. Most
blacks, whether free men and women or escaped slaves, kept to
themselves, as wary of whites as whites were of them.
Still himself was the child of former
slaves, the youngest of eighteen children. His father, a Maryland
slave, had earned money in his spare time and was able to purchase
his freedom and move to New Jersey. Some masters permitted their
slaves who had a craft or special talent to work for pay in what
little free time they had, and many used the money to buy their way
out of bondage. Still's mother, however, was an escaped slave. Her
first attempt to flee, with four children in tow, had ended in their
capture. But on a second attempt, with only two of her youngsters,
she succeeded in getting away and was able to rejoin her husband.
The family changed its surname from Steel to Still to forestall
further pursuit of the mother. She also changed her given name from
Sidney to Charity.
By the time William was born on
October 7, 1821, the growing family was living in freedom on a
forty-acre farm in a secluded, far-off section of Burlington County,
New Jersey, known as the Pines. The farm was outside the town of
Medford, an agricultural area populated in the main by Quakers.
William worked on the family farm and did odd chores for some of his
Quaker neighbors.
The death of his father just before
Christmas in 1842 marked a turning point in Still's life. He left
home and decided to seek his fortune elsewhere, eventually heading
two years later across the Delaware River to Philadelphia, which
seemed to promise a range of opportunities for a young black man.
Two sisters were living there, so he would not be totally without
family connections. He was twenty-two years old at the time.
The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law
in 1850 brought great personal risk. The same year that Still began
work at the Anti-Slavery Society, 1847, he married Letita George.
The couple made their home on a short, alley-like street that no
longer exists, Ronaldson's Row. It was tucked between Ninth and
Tenth streets below South Street in the very heart of the city's
major black community. Their home became a sanctuary for runaway
slaves, a way station before being transported farther north to New
York State, New England or Canada, passed along from hiding place to
hiding place by the friendly "conductors" of the Underground
Railroad. In the decade before the Civil War, it was reported,
almost every fugitive fleeing through Philadelphia took shelter in
the Stills's "humble" home. And what had begun as a clerk's job at
the Anti-Slavery Society became a lifelong passion. Still would
devote his life, first to helping runaway slaves and then, after
emancipation, to helping fellow blacks to receive an education, work
training and other assistance that could better their lives. A
contemporary biographer who knew Still wrote that he had "seen his
race bowed and broken by slavery."
Still was involved in helping an
extraordinary number of fugitives. The society's General Vigilance
Committee – which Still described as being "synonymous with the
underground railroad" – would boast, for instance, that in the
period alone between December 1852 and February 1857 it had helped
nearly five hundred runaways to gain their freedom. Still himself
noted that in a single month in 1857, sixty escaped slaves – of all
ages and both sexes – were "sent northward on freedom's journey."
"Fugitives from southern injustice are coming thick and fast," the
abolitionist weekly Provincial Freeman, published in Canada,
declared in 1854. "The underground railroad never before did so
large a business as it is doing now."
The death of his father in 1842 had
been a turning point for Still, propelling him out of the safety and
security of the family homestead into an alien and unwelcoming
world. Ten years later, an amazing coincidence spurred another
turning point in Still's life. An old, white-haired black man named
Peter Friedman walked into the Anti-Slavery Society's office. He had
bought his freedom in Alabama and had traveled more than a thousand
miles to Philadelphia, where he heard that "his people" lived, in
hopes of earning enough money to purchase the freedom of his wife
and three children, whom he had left behind. Friedman--or Freedman
as his name is sometimes spelled-had been roaming the city streets,
trying to locate "his people" and thought that someone in the
society's office might have a clue as to their whereabouts. Friedman
began to describe the members of his family. He told how he and a
brother had been left behind with a grandmother when his mother,
Sidney, successfully fled from Maryland with two younger sisters.
His father Levin, he knew, had died in the early 1840s. He
understood that a sister Mary ran a school for black children in
Philadelphia. Still could not believe what he was hearing. Friedman
was describing the events experienced in his own family. He realized
that Friedman was his brother, a brother he had never met. Their
mother had been unable to take all her children when she had fled
her master a second time. Still had been born free years later in
New Jersey, but as a youth he had heard his parents talk about the
boys who had been left behind. Suddenly it occurred to Still what he
must do: "All over this wide and extended country thousands of
mothers and children, separated by slavery, were in a similar way
living without the slightest knowledge of each other's
whereabouts." From then on, Still took it upon himself to keep a
list of the fleeing slaves that came through the Anti-Slavery
Society's office, recording not only their names and where they were
from, but also the stories of their escapes and whom they had left
behind-husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, who
might someday escape, too, and want to locate kin who had fled
before them.
Still kept detailed records of the
fugitive slaves who passed through the society's office. It was a
dangerous thing to do, because his notebooks were proof that he and
others were helping runaway slaves. That was clearly in direct
violation of the Fugitive Slave Law. Still, however, persisted,
compiling the names and stories of the hundreds of escaped slaves
who were ushered into the welcoming hands of the Anti-Slavery
Society and sped along on the Underground Railroad to safety and
freedom.
Although the message Still was
carrying now did not deal with a fugitive slave, it was nevertheless
another appeal for help and the reason for his haste. Reaching the
comer of Arch Street, Still, the note in hand, turned, heading for
the office of another member of the Acting Committee. The time was
4:30 P.M. The day, Wednesday, July 18, 1855. The member's name was
Passmore Williamson. |
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William Still
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Passmore
Williamson
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