Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad/Chapter I
CHAPTER I.
Something over twenty years ago, I stopped a few days at the City Hotel in Wheeling, Va. The hotel was located on the southern border of the city, adjoining a small plantation in the rear of the garden. The landlord was a pleasant, social gentleman, well informed on all topics of interest, and preferred hiring his help rather than be the owner of a human being. Having learned this, I was less guarded in talking about their institutions than I should otherwise have been. Among the guests at the hotel was a family of Quakers on their way from Eastern Virginia to Indiana. One of the young men told me that he had never been outside of the State of Virginia; had long been disgusted with the wickedness and cruelty of slavery which he could not avoid seeing and hearing every day. The horrors of the everyday life on the plantations as described by him exceeded everything related in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and he had sold out, and the family were going to settle in a free State.
I was sitting on the piazza talking with this man, when a coffle of slaves came in front of the house and were hustled along by the driver; the men were fine looking fellows, though they were bare-footed, and most of them bare-headed; they were chained by the right wrist to a long bar of iron. The women were not fettered, some of them carried infants in their arms, and some children rode on the wagon with the corn on which they all were fed. They soon started toward a steamboat lying at the levee, and were shipped for the New Orleans market. This was the first drove of slaves I had ever seen, and being a little excited, I made a remark to the Quaker which the landlord overheard, and touching my shoulder, he beckoned me to go with him. We went aside, and he said to me, “You are going to Kentucky, and I advise you to beware how you speak of these things. There are men in this place, who, had they heard that remark, would have had you in jail in a hurry. I hope you will heed my advice.”
An incident that occurred on the U. G. R. R., not many months after, brought vividly to my remembrance the kind-hearted, unselfish landlord of the City Hotel in Wheeling. It was on a bitter cold day in December that a sleigh was driven into Fredonia, N. Y. ; the driver had made some inquiries, (for this was his first trip as conductor,) and turned his team down fhe creek in search of a depot. It was late in the evening, and the road was badly drifted, but the train went through and made connection as usual. The passenger came out from under the driver’s seat, shook off the blankets and Buffalo robes that had hid him and kept him warm. He was not inclined to talk at first, but a hearty welcome, a warm supper, and the assurance that he was safe from his pursuers, induced him to give a brief account of his adventures. He said:
“I have always lived in Loudoun County, Virginia. My mother was the cook, and I worked about the house, and sometimes traveled with master,—went to Washington, Baltimore, Cumberland, and once to Wheeling, on horseback. One day, when mother gave me my dinner, she said, ‘Charley, all my children gone but you, and Massa’s done gone and sold you, and I’ll never see you ’gin.’ ‘Guess not, mother, he promised you to keep me always;’ but she said, ‘I heard him tell the trader he’ll send you to town Monday morning, and he must put you in jail.’ Well, I was afraid to tell mother what I wrould do, because maybe somebody would hear, so I couldn’t say good-bye to my poor old mother, but next morning master’s best horse and I were 50 miles away towards Wheeling. Hid in the woods all day, at night left the horse loose in the woods and went on as well as I could. Did not go through the towns, went round, then found the road and went on. Found corn in the fields, and some apples, and got to Wheeling in about 14 or 15 days. Was almost starved, went into the City Hotel before daylight. The landlord was up, and I asked him for some bread. He looked at me and said, ‘You are a runaway.’ I began to say ‘no,’ but he said, ‘Go with me!’ We went to the barn, and he said, ‘Do you know whose horse that is?’ Then I owned up, and begged him to let me go and not tell master. He then read to me an advertisement, offering $500 reward for me. Then I thought, it’s no use trying—-must go back, sold! sold! Oh! I wanted to die; but the man said, ‘See here! you see that house beyond that lot?’ ‘Yes, master,’ I said. ‘You go there and tell them I said they must take care of you, and give you something to eat.’ Then he looked so happy, and I wanted to lie down and kiss his feet; but it was getting light. ‘Hurry,’ said he, ‘go right in the back door.’ When I got in I could see nobody but a sick woman on a bed. I told what the man said, and soon I heard horses running up the road, and looking out, saw my master and another man coming. I began to cry, but she told me to get under the bed and lie still, and when I had done so she took up her baby, and got it to screaming with all its might. Soon master opened the door and looked in, and asked if a negro boy had come in there. The baby cried and she pretended to try to stop it, and asked him what he wanted. He repeated the question. She tried to hush the baby, and finally said, ‘Husband is at the barn; he can tell you if he has been here.’ They went to the barn, and soon I heard them running their horses up the road. Then she said to me, ‘Go up the ladder and lie down on the floor,’ which I did, and when the man came in with his milk pail, he asked his wife who that man was, inquiring about a boy? She said, ‘I don’t know, but I know where the boy is.’ ‘Where is he?’ ‘He went up the ladder, and you must carry him something to eat, poor fellow, he’s starved.’ As soon as he could, he came to me with enough to eat, and then fixed a place for me to lie down, and said, ‘You are tired and sleepy. Now go to sleep, and if you wake, don’t stir nor make a noise until I come.’ Having slept little since I started, I slept all day; it was dark when he roused me up and told me to go down. I found a good supper ready, and while I was eating the man and his wife said not a word. When I had done he said, ‘Come out here.’ Following him, I saw at the door three horses; there was a man on one of them; I was told to mount one, and he mounted the other. I was between them. Not a word was spoken, and passing round the edge of the town near the hill, we came to the road leading north near the bluff above the river. I didn’t know what it all meant, but supposed they were going to give me up, and claim the $500. We rode three miles maybe, hitched the horses in some bushes, and went down the steep bluff to the Ohio Fiver. He pulled a stake and threw it into a boat that was tied to it, and motioned me to get in. We soon got across the river, then taking a little bundle, he directed me to go forward, and we were soon on a road. He then put two loaves of bread in my hand, and said to me, ‘This is a free State, and there is the north star’ pointing to it; ‘God bless you’ and I soon heard the splash of his pole in the river, and started northward.”
Charley found himself alone in the road, the river on his right hand, broad fields on his left, and no house in sight; as to the north star, he looked towards it when his friend pointed towards it, but did not know which it was; his education had been neglected. Smart negroes knew that star by sight. When a slave could find the north star, and show his mother how he knew it, and by what signs he found it, he was ready to graduate—he had finished his education—but Charley, poor fellow, had been having an easy time, riding about with his master, caring for the horses, blacking his boots, and brushing his clothes, and had not thought of going north until his mother told him that he had been sold. Besides, Charley was terribly disappointed. He supposed he was to be delivered to his master; that a white man would feed him and help him on his way to freedom, when he could have $500 for less trouble and no risk, he had not supposed was possible. He began to feel dizzy and faint, went a few rods and sat down, and soon fell asleep. He dreamed that two men were putting him into jail; he struggled, and awoke up finding himself alone, and darkness all around. He soon aroused sufficiently to understand the situation, and started along the road, not knowing whether he was going north or south, but kept going until it began to be light, when he saw a paper nailed to a board fence with a picture of a negro running, and looking like the advertisement that the landlord showed him in his barn. While he stood looking at it, a man came behind him, put his hand on his shoulder, and said, what have we here? He turned to run, but the man held on to him, speaking kindly, and said, “don’t be frightened, let us see what this is about;" then he read the advertisement, and looking at Charley, said, “this means you; come with me, there is no time to be lost.” He took him to a safe place far back in the woods, and seeing that he had bread with him, he said, “I will bring you more food to-night,” and left him.
When he came to bring food, he told Charley that he would have to stay a few days until the men that were looking for him were gone. He was soon taken to a comfortable place, but it was two or three weeks before his kind conductor felt safe in starting with him.
The route from Wheeling was supposed to be towards Detroit at that season of the year, and the hunters were able to trace Charley going that way. They met, all along the way, men who had seen him, and could describe him as well as if they had known him from his childhood. Those rascally U. G. R. R. conductors were putting him through Carroll, Starke, Wayne, Ashland, and Huron counties, toward Detroit, where he could cross over. There were plenty of men along this route that were waiting to show them the way he had gone.
Meanwhile, Charley was on the short route to Buffalo, by way of Meadville, Pa., and Westfield, N. Y., though no man saw him on the way.
At Westfield Mr. Knowlton kept the station, and it was his splendid team, that on that cold day in December, came into Fredonia and turned off at the old Pemberton stand on the West Hill, and landed Charley at the cosy little station in Cordova, from whence he was sent forward the next day to Black Rock and across the river to Canada.
In relating Charley’s escape, I have met some people who doubted that story about the landlord in Wheeling. That kind of people have found the parable of the good Samaritan a stumbling block too great to get over, and so multitudes of men have neglected the whole of the New Testament rather than believe and practice its lesson.