Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad/Chapter XV
CHAPTER XV.
In the Shenandoah Valley, near the Bine Ridge, two slaves, a man and his wife, sat talking late in the evening. They were in trouble, and knew not what to do, and there was not a being on earth to whom they dared to apply for counsel. Both wept and both offered a silent prayer to Him whose ear is ever open to the cry of the poor. Finally the man aroused himself and spoke in low, earnest tones. He said, “Rosa, we must go; I can’t bear to see you sold and drove like a beast, in a coffle to the rice swamps of Georgia, to say nothing of myself.” She answered, “It can’t be possible that master has sold us; we have served him so faithfully for thirty years and always obeyed him. Oh dear, Joe, what shall we do. They will catch us and whip us almost to death, and then we shall be separated never to see each other again. It may be we’re not sold, and if we run off he’ll sell us sure.” Joe answered, “He sold us to-day; I heard him read the names of ten of us, to the trader that has been about here three or four days, and our names were first. Yes, Rosa, we must go. If they catch us it can be no worse. The whipping will not be half as hard to bear as the thought that we never tried to be free, and if we die as Sally did when they caught her and whipped her to death for killing the dog that caught her, even that is better than to be driven and sold away from each other.”
Fearing that they might be put in jail the next morning, they started about midnight, taking nothing with them, traveling in the road until it began to be light, when they went into a swamp and waded in creeks and swamps until almost noon, so as to baffle the dogs. Then going as near the road as they thought would be safe, they rested until dark, when they started again. Before morning they were so faint from hunger and fatigue that Rosa could go no farther; the next day Joe found some berries and brought to her these and a few roots, and some hours of sleep revived her so that they went forward. The fourth night they became so exhausted by hunger and fatigue that they laid down in the woods expecting to die there, but after resting a while Joe determined to obtain food for his wife at all hazards, and having slept until evening, he left her and Avent in search of a house. Coming to a road he followed it until he found that he had passed a house. Having the superstition common among slaves, he feared bad luck if he turned back, and so he went on and soon came to another house and knocked at the door. A man opened the door, and looking at Joe, said, “You are a fugitive slave, but be not afraid, come in.” It was with great effort that Joe stepped into the house and sat down. The man spoke kindly to him, and when he learned which way he came, he said, “It is well for you that you did not stop at the house you came past; they would have betrayed you. What can I do for you«?” Joe could only say “bread.” When it was given to him he looked at it and turned it over, seeming as the man thought, to almost devour it with his eyes. He said, “You are starved; why don’t you eat?” “Yes,” said Joe, “I am starved, but hungry as I am, I could not eat this if Iliad none for my wife.” “Eat,” said the man, and going into another room he brought some bread and meat and sent him away, saying, “Stay where your wife is to-night and to-morrow; come here again in the evening. Meanwhile, you must remember that your master will be looking for you. If I see any danger I will warn you by the ‘crack of my rifle.’”
When Joe started to go again to the house of their friend, Rosa went with him and stopped behind some bushes near the road. Joe had been gone about ten minutes when she heard horses coming, and lookingthrough the bushes, she saw her master and two of his neighbors go by; Joe had heard them also, and ran into the woods and soon heard the crack of a rifle. Later in the evening he went again to the house of their friend, who said, “Your master was here an hour ago and asked if I had seen two runaway niggers. I told him that a man and a woman went by pretty fast, but I did not see their faces, and did not know whether they were runaways or not, and he and his men rode off down the road.”
Joe and Rosa were in safe hands. They had, through great suffering, hunger, fright and fatigue, been guided by a kind Providence to the Southern terminus of the U. G. R. R. The track had but just reached this point and was not yet in good running order. However, although the trains ran slow and with caution, they were landed safely in Chester Co., Pa., about ten days after they left the first station.
Joe and Rosa found employment in the service of an honest Quaker farmer, who never asked them from whence they came. When they had been there almost a year, the Quaker returned from market one evening and sent for Joe to come to his room. When he came in the farmer said to him, “Be seated, Joseph, I wish to talk with thee. Thee will be careful what thee says; if what I have heard about thee and thy wife be true, thee need not say so, nor is it necessary for thee to deny it. I have found that thou art discreet, and can be silent when to speak truth might result in something unpleasant. A man who says his name is Ridgley, and that he lives in Virginia, is stopping in Chester, and has employed a man who does little else than to hunt fugitives from slavery, to find and arrest a man and a woman that he says escaped from his plantation last year. I overheard the hunter describing them when I went for my horses into the barn this afternoon. The description answered so well to thee and thy wife that I fear he will arrest thee whether ye are the people they are looking for or not. Ye have been faithful servants, and I shall add something to the wages we agreed upon. Now go and talk with thy wife, and then come to me again for thy money, as I do not like to have accounts for labor run too long.”
The poor fugitive and his wife felt this new trouble severely; they could not understand why two honest, industrious people, who had done no wrong, should be driven from place to place while their persecutors were protected by the government and by society in thus depriving them of their rights. When Joe went again to the farmer Rosa went with him. He gave to them their money, and then said: “Friend Walton starts at ten o’clock this evening so as to be in Philadelphia before morning with his butter; he goes in the night because the days are too warm for the butter. There is a man to whom he will introduce you, and of whom you may buy such clothing as you need at fair prices; his name is Benjamin Harrison. Thee can confide in him with safety, and Joseph, if thee thinks best to relate to him what I have told thee, he will give thee sound advice and efficient aid, but if thee would choose to stay with us, go early to the hay field to work.” Walton was a shrewd conductor, and he delivered them at Harrison’s U. G. R. R. station in Southwark, a suburb of the Quaker City, in due time.
The following day, about noon, Ridgley called at the house of the Quaker, and as dinner was ready he was invited to partake. He sat down with the family and soon entered into conversation about the fugitives. He spoke of them as having been frightened without cause and run off. They had always been well used, happy and contented, and he had no doubt they would be glad to go back among their friends, as he would assure them they should not be punished if they would go without making him trouble. He had heard that two negroes answering the description of his were living there, and as the people in the neighborhood had long been opposed to the return of fugitives, and might try to prevent their being carried back by process of law, he would like to see them, and if he was not mistaken about their identity, he believed they would rejoice to see him and go home willingly. He asked to have them called in without being told that he was there, that the family might witness their happiness on seeing their old master. The farmer said that his people were in the hay field at some distance from the house. “Thee will rest here until they come, and I will have them all come in and see if thee can identify them,” he added, meanwhile drawing Ridgley into conversation on the subject of slavery, maintaining that the white race had no better right to enslave the blacks than the blacks to enslave the whites. “I am aware,” said Ridgley, “that your people are opposed, honestly, no doubt, to our institution, but it exists among us, and must always be so, for should the mad schemes of the abolitionists prevail, amalgamation with all its disgusting results would be sure to follow; and then so numerous a body of ignorant men having the rights of franchise and social position denied them cannot be controlled in any other position than that in which they are now held.”
“As to amalgamation,” said the Quaker, “I regard emancipation as the only possible method of putting a stop to it; for when both races are left to their own free choice the practice ceases. It has always been so and will be no different hereafter. The laws never interfere in such matters when all parties are free. Slavery forces amalgamation; it is not in practice among free men. What thou sayest in relation to the difficulty in controling so large a body of ignorant men, having their rights denied them, is without foundation, for when they are free they will not long remain in ignorance, and as to the right of franchise, if they cannot be made good citizens without it, then why deprive them of it?” “Why deprive them?” said Ridgley, “they are deprived of it already!” “ True,” said the Quaker, “slaves do not vote, but when slavery is abolished they will be citizens, and if to make them voters will make them better citizens, more easily governed because aiding in the government, then I say, why not grant them equal rights?” “Because,” said Ridgley, “we should soon be overrun by them? Who would ever consent to be ruled by niggers?” “It seems to me,” said the Quaker, “that thee puts a low estimate on the capacity of the white race to maintain republican institutions if thee believes what thee says, that with equal rights twenty millions of whites cannot compete with four millions of black men; thy self-respect must suffer serious damage in the contemplation of such conclusions. I noticed that among the rights of which thee takes it for granted that black men, after emancipation, will be deprived, thee has classed what thee calls ‘social position.’ In that thou art mistaken; social position is not a right of which free men can be deprived by law, it is a condition to which men attain, or fail in the attainment, by conduct, talents and energy. In no other nation except this does the attainment of high social position depend on the color of the skin, and here, secure to him his freedom and equal rights before the law and the black man in his struggle for social position will willingly bide his time.”
“Well,” said Ridgley, “I have not time now to answer all you have said, and to be honest I am constrained to acknowledge that the black man, even in slavery, does not occupy the lowest grade to which men are capable of going. We have, at the South, a class of low, white trash that Joe and Rosa would scorn to associate with.”
When the “hands” came in from the hay field, Riclgley looked among them in vain for his lost chattels, although there were among them colored men and women. “Are these all?” said Ridgley. “Jacob,” said the Quaker to his foreman, “where are Joseph and Rosa?” “They went to the city this morning,” was the reply; “they had a chance to ride, and as they wanted some clothes, I thought they had better go, and we have finished the haying without their help.” The countenances of the colored people present betrayed them. Ridgley saw at once that his chattels had been too e mart for him, and taking a hasty leave of the shrewd Quaker’s family, whom he hardly suspected of being active agents on the U. G. R. R., he hastened towards Philadelphia, but he was never so near to them again as he was the night he stayed in Chester.
Joe and Rosa passed through the old headquarters of the institution at Albany; at Syracuse Rev. J. W. Loguen gave them letters to leading men in the Wilberforce Colony, C. W., and tickets by steamer across Lake Ontario.
Mr. S——, one of the leading men in Wilberforce Colony, was at our house a few years after the above scenes transpired, and mentioned Joe and Rosa as among the most successful farmers and respectable citizens in the settlement.