Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad/Chapter X
CHAPTER X.
While waiting for a train at Perrysburgh, Cattaraugus Co., a few days ago, I met my old friend, Wm. Cooper, Esq. When I first knew him, Mr. Cooper was Supervisor of that town, and he was several times re-elected by the Democratic party; indeed, he was the most influential Democrat in that part of the county, until in an unguarded hour he became interested in the U. G. R. R. He said, the other day, that he was terribly convicted the first time he heard a fugitive[1] relate his sufferings in slavery, and his adventures in making his escape. The wickedness and the danger of sustaining such a system, and the hypocrisy of the political parties, each of which strained every nerve to convince the South that the other was opposed to slavery, convinced him that there was no choice between them on that question; but at the next election he voted, as usual, the “Loco Foco” ticket. The election had been held at his house, (he kept a hotel,) and after the votes had been counted and the people had all gone home except a neighbor and fellow Democrat, he said, “Patch, I have voted for a slaveholder for President for the last time;” and Patch answered, “So have I, but then what are we to do? The Whigs are as careful to have a slaveholder on their ticket as our party.” “True,” said Cooper, “but this new party, the Birney Party, that polled but three votes in this town to-day, is destined to be successful. It may not succeed as a party, but the principles of the Declaration of Independence, as embodied in their platform, will succeed. The people of this nation will not always he fooled by party demagogues, and one or the other of the leading parties will eventually adopt the radical principles of the men who fought England to secure liberty for all the people. We may have to fight again, but, sir, I tell you that whatever party leaders and unprincipled politicians may do, the people will stand by the right, and when aroused to a sense of the condition to which we are drifting, parties and politicians must stand aside. Leading men in the South have an idea that the North will submit to anything for peace, and acting upon that idea, they are in the habit of carrying all their points by threatening to dissolve the Union and boasting of their fighting qualities, but they will learn that this universal Yankee nation, much as we like peace and money making, if a dirty, disagreeable job must be done, will astonish the world by our manner of doing it.” “Well,” said Patch, “I was not aware that you had surrendered to these radicals. I had made up my mind to help whip the Whigs, for by so doing I should vote against a slaveholder as well as for one7 which I flatter myself would balance that account. I have noticed that in attacking this little party, finding nothing in their principles to which they can safely object, both the Whigs and Democrats charge them with radicalism. Radicalism, as I understand it, is a determination to do right because it is right, and refusing to do wrong because it is wrong, while the Whigs and Democrats, by their own platforms, show that the conservat ism by which they propose to demolish each other, is merely going halves with the devil.”
That year business on the U. G. Road became very active, and both the above gentlemen became zealous agents. They had seen some service before, and that explained in some measure “what was the matter.” The first arrival at our station, direct from that of Captain Cooper, came in charge of his son as conductor. The name of the fugitive, or the name by which he called himself, was Robert. He was evidently a very valuable man, and had escaped from a party of Congressmen on their way to Washington from Mississippi, one of whom was his master, and as he said, his half brother. He escaped from some point between Wheeling and Baltimore, and made his journey across Pennsylvania in a rambling way, suffering incredible hardships, hunger, and almost nakedness. His home had been so far from the Free States that he had never heard of this institution, therefore he dared not apply for aid. When almost starved, he fell into the hands of one of our agents south of Jamestown, near the State line, thence came through Ellington, Leon, Dayton and Perrysburgh, arriving at our station early in the evening.
He had been so long wandering in the Pennsylvania mountains that we supposed the pursuit must, of course, have been abandoned, and this idea nearly proved fatal. The spies along the lake shore came near eluding the vigilance of our agents, and had established a strict watch at new points, but they were trapped by the proslavery conversation of one of our detectives, and the fact was disclosed that there was “danger.” So close were the slave-hunters upon Robert’s track that he was obliged to turn backward, and passed our place in the evening. The hunter, coming from the east, crossed the river into the village just about the time that Robert disappeared south into the woods. One of our best guides was with him, and before the next morning delivered him to Mr. Welles, in Leon. A few days after he was placed in the hands of a Quaker friend, named Hathaway, in Collins, Erie Co. In the meantime the hunter was spying around Forestville. The Quaker friend had a house in the woods, where during the season he made maple sugar, and there Robert stayed until the hunters withdrew, when he went to Madison Co. He tried hard to learn to read and write, and succeeded partially, though he made slow progress. He used to say that when slavery was abolished, he would go back to Mississippi and preach to the colored people, and often expressed a wish to go to school and prepare himself for mission work. He came back to Chautauqua Co. a year or two before the war, and worked at chopping wood one winter. He had heard nothing from his old home in many years, yet his faith was unshaken that he should go back a free man, and preach to the colored people there in the far south. When I last saw him, he spoke of going to the negro settlen: nt in Canada as soon as he could finish his job, since which I have not heard from him.
The few incidents related in these sketches, much from memory, aided by very limited search among memoranda, read so tamely compared with the interest and excitement that was felt at the time, that they seem hardly worth relating, yet the liberation of a single human being from so wicked and loathsome a degradation as that of American slavery, is worth more than all the sacrifice it ever cost. But it should not be supposed that the rescue of here and there an individual from bondage was the sole object proposed to be accomplished by the establishment of the U. G. R. R. and I think that when its history shall be understood, it will be known that it did more to hasten the crisis and final clash of arms that resulted in making this a free nation than any other agency. But for this, the fugitive slave law would not have been enacted, and but for that law, we should still have been under the heel of the slave oligarchy. Besides, in its silent operations it is wonderful how much humanity was sifted out of the old Democratic organization, leaving only Copperhead treason trying to shelter itself under the name of that old party.
- ↑ Samuel R. Ward; see Margaret and Samuel, Chapter XII.