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Underground Railroad
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The Underground Railroad was the name given to the system by which escaped slaves from the South were helped in their flight to the North. It is believed that the system started in 1787 when Isaac T. Hopper, a Quaker, began to organize a system for hiding and aiding fugitive slaves. Opponents of slavery allowed their homes, called stations, to be used as places where escaped slaves were provided with food, shelter and money. The various routes went through 14 Northern states and Canada. It is estimated that by 1850 around 3,000 people worked on the underground railroad. Some of the most best known of the people who provided help on the route included William Still, Gerrit Smith, Salmon Chase, David Ruggle, Thomas Garrett, William Purvis, Jane Grey Swisshelm, William Wells Brown, Frederick Douglass, Henry David Thoreau, Lucretia Mott, Charles Langston, Levi Coffin and Susan B. Anthony.
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One of the most famous Underground Railroad routes in central Ohio was Africa Road. This was the setting of one of the most extra-ordinary chapters in Underground Railroad history. The tiny unincorporated zone in southern Delaware County which was once the community of Africa touches the southern border of what is now Alum Creek State Park. Prior to 1840, the hamlet then known as East Orange was a rural crossroads north of the bustling town of Westerville. Country gentlefolk had erected small cabins there as temporary housing while building permanent homes on their estates. After a time, the woodlands north of Westerville harbored a cluster of these abandoned cabins, as folks moved into their newly completed houses.
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In 1857 the Underground Railroad had a setback. Judge Taney of the Supreme Court handed down the Dred Scott decision. Dred Scott was a Missouri slave who had been taken north by his master. After returning to Missouri the master died, and the Negro sued for his freedom on the grounds that he had resided in a free state and was therefore a free man. Although a Missouri court decided against him, Scott appealed, and the case finally reached the Supreme Court. The decision went against Scott again. This meant that any Southern resident could take his property north of 36 degrees, 30 minutes and have it protected by federal law.
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The route to freedom, known as the Underground Railroad, had no engines and no trains. It had stations but no tracks. Its passengers travelled without tickets, and its conductors blew no whistles. So why was it called a railroad? When asked to describe the network, which carried runaway slaves to freedom, people compared it with a train, a mysterious secret railroad. It wasn’t truly a railroad, but a series of secret escape routes leading enslaved people from bondage to freedom.
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The Underground Railroad was perhaps the most dramatic protest action against slavery in United States history. The operations of secret escape networks began in the 1700s, and was later connected with organized abolitionist activity of the 1800s. Neither "underground" nor a "railroad," this informal system arose as a loosely constructed network of escape routes that originated in the South, intertwined throughout the North and eventually ended in Canada. Escape routes were not just restricted to the North, but ... extended into western territories, Mexico and the Caribbean. From 1830 to 1865, the Underground Railroad reached its peak as abolitionists and sympathizers who condemned human bondage aided large numbers of bondsmen to freedom. They not only called for slavery destruction, but also acted to assist its victims.
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The origins of the Underground Railroad go back before the 18th century, but the terminology dates to around 1831. One version states that an enslaved, Tice Davids, crossed the Ohio River in the vicinity of Ripley, Ohio, a ferryboat ride from the slave state of Kentucky, to escape from his owner. As Tice Davids swam the river, his owner kept him in sight as he pursued him in a small rowboat. He could see Tice's head bobbling in the river, but once Tice reached the Ohio side, he was lost from view. His owner searched diligently around Ripley, "a town that hated slavery," but was unable to find his human property. Bewildered and tuckered out, the slave owner could only conclude that Tice Davids "must have gone on an underground road."
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Underground Railroad