Tuesday, November 5, 2013

What is the Underground Railroad?

What is the Underground Railroad:
  Reflections on a Dialogue with Sonya Stewart  By Carrie Aitkins

The Underground Railroad is certainly a difficult phenomenon to define, and many historians have taken issue with attempting to do so.  The historian Larry Gara, in his book The Liberty Line:  The Legend of the Underground Railroad, notes how the movement’s secrecy, lack of clear structure, and non-specified line of command have made its study even more daunting.  As centuries have passed, “the Underground Railroad has taken on mythological qualities and is difficult to pin down with accuracy” (Switala qtd. Gara 11).
            Even the naming of the movement is shrouded in mystery.  According to Switala, “there are three versions of this event in three different sources” (13).  In addition, there is no conceivable way that we can estimate the number of slaves who found freedom through the Underground Railroad network.  So, what are we to make of this operation?  How do we create a satisfactory definition of the Underground Railroad?  Is it to be defined as a network of both fugitive slaves and abolitionists in antebellum America, seeking to assist African Americans in their flight from bondage to Canada?  Accounts exist of slaves fleeing to safety prior to the creation of the Underground Railroad.  According to archaeologist Leland Ferguson, there had once existed what is referred to as “the first underground railroad,” in which “fugitive slaves from South Carolina made their way by foot and dugout canoe across the swamps and marshes of coastal Georgia to freedom in Florida” (41).  In another account of early resistance, Ferguson relates how runaway slaves were able to find another form of freedom on the Carolina coast, where “escaped slaves may have started living with Indians as early as the 1520’s” (20). 
            These examples point to early resistance efforts among slaves prior to the organized effort that would come to be known as the Underground Railroad.  The name for the movement did not begin to be used until around the 1830’s—although other forms of slave rebellion had already take root.  Sonya Stewart, an IUP alumnus whose graduate work centered upon African American migration and settlement in Indiana County, had much pertinent knowledge and offered informed opinion relating to the need to define the Underground Railroad:
The struggle for freedom and the Underground Railroad may not be one and the same thing.  People have often [performed] acts of rebellion and taken their own freedom.  I think of how, during the Holocaust, the Warsaw Ghetto, these were people who were obviously imprisoned within a place and yet they fought and in other ways they were free.
            In light of this, not only is it essential to define the Underground Railroad, it is also important to consider how we define freedom.  Sonya described a situation related to a free black man living in Indiana County “who was born free and yet who disappeared in the field one day and was taken into slavery.” This was surprisingly new information to me, and I have yet to discover more accounts describing this event.  However Sonya elaborated upon this idea briefly by explaining how “after 1850, you could have a slave catcher come and take a free man.  Was anybody actually free unless they made it to Canada?”
            On a slightly different note, the Underground Railroad could partially be defined as a resistance movement; if one were to define resistance as an organized effort of sabotage against forces of oppression.  However, this resistance did not always manifest as a concerted mass movement, and often had to take place in more immediate ways.  As Sonya points out, “if it’s truly the struggle for freedom, there were people who gained their freedom in other ways.  Even as slaves, they gained their freedom.  On the plantations…[for example] they put ground glass in food.  But the biggest way is through stealing.  That is an act of rebellion.  That is an act of resistance.  And really, the Underground Railroad—is it really resistance?  It’s just simply migration—just like people looking for a new life, like when Europeans came here.”
            In consideration of the Underground Railroad as a resistance movement, I think that this is where Sonya and I differ, for I cannot help but think of the difference in circumstances which brought Europeans here, as opposed to the forced enslavement which brought Africans to the Americas.  However, it is not even just this difference which solidifies the idea of the Underground Railroad as a resistance movement in my mind.  For me, the Underground Railroad is a mix of many different things for many different people.  As our conversation came to a close on this subject, Sonya approached the topic of the Underground Railroad as a migration movement.  In a very heart felt manner, she summarized the basic humanity of the movement:


                        "I think it’s just that people wanted a better life like every migrant.  Many of the white people really did have a political agenda—and then again, some of the people who helped with the Underground Railroad were simply: Here’s someone in need, I’m doing the right thing."


Sources Cited
            Ferguson, Leland.  Uncommon Ground:  Archaeology and Early African America, 16050-1800.  Smithsonian Books.  1992.  Web.
            Stewart, Sonya.  Personal Interview.  30 Oct. 2013.
PHMC Marker on the corner of 6th and Philadelphia Streets



In 1845, fugitive slave Anthony Hollingsworth was captured near Indiana by his master, and taken to the former Indiana House, a hotel owned by slave catcher David Ralston.  The location of this site is where Fox’s Pizza now stands, and it is here that a large crowd of abolitionists gathered to protest the capture of Hollingsworth.  Dr. Robert Mitchell took the issue to court, where Judge Thomas White, another prominent abolitionist, declared that Hollingsworth could not be detained any longer, due to technical ambiguities surrounding the Virginia slavery laws at the time.  Eventually, the young Anthony Hollingsworth would successfully reach Canada, and would write to Mitchell years later, in 1862.  The letter from Hollingsworth to Dr. Robert Mitchell can now be viewed at the Historical and Geneaological Society of Indiana County. 

Regrettably, Dr. Robert Mitchell would be sued by Hollingsworth’s former master, stating that Mitchell had violated the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793.  As a result, Mitchell would pay a fee of $500, and would lose a large portion of his land to pay some of the court costs.  Loss of property was a significant financial sacrifice at this time, since in the nineteenth century, land was a major portion of many individual’s monetary resources.  Today, the historic marker commemorating this event stands in the front yard of the Old Court House, across from Fox’s Pizza.  

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Jamison's Eastern Inn

Jamison’s Eastern Inn
This inn, now a store and apartment building on the corner of north 4th and Philadelphia street, is where slave catchers, abolitionists, and fugitive slaves at various times stayed throughout the history of the Underground Railroad, dating to the pre-Civil War era of the middle 1800’s.  The inn was owned by John Jamison, the father of young abolitionist Samuel Jamison, who in 1848 hid two fugitive slaves near the old Caldwell farm, which sat on top of a hill facing Indiana.   According to some accounts, he was offered a substantial bribe from two slave catchers staying at his father’s inn, to reveal the location of the two runaway slaves.  Jamison refused the bribe— instead; he collaborated with Sheriff Taylor to find refuge for them at another location more distant from Indiana.  Eventually, this led the slaves to more secure freedom in Canada. 

Indiana House

Indiana House
This is perhaps one of the most infamous spots of Underground Railroad history, and it is here that a mob formed to prevent the slave-catcher David Ralston from capturing Anthony Hollingsworth, who was detained overnight at the hotel and freed by Judge Thomas White the next day, on the grounds that there was no constitutional evidence for the legality of slavery in Virginia—the state where Hollingsworth had left.  
The Indiana House was lost to a fire years later, and is now the building housing Fox’s Pizza.
Former Indiana House

William and Elizabeth Houston House

William and Elizabeth Houston House
Elizabeth Houston (born 1795-died ?) was a prominent figure within the Underground Railroad movement for aiding escaped slaves by providing food, clothing, and shelter.  According to Catalfamo and others, she “supplied the railroad in secret to keep her husband out of trouble,” in order to keep him from violating fugitive slave laws.  The space now appears to be a series of small apartments.

Dr. Robert Mitchell

Portrait of Robert Mitchell, 
Courtesy of:
Indiana County Genealogical and Historical Society
Dr. Robert Mitchell House

Another site significant to the Underground Railroad Movement was the residence of Dr. Robert Mitchell, one of the most notable abolitionists and Underground Railroad conductors of western Pennsylvania in the pre-Civil War era of the 1840s and 1850s.  He is described by many historians on the Underground Railroad, and is mentioned in both Switala’s Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania book and in the earlier Stephenson history of Indiana County, with its detailed analysis of the Underground Railroad. His prominence in Indiana County extends beyond his abolitionist work, and he was also a Pennsylvania House of Representatives member and an Associate Judge. When the Fugitive Slave Law was passed in 1850, Mitchell was fined $10,000 in Federal Court for his violation of these laws.  This site is located on Philadelphia Street, in a building which primarily houses apartments. It is as unassuming as the Ralston House, but it is inspiring to think that this was once the home of a man who believed that “every yoke should be broken and the oppressed should be free”.  

Memorial Park

 Memorial Park PHMC Marker       

Memorial Park
The next destination is Memorial Park, which would follow one of many known routes which travelers took on the Underground Railroad seeking freedom.  According to the PHMC marker, it was once an overgrown Lutheran cemetery where slaves could easily hide while they were traveling north during the Civil War.  Currently, the park is used for both memorializing veterans and as a place for community activities.  Moreover, it is difficult to envision the park as it once was—as an overgrown wilderness where Underground Railroad travelers could find safe haven.