Print

4 THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD trails and secret safe houses penetrated deeply into the southern states and blacks played a mostly passive role in contrast to white Railroad workers. Each of these assertions is false, or at least greatly exaggerated. In the fi rst place, it’s more accurate to think of the Underground Rail- road in terms of function rather than organization. Broadly, the work of the Railroad encompassed a wide range of activities aimed at getting slaves out of the South and protecting them once they were in the North. In some places, especially in such cities as Cincinnati and Philadelphia, the activities were relatively well coordinated. In other places, fl eeing slaves were often helped by a loosely linked chain of individuals who offered a meal, a bed, and directions to the house of the next Good Samaritan up the line. Participants in the work of the Underground Railroad came and went—there were no membership lists or requirements—and this alone would have been enough to make the Railroad’s organization rather fl uid. But a more powerful reason for the relative absence of structure was the need for continuous adaptability. Railroad workers couldn’t afford to stick to one settled route or series of safe houses, lest they be discovered by law enforcement or slave catchers. Flexibility was essential. Given that the Railroad is better defi ned functionally than organiza- tionally, it’s diffi cult to determine a date of origin for its activities. Slaves fl ed bondage from the earliest days of slavery in the colonies, and many of them were assisted by sympathetic whites. Exactly when coordinated efforts to assist fugitives began remains unknown. But what is unquestion- able is that the Railroad was up and running in the three decades prior to the Civil War, paralleling the emergence of the abolitionist movement, with the greatest activity taking place in the 1850s. As we’ll see in later chapters, the passage in 1850 of a particularly draconian slave law was responsible for the surge in activity during that decade. Less uncertain than the Railroad’s date of origin is when it acquired the name by which it became known far and wide. Railroads weren’t part of the American landscape until 1830. The earliest ones made for unpleas- ant riding: dust, cinders, and coal smoke fl owed into the train’s passenger cars, covering everyone with soot until, in the words of a contemporary traveler, everyone looked “blacker than the Ethiope”12—an unintention- ally ironic observation, given the clientele that the later Underground Railroad would serve. But for all its discomforts, travel by rail was impres- sively swift, sometimes clocking in at an astounding 30 miles per hour.