Some notes on the extent of New York City's involvement in the Underground Railroad.

INTRODUCTION: WHAT WAS THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD?

The Underground Railroad was part of a larger effort to undo an unconscionable, immoral act perpetrated against humanity, in the form of chattel slavery. It was a crucial driving force in the abolitionist movement, drawing the country more and more into the abyss of civil war and the eventual collapse of of the institution of slavery. As part of that larger effort the Underground Railroad can be seen as having been:

      1. Flight from bondage
      2. The theft of self in face of unjust laws
      3. Black and white in defiance of the law to rescue the enslaved
      4. Humanity joined together against inhumanity
      5. Challenge to American doctrines: a) freedom b) equality c)
      justice
      6. Abolitionism, abolitionist, and the law
      7. Slavery, enslaved, and the slave owner
      8. Ongoing struggle for total freedom in USA
      9. The fight against depersonalization & dehumanization
      10. A moral challenge to an immoral mindset
      11. An added thread to an unfinished journey of human freedom:
      Quilting of the American Dream--Freedom!
      12 An ongoing lesson in the evolution of American freedom, and the
      role of African Americans and their friends of freedom in that
      evolutionary process

In that larger picture, the Underground Railroad was in response to an American paradox at the beginning of the country's history, when the founding fathers moved to enslave the African while extending the fruits of freedom to white indentured servants. One response from those totally denied freedom was the elaborate network of clandestine cells across the northern tier of the country that assisted scores of fugitive slaves to freedom. This monumental effort was in direct defiance of the Constitution into which slavery had been written, and federal edits such as the initial Fugitive Slave law of 1793. Defiance intensified with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

The story to be told of the Underground Railroad is that it was a moral challenge posed to a nation that had lost its moral compass; and around which rallied morally committed individuals whose own freedom was not worth much so long as others were enslaved. In the words of one writer, "the Underground Railroad was not a route, but a network; not an organization, but a conspiracy of thousands of people banded together for the deliberate purpose of depriving their southern neighbors of their property (in defiance of the law). It was like a ferment beneath the surface of southern society, and was at the core of the country's moral dilemma." (1) The underground movement was such a formidable force "it called forth [that] ignominious fugitive slave law" and eventually "brought on the Civil War" and the destruction of slavery. (2)

NEW YORK CITY'S HISTORICAL PRECEDENT

New York City's involvement in the Underground Railroad was quite extensive, and took its precedent from flight and rebellion of the enslaved prior to the antebellum period. In their own way, pre-ante-bellum enslaved Africans fashioned a clandestine system of flight and refuge from their bondage, first under the Dutch and the British, then under the Americans after the Revolutionary War. This was part of a tradition of resistance to enslavement by Africans, beginning as captives in Africa and on the high seas, and as human chattel in the City of New York. Both the Slave Rebellion of 1712 and the "Negro Plot" of 1741 exemplify the strength of that tradition, and the extent and risks the enslaved were willing to take to regain a lost freedom.

Early evidence for the kind of support afforded fugitives on the Underground Railroad during the antebellum period, can be seen with the establishment of the New York Manumission Society in 1785. From its inception, the Society worked in tandem with the black community in the city. Between 1785 and 1849 it was "the primary local institution responsible for prosecuting kidnappers, disseminating information on the legal rights of blacks, and protecting the city's black children, who were a frequent target of kidnapping." (3) With such distinguished leaders as John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, the Society, in addition to the above, set up an educational program for black children in the African Free Schools. In the nineteenth century much of its monitoring of kidnappers and protective and legal efforts were assumed by the New York Vigilance Committee.

ANTISLAVERY, ABOLITIONISM, AND THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IN NEW YORK CITY

Before the demise of human bondage in the state of New York in 1827, black consciousness was a moral challenge to the inherent contradictions in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It was as well a potent force in defense of a proscriptive liberty afforded free Blacks in a society governed not by democratic law but one driven by the law of race. In 1816 free Blacks challenged race in the wake of the establishment of the American Colonization Society, which they read as a sinister attempt to remove them from the country to its newly found colony of Liberia on the West African Coast. Not only was it a move to deny them their birth right, but as well it sought to eliminate potential catalysts and/or agitators of slave conspiracies and rebellions.

In the decades of the 1820s, 1830s and 1840s, free blacks took both a defensive and offensive position on the issue of colonization and antislavery. For them, from a defensive position, the two were "the hydra-headed monster." In Brooklyn, as across the state and in other northern cities, the people would not be moved on their right to citizenship given the blood spilled to establish the nation. They insisted that "we are countrymen and fellow-citizens ... we are not strangers ... Here we were born, and here we will die." (4) The reality was that their freedom could only be assured through the lawful abolition of slavery. Therefore, in those three decades African Americans linked their dislike for the colonization scheme to the sentiments of anti-slavery. The two were indistinguishably the same evil. Free blacks were now abolitionists in a struggle not only to lift themselves out of their degrading conditions, but also to guarantee their own freedom through the winning of freedom for those enslaved.

To ensure a concerted effort and a sense of unity of purpose on the offensive side, African Americans produced their first newspaper. In 1827 Samuel E. Cornish and John B. Russwurm, two residents of New York City, published Freedom's Journal, the voice of Black America in full opposition to the evil of colonization and slavery. In the words of one source: "the New York-based Freedom's Journal helped link black abolitionists from Washington. D.C. to Maine by speaking out on colonization, slavery, and racism, by encouraging antislavery activism, and by using local subscription agents who helped spread the message." (5)

In support of having their own paper rather than reliance on white-controlled papers, New York City physician, and Scottish trained, James McCume Smith in the 1840s, admonished fellow blacks not to become too comfortable with what "the white antislavery press offered," especially its "racial hostility and patronizing benevolence." (6) In the words of the editors of Abolitionist Papers in interpreting Smith:

      "We must command respect," Smith insisted, "This can only be
      done," he determined, "through a Press of our own." For Smith and
      black leaders of the 1840s, a black press was essential to
      achieving their goals of unity, elevation, independence,
      emancipation, and equality. (7)

A black-owned newspaper was an excellent way to disseminate information and build an informed black constituency. After 1827 many other such newspapers made their appearance. In New York City alone there were several in the wake of Freedom's Journal such as Rights for All, Colored American, and Weekly Anglo-African. By the 1830s these papers, and others in cities across the northern tier of states, when combined with other forces of freedom, posed a formidable challenge to the three evils of racism, slavery, and colonization. Those other forces were antislavery, temperance, all-black local organizations like the African Dorcas Association and the African Society for Mutual Relief, both of New York City, and that of the Massachusetts General Colored Association founded by David Walker. When tales of the fugitive enslaved were added to this formidable force, and told personally by them, it was that competitive edge needed to sway public opinion and counteract southern attacks on black and white northern abolitionists who spoke for the enslaved.

        Former slaves refuted proslavery claims with firsthand
      evidence. They spoke and wrote with authority, hard-earned
      through bitter encounters with slavery and prejudice. Using
      lecture tours and published autobiographies, black abolitionists,
      particularly fugitive slaves, validated the antislavery strategy
      of the 1840s. The abolitionist movement discovered that free
      black lecturers were more convincing than whites and that former
      slaves were most convincing of all. (8)

Prior to the 1840s, anti-slavery centered around moral suasion and gradualism, and although many blacks identified with such a stance it was basically a white position. African Americans soon realized that such a position only invigorated racists both north and south. Subsequent to the publication of David Walker's Appeal in 1829 and his mysterious death in 1831, indications of the growth of a more militant position was evident with the appearance of the idea of immediatism (immediate emancipation), the annual Colored Convention movement (dominated in the '40s by the more militant delegates), and the establishment of the Foreign and American Antislavery Society in response to the gradualism of the American and New England Antislavery societies of the Garrisonians. By the mid-1830s it was clear that an incipient, more militant black leadership was in place in the black community both in the secular and religious spheres.

In the religious sphere much of the abolitionist leadership was identified with black ministers, some of whom had been passengers on the Underground Railroad in flight from southern slavery. The pre-cursors of the militant 1840s were men like Peter Williams, Jr. of St. Philips Episcopal Church; Samuel E. Cornish, senior editor of Freedom's Journal and founder of the First Colored Presbyterian Church of New York City; J.W.C. Pennington, one of Cornish successors and who was not only a former fugitive on the Underground Railroad but was one of the organizers of the all-black ministerial organization the Union Missionary Society; and James Varick, ex-slave from Newburgh, New York. Varick was co-founder, with Peter Williams, Sr., and first Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. In 1820 he helped establish "Mother Zion" Church. (9)

The 1840s heralded the appearance of the fiery militant, black ministers like Samuel Ringgold Ward, Henry Highland Garnet, and Jermain Wesley Loguen from Syracuse, New York. Like J.W.C. Pennington, all three rode to freedom on the Underground Railroad. "The growing number of fugitive slave clergymen made black churches more outspoken and militant. Ward, Loguen and Garnet, and other black ministers, took their slave past and their antislavery values into the pulpit with them." (10) In line with this, The First Colored Presbyterian Church of New York City, "commonly known as the Shiloh Church," was "arguably the city's most important black church ... a gathering place for black activists, and regularly hosted antislavery meetings" (11) as well as gave sanctuary to fugitive slaves.

As a station on the Underground Railroad, the First Colored Presbyterian Church of New York City was simply duplicating similar efforts afforded fugitive slaves by its sister church in Troy, New York, the Liberty Street Presbyterian Church. Henry Highland Garnet had been minister of the church in Troy, and, undoubtedly, continued such efforts during his ministry at First Colored. Mother Zion AME at the southwest corner of Leonard Street in New York City was another sanctuary for passengers on the Underground Railroad.

Aligned with Mother Zion and First Colored was the African Wesleyan Methodist Episcopal Church on Bridge Street in Brooklyn; the Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn Heights; the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn; the Macedonia A.M.E. Church also in Brooklyn; and the 1694 Friends Meeting House in Queens. In Manhattan (New York City until 1884) between Grand and Broome Streets was the Willett Street Methodist Episcopal Church, which, like the others, was one of many secret stops on the city's clandestinely operated freedom train. (12)

In the secular sphere prominent New York citizens aided fugitive slaves through their involvement with either the American Antislavery Society or the more militant one, the Foreign and American Antislavery Society. The wealthy merchants, Arthur and Lewis Tappen and the wealthy land owner Garrit Smith aided the cause through their membership in the latter of the two societies, while men like William Lloyd Garrison preferred the gradualist/moral suasion position of the former organization. Both Peter Williams, Jr. and Theodore Wright (Cornish's successor at the First Colored Presbyterian Church) served on the Board of the American Anti-slavery Society. George Downing, the black owner of an oyster restaurant on the corner of Broad and Wall street is said to have sheltered

fugitive slaves on the premises. The notorious Five Points in lower Manhattan is reputed to have been a "din" into which Underground Railroad passengers could literally disappear. (13)

One of the most noted conductors and brave souls in the struggle to comfort, protect and defend the interest of the fugitive slave was the New Yorker, David Ruggles. At one point a book seller, grocery store merchant, a writer, David Ruggles made his name as the Secretary of the New York Vigilance Committee. In many ways the Committee was the successor to the Manumission Society as well as the two worked together to protect the rights of free and fugitive slaves. Its goals were: 1. "to protect unoffending, defenseless, and endangered persons of color, by securing their rights as far as practicable." 2. "By obtaining for them when arrested, under the pretext of being fugitive slaves, such protection as the law will afford." (14)

Ruggles's home at 67 Lispenard Street was a major station on the Underground Railroad. And he is credited "with assisting at least six hundred runaway slaves"; one among them being Frederick Douglass. (15) With respect to the Committee, and because of its astounding rescue record (1,373 during its existence), it "earned the reputation as the black community's only effective guardian against kidnappers and slave catchers." (16)

CONCLUSION

New York abolitionists went on to become one of the many thorns in the side of southern slavery, and as well was one of the fiery embers that sparked the conflagration of the American Civil War. From the ashes of that conflagration rose the phoenix of African American freedom--the end result of a long-day's journey into night on the Underground Railroad.

(1) Albert Bushell Hart quoted in Larry Gara, The Liberty Line The Legend of the Underground Railroad (University of Kentucky Press: 1961): 9.

(2) Ibid., 3.

(3) Ripley, Peter C., The Black Abolitionist Papers, III, The United States, 1830-1846: "Founding of the New York Vigilance Committee, David Ruggles to Editor, New York Sun [July 1836] ...", University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill and London, 1991): 175.

(4) Ibid., "Introduction," 6.

(5) Ibid., 7.

(6) Ibid., 33.

(7) Ibid., 33.

(8) Ibid., 28; Blockson, Charles L. The Underground Railroad First-Person Narratives of Escapes to Freedom in the North (Orentice Hall Press: New York, 1987):244-45.

(9) Underground Railroad, 245-46.

(10) Abolitionist Papers, "Introduction," 35.

(11) Ibid., "Theodore S. Wright and Racial Prejudice" (Theodore S. Wright to Archibald Alexander, 11 October 1836)", 188.

(12) Brawarsky, Sandee, "Safe Havens on the Freedom Line," (New York Times, 19 January 2001).

(13) Gray, Christopher, "A Shelter for Runaway Slaves, a Bastion of Activism" (New York Times, 24 December 2000): RE 5

(14) Whiteman, Maxwell, ed., First Annual Report of the New York Committee of Vigilance for the Year 1837 (Piercy & Reed, Printers: New York, 1836. Reprinted by Afro-American History Series, Historic Publication No. 217, 1969): 4.

(15) Underground Railroad, 245.

(16) Black Abolitionist Papers, "Founding the New York Committee of Vigilance", 179.