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Freed slaves in this undated photo.
Tuesday, August 30, 2016
Monday, December 1, 2014
A Guide to the Underground Railroad in New Jersey
A Guide to the Underground Railroad
in New Jersey
New Jersey Historical Commission
Steal away, steal away,
steal
away to Jesus
Steal
away, steal away home,
I ain’t
got long to stay here
— Negro spiritual
ome of those daring and artful runaway slaves
who
S Railroad (UGRR) no doubt sang the words of
old entered New Jersey by way of the Underground
Negro spirituals like "Steal Away"
before embarking
on their perilous journey north. The lyrics of these
precious black folk songs indeed often had
double meanings, serving as code songs that conveyed plans to escape the yoke
of bondage. The phrase "steal away" thus meant absconding;
"Jesus" and "home" symbolized the yearned for freedom in
the North; and the words "I ain’t got long to stay here" meant that
flight northward was imminent.
Running away as a form of protest by slaves
against their bondage is as old as African enslavement itself on American soil.
The first European settlement on land that would ultimately become part of the
United States of America, a Spanish colony established in 1526 in the area of
present-day South Carolina, witnessed the flight of its slaves; it is said they
fled to neighboring Indians. The presence of African slaves in the British colonies
of North America, whose history begins in 1607 with the founding of Jamestown,
Virginia, was also marked by flight as an expression of resistance. The 1772
runaway slave notice shown on the right, for example, is evidence of slave
dissent in colonial New Jersey.
Down to the outbreak of the Civil War, New
Jersey continued to bear witness to the presence of runaway slaves. However,
with the passage in 1804 in New Jersey of An
Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, these fugitives come increasingly
from the South; this legislation indeed made New Jersey part of the
"Promised Land," those northern states to which bondspersons escaped
to quench their thirst for freedom. And from the early 1830s on, these escapees
were
connected to the Underground Railroad, that secret network of persons and
places—sometimes well organized and other times loosely structured—that helped
southern runaway slaves reach safety in the northern states and Canada.
The
Underground Railroad is an immensely popular subject, a fact attributable
perhaps to the dramatic and exciting nature of its operation, as well as to its
having served as the nation’s first example of biracial cooperation in the
cause of social justice. Coinciding with the UGRR’s popularity has been the
perpetuation of many myths, legends, and misconceptions surrounding it. Tales
about tunnels, trapdoors, and secret compartments connected to the UGRR abound,
perhaps exceeded only by the number of UGRR sites and communities for which an
association with the Underground Railroad is claimed, often without credible
evidence. UGRR operatives usually acted clandestinely because of the illegality
of assisting fugitive slaves, a circumstance that has further served to make
documenting the Underground Railroad—separating fact from fiction—difficult.
While the origin of the term
"Underground Railroad" remains obscure and rooted in several
apocryphal tales, the term can be dated to roughly 1830, after the appearance
of the first trains in the United States. It was the rise of radical abolitionism
in the 1830s, however, that helped to create a nurturing climate for the UGRR.
This new approach to the antislavery cause found expression in such forms as
the publishing in 1831 of William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator and the founding two years later of the American
Anti-Slavery Society, with its aversion to "moral suasion" and its
call for immediate emancipation without compensation to slaveholders.
The scale of the Underground Railroad has
often been exaggerated, with some estimates exceeding 100,000 participants.
More recent scholarship seems to suggest that between 30,000 and 40,000
runaways—50,000 at the very most—were involved. Although running away was a
very common form of slave protest, the overwhelming majority of southern slaves
who absconded during the antebellum period remained in the South, many
gravitating to the region’s urban centers, where they often sought to pass
themselves off as free blacks. The advent of the Civil War reinforced this
tendency to remain in the South, with runaway slaves flocking in droves to the
invading Union forces that came near them and becoming known thusly as
"contraband."
SIGNIFICANCE
The significance of the Underground Railroad, of course, lies foremost
in its serving as an expression of slave resistance. Slaveholders and their
sympathizers, in attempting to make slavery morally defensible, asserted that
slaves were simple, child-like creatures who were very much contented with
their bondage. Each fugitive who headed north therefore personally refuted the
claim that bondspersons had no desire for freedom.
Underground Railroad runaways also helped
exacerbate the sectional strife over the issue of slavery, thereby facilitating
the very event—the Civil War—that would lead to slavery’s end. Indeed, slave
flight to the North prompted the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850,
which, as a concession to the slave states, empowered federal agents to
apprehend and return runaways who had fled to the free states. Public opinion
in many parts of the North, however, increasingly turned against this
legislation, some of its provisions (for example, the power of federal marshals
to deputize individuals to assist in capturing runaways) being perceived as
grave violations of civil liberties. Some free states therefore enacted
personal liberty laws that sought to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act. Such laws
in turn infuriated the South; it saw them as further evidence of a hostile
North prepared to deny slaveowners their property.
NATIONAL UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
Most Underground Railroad fugitive slaves
hailed from the Upper South, in particular, the states of Kentucky, Missouri,
Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. Most were males between the ages of 15 and 30
who traveled singly—by foot, horseback, wagon, stagecoach, carriage, train, and
boat—and at night, often guided by the North Star. While great attention has
been accorded the role of white abolitionists in assisting UGRR fugitives, this
role appears somewhat overdrawn.
In the South, where slave patrols made escape an extremely risky
undertaking, the fugitives, when not relying solely on their own cunning and
wile to reach the free states, were mainly assisted by free blacks and fellow
slaves. And in the North, free blacks—acting individually, in the vigilance
committees common to many northern cities, or through their own churches and
self-help organizations—were often in the forefront of efforts to provide
shelter, financial help, and general support to the runaways. Indeed, on
reaching the North, the "passengers" were routinely hidden, fed,
clothed, allowed to rest, and cared for at each "station," which
could be any kind of structure, for example, a house, church, hotel, or store.
NEW JERSEY UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
New Jersey, an integral part of the eastern corridor of the Underground
Railroad, received fugitives mainly from the Atlantic coastline states of
Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. Its proximity to the
slave states of Delaware and Maryland, as well as its location between two of
the most active UGRR metropolitan centers—Philadelphia and New York City—only serves
to underscore the crucial place it occupied in the movement of runaway slaves
northward.
New Jersey is also identified with the
Underground Railroad’s two most celebrated figures. One, the legendary Harriet
Tubman, spent the summers between 1849 and 1852 as a hotel worker in Cape May,
earning money to finance her forays into her native Maryland Eastern Shore to
guide fugitives slaves to freedom. And in all probability she traversed the
state in leading some of her estimated 300 charges from Maryland to safety. The
other, William Still, was a native New Jerseyan who was distinguished by being
both the most important UGRR operative in Philadelphia and the author of the
1872 classic The Underground Railroad.
This study, which offers accounts of the flights of the fugitives he assisted
in Philadelphia, is especially noteworthy because it alone among
nineteenth-century works on the Underground Railroad made the freedom-seeking
fugitives—not the abolitionists who assisted them—the true heroic figures of
the Underground Railroad’s dramatic and compelling story of struggle against
oppression.
Finally, no other northern state exceeded New
Jersey in the number of all-black communities that served as UGRR sanctuaries
for southern fugitive slaves. Springtown
(Cumberland County), Marshalltown (Salem County), Snow Hill
(present-day Lawnside, Camden County), and Timbuctoo (Burlington County) were
among such places, located mainly in rural South Jersey, in which fugitive
slaves also settled. One consideration for remaining in these communities was
the physical safety they afforded runaway slaves; there are several instances
recorded of slave catchers being run out of town with haste when they were
discovered in such communities.
Underground Railroad is an epic American
story featuring the forces of righteousness arrayed against those of
evil—forces locked in moral combat over the elimination of perhaps the greatest
expression of inhumanity: the ownership of one human by another. Certainly the
important New Jersey chapter in this antislavery saga merits recounting. Some
New Jerseyans indeed transcended conventions of race, class, gender, and
culture and accepted the bold challenge of striking a blow against the peculiar
institution. In so doing, they, often at great sacrifice and risk, bequeathed
to future generations of New Jerseyans an Underground Railroad heritage worthy
of being appreciated, celebrated, and preserved—a heritage first made possible
by those who, in their quest for human dignity, respect, and freedom, were
moved to "steal away, steal away."
Chronology
1619 As part of the trans-Atlantic slave trade,
20 Africans are landed in Jamestown, Virginia, marking the beginning of the
historical presence of blacks in English North America. These slaves are listed
in later censuses as indentured servants.
1623 Dutch establish Fort Nassau, a military post
in present-day Gloucester City in Camden County; it may have witnessed the
presence of African slaves for its construction and maintenance.
1625 Dutch establish colony of New Netherland;
it includes New Amsterdam (present-day New York City), where 11 African slaves
are recorded.
1639 African slaves present by this year in
Pavonia (located in or near present-day Jersey City), which, as part of New
Netherland, was the first permanent Dutch settlement on New Jersey soil.
1664 English seize New Netherland from the
Dutch, establish the colony of New Jersey, and find slaves who had been on
Burlington Island (Burlington County) since 1659. The Concessions and
Agreements, the constitution governing the establishment of New Jersey,
encourages slavery by granting settlers additional land for any slaves
imported.
1675 First legislation implying the actual
presence of black slaves in New Jersey is enacted; it prohibits transporting or
harboring a slave who has left his or her owner without permission.
1676 New Jersey is divided into two
provinces—East Jersey (mainly North Jersey) and West Jersey (mainly South
Jersey)—thereby marking the proprietary period, which lasts until 1702. Owing
to East Jersey’s topography, more advanced state of economic development, and
considerable Dutch presence, most slaves are located here, rather than West
Jersey, which had a large Quaker presence.
4
1680 Between 60 and 70 slaves are recorded for
the Shrewsbury (Monmouth County) manor of Colonel Lewis Morris, marking the
largest slaveholding in New Jersey up to this time.
1688 Francis Daniel Pastorius, a Germantown
(Philadelphia) Quaker, writes the first antislavery tract to appear in the
American colonies; it is subsequently read during the same year at the yearly
meeting of Delaware Valley Quakers held in Burlington.
1702 New Jersey becomes a royal colony and,
owing to the desire to increase the Crown’s wealth, the importation of slaves
into New Jersey is encouraged.
1726 New Jersey slaves number roughly 2,600,
approximately 8 percent of the colony’s population.
1734 A slave conspiracy is uncovered by
authorities in Somerville, the first such significant plot for New Jersey.
1741 In Hackensack three slaves are convicted and
burned alive for setting fire to seven barns, marking New Jersey’s second
significant slave plot. Subsequent conspiracies are unearthed in Perth Amboy in
1772 and Elizabethtown in 1779.
1745 Roughly 4,700 slaves are recorded for New
Jersey; they constitute approximately 7.5 percent of New Jersey’s population.
1750 By this date, most slaves imported into New
Jersey
are arriving directly from Africa, rather than the Caribbean.
1776 Declaration of Independence is adopted on
July 4, marking the official beginning of the American Revolution. Some New
Jersey slaves, like others elsewhere, use the chaos of the war to flee and, in
some instances, later present themselves as free blacks.
New Jersey’s first state constitution is
adopted on July 2; it grants the franchise to women and free blacks.
Several blacks, including Burlington County’s
Oliver Cromwell, cross the Delaware River with Washington on the night of
December 25 and engage in the Battle of Trenton, marking a turning point in the
American Revolution
1783
With the end of the American Revolution, some New Jersey free blacks and slaves
leave with the British troops and settle in Nova Scotia.
1786 New Jersey enacts legislation that
essentially bans the further importation of slaves, thereby ending the African
slave trade to New Jersey. Another provision of this law makes manumissions
easier.
1789
U.S. Constitution takes effect; it states that no runaway slave becomes free by
escaping from one state to another (article 4, section 2, clause 3)
1793 New Jersey Society for the Abolition of
Slavery, the state’s first antislavery organization, is established.
First federal Fugitive Slave Act enacted; it
requires appropriate officials in the state to which a runaway slave has fled
to return the fugitive to his or her owner.
1804 An Act for the Gradual Abolition of
Slavery, New Jersey’s first abolition law, passes. It frees all black children
born on or after July 4, 1804, after serving an apprenticeship to their
mother’s owner of 21 years (female) and 25 years (male).
1807
Free blacks and women lose the franchise granted in the state constitution of
1776.
1808 The importation of African slaves into the
nation becomes illegal as the trans-Atlantic slave trade to the United States
is banned.
1818 In the wake of a scandal involving the sale
of Middlesex County slaves and free blacks in the slave market of New Orleans,
the state adopts legislation prohibiting the selling of slaves outside of the
state.
1826 New Jersey passes legislation that
authorizes the return to their owners of fugitive slaves from other states
residing or apprehended in New Jersey.
1830 Signaling the rise of radical abolitionism
and the formation of antislavery vigilance committees in various northern
cities, the Underground Railroad begins after the first appearance of trains in
the nation in 1829. The origin of the term remains unclear.
1831 Indicative of the onset of radical
abolitionism that helps to create a climate favorable to the operation of the
Underground Railroad, William Lloyd Garrison prints the first issue of The Liberator, an antislavery newspaper.
1833 American Anti-Slavery Society is formed in
Philadelphia, further evidence of the growth of radical abolitionism.
Slavery is abolished in the British Empire,
making Canada a safe settlement area for runaway slaves participating in the
Underground Railroad.
1838 Frederick Douglass uses the Underground
Railroad to flee from bondage in Maryland. The abolitionist leader later
becomes an Underground Railroad operative while living in Rochester, New York.
1840 New Jersey State Anti-Slavery Society, the
state’s second statewide abolition organization, is formed.
1844 New Jersey’s second constitution is
adopted; while eliminating property qualifications for voting, it continues to
restrict the franchise to white males.
1846 New Jersey’s second abolition law is
enacted; it eliminates apprenticeships for all black children born after its
passage and, although formally outlawing slavery, makes the state’s remaining
slaves (all of them elderly persons) "apprentices" for life, another
form of slavery.
1847 William Still, a New Jersey native, begins
his work in Philadelphia with the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of
Slavery; this work enables him to become an important figure in the operation
of the eastern corridor of the Underground Railroad.
1849 Using the Underground Railroad, Harriet
Tubman escapes from slavery in Maryland’s nearby Eastern Shore; her summers
from this year to 1852 are spent working in hotels in Cape May and earning
money for her own Underground Railroad exploits.
First statewide black convention is held in
Trenton (August 21 – 22); participants agitate for the return of the franchise
to black males.
1850 Fugitive Slave Act passes as part of the
Compromise of 1850; this law, giving the federal government primary
responsibility for capturing slaves fleeing to the North, causes some free
blacks, fearing kidnapping, and fugitive slaves to flee to Canada and prompts
some northern states (New Jersey not included) to pass "Personal Liberty
Laws" that sought to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act.
1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act repeals the Missouri
Compromise of 1820 and introduces the doctrine of "popular
sovereignty"; this allows territories to decide whether to be slave or
free states.
1857 Dred Scott decision is rendered by the U.S.
Supreme Court; it holds that blacks are not American citizens and that Congress
has no authority to prohibit slavery in any part of the nation.
1859 John Brown conducts a raid on the federal
arsenal in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, in an effort to spark a large-scale slave
rebellion. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, abolition activists and
Underground Railroad operatives, are implicated in this conspiracy.
1860
Eighteen slaves are recorded for New Jersey by the U.S. Census, making the
state the last in the North in which slaves can be found.
1861 With the firing on Fort Sumter in South
Carolina by the Confederate forces, the Civil War begins. The Underground
Railroad ceases to operate, as southern slaves who abscond from their owners
gravitate toward the invading Union forces that come into their vicinity,
rather than fleeing to the free states of the North.
1863
The Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln goes into
effect. It frees slaves in the Confederate states, but not those that remain in
the Union. This encourages even greater numbers of southern slaves to flee from
their owners.
1865 Thirteenth Amendment is ratified, bringing
to an end the long presence of bondage on American soil. Presumably any of the
18 slaves recorded for New Jersey in 1860 who are still living are freed by
this amendment.
The Education of African Americans in Southern New Jersey from 1920--1945
Accumulation of
knowledge: The Education of African Americans in Southern New Jersey from
1920--1945
Allen,
Janet E.. Rutgers The
State University of New Jersey - New Brunswick, ProQuest, UMI Dissertations
Publishing, 2011. 3464711.
The participants’
parents who had greater socio-economic status than their peers and/or had
cultural and social capital were able to orchestrate their children’s
education. These parents chose an educational path for their children that
included college attendance or attending the manual training school in
Bordentown. Parents
with capital were able to lay a foundation for success in an era that
segregated and discriminated against blacks.
The Manual Training
and Industrial Institute at Bordentown for Colored Youth offered its students
the opportunity to learn a skill or trade that would insure their employment.
The school was modeled after Tuskegee Institute and offered a manual training
and an academic track.
Students enrolled in
the academic track also had to learn a trade before graduating. Parents sent their
children to this school because of its purpose and it offered the students a
safe and secure residential campus environment. The participant who attended
Bordentown was proud of its heritage and spent a good part of her interview
reminiscing about the schools purpose, her courses, the curriculum, the
principal and teachers, All of the teachers and the principal were black, and
she described what each one of her teachers taught and painted a verbal picture
of how they looked. There was an excitement and sense of belonging in her
experience that was unlike those of the other participants who attended
integrated public schools.
Throughout the
interviews, participants not only talked about their parents’ aspirations for their
children’s education, but discussed what their parents did and sacrificed to
fulfill their dreams for their children’s futures
Very fine kids came from Bordentown and could
find employment
because they were
well-qualified and able.
The refined people were
trained at Bordentown to become butlers. They were hired by refined families.
You couldn’t be all loud and rude and keep those jobs they wouldn't have you..
And the butlers in Cape May
were more refined and when they retired they came to Cape May so therefore
brought that culture with them. They didn’t bother with them other kind of
people and I don’t blame them. It was a wonderful training. Those that wanted
to be trained could be.
M: There was such a few of
them and they were older. But as Wildwood grew larger and larger and they
didn't have enough in Wildwood to supply them. However, some of the black waitresses
went around cleaning the community houses which are now known as bed and breakfasts.
That is something they don't have anymore. A community house; it's like a bed
and breakfasts, you had the privilege to use the community kitchen. There are
too many restaurants most of them were Jewish houses. And they have a room with
the kitchen use. And the maids did not clean up after themselves they would
just cook but they didn't wash dishes. That was a job for the black girls to
clean everybody's dishes but they kept the place clean they would clean up the
whole kitchen and wash everybody's dishes. And what food not thrown away the
girls could bring home. So, therefore they still needed more help.
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Underground Railroad in New Jersey
Introduction
Steal away, steal away,
steal
away to Jesus
Steal
away, steal away home,
I ain’t
got long to stay here
— Negro spiritual
ome of those daring and artful runaway slaves
who
S Railroad (UGRR) no doubt sang the words of
old entered New Jersey by way of the Underground
Negro spirituals like "Steal Away"
before embarking
on their perilous journey north. The lyrics of these
precious black folk songs indeed often had
double meanings, serving as code songs that conveyed plans to escape the yoke
of bondage. The phrase "steal away" thus meant absconding; "Jesus"
and "home" symbolized the yearned for freedom in the North; and the
words "I ain’t got long to stay here" meant that flight northward was
imminent.
Running away as a form of protest by slaves
against their bondage is as old as African enslavement itself on American soil.
The first European settlement on land that would ultimately become part of the
United States of America, a Spanish colony established in 1526 in the area of
present-day South Carolina, witnessed the flight of its slaves; it is said they
fled to neighboring Indians. The presence of African slaves in the British
colonies of North America, whose history begins in 1607 with the founding of
Jamestown, Virginia, was also marked by flight as an expression of resistance.
The 1772 runaway slave notice shown on the right, for example, is evidence of
slave dissent in colonial New Jersey.
Down to the outbreak of the Civil War, New
Jersey continued to bear witness to the presence of runaway slaves. However,
with the passage in 1804 in New Jersey of An
Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, these fugitives come increasingly
from the South; this legislation indeed made New Jersey part of the
"Promised Land," those northern states to which bondspersons escaped
to quench their thirst for freedom. And from the early 1830s on, these escapees
were
connected to the Underground Railroad, that secret network of persons and
places—sometimes well organized and other times loosely structured—that helped
southern runaway slaves reach safety in the northern states and Canada.
The
Underground Railroad is an immensely popular subject, a fact attributable
perhaps to the dramatic and exciting nature of its operation, as well as to its
having served as the nation’s first example of biracial cooperation in the
cause of social justice. Coinciding with the UGRR’s popularity has been the
perpetuation of many myths, legends, and misconceptions surrounding it. Tales
about tunnels, trapdoors, and secret compartments connected to the UGRR abound,
perhaps exceeded only by the number of UGRR sites and communities for which an
association with the Underground Railroad is claimed, often without credible
evidence. UGRR operatives usually acted clandestinely because of the illegality
of assisting
fugitive slaves, a circumstance that has further served to make
documenting the Underground Railroad—separating fact from fiction—difficult.
While the origin of the term
"Underground Railroad" remains obscure and rooted in several
apocryphal tales, the term can be dated to roughly 1830, after the appearance
of the first trains in the United States. It was the rise of radical
abolitionism in the 1830s, however, that helped to create a nurturing climate
for the UGRR. This new approach to the antislavery cause found expression in
such forms as the publishing in 1831 of William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator and the founding two years
later of the American Anti-Slavery Society, with its aversion to "moral
suasion" and its call for immediate emancipation without compensation to
slaveholders.
The scale of the Underground Railroad has
often been exaggerated, with some estimates exceeding 100,000 participants.
More recent scholarship seems to suggest that between 30,000 and 40,000
runaways—50,000 at the very most—were involved. Although running away was a
very common form of slave protest, the overwhelming majority of southern slaves
who absconded during the antebellum period remained in the South, many
gravitating to the region’s urban centers, where they often sought to pass
themselves off as free blacks. The advent of the Civil War reinforced this
tendency to remain in the South, with runaway slaves flocking in droves to the
invading Union forces that came near them and becoming known thusly as
"contraband."
SIGNIFICANCE
The significance of the Underground Railroad, of course, lies foremost
in its serving as an expression of slave resistance. Slaveholders and their
sympathizers, in attempting to make slavery morally defensible, asserted that
slaves were simple, child-like creatures who were very much contented with
their bondage. Each fugitive who headed north therefore personally refuted the
claim that bondspersons had no desire for freedom.
2
Underground Railroad runaways also helped
exacerbate the sectional strife over the issue of slavery, thereby facilitating
the very event—the Civil War—that would lead to slavery’s end. Indeed, slave
flight to the North prompted the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which,
as a concession to the slave states, empowered federal agents to apprehend and
return runaways who had fled to the free states. Public opinion in many parts
of the North, however, increasingly turned against this legislation, some of
its provisions (for example, the power of federal marshals to deputize
individuals to assist in capturing runaways) being perceived as grave
violations of civil liberties. Some free states therefore enacted personal
liberty laws that sought to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act. Such laws in turn
infuriated the South; it saw them as further evidence of a hostile North
prepared to deny slaveowners their property.
NATIONAL UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
Underground Railroad fugitive slaves
hailed from the Upper South, in particular, the states of Kentucky, Missouri,
Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. Most were males between the ages of 15 and 30
who traveled singly—by foot, horseback, wagon, stagecoach, carriage, train, and
boat—and at night, often guided by the North Star. While great attention has
been accorded the role of white abolitionists in assisting UGRR fugitives, this
role appears somewhat overdrawn.
In the South, where slave patrols made escape an extremely risky
undertaking, the fugitives, when not relying solely on their own cunning and
wile to reach the free states, were mainly assisted by free blacks and fellow
slaves. And in the North, free blacks—acting individually, in the vigilance
committees common to many northern cities, or through their own churches and
self-help organizations—were often in the forefront of efforts to provide
shelter, financial help, and general support to the runaways. Indeed, on
reaching the North, the "passengers" were routinely hidden, fed,
clothed, allowed to rest, and cared for at each "station," which
could be any kind of structure, for example, a house, church, hotel, or store.
NEW JERSEY UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
New Jersey, an integral part of the eastern corridor of the Underground
Railroad, received fugitives mainly from the Atlantic coastline states of
Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. Its proximity to the
slave states of Delaware and Maryland, as well as its location between two of
the most active UGRR metropolitan centers—Philadelphia and New York City—only
serves to underscore the crucial place it occupied in the movement of runaway
slaves northward.
New Jersey is also identified with the
Underground Railroad’s two most celebrated figures. One, the legendary Harriet
Tubman, spent the summers between 1849 and 1852 as a hotel worker in Cape May,
earning money to finance her forays into her native Maryland Eastern Shore to
guide fugitives slaves to freedom. And in all probability she traversed the
state in leading some of her estimated 300 charges from Maryland to safety. The
other, William Still, was a native New Jerseyan who was distinguished by being
both the most important UGRR operative in Philadelphia and the author of the
1872 classic The Underground Railroad.
This study, which offers accounts of the flights of the fugitives he assisted
in Philadelphia, is especially noteworthy because it alone among
nineteenth-century works on the Underground Railroad made the freedom-seeking
fugitives—not the abolitionists who assisted them—the true heroic figures of
the Underground Railroad’s dramatic and compelling story of struggle against
oppression.
Finally, no other northern state exceeded New
Jersey in the number of all-black communities that served as UGRR sanctuaries
for southern fugitive slaves. Springtown
(Cumberland County), Marshalltown (Salem County), Snow Hill
(present-day Lawnside, Camden County), and Timbuctoo (Burlington County) were
among such places, located mainly in rural South Jersey, in which fugitive
slaves also settled. One consideration for remaining in these communities was
the physical safety they afforded runaway slaves; there are several instances
recorded of slave catchers being run out of town with haste when they were
discovered in such communities.
Railroad is an epic American
story featuring the forces of righteousness arrayed against those of evil—forces
locked in moral combat over the elimination of perhaps the greatest expression
of inhumanity: the ownership of one human by another. Certainly the important
New Jersey chapter in this antislavery saga merits recounting. Some New
Jerseyans indeed transcended conventions of race, class, gender, and culture
and accepted the bold challenge of striking a blow against the peculiar
institution. In so doing, they, often at great sacrifice and risk, bequeathed
to future generations of New Jerseyans an Underground Railroad heritage worthy
of being appreciated, celebrated, and preserved—a heritage first made possible
by those who, in their quest for human dignity, respect, and freedom, were
moved to "steal away, steal away."
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