Stories in Their Own Words

Edward Galusha Dyer, Burlington, Wisconsin

Dr. Dyer was called a "Double Abolitionist." This probably was because he spoke out against slavery, helped people running from slavery, and gave money – lots of money – to anti-slavery work.
When an abolitionist friend, Lyman Goodnow, showed up in the little town of Burlington with a 16 year-old fugitive slave named Caroline Quarles, Dr. Dyer wasted no time getting help. He grabbed people right on the street and "passed the hat" for money.
Mr. Goodnow and Caroline left Burlington with a borrowed horse and wagon, a pillow case filled with food, and $20! Dr. Dyer wrote a letter for them, begging any "freedom minded" person to give any help possible. He also gave them a list of trusted people and "friends of slaves."
With slave-catchers chasing them and rain clouds filling the sky, Mr. Goodnow and Caroline headed across the Wisconsin-Illinois border. For five weeks they drove, making a wide circle around Chicago to Indiana. They cut straight across Michigan, heading toward Detroit. In Detroit, Mr. Goodnow paid $2 to the ferry boat owner to take Caroline across the Detroit River to Canada.
Dr. Edward Galusha Dyer named the street in front of his house "Liberty Avenue" to everyone would know he was for freedom and against slavery.
He once said, "Can liberty and slavery long dwell together? Which side shall we be on? Surely we shall be for liberty."

Henry Bibb

1850 Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American slave
written by himself….

"I have often worked without half enough to eat, both late and early, by day and by night…. Through all kinds of weather, hot or cold, wet or dry, and without shoes frequently until the month of December, with my bare feet on the cold frosty ground, cracked open and bleeding as I walked. Reader, believe me when I say, that no tongue nor pen ever has or can express the horrors of American Slavery….
Among other good trades I learned the art of running away to perfection. I made a regular business of it and never gave it up until I had broken the bands of slavery, and landed myself safely in Canada where I was regarded as a man and not as a thing."

Henry Bibb told some of his tricks for running away.

"….by this time I had become much better skilled in running away and would… avoid detection by taking with me a bridle. If anybody should see me in the woods and asked, "What are you doing here, sir? You are a runaway?" I said, "No sir, I am looking for our old mare…."

Jacob Green : 1863

Jacob Green was a fugitive slave from Kentucky. He made his way to New York and was hoping to get across Lake Erie into Canada. But, on the street, he had an unexpected, terrible surprise…

“I saw my master who laid hold of me and called to his aid a dozen more….that night I was placed in prison…and irons placed on my ankles and hand-cuffed…”

Jacob’s master took him on the steam boat Milwaukie headed for Chicago, Illinois on Lake Erie. They stopped in Cleveland to change boats.

"On Monday I was taken on board the steam boat ‘Sultana’…I was placed in the cabin and at dinner time the steam boat stared and had about half a mile to go before she got into the lake and the captain came in to me and cautiously asked me if I could swim – I answered I could, he told me to stand close by a window…and when the paddle wheels ceased* I made a spring and jumped into the water."
Jacob swam away. He saw the captain standing on the deck. When the captain saw him, he waved to the engineer to start the paddle wheel again. As the boat began to move, Jacob kept swimming. Suddenly, he heard his master’s voice up on the deck. "Here, here – stop captain!....Which was echoed by shouts from the passengers; but the boat continued her course, while I made my way as fast as possible to Cleveland lighthouse, where I arrived in safety…”

*ceased: stopped

More Thoughts about Slavery

Some people who had been slaves remembered being treated kindly by their owners. After slavery ended, many people struggled to find work to feed their families. Life was hard in slavery. Life was hard in freedom.
Some people even said life was easier for them in slavery, where they worked for the Master and he gave them food, clothing, and a place to live.

Van Moore, Texas: 1930
"I still has love for my old missy, because she loved us and sure was good to us and it makes me feel kinda good to talk about her and the old times"

Nicey Pugh, Alabama
"We had a master who would fight for us and help us and laugh with us and cry with us. We had a mistress that would nurse us when we was sick and comfort us when we had to be punished…"

One woman even said:
"I think slavery was a mighty good thing for Mother, Father, me, and the other members of the family. I cannot say anything but good for my old marster and missus."
Mary Anderson: North Carolina

Sam McAllum, Mississippi. Age 95 when interviewed

"Times were mighty tough. Us thought us knowed trouble during the war. Um-m-m. Us didn’t know anything about trouble. Mistis put us out [hired out her slaves for wages, to be paid to herself]. She sent me to Mr. Scott….I was almost a grown boy by then and could plow pretty good.
Come the surrender, Mr. Scott said, "Sambo I don’t have to pay your mistis for you no more. Negroes is free. I have to pay you if you stay. You is free."
I didn’t believe it. I worked that crop out but I didn’t ask for no pay. I didn’t understand about Freedom, so I went home to my old mistis. She said, "Sambo, you don’t belong to me now."….
Sam tried working in different places. One man promised to teach Sam to read in payment for work. He lied. Sam said,
" …aint never seen no speller nor nothing…but us worked that crop out.
My mammy and me went back to McAllum’s [their old mistress and master] and stayed until a man give us a patch [of land] in return for us helping him on his farm."

Other people were confused when freedom came. They had never been paid for work. They had never owned land or learned to read or write. Some people didn’t know how to get work or where to go. Many people had been told lies by white people and beaten and hurt by white people. Who could be trusted? What should they do?

Robert Falls, a former slave from Knoxville, Tennessee:

"If I had my life to live over I would die fighting rather than be a slave again….But in them days we didn’t know no better. All we knowed was work and hard work. We learned to say, "Yes, sir!" and scrape down and bow and do just exactly what we was told to do, make no difference if we wanted to or not….
I remember so well how the roads was full of folks walking and walking along when the Negroes were freed. Didn’t know where they was going….
[Time passed, and] then something begins to work, up here [in Mr. Falls’ mind] I begins to think and to know things. And I knowed then I could make a living for my own self, and I never had to be a slave no more."

Levi Coffin: station master on the Underground Railroad

Levi Coffin, called the "President of the Underground Railroad," kept diaries of his experiences. He wrote about people who came to their home in Cincinnati. He wrote about using hand signals to tell other abolitionists about runaways coming. He wrote about tricking slave catchers and staring down slave owners. Here, he remembers the rescue of a girl by two soldiers from the 22nd Wisconsin Infantry Regiment from Racine, Wisconsin:

" While they were in camp near Nicholasville, Kentucky, a young mulatto* slave girl, about eighteen years old….was sold her by master. … As soon as the poor girl learned of the fate in store for her, she fled from her master and making her way to the camp of the Twenty-Second Wisconsin volunteers…told her story and asked for protection. The true-hearted men to whom she applied for help, resolved to aid her, though the law did not then allow Northern troops to protect fugitive slaves who came within their lines…

Her master soon came to the camp, but …. She was dressed in soldier’s clothes and hidden in a sutler’s [trader’s] wagon under some hay. The two men [soldiers from Wisconsin] dressed themselves in citizen’s clothing… and drove out of the camp about one o’clock at night. They traveled almost without stopping … – more than one hundred miles ….to my house ….[the girl] looked like a mulatto soldier boy.

The “soldier boy” was given into my wife’s care, and was conducted upstairs to her room. Next morning “he” came down transformed into a young lady!....these brave young men telegraphed to Racine, Wisconsin and made arrangements for their friends there to receive her. I took her one evening in my carriage to the depot [train station], accompanied by her protectors and put her on board the train with a through ticket for Racine, via Chicago….As the train moved off, they lifted their hats to her and she waved her handkerchief in good-by.

It seemed one of the happiest moments of their lives when they saw her safely on her way to a place beyond the reach of pursuers."

* mulatto: a person with white and African American parents

The two soldiers were Jesse Berch and Frank Rockwell, both from southern Wisconsin. Jesse Berth wrote Levi Coffin to let him know they arrived back at the army camp safely...

"At five o’clock on Friday evening, after a ride of three days, we arrived at our camp near Nicholasville; and you would have rejoiced to hear the loud cheering and hearty welcome that greeted us on our arrival."…Your humble friend, Jesse L. Berch"

Jesse was badly injured in the war, and returned to Wisconsin. He wrote again to tell Levi Coffin that the girl was safe. He wrote, "Afterward she married a young barber and moved into Illinois."

William Hall: on board Wisconsin’s freedom ships

William Hall was a slave in Tennessee. He told his story to Benjamin Drew in Canada.

"The overseer tied me to a tree and flogged me with the whip. Afterward he said he would stake me down [tie his hands and feet to posts on the ground] and give me a farewell whipping that I would always remember. While he was eating supper I got off my shoe and slipped off a chain and ran. I ran….I heard a shouting, hallooing, for dogs to hunt me up….I went through the woods to a road…traveling all night: lay by all day, traveled at night…"

William Hall crossed the river into Illinois. He walked to Bloomington and was "too tired to go another step." Abolitionists helped him reach Chicago.

"From the middle of August to the middle of November I dwelt in no house except in Springfield, [Illinois] sick. Had no bed till I got to Bloomington. In February I cut wood in Indiana – I went to Wisconsin and staid till harvest was over. Then came to a particular friend who…gave me a Testament.

‘Now,’ said he, ‘Square up your business and go to the lake, for there are men here now, even here where you are living, who would betray you for half a dollar if they knew where you master is. Cross the lake: get into Canada.’ I…came to Canada."

Mrs. Christopher Hamilton

Most fugitive slaves were men. Often, women couldn’t run away because they had little children. This woman told her story:

" The slaveholders say their slaves are better off than if they were free….I do not, and never saw any one that wished to go back….I had rather live in Canada on one potato a day than to live in the South with all the wealth they have got. I am now my own mistress….I can do my own thinkings, without having anyone to think for me – to tell me when to come, what to do, and to sell me when they get ready. I wish I could have my relatives here. I might say a great deal more against slavery and nothing for it."

Allen Watkins: married to Caroline Quarles

In a letter written to Lyman Goodnow, a Wisconsin abolitionist who helped Caroline escape.

" They sold my wife…after they sold her I resolved to go away. That night I stole a boat and managed to get as far as the Ohio River….After I crossed I hid…on a bridge that has two stories. My pursuers passed right under me as I was lying on the top part and could hear every word they said."

The Underground Railroad helped Mr. Watkins get to Canada. Some years later he met and married Caroline Quarles, a young girl who had taken her freedom by running from St. Louis, through Wisconsin, to Canada.

Allen Watkins ended his letter to Mr. Goodnow by writing:

" I will always be ready and willing to speak up a good word for those glorious abolitionists….I should be very much pleased to hear from you at any time and if any of your family ever comes here I should be happy to have you call…
Your Well wisher,

Allen Watkins, Sandwich, Ontario"

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