Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad/Chapter XIV
CHAPTER XIV.
Not many years ago I spent a Sabbath in Springville, Erie Co., N. Y., where I met an old friend, Deacon E, a zealous worker in the interest of the U. G. R. R. He recalled the case of Henry Rankin, as one of the most interesting fugitives who ever came this way. Henry had been a slave in Kentucky and was a good blacksmith; his master allowed him to find work for himself by paying $30 per month for his time. His master had also agreed to emancipate Henry on the payment of $1,500 out of his extra earnings. Henry paid the stipulated sum, $30, at the close of every month, and on Christmas day he paid over to his master all the money he had left of his extra wages after paying for a good plain suit of clothes with which to commence the new year. Henry was a strong man and an excellent mechanic, and found time after the close of work hours to devote to the acquisition of an education. He became a good reader and writer, and thoroughly understood all the rules in the common arithmetic; he read his bible histories and such other useful books as he could procure. When Henry was twenty-eight years old, he had paid nearly the whole of the stipulated sum to his master and was anxiously looking forward to the next Christmas as the day on which he was to have his free papers, but before that day the old man died, and as, by the laws of the State of Kentucky, no contract made with or by a slave was valid, the heirs refused to acknowledge Henry’s claim, although he was prepared to pay the small balance due. They also seized him and sent him to the New Orleans market where such mechanics as he was would sell for from $3,000 to $5,000.
It was a hard case for poor Henry, but he never gave up the hope of obtaining his freedom, and watching his opportunity he managed to escape on a vessel, on which he had worked making repairs at New Orleans. When the ship was in the Gulf of Mexico, four or five days out, he was discovered on board. The captain and crew respected him for his industry and good behavior as well as for his excellent workmanship as a mechanic; therefore they did not betray him at Baltimore where they landed him, but gave him as good counsel as they could in relation to his best route to Canada. He had some money, and providing himself with a pass written by himself, he left Baltimore and traveled sometimes in the day and sometimes in the night until he came into this State, near Bradford, Pa. Passing the Alleghany Reservation, near Great Valley, thence by the way of Ellicottville, he arrived at SpringAdlle one evening and went into a hotel. There was some kind of a gathering there and the bar-room was full of men, so Henry went to the landlord and said, “Please, sir, can you tell me, is there a praying Christian about here?” “Yes,” said the landlord, “there is one just around the corner.”
“Here, George, show this man where Deacon E—— lives.” The Deacon was the first man to whom Henry had confided his history since he left the ship in Baltimore. He landed safely in Canada, since which we have no account of him, but we have no fears as to his conduct and success as a citizen of his adopted country. Henry escaped from slavery about the time the U. G. R. R. was first organized, and before the lines were all arranged hence he worked his way without aid until he arrived almost in sight of Canada.
The New York Tribune quoted from the Mobile Sunday Times of July 12th, 1868, an article in which the editor, a rebel Democrat, made the following admission: “The negro population, who are easily led away by novelty and excitement, and extravagant promises, are very quick to perceive where their vital interests lie, and to return to the path of common sense when they make the discovery.” On reading the above article one morning, 1 was reminded of a conversation I had with a gentleman in Carlisle, Nicholas Co., Kentucky, which directly corroborated Henry’s story. I had stopped one evening at the hotel in said towTn ; at the table a gentleman sat opposite to me whose face and voice seemed familiar. After dinner he came into the public room and sat down near to us, (my brother was Avith me) and said, “Gentlemen, you are from the North. May I ask what State?” “New York,” I answered “Ah!” said he, “I thought so; from the town of Fabius, Onondaga Co. I was sure I had seen you before; your name is Pettit.” “Yes,” said I, “and you are Frank Chapel, of Pompey. You taught the school in our town when I was a boy.” After cordial greeting and congratulations on having met each other so far away from the scenes of our boyhood, he invited us to meet him at his office in the evening.
Chapel had studied law and gone to Kentucky some ten years previous to the time I met him. His talents, general manners and brilliant conversational powers had drawn about him troops of friends and a thriving business. In the evening we fell into conversation on the manners, customs and institutions peculiar to that country, the marked distinction between the wealthy and the slave-holding classes, and the poor class of whites, and the influence of their system of slave labor in producing these distinctions. He related much of what he had witnessed and heard himself, but nothing amused and interested us so much as what he told us of the experience and adventures of a young clergyman with whom he fell in company at Pittsburgh, Pa. He was going to Cynthiana, Ky., where he was expecting to settle. They traveled together and became not only acquainted, but interested in each other’s success, just entering, as they both were, into society so different from that in which they had been educated. On the subject of slavery they had never thought or cared much, but they had an impression that negroes were created expressly for slaves; that as to their capacity for the attainment of knowledge and science and the enjoyment of civilized life and social comforts and pleasures, there was no comparison between them and even the most ignorant and degraded of the white race. Therefore, they argued that slavery was the normal condition of the negro.
Although Cynthiana is not more than twenty-five miles from Carlisle, it so happened that Chapel and Rev. Mr. Platt, the clergyman above mentioned, did not meet until about a year after they came together into the State. Chapel was attending court in “Harrison Co., of which Cynthiana is the county seat, and called on Mr. Platt to renew their acquaintance. He met with a cordial reception, and was invited to spend his evenings with the reverend gentleman. In the course of the evening Chapel said, “Mr. Platt, how does this slave question affect you? It is a matter of no small moment, at least I find it so.” “Well,” said Platt, “I’ll tell you I had my eye teeth cut on that question the day I arrived here. You see I had letters of introduction to Mr. Hamilton, a planter (or farmer as he said) living two miles from town. I went immediately to his place, was cordially entertained by the ladies of the family, but Mr. Hamilton was not then at home. Mrs. Hamilton said, < you will please make this your home until he return?, which will be in three or four days.’ I soon discovered that Mrs. Hamilton was a lady of superior talents, refinement and education, a devoted Christian, while in her conversation that which you would notice first was her sound common sense and conscientious honesty of purpose. In the afternoon the ladies, except Mrs. Hamilton, had gone out for a ride, and there were only Mrs. Hamilton and the small children with me in the parlor. The common topics of conversation being exhausted and having seen some slaves about the house, I thought it might be a good time to place myself on the right sort of a platform on the slave question, inasmuch as I came from Massachusetts, where, in some sections of the State, the subject was being agitated. (This was soon after the beginning of the agitation and before the fugitive slave law was thought of.) What I said I cannot remember, for what followed obliterated from my mind not only the language I used, but the sentiment that my words expressed. I only recollect that I desired to make Mrs. Hamilton understand that I fully appreciated the beautiful arrangement of Providence in creating a people capable of appreciating the social comforts and intellectual enjoyments of our advanced civilization, with the hopes and the happiness of the Christian religion, and in relieving us of the labor necessarily attendant upon such a state of things by giving us possession of a race of beings not only incapable of such enjoyments, but whose minds and bodies were exactly adapted to the performance of the labor and drudgery needed by us. I am not sure that I had any doubt as to the truth of all this, until on looking up I saw depicted on her countenance grief, astonishment and disgust all combined. It was now my turn to be astonished. I had intended to close with a peroration upon the curse of Canaan, but that was all lost. A glance of her eye paralyzed my tongue. I wished to apologize, but could not do even that. There was silence, and I suffered more in five minutes than I can describe. I thought I saw in her countenance all kinds of emotion, until finally that of pity seemed to predominate.
“Mrs. Hamilton was, I judge, about the age of my mother,” said Platt, “and in person, voice and expression, commanding the utmost respect. I have never been able to account for my folly in being so forward in the expression of sentiments that I did not understand, nor did I know whether I believed them or not. After a most painful silence, she was the first to speak, and said, ‘My dear sir, wdien I heard that you were coming here from a New England home, I did hope and expect to hear from you sentiments very different from those you have just expressed. Yet, if such is your view of things on this subject, I am glad to know it now and to have the opportunity to give such advice as a mother might venture to give her son. People from the North are never under a greater mistake than when they suppose that they command the respect of slaveholders by advocating principles such as I have just listened to. Had my husband heard what you have said to me, he might, from courtesy or motives of policy, have seemed to coincide with your views in some measure, but his feelings towards you would have been characterized with the utmost contempt. You will pardon me, sir, for in this plain speaking I put it more mild than the case will warrant. Mr. Hamilton is a man of the world, a slaveholder, and while he regrets the existence of slavery, he says no way has yet been devised by which we can be rid of it, and I doubt not he likes to hear Northern men talk as you do sometimes, for thereby he knows that, politically, the South gets the advantage of the North.
“‘As to the capacity of the negroes, I will relate what I heard Mr. Hamilton say, in conversation with a neighbor on the subject of repealing the laws that prohibit their education. The man pretended to believe as you have said, that they are too ignorant and stupid to learn if they had a chance. My husband said in answer? 4 They are ignorant of course; our laws have made them so, and keep the most of them in that condition; but if they are too stupid to avail themselves of a chance for improvement, what is the use of making laws to prevent them from getting an education? No sir; I tell you they have intellects naturally as bright as the white race. Indeed, the whole mass of slaves in Kentucky, with all their disabilities as to education, the degradation and oppression necessarily attending their condition, are, in point of intellect, ahead of the poor whites that are scattered all over the slave States, a disgrace to our civilization; yet each white man holds a vote of equal power with the proudest aristocrat in the nation. If the slaves were set free, and I wish to God they were, and placed on an equal footing with the class I spoke of, the blacks would start with a bound on the race of improvement, outstripping the poor whites in the race. I will give you a practical illustration:
“‘The State of Kentucky passed a school law and created a fund for this class of white children, but they never availed themselves of it. Not a common schoolhouse has been built because they never asked for one, and finally the school fund was appropriated to other objects; whereas, not only the law makes it a penal offense to teach a negro, free or slave, to read, but subjects the negro to a public whipping for trying to learn ; yet there are more slaves in this county who can read and write than there are of that class of whites. Yes sir, if made free to-day, the blacks would use the elective franchise more intelligently than they. Why sir’ said he, becoming excited by his own talk, ‘there are ten men in the legislature of this State that are not as capable of making laws for the government of the ’State as my Ben is. His education is better than theirs—the Lord knows how he obtained it—and he has better common sense; and Rankin, there is your blacksmith Henry. Where can you find a better mechanic, or a man better fitted to discharge the duties of a free citizen than he is?’
“‘I give you this’ said Platt, ‘as the substance of what she said, in a conversation in which I took some part.’
“I have only to add,” said Chapel, “that my observation corroborates all the sentiments expressed by Mrs and Mr. Hamilton, and,” said he, “I believe that nearly all the better portion of the people hold similar opinions, though few will speak as freely on the subject as did Mrs. Hamilton. Platt was thoroughly cured of his toadyism.”
From Carlisle we went to Cynthiana, where it was our good fortune to become acquainted with Mr. Hamilton, and we accepted his invitation to visit him at his home. He had buried his good wife some years before, but he wished to introduce us to his son. The father and son were both enthusiastic admirers of Northern institutions, especially our common schools, internal improvements and free labor, and said that Kentucky needed only these to make it the paradise of the United States.