I've made good progress in Bound for Canaan this week. It's very well written, and full of interesting information about the Underground Railroad. The first part of the book deals with the beginnings of the network, which was, apparently, never formally constituted. It simply evolved, over the decades, from its beginnings as isolated pockets of people (principally in the North) who believed slavery was evil and should be resisted, into something widespread, well known and well organized.
The anti-slavery underground was more than just networks of people who helped the enslaved to escape to freedom. People also helped the fugitives find jobs and establish lives in communities (mostly in the Northern states). They helped with the cause of abolition, too, politically and socially. Many of the people involved were members of religious groups who came to believe slavery was a grievous sin that must be eradicated immediately. The Quakers were the most prominent of such groups, but the Methodists were also early advocates of resistance. Ministers would urge their congregations to join with them in helping slaves in any way they could and to convert others to the cause.
One major thing I learned from this book is that the Underground Railroad was not just a group of sympathetic northern wealthy whites. The author makes the point repeatedly that the Underground Railroad involved people of all ethnicities and socioeconomic groups who came from both the north and the south. Many black people, both free and enslaved, helped fugitives escape and establish new lives. Some helped through the courts, others through the media, through their churches or their businesses.
As with every history book I've read, what struck me with Bound for Canaan is the immense complexity of this period in our history. There was an awful lot going on with this issue in the late 18th century into the 19th century. After reading this book, there is no way anyone can say that slavery was not the cause of the Civil War. Everyone was talking about it; everyone had an opinion about the rightness of slavery, how the enslaved should be dealt with, what to do with freed blacks, how to help the newly freed people. Many people were frightened by the possibility of the violence that this problem and its solution seemed to bring with it.
The author also mentions the cotton gin, and how that transformed the more diverse southern economy into the cotton monoculture economy it became, and how it changed the fate of the enslaved and the formerly enslaved. The increased value of cotton and the outlawing of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1808 made slaves more valuable than ever. Owners were very reluctant to let them go, and the Fugitive Slave Act had already made it possible for slaves to be hunted throughout the United States. For that reason alone, many slaves traveled all the way to Canada so that they could not be caught and returned. But even freed slaves or those who had been born free were not safe from slave catchers, who stood to gain from selling any dark-skinned person they could kidnap. And of course those kidnapped people had to be rescued, too, adding to the numbers of those in need of help and the difficulty of helping them.
One important Underground Railroad conductor and abolitionist was the Reverend Rankin, whose house high on a hill overlooking the town of Ripley, Ohio and the Ohio River gave hope to slaves coming through Kentucky on their way north. His house still sits there. You can visit it and imagine how he lived and carried out his crucial mission for over thirty years. He was only one of many, though. Some of the people involved in this crusade helped hundreds, even thousands of slaves escape bondage over the decades.
But I guess I've said enough for now. And I'm not even half way through! There's much more to come next time, so stay tuned!
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