Not only fugitive slaves who had settled there, but free blacks feared that the new law would increase the activity of slavecatchers and the threat of abduction into slavery. In the three months after the passage of the law, an estimated 3,000 American blacks fled to Canada. It was only the beginning of a mass exodus that continued throughout 1851 and a steady migration thereafter up through the Civil War.
Fugitive Slaves Fled from Boston thru Vermont
Vermont was a likely escape route to Canada for the estimated 600 fugitive slaves who had been living in Boston before the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. This emigration from Boston increased after the attempted rendition in 1851 by federal authorities of the fugitive slave, Shadrach Minkins, who with the help of the Boston Vigilance Committee was able to flee to Canada through Vermont.
Two months after Minkins’ flight to Canada, Thomas Sims, another fugitive slave, was apprehended in Boston. When the vigilance committee met to plan a rescue, black leader, Lewis Hayden, complained that the number of blacks available to help had significantly diminished because of recent emigrations to Canada. According to Gary Collison, aid to more than 430 fugitive slaves was accounted for by the Boston Vigilance Committee after 1850. However, it is impossible to determine exactly how many fugitive slaves passed through Boston during those years. Rev. Joshua Young, who lived in the Boston area before moving to Vermont in 1852, stated that fugitive slaves passed through daily after the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law.
Young, installed as the pastor of the Burlington Unitarian Church in 1852, described his participation in the Underground Railroad there in a letter to Siebert:
Letter Testified to Fugitive Slaves Passing thru Burlington
"How many tales of cruelty I listened to, how many backs scarred by the slave driver’s lash and some not healed, I looked upon, how many poor scared creatures I secreted in cellars or garrets until the danger was past I cannot tell, only this I did again and again, both while living in Boston and in Burlington . . ."
Young’s letter also includes a number of insightful comments about the Underground Railroad in Vermont and identifies his collaborators as Lucius Bigelow and Simon Wires. Another key Burlington participant was Congregation minister, John Converse. Elizabeth Buffum Chase, a known Underground Railroad participant in Rhode Island, also identified Young as the conductor who forwarded fugitive slaves to Canada from Vermont, at the end of a route beginning in New Bedford, Massachusetts and passing through her home in Valley Falls.
The effect of the second Fugitive Slave Law on the appearance of slavecatchers in Vermont is significant. In addition to the renditions of Minkins and Sims, the federal government financed the rendition of Anthony Burns in 1854, providing legal, military, and naval support totaling as much as $100,000 (millions based on today’s values). It is no accident that documented reports of slavecatchers in Vermont come after 1850.
Antebellum Newspaper Accounts Document Appearance of Slave Catchers
In addition to many oral accounts, a story from the pages of the Vermont Freeman and National Anti-Slavery Standard reported a family of fugitive slaves had been forwarded to Plainfield, where the citizens pitched in to pay for a horse and wagon to take them to Canada. Only nine hours later, slavecatchers arrived in Montpelier, about eight miles east.
Two more newspapers accounts, one from the St. Albans Messenger in 1856, and the other from the Vermont Tribune of 1857, reported stories of fugitive slaves in Vermont being pursued by slavecatchers. The first reported in the Montreal Herald told of a narrow escape by a man from federal marshals at St. Albans.
The second described a woman named Charlotte who had escaped from her master who was her father. She had undertaken an epic journey that took her from Baltimore to Philadelphia to Boston to Maine, where slavecatchers had tracked her, before finally reaching St. Albans, where she was led by Underground Railroad agents to Canada.
According to the 1861 census, there were 228 blacks living there. Collison, who did extensive research on the black population of this period, believed the figure was closer to 400 as estimated by the Montreal Gazette at that time. His research of the backgrounds of these individuals indicated to him that most of them were fugitive slaves.
This suggests hundreds of fugitive slaves living in an area that implies a journey through Vermont.
See The Underground Railroad in Vermont Before 1850
References
Tom Calarco, The Underground Railroad in the Adirondack Region (Jeffersonville, N.C.: McFarland and Company, 2004)
Wilbur H. Siebert Collection, Ohio History Center, Columbus, OH
Wilbur H. Siebert, Vermont's Anti-Slavery and Underground Railroad Record (1937. New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969).
Raymond Paul Zirblis, Friends of Freedom (Vermont Division of Historic Preservation: Montpelier, 1996).
Tom Calarco - Tom Calarco is the author and editor of five books on the Underground Railroad, the latest, Places of the Underground Railroad, to be ...
