Aspects of Slavery and Freedom Seeking in North Carolina
Wind-Aiding and Abetting Runaways on the Underground Railroad
Consequently, Quaker members proposed to assist African Americans to leave for Liberia and Haiti, as they were convinced that their lives would be better if they started anew on foreign soil. However, as time passed, the Coffins left the Manumission Society to pursue the more direct and radical act of helping runaways escape freedom through extralegal means.
While Quakers failed to directly interfere or encourage the runaway slaves who hid in the woods and thickets of New Garden, Levi Coffin explained how he and other members felt a moral obligation to provide aid to fugitives who needed care, food, or shelter. His conversion to anti-slavery began when he was seven years old when he witnessed a gang of handcuffed and chained slaves being driven by a man on horseback with a long whip along the road. Levi’s father politely asked, “Well, boys, why do they chain you?” One of the men sadly replied, “They have taken us away from our wives and children, and they chain us lest we should make our escape and go back to them.”
As Levi traveled among the 200 acres of New Garden Woods, which presently encompasses Guilford College, he carried sacks of corn to feed the hogs that also contained bacon and corn bread for the slaves. While they ate, he sat and “listened to the stories they told of hard masters and cruel treatment or spoke in language, simple and rude, yet glowing with native eloquence, of the glorious hope of freedom which animated their spirits in the darkest hours and sustained them under the sting of the lash.” Despite the danger of being caught traveling without a pass, the love and longing for separated family members continued to be strong.
Routes to Freedom: Quaker Influence on the Underground Railroad
Stories often depict stories of husbands and fathers who traveled behind the train of wagons during the day and crept up to the camp at night, close enough for his wife and children to see him and bring him food. One incident captured the cruelty that a slave master enacted on a runaway slave. When the master asked, “Weren’t you well treated?” His slave replied, “Yes, massa.” The master then asked, “What made you run away?” The man replied, “My wife and children were taken away from me, massa, and I think as much of them as you do of yours, or any white man does of his. Their massa tried to buy me too, but you would not sell me, so when I saw them go away, I followed.” His master coldly replied, “I've always treated you well, trusting you with my keys, and treating you more like a confidential servant than a slave, but now you shall know what slavery is. Just wait till I get you back home!” Even after the master threatened him with the severest punishment, the man refused to confess who had written the pass. Finally, to force him to confess, the master placed the slave’s hand on the blacksmith’s anvil and struck it with a hammer until the blood settled under his fingernails.
In 1817, a lengthy legal case involved an African American man named Benjamin Benson kidnapped in Delaware and sold in Guilford County to a slaveholder. Eventually, the Guilford County Supreme Court ruled in his favor, but the backlash from slaveholders sparked the idea of an organized method of helping enslaved people to escape to freedom. Fugitive John Dimery’s escape to Indiana was the earliest documented instance of Underground Railroad activity. Dimery, freed by his master somewhere in North Carolina, resettled with his wife in New Garden. In 1819, he was granted his freedom after his master died in 1819. However, his master’s sons came to New Garden to collect Dimery in the night. Subsequently, Dimery directed his daughter to “run for ‘Mr. Coffin.” Vestal and his friend Isaac White caught up with and detained the kidnappers while “the woman of the house” quietly untied Dimery who “disappeared into the woods.” Addison Coffin reported that Dimery traveled along the Underground Railroad to Richmond, Indiana that night.
During the night, runaway slaves came to Levi’s home and entered his room asking for food or assistance. Although southern law inflicted heavy penalties on persons who aided or abetted a fugitive slave in escaping, Levi and Vestal constructed plans to help fugitives escape safely to the North and avoid patrollers or mounted officers. On several occasions, Levi and Vestal intervened on behalf of people who had been illegally kidnapped.
For example, when Vestal learned that an upstanding African American man from Pennsylvania had been stolen and sold into slavery in New Orleans, he contacted the man’s friends who sued the owners, and he regained his freedom. While Vestal is credited with leading the movement, Levi was designated as “President of the Underground Railroad.” From 1819 to 1826, Levi helped no less than 1,000 African Americans travel along the 500-mile Kanawha Route from New Garden, North Carolina to Ohio and Indiana.
By 1830, the population of Guilford County comprised 84 percent whites, 14 percent enslaved, and 2 percent free black people. The New Garden community, which was predominantly white and included free and enslaved African Americans, had ties to northern free state areas through family and faith community connections to Quaker settlements in the northwest, especially to Wayne County, Indiana, and the other regions of Indiana and Ohio. As new lands opened in territories that did not practice slavery, many southern Quakers moved to the northwest instead of migrating to the southwestern territories. Source: Fergus Bordewich, Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, Amistad, 2006.
Levi recalled aiding an enslaved woman named Ede. Purchased to work as a servant for Dr. Caldwell, who was in Guilford County visiting relatives, Ede was a married mother of four children. Her husband and three children were left behind, whereas the youngest, a newborn, was permitted to go with its mother. Dr. Caldwell’s wife was despondent about separating families. To satisfy his wife, he told her that Ede's husband—who belonged to another master—“was a trifling negro, and that his master would probably sell him before long; that slave marriage was not legal; and that perhaps Ede would soon get a better man for a husband.” Filled with grief and dismay about being more than a hundred miles away from her family, Ede fled to the woods the night before they were scheduled to leave. While preparing provisions, she thought that if she and the baby could hide in the woods for a week or two, then her master and mistress might have reconsidered letting her stay with her family.
They were exposed to the cool and chilly elements for several days and nights. She lit a fire and used a bed of leaves to shelter them as best she could. When the baby became ill, and they ran out of food, Ede wanted to leave her hiding place. Familiar with the Coffin family’s reputation of aiding fugitives, she came to their house. Despite knowing the heavy penalty for harboring a fugitive slave, they ignored the law. Ede was kindly received, given a hot supper, a comfortable resting place, and advised on what to do next.
When morning came, the question arose, “What should be done with Ede?” The family would not let her return to her hiding place in the cold with her sick child. Begging not to be returned to her master, she repeated her sad story. As the tears streamed down her cheeks, she threatened to take her own life rather than be separated from her family.
The next day, Levi spoke with the Caldwells to persuade them not to send her away. The Doctor replied, “Yes, she ran off several days ago to keep from going home with our son Sam, I suppose. She needs a good flogging for her foolishness--she would have a good home at his house. Do you know where she is hiding?” Relating to the incident of Ede coming to their home and what they had done for her, Levi pleaded her case by quoting scriptures and requesting that they put themselves in her place. The mistress was touched.
She thanked his mother for caring for the sick child and admitted that she had very reluctantly given her consent for Ede to be separated from her family. He told them that Ede was willing to return home if they allowed her to stay but that she would rather die than be separated from her husband and children. Dr. Caldwell listened but made no reply. Levi then inquired whether his father would be prosecuted for violating the law if the Caldwells pressed charges.
Levi Coffin and his family left North Carolina in September 1826. Shortly after they arrived in Newport, they learned that fugitives came and interacted with free Black communities, mainly from North Carolina, who were the descendants of slaves who had been freed by Quaker years before and sent to free states at the expense of the North Carolina Yearly Meeting.
Fugitive slaves who sought refuge in these communities were often pursued and captured because free African Americans were neither skillful in hiding them nor shrewd in helping them escape to Canada. Levi asked why the community of friends did not take them in, hid them when they were pursued and then helped them get to Canada? Admitting they were afraid of the penalty of the law, he told them that when he was a boy, he read in the Bible that it was right to take in the stranger and administer to those in distress. Thinking it was always safe to do right, he added, “The Bible, in bidding us feed the hungry and clothe the naked, said nothing about color, and I should try to follow out the teachings of that good book. I was willing to receive and aid as many fugitives as were disposed to come to my house.”
With the support of his wife Catherine, the Black community recognized Coffin’s house as a place where hunted and harassed fugitives could find sympathy and support for the journey northward. Throughout the winter between 1826 and 1827, the number of fugitives who came to their house increased. Quakers who were reluctant to participate under the penalty of the law contributed clothing and provided aid, but they were too afraid to shelter them in their homes.
Describing the plight of fugitives in great detail, Levi Coffin recounted:
The care of so many necessitated much work and anxiety on our part, but we assumed the burden of our own will and bore it cheerfully. It was never too cold or stormy, or the hour of night too late for my wife to rise from sleep, and provide food and comfortable lodging for the fugitives. Her sympathy for those in distress never tired, and her efforts in their behalf never abated. This work was kept up during the time we lived at Newport, a period of more than twenty years. The number of fugitives varied considerably in different years, but the annual average was more than one hundred… Sometimes when the fugitives came to us destitute, we kept them several days, until they could be provided with comfortable clothes. This depended on the circumstances of danger.
If they had come a long distance and had been out several weeks or months--as was sometimes the case--and it was not probable that hunters were on their track, we thought it safe for them to remain with us until fitted for traveling through the thinly settled country to the North. Sometimes fugitives have come to our house in rags, foot-sore and toil-worn, and almost wild, having been out for several months traveling at night, hiding in canebrakes or thickets during the day, often being lost and making little headway at night, particularly in cloudy weather, when the north star could not be seen, sometimes almost perishing for want of food, and afraid of every white person they saw, even after they came into a free State, knowing that slaves were often captured and taken back after crossing the Ohio River.