Upper South Slavery

Underground Railroad

Freedom in Pennsylvania

(history.com)

“[To the slaveholders] Slaves were a form of real estate, or human furniture, so to speak, whose personal life had no more intimate meaning than that of a cow, or a settee. Where they were considered human, the law allowed them no claim on their own families. It has been estimated that in the Upper South forcible separations probably destroyed one out of every three marriages by slaves, and that a similar proportion of enslaved children were taken away from one or both parents to be sold.”

​​​​​​​--Fergus M. Bordewich, Bound for Canaan (2005), p. 23

(americainclass.org)

Henry "Box" Brown escaped in 1849 (UConn Today)

“But the Underground Railroad is no more ‘black history’ than it is ‘white history’: it is American history, and it swept into its orbit courageous Americans of every hue. It was the country’s first racially integrated civil rights movement, in which whites and blacks worked together for six decades before the Civil War, taking great risks together, saving tens of thousands of lives together, and ultimately succeeding together in one of the most ambitious political undertakings in American history.”

--Fergus M. Bordewich, Bound for Canaan (2005), p. 4

1833 image mocking free blacks (philadelphiaencyclopedia.org)

“Although freer than any of the slave states, the Pennsylvania into which William Parker had moved in the summer of 1839 was no utopia for black people. There was no slavery in Pennsylvania, but jobs open to blacks were generally the most menial and lowest paid. The jobs blacks had previously won were then being challenged by the competition of white immigrants pouring into America. Black Pennsylvania coal miners, canal and railroad workers lost their jobs to the newly arrived Irishmen who formed a cheap labor force.” 

---Jonathan Katz, Resistance at Christiana (1971), p. 23

(wikipedia.org)

--John Gorsuch, Baltimore Sun, September 18, 1851 

“Near three years ago, four negroes, between the ages of nineteen and twenty-two, fled from my father’s, in Baltimore county, nineteen miles from the city, into Pennsylvania. These negroes were to be free at the age of twenty-eight, and this fact they knew. It had come to the knowledge of my father that they had sold wheat, stolen from him, to a free negro. A warrant was got out for the arrest of the free negro, which, coming to the ears of his accomplices, they resolved (the same evening) to make good their escape.”

--John Gorsuch, Baltimore Sun, September 18, 1851

--The Liberator, September 26, 1851

“It should be remembered that the colored people who reside near Christiana had been exasperated and maddened by personal kidnapping outrages. They dwell in a community by themselves, and are mostly brick-makers. About two years ago they were invaded by a lawless gang of kidnappers, who came at midnight, and, without any pretense of legal warrant, broke into a home, seized a colored man, beat him horribly... ”

--The Liberator, September 26, 1851

In the month of Sept, 1850, a colored man, known in the neighborhood around Christiana to be free, was seized and carried away by men known to be professional kidnappers, and has never been seen by his family since. In March 1851, in the same neighborhood, under the roof of his employer, during the night, another colored man was tied, gagged, and carried away, marking the road along which he was dragged by his own blood. No authority for this outrage was ever shown, and he has never been heard from. These and many other acts of a similar kind, had so alarmed the neighborhood that the very name of kidnapper was sufficient to create a panic. The blacks feared for their own safety, and the whites knowing their feelings, were apprehensive that any attempt to repeat these outrages would be the cause of bloodshed. Many good citizens were determined to do all in their power to prevent these lawless depredations, though they were ever ready to submit to any measures sanctioned by legal process. They regretted the existence among them of a body of people liable to such violence; but without combination, had, each for himself, resolved that they would do everything dictated by humanity to resist barbarous oppression.

-- [W. A Jackson] A History of the Trial of Castner Hanway (1998) p.35-36​​​​​​​

Lancaster Co. 28 August 1851

Respected friend,

I have the required information of four men that is within two miles of each other. Now the best way is for you to come as a hunter disguised about two days ahead of your son and let him come by way of Philadelphia and get the deputy marshal John Nagle, I think his name is. Tell him the situation and he can get a force of the right kind it will take about twelve so that they can divide and take them all within half an hour. Now if you can come on & I will meet you at the gap when you get there. Inquire for Benjamin Clay’s tavern let your son and the marshal get out Kinyer’s hotel now if you cannot come at the time spoken of write very soon. And let me know when you can. I wish you to come as soon as possible.

Very respectfully thy friend

Wm. M.P.

--William Padgett to Edward Gorsuch, August 28, 1851, excerpted in Thomas P. Slaughter Bloody Dawn (1991) p. 19

Gorsuch Farm (gutenburg.org)