Response from:

Henry Robert Burke
Marietta, Ohio

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Underground Railroad Research

Dear Barbara and Bennie,

Please post this on Afrigenas.

After reading "Bound for Glory on the Bayou" I found some points that I would like to debate. I am not looking to argue, but rather to clarify the subject of the Underground Railroad. My only wish is to present the most accurate history of the Underground Railroad Movement possible, so that future generations will be able to understand what happened to my people. I feel those fugitive slaves presented in "Bound for Glory on the Bayou" deserve as much attention and admiration as fugitive slaves who escaped to Canada. But I find it offensive the way that fugitive slaves escaping to Canada were refferred to as being weak and led by the hand by white Abolitionists. Who ever wrote that article should consider the cold climate in the North. Many fugitive slaves who passed along the Underground Railroad in Ohio were women, children and older people, who needed transportation, shelter, food and directions. Also I don't doubt that fugitive slaves escaped to Mexico and the Carribean, but I don't think that it was an organized effort. If so, I would like to see the evidence or documentation. I applaud the Maroons and the Seminole for I have some genetic connection with the Creeks and Seminole but I don't consider their involvement the Underground Railroad either.

My Question: Is "Bound for Glory on the Bayou" discussing an organization called the Underground Railroad or are they claiming that all acts of slaves rebelling and running away are called the Underground Railroad?

My View: If the consensus is that the Underground Railroad is the act of a slave or group of slaves running away from their place of enslavement, then I no point of contention. Even I know that multitudes of slaves, when ever and where ever they were enslaved, ran away when they had an the opportunity. I know that many slaves escaped using their own ingenuity and relied on their own skills to survive. I applaud their accomplishments! As a matter of fact my own great-great grandfather John Curtis and his two younger brothers, at a very young age, escaped from a plantation in Rockingham County, Virginia and crossed the Appalachian Mountains to the Ohio River on their own.

Now I do not have much access to information about or interest in slavery that was practiced by the French and Spanish in North America and elsewhere. That subject belongs to other researchers and I will have to learn from then. My research of the Underground Railroad begins with slavery in Virginia, where slavery in the English Colonies of North America began in 1619.

My research and perspective derives from information logged in plantation journals such as those kept by:

Robert "King" Carter (1663-1732) slave owner of Corotoman Plantation located at Christ Church in Lancaster County, Virginia. Robert "King" Carter owned nearly 300,000 acres of plantation land and more slaves than any man in history of North America. He cut off the toes of runaway slaves above the instep . In information in reward posters advertised for runaway slaves before 1800 it is apparent that these slaves were running away on their own.

George Washington Henderson (1806-1868) slave owner of Henderson Hall, located in Williamstown, Virginia. The record of his slave owning activity was kept in his plantation journals and even involved Federal Court Cases. One of his slaves named Isaac Fairfax ran off to Canada on the Underground Railroad. Fairfax wrote a letter asking to return to Henderson Hall and came back to Henderson Hall. Fairfax soon ran away again, this time taking 8 other slaves with him.

Before the Revolutionary War (1776) slavery was legal in all the English Colonies of North America. New Hampshire first abolished slavery in that state in 1777, followed by Massachusetts, Connecticut and Pennsylvania in 1780. After 1780 along the border between Pennsylvania, which had abolished slavery ,and Maryland and Virginia where slavery remained, whether a runaway slave was free once he crossed into Pennsylvania became a bitterly contested issue. In fact this border was the beginning of the Mason-Dixon Line that separated the North from the South.

The creation of the Northwest Territory extended the Mason-Dixon Line along the Ohio River all the way to Cairo, Illinois. Article 6 of the Ordinance of 1787 contained the first U. S. Fugitive Slave Law. This made it unlawful for "those owing service" i.e. slaves, to hide in the Northwest Territory. The Federal Fugitive Slave Law passed by the U.S. Congress in 1793 was patterned after the fugitive slave clause in Article 6 in the Ordinance of 1787.

Fortunately, slavery was abolished in the Upper Province of Canada (Ontario) in 1793 and the Lower Province of Canada (Quebec) in 1803. By this time the Northern States had completed implementing the abolition of slavery and this created a zone between the slave states and the non-slave states where the Abolitionist Movement could not only grow, but both free blacks and white Abolitionists could assist fugitive slaves to cross the International Border into Canada to escape capture and return to slavery under the U.S. Fugitive Slave Laws. By 1820 the efforts to help fugitive slaves get to Canada had become fairly well organized. These facts are not disputed by any knowledgeable Underground Railroad researcher.

Henry Robert Burke