USA > Indiana > Pioneer history of Indiana : including stories, incidents, and customs of the early settlers > Part 47
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him and the rest of his party and hemmed him behind a set of hewed logs for a house. In attempting to escape he ran his horse over the logs lengthwise. The horse caught his foot between the logs and fell. At that the kidnappers rushed onto him with drawn knives and his friends rushed to his relief. His horse got its foot loose or Calvert would have been killed. The rescuing party found there were too many kidnappers for them to contend with, so they fell back and returned to their homes. It afterward developed that the boys were hidden in a well nearby at the time this battle took place. They were then taken into Missouri and sold into slavery. A few months after that "Grandfather Armstrong," as he was known, and John Armstrong sold out their posses- sions and moved to what was then called the Red River coun- try, located in southwestern Arkansas. "Uncle Paddy Cal- vert" and his son Robert went with a four-horse team to help them move. On their way home they stopped over night in the neighborhood where the little boys were sold, and in talking with the gentleman with whom they stayed all night, they learned that two little mulatto boys were brought there and sold to his neighbors. The next morning Mr. Calvert and his son went to see the gentleman who had bought the boys and asked him to call the boys up, one at a time, and if they did not know him or his son, or both of them, they would not claim them as stolen boys. Ike was called up, but failed to recognize either man. Then Jack was called, and he did not know Mr. Calvert, but knew his son at once, and said, "That's Marsa Bob Calvert." Then the boys both seemed to recollect the two men and recalled their names. The man who had bought them readily gave them up to Mr. Calvert, as they were stolen property. He took them home, raised them to manhood, sent them to school and gave them an education the same as he did his own children. An agree- ment was made between Calvert and the Missouri man that the boys were never to go into bondage again. When they were twenty-one years old he gave each of them a good horse, saddle and bridle, and one hundred dollars apiece and started them out into the world.
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REV. HIRAM HUNTER RELEASING KIDNAPED NEGROES.
In the fall and winter of 1863 I had the misfortune to be an inmate of Libby Prison hospital with a wound made by a Minne ball through my hip. There were at that time about one thousand Federal officers, from the rank of brigadier- general down to second-lieutenant, in that prison. Among that number as a patient in the hospital was Col. W. McMackin, of the Twenty-first Illinois, the regiment which General Grant went into the service with. The Colonel, as well as myself, had been captured at the battle of Chickamauga, Geor- gia. As I now recall it, he was a Cumberland minister and a Christian gentleman at all times, doing all he could to con- sole the poor unfortunates who were in that hospital, many of them very severely wounded, and a number died while he was there. I am glad to be thus privileged to bear testimony that the Colonel was ever ready at any time, night or day, to aid those wounded and sick in their temporal wants and to give them the words of consolation which are in the precious promise of our Savior. He looked to have never been strong, and the exposure from that terrible campaign, from Murfreesborough, Tenn., to Chickamauga, Ga., in the rain nearly every day, had been so severe that he appeared to be suffering from that dreadful disease, consumption. During the long and weary months that he worked so faithfully for the hapless and helpless ones in that house of death, he never complained of his own suffering. He was ever doing good and organized a Bible class for the convalescents. In this way I became very well acquainted with him. He learned where I lived and the town of Princeton was near my home, and in talking together he related to me this strange story which took place some twenty-five years before:
He said he had gone to Princeton, Indiana, to meet Hiram Hunter, and had had been there for quite a time doing some school work in the old brick seminary which stood on the hill, under Hunter or some other persons whom Hunter had assigned to give him lessons in theology. During the time he was there he went out with the ministers to the dif- ferent churches in the country surrounding Princeton and
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heard the old ministers preach. At one time he attended a camp-meeting some miles southwest of Princeton. There were many preachers and thousands of persons in attendance. While attending one of these meetings eight or ten miles southwest of Princeton there was a lengthy service at night and during the time the meeting was going on there was some rain and quite a flurry of wind. After the meeting was over, Rev. Hiram Hunter, who was in attendance, was invited by a gentleman who lived near to go home with him to spend the night. The Colonel, through Hunter, was also invited. They were all on horseback and Mr. Knowlton (no doubt Knowles) had his wife on the same horse back of him. They had gone some distance from the church when they found the road completely blocked by the top of a tree which had fallen into it. They all dismounted and crept around through the thick brush as best they could to get around the tree top. On coming to the road on the other side, they found a covered wagon which was stopped by the blockade. On coming up to it. a man was seen standing in the road. Mr. Hunter was in front and asked the man how he came there with a covered wagon at such a time of night. The man answered him by saying it was none of his business. Mr. Hunter was a deter- mined man and it did not take much of this sort of thing to raise his anger. He said, "I spoke to you as a gentleman and your answer shows that you are an ill-bred cur. I am now satisfied that there is something wrong about you, and before we go any further we will investigate." At this point another man appeared, who had been cutting a road around the other side of the tree, and demanded to know what the trouble was. Mr. Hunter told him there was no trouble, but they thought there was something wrong and intended to know what it was. At this, the man with the ax said that the first man who attempted to lay hands on the wagon would lose his life. As quick as thought one of the two stalwart sons of Mr. Knowlton, who were with the camp- meeting party. caught the ax and wrenched it out of the threatening fellow's hand. The other man attempted to aid his partner, when the senior Mr. Knowlton laid him on his
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back in the road. The two boys tied the man they had and their father and Mr. Hunter drew the arms of the man who was knocked down behind his back and McMackin tied them hard and fast with his handkerchief. The night was cloudy, but there was a moon and it was not very dark, but the tim- ber was so very thick on each side of the narrow road that they could not see to any advantage. Matches at that time were not in general use. Mr. Knowlton told one of his sons to take his mother home and bring back some material to make a torch. The young man was soon back with the steel, flint and punk and in a little time they had a flaming torch. In the wagon they found a negro man and woman with their hands tied and they tied to a cross-piece under the bottom of the wagon and a rope was tied in each of their mouths. They were soon liberated, but it was some time before they could stand or talk. They said they lived in Illinois, some miles west of Vincennes, Indiana, and they had been tied ever since the latter part of the night before and had been gagged most of the time. They further said they crossed the Wabash at Mt. Carmel on the ferry; that they were free negroes. and that these two men had come to their cabin the night before, after they had gone to bed, pretending to be lost, and asked the privilege of feeding their team near their house, saying they would sleep in their wagons, but if the negro woman would get them a good supper they would give her a silver dollar, and she did so. Sometime after midnight they knocked at the door, saying they were cold in the wagon and asking permission to lie on the floor. The door was opened and they caught and tied and put them in the wagon, nearly twenty-four hours before they were liberated.
The wagon was turned; the two kidnappers were made to walk behind it, guarded by Messrs. Hunter and Knowlton. One of the boys drove the team and they were soon home. After getting into the house they had an informal examina- tion. The two negroes told the same story that they did at the wagon. The man knocked down was the first interro- gated. He was very insolent and said he would make it dear business to them for stopping him and meddling with his
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property; that the two negroes were his and he had a descrip- tion of them, which he showed. He said they had run away from southern Kentucky about two years before. The other kidnapper would not say anything. The stories of the negroes were believed, and it was decided to hold the men until morning and take all of them to Princeton, where legal proceedings would be brought.
The first cabin of this family was standing in the yard .. A pallet was made down on the floor and the kidnappers were put on it. There were no windows and but one door which was fastened with a rope tied on the outside. The two boys. volunteered to occupy a room not more than ten feet away and guard the door. Somehow these outlaws untied each other and got out at the top of a wide, low chimney and made a break for the stable to get the horses, but the boys with their guns foiled them in this, and they made a rush for the woods which was nearby and escaped. That was the last these people ever heard of them. The next morning it was decided that Mr. Knowlton and a neighbor would take the negroes back to their home. The two men were well mounted and armed with long rifles, as everybody was in those days. They soon got started, the negroes driving the wagon. When they arrived in the neighborhood where the negroes lived they learned that the team and wagon had been stolen about three miles north of their cabin and that the negro fam- ily had lived in that neighborhood for more than twenty years.
One morning in the spring of 1864 the rebel surgeon in charge of the Libby Prison hospital came to me and said that I was so much trouble to them, they had decided to send me to my own people on parole, and for me to be ready in two hours, as an ambulance would be there to take me to a boat which would go on to City Point. I was greatly elated over the prospect of liberty. Colonel McMackin congratulated me on my good fortune and said: "I don't know that I will live to see home again, but when I die I will go to a country where rebel torture will not come, and then some day I hope to meet all my comrades who were with me in durance vile in this wretched prison."
CHAPTER XXIX.
UNDERGROUND RAILROAD.
FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW-ANTI-SLAVERY LEAGUE-ROUTES OF FUGITIVE SLAVES-INTERESTING LETTERS-REV. T. B. MCCORMICK.
THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD.
In this chapter I have been governed by data secured from the superintendent of the men working on the southern borders of Indiana near the Ohio river for the Anti-Slavery League. This matter has never been printed before.
Slaves being regarded as personal property, "things," not human beings, as the old Roman law was pleased to put it, the rights of the master to reclaim his property were ac- cepted as a reasonable consequence.
The fugitive slave law of 1793, following shortly after the agreement of 1787, when the compact to forever exclude slavery from the Northwest territory was passed by the votes of the slave-holding states, thus making it the law that all the states that would be formed out of that immense territory should forever be free.
The act of 1793 provided for the reclamation of fugitives from justice as well as from service. It was accepted by all as a just law, permitting the owners of slaves to reclaim their property. The fugitive slave law that was passed in 1850, the provisions of which were drafted by Senator Mason, of Virginia, who was among the foremost of the Southern "fire-eaters" in his hatred of the North (and he injected everything into that measure which he felt would be galling to the abolitionists), gave the slaveholders or those hunting
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their runaway slaves the power to organize a posse at any point in the United States to aid them in running down their negroes.
There was a great impetus given to fugitive slave- hunting in all the free states bordering on slave states and far into New England. The favored provisions that the South had received by that law were taken advantage of by many men who never owned a slave or had been in a slave state.
Kidnapping the negroes was accomplished by running them away from their acquaintances to a friendly commis- sioner, probably a partner in the business, and there the kid- napper secured his right to the negro by a judicial decision of the villainous commissioner who received from the United States ten dollars for every decision he made against the negro and but five if he made it for the negro; thus offering the commissioner a bribe of five dollars for a favorable decis- ion in the interest of the kidnapper. The negro was thus doomed and taken South and sold into slavery. The harsh and humiliating provisions of that law seemed to have im- bued the Southern men with an extra touch of their imagin- ary superiority. This was carried so far that when the war came on, their recruiting officers, when raising troops for the Confederate army, boastingly said: "One Southern soldier on the battlefield will be equal to five Yankees." "Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad," was literally carried out with the Southern "fire-eater." This madness rang the doom of slavery.
Many of the provisions of the act of 1850 were without a doubt unconstitutional.
The Constitution of the United States expressly provides that "in suits at common law where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right to a trial by jury shall be preserved." The fugitive slave law of 1850 provided for the delivery of fugitives from slavery without allowing them the trial by jury. Section Six of that law says that "in no trial or hearing under this act shall the testimony of such al- leged fugitives be admitted in evidence." The first negro
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arrested and tried before a United States commissioner in Indiana was a free negro man. The commissioner decided against him, but when taken to the slaveowner for whom he was arrested, the man was honest enough to declare he had never seen the negro before. The law was, further, very se- vere, as it imposed a fine of one thousand doilars and im- prisonment on anyone harboring or in any way aiding fugi- tives in escaping. Unfortunately for justice, the United States courts of that period were organized so favorably to. the interests of the owners of slaves, that a very small inci- dent would be construed as aiding and harboring.
In southern Indiana in an early day, four-fifths of the people were in sympathy with slavery. The greater portion of them had moved to Indiana from slave states and had been raised to regard the rights of the slaveowner to his slave as. sacred as his rights to his horses, cattle or any other prop- erty. It was but natural that the law-abiding people would have just such a regard for the law that they had been taught to obey. Slavery had existed in all the settled sections in the. Northwest territory for many years before Indiana Territory was organized, and at the time of the passage of the fugitive slave law in 1850 there was but little open opposition to slavery. After that obnoxious law came in force, so many brutal acts were committed by the kidnappers, that a great change came over the people. They realized that the law was passed so that the negroes could be kidnapped and sold into slavery who were free born, and this be done under the guise of obeying the forms of law.
Many expedients were entered into to defeat the owners or their agents from recapturing their slaves, by feeding the fugitives, placing them in hiding during the day, piloting them farther north in the night and turning them over to. friends who would carry them farther on their journey to- ward liberty. These anti-slavery men would gather a com- pany of men and put the slave-watchers at different bridges to flight, and in many cases severely chastise them. This was kept up until men from many sections of the free states. got together and determined to organize an Anti-Slavery
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League. This was a secret organization, the object of which was to aid the fugitive slaves to gain their freedom, and to render this aid in a way that would be more effective than the haphazard way that was being done by the unorganized few who were helping the runaways.
This organization was in direct opposition to the laws of the United States, and its members fully understood the se- vere penalties which would be meted out to them if they were caught in the act of violating the law. Notwithstanding this danger, there were hundreds of men who were willing to engage in any enterprise which would defeat the swaggering negro hunter. The organization was made and there was all the money back of it that was needed and it was very effect- ive in helping large numbers of negroes to esape from slavery.
It was not long after the employes of that organization were placed on duty at the different points assigned them un- til so many slaves escaped and the route they went could not be ascertained, that the slaveowners said there must be an underground railroad under the Ohio river and on to Canada.
The Anti-Slavery League of the East had many of the shrewdest men of the nation in its organization. They had a detective and spy system that was far superior to anything the slaveholders or the United States had. There were as many as one hundred educated and intelligent young and middle-aged men on duty from some ways above Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, along down the Ohio on both sides of it to the. Mississippi river. These men had different occupations. Some were book agents and other sorts of agents; some were singing teachers, school teachers, writing teachers, and others map-makers, carrying surveying and drawing outfits. for that purpose; others were clock tinkers; some were real Yankee peddlers; some were naturalists and geologists, carry- ing their hammers and nets for that purpose. They belonged to any and all sorts of occupations and professions that gave them the best opportunity to become acquainted and mix with the people and gain a knowledge of the traveled ways of the country. They never engaged in political argument, making it a point always to acquiesce with the sentiment of.
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the majority of the people they were associating with. There were ten young men who were carried on the rolls of the Anti-Slavery League who took upon themselves the role of a spy. These spies were loud in their pro-slavery talk and were in full fellowship with those who were in favor of slavery. In this way they learned the movements of those who aided the slave masters in hunting their runaways, and were enabled often to put them on the wrong track, thus helping those who were piloting the runaways to place them beyond the chance of recapture. There was also a superin- tendent for each of the four states, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, who had the management of the men working in the state that he was assigned to. The man who superintended Indiana was named J. T. Hanover, but was known to us by the name of John Hansen. While he was do- ing this work he was for two or three days every two weeks at my father's house, where he boarded off and on for five years. He was a naturalist, and one time was near what is known as Snakey Point, now on the Evansville and Indian- apolis Railroad, two and a half miles northeast of Oakland City. Seeing a snake of peculiar species, he caught it with a pair of circle nippers he had for that purpose, but when put- ting it into a cage was bitten through the thick part of the right hand and remained at my father's house for two and a half months under the care of Dr. Samuel Mccullough. He came very near dying from the effects of that poison. Dur- ing the time he was there much of his mail accumulated at Princeton. The writer was sent there several times for it and answered many letters for him; in fact, the last month and a half I did all his correspondence. My father and Hansen consulted about me doing this work for him, when he said he was willing to risk it, as we would be as deep in the mud as he was in the mire. During the time he was lying there sick, young men came to see him from Princeton, Boon- ville, Petersburg and many other places. These men were all in the employ of the Anti-Slavery League. The author is yet in possession of a diary kept by Hansen during that period, also a key which was used by Hansen in making his
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report. Without this key nothing in the work could be un- raveled.
Hansen was working and traveling over the first three or four tiers of counties all along the southern borders of Indi- ana and pretended to be representing an eastern real-estate firm from which he received large packages of mail at many of the county seats and large towns all along southern Indi- ana. The young men assigned to do this hazardous work under him were men who could be depended upon to do it in a way that no suspicion of their real mission would be had. They were under a most perfect discipline similar to that the secret service men were under during the war times in the Sixties. There was a code used that each man was thorough- ly acquainted with, and had their numbers and all that was said or done about him was by that number, which numbers were referred to as numbers of land, towns, ranges and sec- tions and by acres when the numbers were above thirty-six. The routes these men were on were called by the names of timber, such as linden, oak, maple, hickory, walnut, dog- wood, sassafras, beach, and all the sorts of timber that were native of the country in which they worked.
There were many places that runaway negroes crossed the Ohio river from Kentucky into Indiana. I shall not at- tempt to give a description of any of the routes on the other three border states, for the only one who knew anything about this work I became acquainted with was the superin- tendent of the Indiana division. I shall name the most used routes commencing above the mouth of the Wabash river on the Ohio and on up to the neighborhood of Cincinnati. The most difficult problem that the slave had to solve was how to cross the Ohio river and to make that proposition easy it was agreed that there should be several places located along that river where the negro could be crossed in boats belonging to the anti-slavery league.
At Diamond Island, near West Franklin, Posey County, many runaway slaves were helped over the river and were taken over two routes. One route was to cross the Wabash river at Webb's Ferry near the southern line of Gibson
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County, Indiana, and then on up along the Wabash or near it in Illinois to a friendly rendezvous where they met friends who carried them on farther north, recrossing the Wabash above Terre Haute and up to a point near Lake Michigan, either in Lake, Porter, or LaPorte Counties. Here there was a place in each county where they were secreted and smug- gled on board a lumber bark that the anti-slavery people owned that was manned by an anti-slavery crew. This boat was very unpretentious to look at but was built for strength and speed. Anyone not acquainted would think the boat would not dare venture five miles from shore. The boat cruised along the shore landing at different points in the three counties, loading and unloading such freight as was of- fered them, but carrying no passengers. The negroes were kept secreted in the holds until a number were gathered to- gether and then taken along the Michigan shore on up into Canada.
The other route from Diamond Island was to a point in Vanderburg County then known as the Calvert neighborhood, thence north to the various rendezvous until at one of the gathering places near Lake Michigan. Near the city of Ev- ansville was another place where the runaways crossed. This was a very popular route as there were many free negroes in the city among whom the refugees could be easily hidden.
This work was done at night by fishermen who supplied fish to the market. These two men with the fish boat were in the employ of the anti-slavery league. No doubt there are old people of the city of Evansville who can yet remember two young men who sold fish in their market during the early fifties who were men of fine literary attainments. The re- fugees who crossed by this route were placed in the hands of one of the anti-slavery league's pilots or guides and were tak- en by them along different routes to places where the negroes had friends who carried them farther north, turning them ov- er to other friends until they arrived at one of the points near Lake Michigan.
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