 |
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
| 736 THE UNDERGROUND RAIL ROAD. refer to a few incidents which you may select and use as you may think proper. You are perfectly cognizant of the feet, that after the decision in York, Pa., of the celebrated Prigg case, Pennsylvania was regarded as free territory, which Cauada afterwards proved to be, and that the Susquehanna river •was the recognized northern boundary of the slave-holding empire. The borough of Columbia, situated on its eastern bank, in the county of Lancaster, was the great depot where the fugitives from Virginia and Maryland first landed. The long bridge connecting Wrigbtsville with Columbia, was the only safe outlet by which they could successfully escape their pursuers. When they had crossed this bridge they could look back over its broad silvery stream on its western shore, and say to the slave power : " Thus far shalt them come, and no farther." Previous to that period, tbe liue of fugitive travel was from Baltimore, by the way of Havre de Grace to Philadelphia ; but the difficulty of a safe passage across the river, at that place caused the route to be changed to York, Pa., a distance of fifty-eight miles, the fare being forty dollars, and thence to Columbia, in the dead hour of tbe Di'ghL My house was at the end of the bridge, arid as I kept the station, I was frequently called up in the night to take charge of the passengers. On their arrival they were generally hungry and penniless. I have received hundreds in this condition; fed and sheltered from one to seventeen at a time in a single night. At this point the road forked; some I sent west by boats, to Pittsburgh, and others to you in our cars to Philadelphia, and the incidents of their trials form a portion of the history you have compiled. In a period of three years from 1847 to 1850, I passed hundreds to the land of freedom, while others, induced by high wages, and the feeling that they \vere safe in Columbia, worked in the lumber and coal yards of that place. I always persuaded them to go to Canada, as I had no faith in their being able to elude the grasp of the slave-hunters. Indeed, the merchants had the confidence of their security and desired them to remain; several of my friends told me that I was injuring the trade of the place by persuading the laborers to leave. Indeed, many of the fugitives themselves looked upon me with jealousy, and expressed their indignatiou at my efforts to have them removed from peace and plenty to a land that waa cold and barren, to starve to death. It was a period of great prosperity in our borough, and everything passed on favorably and successfully until the passage of the fugitive slave bill in 1850. At first the law was derided and condemned by our liberty-loving citizens, and the fugitives did not fear its operations because they asserted that they conld protect themselves. This fatal dream was of short duration. A prominent man, by the name of Baker, was arrested and taken to Philadelphia, and given up by tbe commissioner, and afterwards purchased |