The quiet of a midsummer night had settled down over the city of Washington, when, in August, 1839, a dusky form came, with stealthy tread, from among some buildings not far away, and cautiously approached the eastern entrance to the Capitol. Laying his hand upon the cold steps in the shadow of the great building, Jim Jones, a colored boy of about seventeen, attentively listened as if in expectation of some preconcerted signal.

He had waited but a moment thus, when the hand of a patrol was laid heavily upon his shoulder and the rough query, “What does this mean, you black rascal?” fell upon his ear.

“Dunno, Massa,” was the reply of the startled boy.

“Don’t know, you black imp?”

“No, Massa, dunno what fo’ I was hea.”

“Well, you know, you young nigger, you have no business here at this hour of the night.”

“Yes, Massa, I knowed de night am for white folks, and I jus’ cum for to see—”

“Some d—d abolitionist who is trying to get you away.”

“No, no, Massa.”

“Well, come along and we shall see,” saying which he rudely hurried the boy away to a place of safe keeping.

In the early morning Jim was recognized by his master, who vainly tried to extort from him by questioning the cause of his nocturnal ramble. Failing in this, the boy was taken to a blacksmith shop and his thumbs placed end to end in the jaws of a vice.

“Now,” said the master, “tell me why you were abroad last night.”

“I dunno,” replied Jim.

A half turn of the screw, and a groan of pain escaped the boy; another turn and he writhed in agony.

“Now you black son of a b——ch, why were you at the Capitol last night?”

“O Lor’, Massa, a white man tol’ me I should come.”

“What did he want of you?”

“Fo’ to go norf’.”

“And so you were going?”

“Y-e-s—Massa—I—was—fo’—to—go.”

“How?”

“On a railroad undah de groun’.”

“Under the ground?”

“Yes, Massa, so the gem’an said. He was jus’ comin’ to open de way, when Massa da’ cotched me.”

“Who was he?”

“Dunno, Massa.”

Another turn of the screw, and in the agony of despair the boy yelled, “Dunno, dunno, Massa, dunno,” and swooned away.

After resuscitation the torture was again applied, but nothing farther was elicited, as the boy continued to aver he had never heard the name of the man who was to lead him; and, indeed, he had met him only in the dark.

Though for years slaves had from time to time been stealing away from the kind attentions of their masters, and, indeed, very frequently of late, yet never before had the latter dreamed that their “chattel” went by subterranean transit, and the theme became one of such absorbing interest that, when two months later five prominent slaves escaped from the city in a single night, a Washington morning paper heralded the matter before the world for the first time as follows:—

“The abolition incendiaries are undermining, not only our domestic institutions, but the very foundations of our Capitol. Our citizens will recollect that the boy Jim, who was arrested last August, while lurking about the Capitol, would disclose nothing until he was subject to torture by screwing his fingers in a blacksmith’s vice, when he acknowledged that he was to have been sent north by railroad; was to have started near the place where he stood when discovered by the patrol. He refused to tell who was to aid him—said he did not know—and most likely he did not. Nothing more could be got from him until they gave the screw another turn, when he said: ‘The railroad goes under ground all the way to Boston.’ Our citizens are losing all their best servants. Some secret Yankee arrangement has been contrived by which they ‘stampede’ from three to eight at a time, and no trace of them can be found until they reach the interior of New York or the New England States. They can not have gone by railroad, as every station is closely watched by a secret police, yet there is no other conveyance by which a man can reach Albany in two days. That they have done so, is now clearly demonstrated. Colonel Hardy, a tobacco planter residing in the District, about five miles from the city, lost five more slaves last Sunday evening. They were pursued by an expert slave catcher, but no trace of them was discovered. The search was abandoned this morning, the Colonel having received a paper called the Liberty Press, printed in Albany, with the following article so marked as to claim his attention:

“‘Arrived, this morning, by our fast train, three men and two women. They were claimed as slaves by Colonel Hardy, of the District of Columbia, but became dissatisfied with the Colonel’s ways of bucking Harry, making love to Nancy and other similar displays of masterly affection, and left the old fellow’s premises last Sunday evening, arriving at our station by the quickest passage on record.’

“The article recites many incidents that have transpired in the Colonel’s family, that correspond so exactly with facts that the Colonel says: ‘Nobody but Kate could have told that story!’ Said article closes by saying: ‘Now, Colonel H., please give yourself no trouble about these friends of yours, for they will be safe under the protection of the British Lion before this meets your eyes.’”

The term which had been given to poor Jim, in confidence, as the means by which he was to make his escape from bondage, and extorted from him by torture, having thus been given to the world from the city of Washington, became henceforth the universal appelation for a corporation which, for more than twenty years thereafter, extended its great trunk lines across all the northern states from Mason and Dixon’s line and the Ohio River to the Queen’s Dominion, and its ramifications far into the southern states. It was most efficiently officered, and had its side tracks, connections and switches; its stations and eating houses all thoroughly well recognized by the initiated; its station agents and conductors, men undaunted in danger and unswerving in their adherence to principle; its system of cypher dispatches, tokens and nomenclature which no attachÉ ever revealed except to those having a right to receive them, and its detective force characterized by a shrewdness in expedients and a versatility of strategy which attached to any mere money making enterprise would have put “millions in it.” It received the support of men and women from every class, sect, and party, though from some more than from others; its character was engraven, as by a pen of fire, in the hearts and consciences of men, burning deeper and deeper, until finally abrogated in that grand emancipation proclamation of Abraham Lincoln, when it was found that its stock, always unwatered but by tears, had yielded an incomputable percentage in the freedom secured to over thirty-six thousand fugitives from human bondage, and embodied in houses, lands, schools, churches and social and domestic happiness.

Now that the track is all pulled up; that the rolling stock has disappeared; that most of the operators and passengers have gone down into silence or are dwelling in forgetfulness of accumulating years, and that only a few of the old stations remain as they were, a new generation pertinently inquires, “What called such a road into existence and how were its gigantic operations so successfully and yet so secretly carried on?”

To the first of these questions it may be replied that the history of American slavery is older than the story of Plymouth Rock. In the year 1619 a cargo of Africans, kidnapped on the coast of the “Dark Continent,” was sold from the deck of a Dutch man-of-war at Jamestown, Va., to be used in the cultivation of tobacco along the river.

At that time very little was thought about the enormity of human slavery. The labor proved remunerative, and the institution spread over the original colonies, with little or no question, so that at the breaking out of the Revolution there were 500,000 bondmen, a standing menace to the cause of freedom, and yet technically said to be “armed in the holy cause of liberty.”

On the adoption of the constitution in 1787, public sentiment had become so strong against the African slave trade that provision was made for its abolition in 1808. Persistent effort was also made, particularly by the Quakers, for the ultimate abolition of slavery itself, but without avail, as it was claimed by its apologists that it would ultimately die of its own accord—a prophecy in some sense fulfilled, though in a manner all undreamed by those who made it.

Though Anti-slavery Societies had long been in vogue, of one of which Benjamin Franklin had been president, it was found by the census of 1800 that the country contained 893,000 slaves. From this time forward one after another of the Northern States abolished it, until it finally disappeared from New York last of all, July 4th, 1827. In the meantime it was strengthened in the South. The invention of the cotton gin and the extensive manufacture of sugar in the Gulf States, made the rearing of slaves in those farther north very lucrative, and slave marts were set up in many of their cities and towns to which men, women and children were brought and sold upon the auction block and at private sale.

The slaves thus purchased in Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky and elsewhere for the more southern markets were either driven across the country like so many cattle, or, if more convenient, taken down the Ohio and Mississippi on steam-boats or in flats, all those deemed likely to give trouble being handcuffed together across a coffle chain, thus constituting a “coffle.”

On their arrival at the place of destination, they were more or less jaded and warm, and hence unmarketable until properly fitted up. To facilitate this, buildings or “pens” were provided where they were well fed and given liberal rations of whiskey. Under the management of some genial dealer, they were induced to tell stories, sing songs and make merry. In this way they were soon recuperated and ready for the ordeals of another sale in which they were subjected to much the same scrutiny of body and limb that is bestowed upon a horse when the person would ascertain its physical condition.

To escape this degradation and the hardships of the southern plantations, the more intelligent and hardy of the slave population early began to flee to the free states as an asylum from cruel bondage. As if in anticipation of this, the constitution had provided for their return, and under its provisions many were restored to their masters, through the cupidity of sordid northern men, for the rewards offered.

Finding so many of their chattels escaping and the sentiment against their return growing stronger and stronger, the southern people, with the aid of abettors at the north, succeeded in 1850, in securing the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, which imposed heavy fines and even imprisonment for in any way aiding a fugitive from slavery to escape. By its provisions every man at the North was virtually made a slave catcher.

Canada now became the goal of the fugitive, and to its safe retreat thousands escaped, and yet so successful was the business of slave culture that in 1860 the whole number of persons held as mere chattels, without a vested right in land, or home, or wife, or husband, or child, or life, even, that might not be served by the will of the master, amounted to 3,953,000 souls. The bitterness of sectional feeling engendered by such a state of affairs, and the intense activity of nerve and intellect called forth thereby, can never be duly appreciated except by those who were active participants in the affairs of ten years ante bellum.

The second question, and, also, many points covered by the first, will be best answered by following the thread of these “Romances and Realities of the Underground Railroad,” gathered as they are from personal observation, extensive reading, visitations along many of the old lines, and numerous interviews and extensive correspondence with those heroic men and women who dared their fortunes and their personal liberty in the cause of humanity and right, still lingering among us, as, also, with many a passenger over this truly wonderful thoroughfare.