He left Maryland in 1838 under suspicion for his activities and settled in Illinois and eventually Chicago after spending a few years in Chatham, Ontario.

Continuing to work with the Underground Railroad, he was also a typesetter and journalist for radical anti-slavery newspapers before the abolition of slavery in Chicago.

Starting about 1835, Wagoner became active trying to free slaves, and he remained a part of the Underground Railroad and various anti-slavery movements until the abolition of slavery in 1865.

In mid-September he arrived in Wheeling, West Virginia, where he stayed six weeks before moving on to Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio, where as a literate black man, he taught school until the spring.

[1] By 1852, he owned and operated a produce depot and grist mill, specializing in southern-style corn meal with great success.

[9] His was one of 5 names attached to the address of the convention to the people of the United States published under the title, The Claims of Our Common Cause, along with Douglass, James Monroe Whitfield, Amos Noë Freeman, and George Boyer Vashon.

[11] In 1856 he attended the National Convention of Radical Abolitionists,[9] and that same year he campaigned in Illinois for presidential candidate Gerrit Smith.

Wagoner wished to become a part of Brown's mission, but his property was damaged in a fire, and he felt his duty was to rebuild and support his family first.

[1] Jones, Wagoner, and Allan Pinkerton helped purchase clothes and supplies for Brown at a meeting in Chicago.

[13] Other Chicagoans with whom Wagoner was associated in his civil rights activities included James D. Bonner, Byrd Parker, Reuben H. Rollins, and William Johnson.

[14] He left Chicago in 1860 and arrived in Denver, Colorado, August 1, 1860, seeking to make a fortune in the gold mines near Pikes Peak.

[15] In the fall of 1861 the American Civil War (1861–1865) was underway and he returned to Chicago and took work as an assistant to a sutler for the Union Army.

[16] He then was commissioned to recruit refugees in contraband camps in Mississippi to serve for additional black regiments for the state of Illinois.