Underground Railroad in Indiana
The Underground Railroad in Indiana was part of a larger, unofficial, and loosely-connected network of groups and individuals who aided and facilitated the escape of runaway slaves from the southern United States.
The network in Indiana gradually evolved in the 1830s and 1840s, reached its peak during the 1850s, and continued until slavery was abolished throughout the United States at the end of the American Civil War in 1865.
An unknown number of Indiana's abolitionists, anti-slavery advocates, and people of color, as well as Quakers and other religious groups illegally operated stations (safe houses) along the network.
Despite the risks of being captured and sold into bondage, some free people of color illegally provided aid to fugitive slaves in the early years of the Underground Railroad's operations.
[1][2] The Underground Railroad gradually evolved in the 1830s and 1840s, reaching its peak during the 1850s,[3] and remained in operation until 1865, when slavery was abolished throughout the United States at the end of the American Civil War.
[6][7] The proslavery faction of the territorial government adopted legislation in 1803 that allowed involuntary servitude to circumvent Article VI of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 that prohibited slavery.
Senator Noah Noble, who was elected governor of Indiana in 1831, supported the antislavery sentiment by voting against granting statehood to Missouri in 1820 because of its proslavery stance.
)[18] In the decades leading up to the Civil War, some individuals became abolitionists who sought an end to slavery through legal means; others became involved in the Underground Railroad and actively aided runaway slaves.
[19][29] In addition to Indiana's free-black community and some abolitionists, other early supporters of the Underground Railroad were Quakers living the state's eastern counties.
The effort, which continued until the end of the Civil War in 1865, involved individuals or groups who worked together in secrecy to give directions or provide food, clothing, shelter, and transportation to assist runaway slaves as they moved from one safe place to another to avoid capture.
The underground network also incorporated railroad-related terms to refer to various aspects of this clandestine work such as routes, stations or depots (safe havens), conductors (guides), agents or stationmasters (property owners of the safehouses or their assistants), and passengers and cargoes (fugitives).
Indiana's southern boundary, directly across the Ohio River from Kentucky, had several crossing points and various routes for runaways to follow north to reach Detroit, Michigan.
On some occasions, Indiana agents of the Underground Railroad working with associates in Kentucky used visual signals such as bonfires before ferrying fugitives across the river.
[50][51][28] For example, African American runaways John Rhodes (or Roads) and his wife, Rhuann Maria, along with their young child escaped in Missouri and passed through the Westfield, Indiana, area on their journey north.
From Madison, the eastern rout went north to stations along the Indiana-Ohio border, including Newport in Wayne County, Indiana, where Levi Coffin, one of the primary organizers of the network lived for some time.
Lott worked with Harris to organize the free blacks in the area; Thornton later served in the Union army during the Civil War before his death in 1892; and Booth later moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan.
The Neil's Creek Anti-Slavery Society in rural Jefferson County, Indiana, for example, had more than eighty families involved in support of the Underground Railroad near Eleutherian College.
[28][57][33] The Levi and Catherine Coffin home at Newport has been called the "Grand Central Station of the Underground Railroad" along the route between Cincinnati, Ohio, and Canada.
[57][64] In addition to Bush, several also African American men in the Newport area, including "William Davidson, Douglas White, James Benson, and Cal Thomas" assisted runaway slaves reach safety in the north.
[38] At Newport, about 8 miles (13 km) north of Richmond, in Wayne County, Indiana, other area residents provided aid to fugitive slaves, most of them anonymously.
Local women in Newport formed a sewing group to assemble clothing for the runaways and raised funds to purchase what was needed by selling some of their handmade goods.
[28][67] Branches of the central route converged near Columbus and continued north to Indianapolis, Westfield, Logansport, Plymouth, and South Bend, Indiana, before passing into Michigan.
[49] Others active in the movement in central Indiana included several members of the Westfield, a community founded by Quakers in Hamilton County, as well as others from nearby Deming.
Men and women of Westfield and Deming offered places in their homes and barns for shelter, cared for the sick, and provided food, clothing, and other supplies for fugitive slaves.
Farther north in Parke County, Rueben Lawhorn, a free-born African American, was a part of the underground network, but others working along the western routes are unknown.
The next stops in the area toward Daviess and Greene Counties were James Cockrum's barn cellar at Oakland City and Doctor John W. Posey's coal bank outside Petersburg.
[72] Other Gibson County residents provided aid and shelter, including John Carithers, an antislavery supporter and member of the local Reformed Presbyterian Church, and Charles Grier.
At Crawfordsville in nearby Montgomery County, the home of stonemason John Allen Speed, who later became the second mayor of the city, and his wife, Margaret, was used as a safehouse along the route to Lafayette.
[79][80] Enforcement of fugitive slave laws and fear of being captured by bounty hunters and their deputies caused many African Americans, especially those living along Indiana's southern boundary, to move elsewhere.
Popular opinion regarding the plight of escaping slaves eventually shifted, especially after witnessing bounty hunters and slavecatchers forcibly taking runaways and, in some cases, free people of color into bondage.
