Underground Railroad in Indiana

Although slavery was prohibited within the Northwest Territory and the Indiana Territory prior to Indiana's statehood in 1816, early residents disagreed on whether slavery should be allowed in the territory. In addition, federal and territorial laws did not prevent residents from enslaving others through indentured servitude.[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.[8] Passage of an indenture act in 1805 also allowed slaveholders to bring slaves purchased outside the territory into Indiana and bind them into service as indentured servants.[9] In addition, passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 enforced slaveholders' rights to pursue, retrieve, and return African Americans to bondage in the South. Those who provided aid to fugitives or interfered with their capture were subject to fines and prison terms.[6][7]

In the early 1800s, early leaders of the antislavery movement in the Indiana Territory included Quaker settlers living in the eastern part of movement, the antislavery faction became the dominant political group. In 1810, antislavery politicians had gained sufficient influence to repeal the 1803 and 1805 laws that supported slavery in the territory.[10]

When Indiana became a state in 1816, antislavery supporters were successful in getting the delegates at the state constitutional convention to officially abolish slavery and involuntary servitude under the new state's constitution. Although free people of color who lived in the Indiana did not have the same legal rights as other residents,[6][7][11][12] by the time that it became a state, Indiana along with Ohio and the adjacent territories (Illinois Territory and Michigan Territory) were beginning to be known as refuges for runaway slaves.[1]

Early abolitionist leader Dennis Pennington

The Indiana General Assembly passed "man-stealing laws" in 1816 with additional legislation passed in 1818 to prevent bounty hunters and slavecatchers from abducting and forcibly removing any person from the state without first before a judge or justice of the peace for a hearing.[13][14] Indiana's "man-stealing" legislation soon brought the state into conflict with Kentucky, its neighboring slave state. In November 1818, Indiana state senator Dennis Pennington brought suit in the Harrison County, Indiana, Circuit Court against three Kentucky men under the state's man-stealing laws. Pennington charged that the three men had illegally captured a woman of color named Susan in Corydon, Indiana, and had forcibly taken her to Kentucky. Jonathan Jennings, the governor of Indiana, tried to have the men extradited to Indiana for trial, but Gabriel Slaughter, the governor of Kentucky, declined on constitutional grounds.[15][16]

In border states such as Indiana, some individuals supported slavery while others opposed it or had neutral opinions about the issue and did not take any action.[17] Despite the disagreements within his own state, Indiana's U.S. 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. (The law slavery debate continued in Congress, but Missouri gained its statehood as part of the Missouri Compromise.)[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. Antislavery groups were not in agreement on how they should respond. Some individuals joined antislavery societies forming in the non-slaveholding states, including Indiana, to assist runaway slaves.[17]

A common image used in runaway slave ads.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 reinforced prior fugitive slave laws dating from 1793 and protected the rights of slaveholders, as well as the slavecatchers who came into Indiana to capture runaways. These laws also punished those who participated in Underground Railroad activities, causing much of their assistance to be conducted in greater secrecy. In addition, enforcement of the federal fugitive slave laws made it riskier for fugitives and free people of color who aided them to remain in Indiana. Free people of color were also more vulnerable to harassment and kidnapping, especially those living in counties along the Ohio River.[19][20]

Bounty hunters (slavecatchers), mostly operating in the southern part of the state, offered their services and knowledge of the area to southerners searching for runaways.[21] In addition, free blacks could become victims when slavecatchers could not find runaway slaves. Bounty hunters and slavecatchers might seize free blacks, claiming them to be runaways, and bring them to the Southern United States to be sold into bondage. In one incident in the early 1850s, for example, slavecatchers seized two free blacks working on the Wabash and Erie Canal. Although local abolitionists quickly organized and petitioned the sheriff to release the two men, the slavecatchers had documents that described the men and claimed they were runaways. Evidence suggested the documents were false, but there was no way to refute the claim. The slavecatchers were allowed to take the two men as their prisoners, but before they left Indiana a group of abolitionists overtook the party and freed the two black laborers.[22]

Indiana's state constitution prohibited slavery, but many Indiana residents supported legislation that prevented runaway slaves from entering the state.[18] In 1851, when the Constitution of Indiana was revised, delegates to the constitutional convention considered granting voting rights to Indiana's free people of color. At that time, slave states were expelling free people of color and emancipated slaves in the hope that they would migrate to free states. Many residents of free states, including Indiana's citizens feared the impact of a rising population of free African Americans and wanted to keep these migrants out of the state. The majority of the convention delegates, hoping to ease tensions between the states and prevent further violence between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions, thought that the only appropriate solution was to include a clause in the state constitution that prohibited African Americans from immigrating to Indiana. The state's voters adopted Article XIII, Section 1, of the new constitution banning blacks and mulattos from entering the state; it remained in effect until the state constitution was amended in 1881.[23]

The slave catchers' aggressive tactics and the sight of runaways being returned to bondage in the South gradually impacted the state's population. By 1851, popular opinion was shifting from indifference to slavery toward increasingly antislavery sentiments. The result was more widespread involvement in the Underground Railroad and an increase in general support for hampering the slave catchers' efforts.[3][24]

People of color, antislavery advocates, vigilance groups, abolitionists, and religious groups who opposed slavery were involved in the illegal network to help runaways.[25][26] Although Indiana's free African American population was small (less than 1 percent of the state's overall population),[27] most of the individuals who aided the fugitives along the state's southern border, especially at Madison, Indiana, were people of color.[28] Some free blacks living in central and northern Indiana also aided runaways.[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.[30][31][19]

Not all abolitionists and members of antislavery groups approved of the underground network's radical activities, which were illegal, dangerous, and carried out in secrecy.[32][28] While many Quakers supported the Underground Railroad, some opposed these efforts, viewing them as extremist.[33] Other Indiana residents, even those who opposed slavery, disapproved of the secret network's illegal methods.[34]

Because of the consequences if they were caught (monetary fines, imprisonment, public harassment, etc.), unknown numbers of people living in Indiana participated in the Underground Railroad. In some Indiana communities, dozens were involved; in others, it may have only been a single person, but the Underground Railroad was not an organized nationwide network.[35][36] Membership in abolitionist groups or antislavery societies did not also mean they were Underground Railroad activists.[6] For example, prominent Indiana abolitionist Stephen S. Harding, a lawyer in Ripley County, Indiana, who later became the territorial governor of Utah and chief justice of the Colorado Territory's Supreme Court in the 1860s, was outspoken in his views against slavery, but the alleged use of his home in Milan, Indiana, as a safehouse for fugitive slaves has not been confirmed.[37]

After secretly crossing the Ohio River on ferries from Trimble or Carroll Counties in Kentucky to either Cincinnati or Ripley, Ohio, runaway slaves following the eastern route typically came through Madison, a major center for the Underground Railroad in Indiana. 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. A branch of the eastern route passed into Ohio, but the main route continued north from Newport through Winchester, Portland, Decatur, Fort Wayne, and Auburn, Indiana, before continuing into Michigan. Quaker families in settlements known for their antislavery activity in Wayne, Randolph and Henry Counties also provided aid to fugitives. Another branch from southeast Indiana went through Columbus, Indiana, a point of convergence with the central Indiana route.[3][56][57]

In Madison, Indiana, the free black community was especially active in the Underground Railroad from 1836 until 1846, when a race riot in Madison made it unsafe for its free black leaders to remain there. Chapman Harris, a free African American, was a member of the underground network by the 1830s. His family's cabin, about 3 miles (4.8 km) from Madison, was a safe house for fugitives who crossed the Ohio River. Harris's associate, Elijah Anderson, a free-born African American whose cabin was also a station, helped ferry fugitives across the river. Anderson came to Madison in 1837 and guided as many as 800 fugitives before he was eventually arrested and convicted in Kentucky for his efforts. Anderson served four years of an eight-year sentence at the state penitentiary at Frankfort, Kentucky, before his death in 1861.[19][28][58] George DeBaptiste a free black who moved to Madison in 1838, was a barber and businessman, as well as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. DeBaptiste crossed the river into Kentucky to guide runaways and is believed to have helped more than 300 fugitive slaves. His barbershop in Madison was a center of Underground Railroad activity along the eastern route in the 1830s and 1840sbut due to his active involvement in the underground network, it became unsafe for DeBaptiste to remain in Madison. He moved to Detroit, Michigan, around 1846.[59][19][60] Other African American agents of the underground network in Madison included John Lott, Henry Thornton, and Griffith Booth, among others. 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.[61][59]

Eleutherian College

Antislavery whites in the Madison area were also involved in aiding fugitive slaves. 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. Area leaders included the families of Lyman Hoyt, Benajah Hoyt, James Tibbetts, and John Hays, among others. More than nine of society members' homes were used as safe houses for the underground network.[62] Farther north, Arvine C. Quier, an Ohio native who moved to Indiana in 1852, was among the conductors who assisted fugitive slaves escape through Jennings County, Indiana, a stopover for runaways journeying north from Madison, and others following the central route from the New Albany, Indiana, area. Quier owned a sawmill near Butlerville, and his wife, Mary (Michener) Quier, cared for fugitive slaves in their home before he transported them to the next station.[63]

Quaker abolitionist Levi Coffin

Levi Coffin, a Quaker and one of the most famous abolitionists in Indiana, operated a station out of his rural home at Newport (present-day Fountain City). Coffin, who is sometimes referred to as the president of the Underground Railroad, made no secret of his activities as an Underground Railroad conductor, although many of his fellow Quakers thought his actions too radical.[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. Between 1826 and 1846, more than 2,000 escaped slaves reportedly stopped there for aid. Among the fugitives that the Coffins assisted was William Bush, who remained in Newport and became a blacksmith, as well as an Underground Railroad conductor.[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.[65] Newport Quakers and free-black communities in the area worked together as well as separately in their efforts. Informers in the Newport area were made to feel unwelcome, and most, but not all moved elsewhere. 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. When bounty hunters or slave owners were not pursuing them, some escaped slaves found work in Newport among the community's free black residents. At Cabin Creek, a free-black community near Newport, runaways stayed in the home of John Bond and other homes scattered in the area. Spartanburg was another free black community in the area that provided aid. Spartanburg resident Lewis Talbert made multiple trips to the South to guide runaways to freedom. Although he was captured and escaped, it not known how long he survived.[66]

After crossing the Ohio River from major crossing points in the Louisville, Kentucky, area, the central Indiana route began at New Albany, Jeffersonville, and Clarksville, or possibly at Madison or the vicinity of Leavenworth, Indiana. From these arrival points, the route continued to Corydon and Columbus, Indiana. Some fugitives, after crossing the river into Indiana, went to an African American settlement known as Greenbrier, near Hanover, Indiana, before moving to stations in Jennings and Decatur Counties.[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. Westfield also became a key station of the Underground Railroad in central Indiana as a point where several routes converged. 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.[68]

At New Albany, Indiana, runaway slaves moved on to Salem and Bloomington before continuing north.[3] Free blacks at Graysville in Jefferson County, especially George Evans, the African American stationmaster at Greenbrier, as well as other free blacks living in smaller communities near South Hanover and Kent provided aid and assistance to the fugitives moving to stations in Jennings and Decatur Counties. Free blacks also managed routes beginning at Jeffersonville, Indiana.[69] African American agents operating in Rush County, Indiana, included Clarksburg resident Miles Meadows and Jim Hunt of Carthage; however, most of the agents in central Indiana were white men.[67] White antislavery agents reportedly working in the Corydon area included Bill Crawford, John Rankin, and Zack Pennington.[70]

Not all agents along the central route were successful in their efforts. Corydon resident Oswald Wright was arrested for aiding fugitive slaves in Harrison County, Indiana, during their escape from Kentucky. Wright was sentenced to five years in prison at the Frankfort (Kentucky) penitentiary and returned to Corydon after serving his sentence.[67]

Anti-Slavery League agents in western Indiana had boatmen ferry fugitives across the Ohio River from various points in Kentucky.[71] These routes through Indiana began at Evansville, a river town in Vanderburgh County, or at crossings in Posey, Warrick, or Spencer Counties. The western routes continued north along the Wabash River, or through Gibson and Pike counties, toward Terre Haute in Vigo County and onward to Lafayette in Tippecanoe County. Routes from Evansville north to Princeton in Gibson County, Indiana, were not as frequently used as routes between Oakland City also in Gibson County, and Petersburg in Pike County.[72]

A free black community at Evansville often provided aid for fugitives seeking refuge.[49][28] Other free African American communities in western Indiana who assisted the fugitives included Lyles Station in Gibson County and Lost Creek in Vigo County.[73] Thomas Cole, a free black from Lyles Station, about 5 miles (8.0 km) west of Princeton, used his farm as an Underground Railroad station.[74] African American Ben Swain was the principal agent at Rockport, Indiana. 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.[75]

From Princeton, Indiana, fugitive slaves moved north to Bloomingdale in Parke County and onward to Michigan City in LaPorte County before crossing the Indiana-Michigan border. Other routes from Indiana led to Toledo, Ohio, a short distance to Canada. Arrivals from Rockport in Spencer County, Indiana, journeyed to Petersburg, where they hid in coal mines and coal banks before continuing north to Mooresville or Morgantown in Morgan County, Indiana, and Noblesville in Hamilton County, Indiana.[3]

Warrick County farmer Ira Caswell (1814–1878), a secret member of the Executive Committee of the Anti-Slavery Society, was an outspoken abolitionist. He was also an active conductor on the Underground Railroad. His land north of Boonville was considered the first stop for runaways entering in Warrick County, Indiana, after crossing the Ohio River. 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. (Posey, a Petersburg physician and abolitionist, was owner of Blackburn Mine, a coal mine near Petersburg.)[76]

In Gibson County, David Stormont (1802–1886), a member of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, and his wife provided runaways with food and clothing. They also hid runaways in their Gibson County home and at a log cabin on their property about 2.5 miles (4.0 km) northwest of Princeton.[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.[77]

The underground network in west central Indiana, as in other areas of the state, was loosely organized. At the Bethel settlement, a Quaker community in Fountain County, cabins in the swamplands, area homesteads, and Bethel Church (affiliated with the Methodist Episcopal Church) were used as safehouses. Some fugitives remained in the community, living among the free blacks, but most escaped slaves moved north toward Canada. 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.[78]