[wirHRow | THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY 67 
late such unrighteous commands. Emergency funds were established 
whose contributors were described as “stockholders” in the Underground 
Railway. Women conducted sewing circles to supply the fugitives with 
clothes. Even humble negroes, both men and women, gave freely to 
help them. After the introduction of steam locomotion, railways and 
steamboats could often be used. The cost of tickets was considerable, 
yet it was always cheerfully met by sympathetic friends. Generous cap- 
tains on the Mississippi, Ohio and Illinois rivers often conveyed fugi- 
tives as stowaways. Captain William Brown in 1842 conveyed in seven 
months sixty-nine of them across Lake Erie to Canada. Scows and 
sailing craft were also employed. 
It is remarkable that so seldom were runaways returned to slavery, 
and that not unfrequently those seized for that purpose were rescued 
from the slave hunters. Even when on trial and under the very eyes of 
the judge, they were sometimes smuggled out of the court room, and the 
marshal and his deputies hustled and prevented re-arresting them. 
Many of the friends of the fugitives suffered in their person and in 
their purse for their humanity. In Michigan three persons were mulcted 
in fines and costs $6,000. D. Kauffman, in Pennsylvania, for sheltering a 
family of slaves in his barn, was fined over $4,000. For a similar offence 
R. Sloan, a lawyer of Sandusky, was fined $3,000. Space would fail to 
do justice to this noble army of heroes, and some of them martyrs. Pro- 
fessor Siebert gives a list of 3,211. Their obscurity and unknown death 
have prevented the record of many more. He well remarks: “ Consider- 
ing the kind of labour performed and the danger involved, one is 
impressed with the unselfish devotion to principle of these emancipators. 
There was for them, of course, no outward honour, no material recom- 
pense, but instead such contumely and seeming disgrace as can now be 
scarcely comprehended.” 
Five families in Ohio whom he mentions forwarded over a thousand 
fugitives to Canada before the year 1817. Daniel Gibbons, of Pennsyl- 
vania, in fifty-six years, aided about one thousand, Dr. Nathan M. 
Thomas, of Michigan, fifteen hundred, and John Fairfield not only hun- 
dreds, but thousands. General McIntyre, resident in Ohio, aided over 
a hundred fugitive slaves. “ Of the multitudes,’ says ex-President 
Fairchild, “that came to Obelin, not one was ever taken back to bond- 
age.” So intense was popular sympathy with the anti-slavery move- 
ment, that a sign-post was erected in the form of a fugitive running 
towards the town. In consequence of this defiance of the law against 
harbouring slaves, repeated attempts were made to repeal the charter of 
Oberlin College. 
Though the heroes of this great crusade concealed their acts, they 
did not conceal their principles; indeed, they sought to make converts 
