The Path to Liberty
- Apr 15
- 5 min read
Updated: Jun 28
Abolitionism and the Underground Railroad
The Gradual Abolition Act of 1780, the first extensive abolition legislation in the western hemisphere, passed the Pennsylvania General Assembly on March 1, 1780. To appease slave owners, the act gradually emancipated enslaved people without making slavery immediately illegal. At that time, there were 142 slaveholders and a total of 470 African-American slaves in Chester County. In Sadsbury Township, there were 7 residents who owned 13 slaves (by comparison, the township with the largest number of slaves at that time was Oxford, with 28). In Sadsbury, Joseph Park, Esquire (a judge) owned 4 slaves, and Reverend William Foster owned 3; the others owned 1 or 2 slaves each. By 1800, there were 58 slaves living in Chester County.
The term “Underground Railroad” referred to the clandestine movement of African-American slaves escaping out of the South to a loosely organized network of abolitionists who assisted them in their search for freedom in the North. While the enterprise began after the abolition of slavery in the Northern states in the late 1700s, its greatest activities occurred between 1835 and 1865. Most of the enslaved people helped by the Underground Railroad escaped border states such as Kentucky, Virginia and Maryland.
Chester County, located just above the Mason-Dixon Line which divided the free and the slave states, was an important junction of the Underground Railroad’s Eastern Line. The free black community and both Quaker and non-Quaker abolitionists formed a strong network of communication which allowed them to guide fugitives to freedom.
Slavery had never been a large-scale institution in Chester County, or in Pennsylvania as a whole; by 1780, the Pennsylvania Assembly enacted a law calling for the gradual abolition of slavery. William Penn, like many of the early Quaker settlers, believed slavery to be “economically beneficial but morally indefensible”. Slaves in Chester County were engaged largely in farming and related activities, where tasks were divided by gender and workloads varied by the season.
While many of Chester County’s white residents were not abolitionists, the region was home to a sizable Quaker population and thus had more stations than most of the other surrounding counties. The documented stations in Sadsbury Township were Joseph Fulton, Moses Whitson, James Williams (known as “Abolition Jim”), and J. William Thorne.
Slaves came to Joseph Fulton’s home from stations conducted by Thomas Whitson, Lindley Coates, and Daniel Gibbons in Lancaster County. They usually arrived between dusk and ten o’clock in the evening. After they were fed, they were housed in a barn until it was safe for them to move on toward Ercildoun; his family assisted in caring for the refugees. Fulton, a Presbyterian farmer, enlisted the support of Henry Lee, a free black “conductor” on the Underground Railroad. While Lee guided fugitives on to the next station, Fulton stayed up late into the night writing letters to Congressmen on behalf of the abolitionist cause.
Moses Whitson also assisted in the movement of refugees. He was a surveyor and civil engineer who often employed escaping refugees on their way from the south; some of them remained several years before moving on. As far back as 1838, James Williams sent slaves to the farm of Elizabeth Scarlett in Berks County; when they arrived, they were cared for and assisted on their way toward Canada.
J. William Thorne was a Quaker and successful fruit farmer. He also was an excellent debater, often supporting religious freedom, abolition of slavery, temperance, and women’s suffrage. Thorne became active in the Underground Railroad following passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850. His biographer, Max Longley, writes that many fugitives passed through Thorne’s farm. When white kidnappers seized one of his free black tenants, Thorne pursued the kidnappers and freed the man. His Underground Railroad activities did not make him popular with some people -- in 1860 an arsonist burned down his barn. He later moved to North Carolina and served in the House and Senate there, but in 1886 he gave up on politics and moved back to Pennsylvania.
The Christiana Riot
The Fugitive Slave Act was a law passed by the U.S. Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern interests in slavery and Northern Free-Soilers.
The Act was one of the most controversial elements of the 1850 compromise, requiring that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be returned to the enslaver and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate. The Act contributed to the growing polarization of the country over the issue of slavery and was one of the factors that led to the American Civil War.
In a number of cities in the North, black people organized vigilance committees. These committees served as intelligence headquarters for the Underground Railroad, coordinating the escapes and warning communities in advance when slave catchers were on the way. It was fellow blacks who conducted daring rescues, freeing escaped slaves from marshals and even from jails, and setting them on their way north again.
William Parker, himself an escaped slave, had organized blacks in lower Lancaster County for mutual self-defense. When a slave owner from Maryland arrived at Christiana in the fall of 1851 with a posse to help him recapture four escaped slaves, Parker and his comrades fought to protect them. In the battle, the slaveowner was killed and several of his party were wounded. The four slaves escaped.
While trying to recapture the four slaves, the United States marshal had ordered two local white residents to aid him, as he was empowered to do by the Fugitive Slave Law. The two residents refused, being conscientiously opposed to maintaining the institution of slavery.
The slave owner and the Maryland group imagined that the two residents not only refused to come to their aid but actually urged the blacks on to armed resistance. They jumped to the conclusion that the two Pennsylvania men had acted on the basis of a conspiracy to resist federal authority in the recapture of the slaves.
The South in 1851 was on the verge of seceding from the Union if the Fugitive Slave Law was not enforced. In order to show the South that the law would be enforced and keep the Union together, the federal government decided to try the Christiana rebels – white and black alike – for treason against the United States.
Northern abolitionists hailed the acquittal of the defendants as a major victory against slavery and especially against the Fugitive Slave Act. Southerners, however, felt that their property could not be secured even in the North. Thus, the riot became the first of a series of episodes including “Bleeding Kansas” in the late 1850s and John Brown’s Raid at Harper’s Ferry in 1859 that propelled the nation toward the Civil War.
Sources:
A History of Chester County, Pennsylvania, Charles William Heathcote, 1932
History of the Underground Railroad in Chester and the Neighboring Counties of Pennsylvania, Robert C. Smedley, 1883
People of the Underground Railroad, Tom Calarco, 2008
Just over the line: Chester County and the Underground Railroad, William C. Kashatus, 2002
Rebellion at Christiana, Margaret Hope Bacon, 1975
