We have the wolf by the ears … and we can neither subdue him nor turn him loose.
Thomas Jefferson
I’d been a “white” member of the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society for three years, under the presidency of Lucretia Mott, the same Lucretia Mott who had arranged my voyage to London with Dorcas Willowpole. There were black members—Sarah, Harriet, and Marguerite Forten, Hetty Burr, and Lydia White—but none of them suspected me of passing. The society sponsored antislavery fairs and were an auxiliary of the Vigilance Committee of Philadelphia, which had been organized by Robert Purvis to aid destitute fugitives, providing room and board, clothing and medicines, informing them of their legal rights, and giving them protection, both moral and legal, from kidnappers. By acting as if I were a fly on the wall, I had found out what white people really thought of us.
All of them were so open about how they felt about black people. That they were beneath contempt; a race so low in morality, sensibility, and intelligence that nothing said to them or behind their backs could offend them. As my white acquaintances vented all their secret fears, anxious sexual fantasies, and unconscious hatreds, oblivious of my true identity, I felt an indulgent superiority. This evidence of white frailty thrilled me, because I could send them scurrying for cover. I became famous for my wicked and upbraiding tongue in defense of the colored man. I spoke out from my invincible armor of whiteness, and I spoke for every black man, woman, and child that had ever been born. For every injustice they suffered, every death they witnessed.
It was a dangerous, reckless game. Misplaced respect offered to an impostor of the white race, I had learned from Sykes, could elicit murderous anger in a deceived white man. Sykes had decided to kill me over that affront.
But neither death nor punishment frightened me anymore. I had become impervious to my mixed blood—indifferent to it. I no longer fought or defied it. I was simply the composite of the two races which had made me.
Thor was coming home after an absence of two years. I decided I would plead for a new and dangerous enterprise as soon as his ship dropped anchor. Thance and I had been thinking of moving both the laboratories and ourselves out of the city to Anamacora, giving up the house in West Philadelphia, which, with the twins, had become too small for our family. The seclusion of the country would allow me to organize an underground station for fugitives escaping from Virginia and Maryland over the Blue Ridge Mountains and by canal and the Susquehanna River.
I believed myself invincible.
“The risks involved,” I began, “are minimal in relation to the great cause we would be serving.” We were in the library, just the three of us, having coffee.
“You know I’ve never opposed you, Harriet, in your devotion to the antislavery cause. I’ve respected your wishes ever since you came back from London a convinced abolitionist. But this, this is going too far! An underground station at Anamacora, under Mother’s nose, is out of the question! Think of her. Think of the children. Think of me. What if something happened to you? There’s been more than one shootout at these stations, and informers and spies are everywhere. I imagine there’s a file on us down at City Hall anyway, between your memberships in subversive organizations and Thor’s mysterious operations in Africa. Remember you had a bad scare last year with Passmore Williamson. He could have implicated you in the Johnson scandal, and you would have been sitting in the Old Moyamensing Prison! And what about your friend Lucretia Mott? When she left that antislavery meeting in Norristown arm-in-arm with William Lloyd Garrison, she could have been killed by that crowd. No, Harriet. For the sake of your children, you cannot go any further in this … Underground Railroad than you already have!”
Thor was strangely quiet as he lit his pipe and studied me curiously.
“Anamacora is already surrounded by stations,” I said. “The slaves are sent from Reading Pine Forge and Whitebar to Philadelphia. From Philadelphia through the towns of Bristol, Bensalem, Newtown, Quakertown, Doylestown, Buckingham, and New Hope, our backyard.”
“Harriet, I don’t want you repeating those names. Suppose one of the children were to wander in.”
“Harriet,” said Thor slowly, “just how involved are you in this clandestine operation? How much do you know? Or can you even tell us that?”
Thor stood leaning against the fireplace, his long body curled around it as if seeking a memory of the tropical heat he had abandoned nine weeks earlier. His long supple hands were in continual motion, as if he gathered medicinal herbs even in his sleep. There was no hostility in his voice, only concern for his nephews and nieces and mother. Surely he who had experienced the slave trade firsthand would understand, I thought, so I plunged ahead.
“For your own sake and the children’s, I can’t tell you everything. I can say this, however. New Jersey is closely allied with Pennsylvania and New York as a center in the fugitive slave network. The main route leads across the Delaware River to Camden, through Mount Holly, Broadtown, Penning-ton, Hopewell, Princeton, and New Brunswick. I cannot name the conductors of these stations. Slave hunters in search of runaways operate headquarters there. At the Raritan River Bridge, east of New Brunswick, they sometimes stop the trains to search for runaways. To prevent this, local train conductors (real ones, that is) serve as lookouts, warning their coworkers when to transport the slaves in boats to Perth Amboy. Some sea captains take the risk of hiding fugitives, and hire them to pump water from their canal boats. Others transport runaways to safe ports in New England or New York. A small but steady stream have thus entered New York. Five thousand of the twenty thousand blacks in this city are fugitives. One of the best-known conductors is the Quaker Isaac T. Hopper, who is backed by Arthur and Lewis Tappan’s fortune. Some of these men and women have been in hiding since Gabriel Prosser’s conspiracy in Virginia, the Denmark Vesey uprising of 1822 in South Carolina, and Nat Turner’s rebellion in Virginia.”
I took a deep breath and tried to control the tremor in my voice.
“The railroad’s underground routes center in cities like Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. In each of these three cities, for example, exist vigilance committees, sometimes composed of Negroes alone, sometimes of both Negroes and whites, to aid the fugitives. The vigilance committees work with underground conductors in Maryland and Delaware, who carry more than a hundred fugitives a year and who are in constant fear of being betrayed. The committee also has ties with two or three sea captains who, for a fee, bring passengers hidden in their ships from more southerly parts to Wilmington or here. The various committees hide fugitives usually in the Negro sections of the city, provide them with clothes, and if they wish to seek more security farther north, pay their expenses to move on by carriage, wagon, train, or ship. The vigilance committees try to keep track of the arrival of slave catchers from the South and if possible warn their intended victims. When Negroes are seized without adequate proof that they are slaves, the committees try to obtain court orders to free them.
“Many who get as far as New York resume their journey toward Canada, and they pass through the shore towns to New Haven; from there, two routes extend northward, one to Southampton, Southwick, and Westfield, Massa-chusetts, the other through North Guilford, Meriden, and Hartford, Connecticut, to Springfield, Massachusetts. The two routes join at Northampton, Massachusetts. In every one of these towns, there are people or organizations of pronounced pro-slavery ideas, people glad to see the slaves sent back to the masters they are fleeing and not adverse to putting hunters and dogs on their tracks. Shall I go on and lead you all the way to New Brunswick and across the border to Canada?”
I stopped and took another deep breath. I had a stitch in my side, as if I had just run a marathon race.
“God Almighty, Harriet!” Thor whistled low and shifted position. “Now tell me what you know about Captain Denmore and Shaka Zulu, and Lord Brunswick, and the Cape Town Riders.”
I was trembling.
Thance walked over to me then, and wiped away a tear, which had slipped unheeded down my cheek. But Thor just stood there, his eyes riveted, as if he could see straight through me. Was he wondering what or who had gotten into his family?
“My God, Harriet, you are up to your neck in this,” exclaimed Thance. “You are not Dorcas Willowpole, who has no responsibilities except for herself, or Emily Gluck, who has been fanaticized by her husband’s guilty conscience, or Thenia, who was a slave herself—you are a white woman with the responsibility of six children, plus, if you’ll be so kind, a husband and your in-laws.”
“As a white woman,” I continued, “I can do a lot that, for instance, Harriet or Sarah Forten, or Lydia White, cannot do. I can go anywhere, do anything, within sane reason—”
There was a great snort from Thor.
“Remember Prudence Crandell? She’s white, too, and reasonably sane. She tried to start a school for little colored girls in Massachusetts. They burned her down, sent her to jail, and nigh lynched her!”
“I’m not a heroine, Thor. I only want to do my duty as I see it. I realize my first duty is to Thance and the children. But I do feel at least a willing mind to encounter reproach and suffering, almost to any extent, to advance this cause. If Anamacora is out, it’s out. If you will let me one barn, let me one. But nothing I’ve said leaves this room, I must insist.”
The twins stood transfixed. They seemed to be having a conversation between themselves by reading each other’s mind. I knew the twins could communicate without speaking, and I watched the expression on their faces change from awe to consternation.
As for me, I flushed with shame. I had broken one of the rules of our organization: giving out secret information to nonmembers. But I had named no names, except those truly in the public domain. I had cited no real conductor or collaborator. But perhaps I had gone too far. And now I had no one to turn to for advice. I couldn’t very well tell Robert Purvis or Emily Gluck that I had informed on their network to my husband and my brother-in-law in exchange for a barn.
“The mayor claims that ninety-nine percent of Philadelphia’s white citizens are opposed to abolition!” said Thor.
“Nevertheless, this city has always maintained its ascendancy in the movement, thanks to the Quakers,” I replied.
“The American Anti-Slavery Society has less than three hundred members,” responded Thor, “and even if a dreamy poet liberal like John Greenleaf Whittier has taken over the editorship of the Pennsylvania Freedman and has greatly improved its literary style, his political efforts at propaganda have brought disaster upon disaster to the Negro community.
“Harriet,” he continued, “antislavery is considered so subversive that any action taken against its proponents is considered legal, and that includes firebombing their houses, running them out of town, tarring and feathering them, beatings, burnings, and murder. Mobs see themselves as patriots, and the whole movement is seen as a conspiracy against the nation formented by British agents.”
“The alternative to slavery,” said Thance, “is either race war or miscegenation, and this last accusation can always be counted upon to stir up the brutality of the mob.”
“Do you expect me to do nothing and watch racial violence become a feature of American life?”
“It is a feature of American life, Harriet,” said Thor. “Houses are burned, people are injured, and attacks on Negroes are frequent and go unpunished. Look what happened to Boss when he was set upon by that Irish gang.”
“You’re telling me, Theodore Wellington? I was the one who was awakened by Abraham’s cries.”
“And don’t forget how those fools who decided to reenact the Boston Tea Party raided your offices, seized a warehouse full of antislavery pamphlets, and threw them into the river. Thank God the offices were closed. What if they hadn’t been?”
“I …”
“And what happened to Pennsylvania Hall after the Anti-Slavery Convention of America met there, and blacks and whites paraded arm-in-arm? I’ll tell you what happened. An out-of-control crowd burned the building to the ground!”
“Thor, I know all this. I’m neither a child nor an idiot.”
“I wonder just what you are, Harriet. This desire for … danger. This playing with your life and the lives of those you love,” said Thance.
“The burning of Pennsylvania Hall strengthened our cause,” I whispered. But I knew that ever since Mary Ferguson, I was intoxicated by danger … by playing with fire.
“Yes, and so would a mob pulling Mother out of her bed at three in the morning, looking for a way station,” he replied.
To her credit, my mother-in-law always held her tongue in connection with my abolitionism, remarking only once that since I had a house full of children to take up my time, she wondered if my early orphanhood was not the cause of my morbid interest in the welfare of black people.
Was I fighting a losing cause? I had counted on Thor’s support, but he was even more terrified of my putting myself in danger than Thance was. How could they know that I had been in danger all my life? I tried a last ploy.
“How about here in the city? How about a hiding place under the laboratories, with a tunnel that would connect it to the barge depot on the Schuylkill Canal? It’s been discussed. We have boat captains ready to take escapees from there. Abraham and Thenia could act as agents instead of me.”
“Harriet!”
“It’s settled, Harriet. No station. Not now or ever. Not here or in Anamacora. Why, even Purvis would be against it.”
“Purvis’s farm in Byberry is a station,” I said. “He and his brother have been carrying out their work for over fourteen years.”
“Harriet, Robert Purvis’s devotion to this cause is, as we all know, almost suicidal, and I think we understand why. I also think he deems you worthy enough of his friendship not to have your own involvement go beyond the ladies’ auxiliary.”
“Harriet, my dear,” said Thor, seconding his brother, “don’t try to be a hero.”
My blood was boiling. It wasn’t fair. Not only had I to convince Thance, but Thor, too. It was double indemnity, and that was unconstitutional. Only cold-blooded logic would save me now. I remembered what Thor had said about verifying his scientific experiments: as proof of reaction, conduct the experiment in reverse.
“You speak,” I said, “only of the danger, the social stigma, the futility of it. What about justice? You know the Fugitive Slave Act is still being carried out in Pennsylvania despite the law. You know it’s wrong to allow slave catchers on northern soil. What,” I said, suddenly inspired, “if it were Thance and not I who was convinced of the absolute necessity of this action? Enough to risk his reputation, his fortune, his good name? What if it were Thance whose honor had been converted to the cause, and I were the one who opposed him on the grounds of danger, indifference, unacceptability? Wouldn’t you very soon find me and Mother Rachel standing outside your cellar door with lanterns in our hands?”
The twins almost spoke as one, so astonished were they. Because in all scientific logic, that’s exactly what would have happened.
“Harriet,” said Thor, “you have a devious mind.”
“More like a steel trap,” said Thance.
“Where did you learn to argue like that?” The question hung in the air.
“In politics,” I said. I wasn’t the President’s daughter for nothing.
Before the year was out, I had my station. Not in Anamacora but on Front Street. Abraham dug a tunnel from an empty vat in the supply room of the laboratory to our cellar. From there to a barge on the Schuylkill was a few meters. A pilot sailed the fugitives to Terrytown, and then another conductor led them to the Purvises’ farm at Byberry, where Jean Pierre Burr, the illegitimate mulatto son of Aaron Burr, dispatched his charges to Albany and the borders of Canada.
Thenia now lived in a separate world from me, divided by the color line. Philadelphia’s blacks had developed a community life of their own, centered around their own needs. They supported nineteen churches, one hundred and six beneficial societies. They maintained their own insurance companies, cemetery association, undertakers, building and loan association, labor unions, and fraternal organizations such as the Masons, the Odd Fellows, and the Elks. They operated their own libraries, organized their own lectures and debates, a Philadelphia Library Company for Colored Persons, a Debating Society, and for women, the Edgeworth Literary Association. They were outlawed from voting, and of the 302 black families living in Moyamensing, where Thenia and Abraham lived, half of them owned personal wealth of only four dollars and forty-three cents per family. The rest owned nothing.
But the daily violence in Moyamensing turned it into a seething medieval ghetto. Philadelphia, it seemed, was a metropolis of such odious prejudice that there was probably no other city in the world which hated the Negro more.
“Colorphobia is more triumphant here than in pro-slavery, Negro-hunting New York,” retorted Robert Purvis when I told him of Thenia’s complaint. “Complaint!” he continued. “There is not perhaps anywhere to be found a city in which prejudice against color is more rampant than in Philadelphia. It meets you at every step outside your home and not infrequently follows even there. The city has its white schools and its colored schools, its white churches and its colored churches, its white Christianity and its colored Christianity, its white concerts and its colored concerts, its white literary institutions and its colored literary institutions. The line is everywhere, tightly drawn between them. Colored persons, no matter how well dressed or how well behaved, ladies or gentlemen, rich or poor, are not even permitted to ride on the horse-drawn streetcars through our Christian city. Halls are rented with the express understanding that no person of color shall be allowed to enter, either to attend a concert or listen to a lecture. The whole aspect of this city’s segregation at this point is mean, contemptible, and barbarous. Every black Philadelphian is considered by a white Philadelphian as a slave, an ex-slave, a potential slave, or a designated slave under God, and treated accordingly.”
What was it, I wondered, that made them fear and hate us so? It couldn’t just be color—look at Purvis; look at me. It must have been something we did to them. Or, I thought suddenly, that they did to us. Our skin was merely the mirror of their own crime. If a man wrongs you, he also hates you because he’s wronged you. We never forgive those whom we have wronged.
And despite my hatred of Martha, her death, coupled with that of my mother, made me feel even more alone and vulnerable. I was tormented with grief and tortured with guilt. I believed my mother had wanted to tell me something she would only have revealed at the moment of her death. She, like my grandmother before her, like all slave women since the beginning of time, had this secret they had to convey to their daughters, and I hadn’t been there to hear. I hadn’t even stood over her grave to grieve. Naked fear invaded me. With my mother and Martha dead, there was nothing to prevent my cousins from claiming me or blackmailing me. What if they had had Eston’s wagon train followed to find me? Ellen, Cornelia, Samuel, and Peter had made no promises to my father to free me.
“Your wife’s a fugitive slave. Our property … financial difficulties … a draft on your bank for … for … how much would Thance be willing to pay to save his wife? Or better still, to buy her back? Do I hear ten, fifty, do I hear a hundred thousand dollars? Do I hear all? Everything? A fortune? Financial ruin like my father? Or nothing? Everything I’d ever achieved, ever possessed in life, lost. Or worse, how much would my mother-in-law be willing to pay to protect her precious white grandchildren—slaves, all of them? I began to imagine I was being followed. I began to have my old nightmares about Sykes. Then, one day, I saw him on the streets of Philadelphia. At Sixteenth and Pine, almost in front of the conservatory. He wore a Stetson, a white collar, and a pistol with cartridges. After nineteen years, he was one of the few people I was sure would still recognize me anywhere. It was Sykes.
Deliberately, I turned my back and spoke to Mr. Perry, our warehouse accountant.
“Mr. Perry, you see that man over there? I want you to find out who he is.”
Yes, ma am.
Mr. Perry reported back. “Name’s Horton. He’s a bloody slave catcher from Virginia.”
But I knew it was Sykes. I was sure. I would never forget. Never. He was no Horton. He had changed his name, just as I had changed mine.
Soon after that, illogical and unfounded fears startled me awake in my bed. I took to getting up in the middle of the night to check on the children. Methodically, I would go from room to room, like a sleepwalker, counting them. Sinclair, Ellen, Jane, Beverly, Madison, James. Each night they were there, safe, white, asleep in their beds, fists closed, their breathing soft, scented. Regular, legitimate, legal, my heart would pound.
Once Thance caught me at four o’clock in the morning in the twins’ room.
“You frightened me,” he whispered, so as not to wake them. “I woke up and you weren’t there,” he complained.
“I thought I heard something or someone, a burglar …”
I had communicated my unspeakable fears to Thance. I gazed up at his smooth, handsome face, sleep-glazed and incredibly blank, like an oversized room, pale, immense, beloved, filling my life, monumental and all-encompassing, blocking out the shadows. I began to tremble. I had seen him, Sykes. He was right here in this city, stalking me. Where are your papers, Snow White? He was coming to get me. I felt a tremor of frigid cold as Thance took me in his arms.
“Harriet, what’s the matter with you? You’ve been dreaming … a