Quakers who then lived in free States offered fugitives material
assistance by open and clandestine methods.[13] The most prominent leader
developed by the movement was Levi Coffin, whose daring deeds in behalf of
the fugitives made him the reputed President of the Underground Railroad.
Most of the Quaker settlements of Negroes with which he was connected were
made in what is now Hamilton, Howard, Wayne, Randolph, Vigo, Gibson,
Grant, Rush, and Tipton Counties, Indiana, and Darke County, Ohio.
The promotion of this movement by the Quakers was well on its way by 1815
and was not materially checked until the fifties when the operations of
the drastic fugitive slave law interfered, and even then the movement had
gained such momentum and the execution of that mischievous measure had
produced in the North so much reaction like that expressed in the personal
liberty laws, that it could not be stopped. The Negroes found homes in
Western New York, Western Pennsylvania and throughout the Northwest
Territory. The Negro population of York, Harrisburg and Philadelphia
rapidly increased. A settlement of Negroes developed at Sandy Lake in
Northwestern Pennsylvania[14] and there was another near Berlin Cross
Roads in Ohio.[15] A group of Negroes migrating to this same State found
homes in the Van Buren Township of Shelby County.
Pages:
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39