|Kennett Square History|
The Underground Railro How some peace-loving Quakers helped win the Civil War The former Harriet Tubman mural in Kennett Square.
By Gene Pisasale Contributing Writer
S
lavery existed for thousands of years around the world. This horrific practice was a stain on the human soul. Today some people think slavery started in the southern United States, but the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and many other civilizations practiced slavery. Some blacks held other blacks as slaves in Africa, selling them to the highest bidder. After rebels fired upon Fort Sumter in April 1861, President Lincoln was faced with a dilemma: fight against the secessionists who supported slavery—or allow them to fracture the nation. As Washington, D.C. was surrounded by slaveholding states (Virginia, Maryland and Delaware), it was a difficult decision to make. Lincoln had to decide whether to fight against and kill American citizens, or allow them to kill the Union. Quakers were the first organized group in America to openly criticize slavery. In 1688, Quakers from
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Kennett Square Life | Summer 2021 | www.chestercounty.com
Germantown condemned the practice, sparking an active debate over the following decades. Their condemnation was a starting point for what became the abolitionist movement. Surprisingly, some Quakers owned slaves. In 1776, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Quakers instructed all chapters to disown anyone who refused to free their slaves. Several conduits existed for slaves to escape from the southern states into the north as far as Canada. The Eastern Corridor ran from South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia into Maryland, leading to southeastern Pennsylvania and Delaware. The origin of the term Underground Railroad has never been definitively ascertained. In his book Just Over the Line: Chester County and the Underground Railroad, author William Kashatus describes one legend. Two slave owners lost track of their fugitive as they pursued him through Kentucky to the edge of the Ohio River. Bewildered, one of them supposedly said: “There must be an underground railroad here somewhere!” The Underground Railroad never Continued on Page 20
