# Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad/Chapter III

CHAPTER III.
The “fugitives from labor” who took passage on the U. G. R. R., were generally of the most intelligent class, and but for their use of certain words and phrases common to both master and servant in the slave States, they would often have been rejected as having no claim to accommodations on our line. One of the most remarkable men of this class that came this way was Tom Stowe. Tom’s master was a sporting gentleman, living, when at home, on his plantation, about 18 miles from Vicksburgh, Miss., and was known from New Orleans to Baltimore as an enterprising, reckless and generally successful sporting man, but not as a common gambler. He kept from ten to twenty race horses, a half dozen fighting dogs, and never failed to buy the smartest fighting cocks, at whatever price. Tom said he had paid as high as $1,000 for a single cock. Tom was head man in his sporting establishment, managed the training, grooming, feeding and fitting of all the animals and birds, and had become so necessary and important an item in the concern, that Stowe more than once refused to sell him for $3,000, offered by rival sportsmen. They usually started north in April, by the way of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, sported some at Memphis, Louisville and ​Cincinnati, and leaving the steamboat at Wheeling, went up to Morgantown, where they stopped to recruit and fit the horses and fighting cocks for the June races and sporting in Baltimore. Stowe would often leave Tom in charge of the establishment while recruiting in Morgantown, and go to Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Morgantown is only six miles from the Pennsylvania line on the Monongahela River. The grocer of whom he bought supplies was in the habit of talking to him about the free States, and told him that he could get to Canada if he would try, but Tom answered that he had many times passed up the Ohio, and knew he was near the free States, but he did not wish to go away; besides, his master could not spare him. Tom had known this man four or five years, but was shy of him, supposing he intended to betray him for a reward, should he listen to his suggestions. After the races in Baltimore Tom was usually left in B. in charge of the stock, while Stowe went north to New York and Saratoga. In the fall, their sporting tour toward home was through Richmond, Charleston, Savannah and New Orleans. Thus by extensive travel and business intercourse with many men, Tom became intelligent, and carried about with him a heart-yearning for freedom. He was always well fed, well dressed, trusted with money, and left by his master often on the very borders of the free States. He remained faithful to his trust, and his master knew he would, and knew the reason why. Tom was, in size and form, a splendid specimen of a man; tall, straight, and handsome, nearly white, weighed about two hundred pounds, and not an ounce of spare material about him. Lucy, his wife, (as he described her,) was also nearly white, an octoroon, one of those whose rare beauty and accomplishments are the greatest misfortune that can ​befall one of her race. She had been brought up in the house, and was lady’s maid to Stowe’s wife. Stowe had consented to their marriage, hoping thereby to prevent Tom of availing himself of the U. G. R. R., in sight of whose depots along the Ohio River they often passed. They had a boy, who was the pride and joy of his mother. Stowe had bought some colts in Texas, and sent Tom to bring them home; and while he was absent the old man sold their little boy, only three years old, to a trader, in a paroxysm of rage because Lucy would not be unfaithful to Tom. When he came home, he found her but just alive, only able to tell him that Georgiehad been sold to a trader by the name of Austin, and carried off. She died of a broken heart for the loss of her boy. It was difficult for Tom to get through this part of his story, and the meanest copperhead in our village, could he have heard and seen him, would never again dispute that a slave has a soul.
After Tom had buried his wife, his first impulse was towards finding his boy, determined not to leave his master until he had learned something about him. Stowe avoided going north by their usual route, fearing, no doubt, that he would lose his man. At the end of two years Tom saw Austin, who told him that he sold Georgie to a lawyer in Savannah, and soon after, beingin that city with his master, he called on the lawyer at his office, and asked him if he had bought such a boy. “Yes,” he said, “I bought him, though I always was opposed to owning slaves, but they were selling the little fellow at auction. He would not have sold for $50 but for his beauty. They had bid $700 ; his beauty and his grief were too much for my caution and my principles, and on the spur of excitement, I bid $800, and no one would raise the bid. “Now,” said he, “I suppose he ​must be related to you, as you are inquiring about him, and he looks like you.” He directed Tom where to go, and said he would be home soon. When he called, he was invited into the parlor, where he found Georgie with his mistress, who had been teaching him to read. I cannot describe Tom’s interview with his boy, and with the kind gentleman and lady with whom he was living. They would not regard him as a slave, and said if Tom should ever find himself in a condition to take care of Georgie, he should have him. I suppose Tom went for him with Gen. Sherman in his “March to the Sea,” and that he found him in Savannah. If it were so, I wish I might have been there to see.
Tom’s master never learned that he had found his boy, and as he had manifested no disposition to abscond, the old man went north again the next spring by the old route, stopping again at Morgantown to fit up for the sporting season. Stowe did not dare to leave Tom as formerly, but stayed there to keep an eye on him. Tom found his old friend, who advised him not to let this chance slip by without an effort to escape ; he told him to cross over to the west side of the Monongahela River, keep along as near the top of the mountain as possible to Pittsburgh, (describing the city so that he would know it,) go down the mountain so as to be at the bridge about dusk of the evening, cross over, passing through the city, cross over the Alleghany River, then go up that river, and it would bring him to Canada. “Well,” said I, when Tom was telling his story, “ The river does not reach all the way to Canada.” “I found that out,” said Tom, “but if I had not been picked up and put on to this route, I’d have followed that river as far as there was a drop of water in it.” His friend gave him some bread, and Tom started and got on to the mountain—cut a ​heavy hickory cane, traveled in the day time and slept at night, never leaving the highest part of the mountain except when a ravine crossed his path, and arrived in sight of the city of Pittsburgh without having seen a man except once. The third day, about noon, he went down into a deep ravine, and came suddenly upon six men engaged in eating their dinner. One of them said, “There is that two thousand dollar nigger,” and seizing an axe, came at him, ordering him to surrender. With the butt of his hickory cane Tom knocked the man down, when another man struck at him with an axe; stepping back, the axe missed him, and swung the man around so that Tom’s bludgeon hit square across his mouth. He then ran up the ravine, and commenced climbing the almost perpendicular mountain, rolling a stone on to the only man that attempted to follow. The last he saw of the other three men, they were carrying off that man’s body. Having learned by these men, as he supposed, that a reward of $2,000 was offered for him, he feared to go within speaking distance of any one, but managed to get through Pittsburgh, and followed along the rocky crest of the mountain within sight of the Alleghany River to near Franklin. Coming down near the road, he saw 'a negro coming towards him, and ventured to ask him to procure some bread for him, being nearly starved, and hardly able to walk with a sprain in his ankle. Tom’s fear of being sent back was so great that he could hardly be persuaded to see the face of a white man. He supposed that everybody had seen the advertisement, and suspected even his negro brother. Tom was, however, in safe hands. His friend took him to our depot near Franklin, Pa., where he could not be induced to stay until his foot recovered, though it was much swollen, and he could bear no weight upon it. ​His route from Franklin came through Warren, Jamestown, Ellington and Leon. He asked me to put my name on his paper, on which I found the names of all the conductors that had put him through. He could not be persuaded to stay over but a day, therefore the train started at midnight, fording the river, and going through the dark woods, (a horrible road in those days,) arrived before daylight at Friend Andrew’s hospitable station. Another idle day was passed, and the next morning about break of day, when Andrew put him on a boat at Black Rock, Tom sent his trusty hickory back to me. I had asked him for it, offering a nice cane in exchange, but he declined parting with it until he got beyond the force of the fugitive slave law; it had been his sole weapon, and in his strong arm had proved more than a match for six men, backed by a reward of $2,000.
I was so much interested by the following incident that I will relate it in Tom’s own words. Tom was anxious to go to Cleveland, but dared not venture. A gentleman living there had offered to aid him should he ever need it, and he thought he would send for his boy if he could but see him. Tom said:
“Six years ago, we were coming north on a steamboat on the Mississippi, when the boat was burned. Mr. W., the gentleman above named, and his daughter, on his way home from New Orleans, occupied a state-room near the bow of the boat, where I had the horses. Master was frightened out of his wits, and begged me to save him, so I pushed the finest horse overboard, and got the old man into the river, with the tail of the horse in his hands; I then cut the lariat, and the horse landed the old man a mile below. The next thing I heard was a lady at her cabin window near by, screaming for help. I took her out of the window, threw the landing plank ​into the water, put her upon it, and by swimming with my hands on the plank, managed to land two or three miles down the river. Her father had left the cabin in search of means to save her, when the fire compelled her to accept my assistance, and she supposed he had perished; but he, having sought in vain for her, had been finally driven by the flames to the water, and by the aid of one of our horses, had got ashore. Each supposed the other had perished, but before noon he had found his daughter, and when he heard how she escaped, he offered Mr. Stowe any amount of money he should ask for my freedom ; but the old man said that no money could induce him to part with me as long as he kept horses to be cared for. The lady gave me a diamond ring, for which a gentleman offered me $100, but it was on Lucy’s finger when she died, and I buried it with her. I suppose it is there now.”
In speaking of his own acts, Tom was very modest. His language was more like that of a Southern gentleman traveling in the North than I had ever heard from a slave before ; but certain phrases were unmistakable. He was a genuine native of Mississippi.
This sketch is somewhat long, though I have omitted many interesting incidents related by Tom. I will add one laughable occurrence. A little before daylight one morning of Tom’s flight, he looked into a cabin window, saw a table all set for breakfast, and the mistress sound asleep in a chair before the fire. No men were in sight, so Tom opened the door, seized a loaf of bread and a ball of butter and left. As he passed the old shanty barn, he heard the man, but he went on unmolested. Tom’s description of the woman was ludicrous, and I always laugh when I try to imagine the consternation of those people when they sat down to that early breakfast.