Free
In 1861, the United States was a nation divided.
There were White people who depended on enslaving Black people to support their economy and their lifestyle. And White people who thought enslavement was wrong and wanted to abolish it. Most of the former were in the South. But New York had its share of people who supported them.
Then came the Civil War. No battles were fought in New York State. But that didn’t mean its citizens weren’t involved.
And long before that war, there came a railroad that wasn’t really a railroad at all.
▲ It was known as the Underground Railroad. But it had no tracks or trains. It was a web of houses and paths runaway enslaved people used to get to freedom. Between 1820 and 1850, an estimated 100,000 people used the network to reach freedom in northern states and Canada. More than 3,000 of them came through New York. Along the way, they stopped at safe houses. Many traveled from the southern border of New York and passed through Tarrytown, just north of New York City. From there they may have traveled northwest to Rochester and Oswego on the shores of Lake Ontario. Or north to Ithaca, Lake Placid, and Auburn.
◀ Author and abolitionist Frederick Douglass was born enslaved in Maryland. He escaped and traveled north on the Underground Railroad to New York City. That’s where he settled. Douglass was 21 years old at the time. Eventually he moved to Rochester. There, he published an abolitionist newspaper called the North Star. He also became a “stationmaster” on the railroad. One estimate is that Douglass and his wife used their home and office to temporarily house hundreds of runaways. Here are two ideas about enslavement that Douglass shared:
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman was born enslaved in Maryland. At the age of 27, she escaped to Philadelphia. The following year, Tubman became a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad. Known as “the Moses of her people,” Tubman made 19 trips to the South. She led 70 runaways to safety in the North. Tubman used the tempo of songs she would sing to signal to “passengers” whether it was safe or not to come out from hiding. Eventually, she and her family went to live in Auburn, New York. Auburn was a center for abolitionists at the time. ▶
▲ New York City residents were also active on the Underground Railroad. One was Louis Napoleon. Napoleon worked as a furniture polisher but had an active life as an abolitionist. As historian Eric Foner said, Napoleon was “the key guy on the streets in New York bringing in fugitives [runaways], scouring the docks, looking for people at the train station.” According to the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper, Napoleon helped rescue 3,000 runaways. Perhaps it’s not surprising then that his death certificate listed his occupation as “Underground R.R. Agent.”
◀ The Civil War began on April 12, 1861. You might think that New York would have been strongly on the side of the Union (the North). But it wasn’t. At first, opinion was split. On one side were New Yorkers who supported the Union. On the other side were those involved in the cotton trade who favored the Confederacy (the South). In the end, New York entered the Civil War on the side of the Union. Over 400,000 soldiers from New York participated, more than from any other state.
Rush Christopher Hawkins was the first New Yorker to sign up. As a brigadier general, Hawkins led the 9th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment. The regiment was also known as the Hawkins’ Zouaves. (Zouaves are light infantry soldier. That means they are armed with lightweight weapons and very little other equipment.) He returned home as a war hero. Afterward he was elected to the New York State Assembly. ▶
▲ The New York Fire Zouaves, also known as the 11th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, was the first New York infantry regiment to fight for the Union. The Fire Zouaves were made up of firefighters from New York City. Soon after the war began, the Fire Zouaves were sent to Alexandria, Virginia and took possession of it. This made them among the first Union soldiers to control territory in the Confederacy.
I looked on their . . . faces upturned . . . as if in mute appeal against the wrongs of the country for which they had given their lives. . . . Among my dead comrades . . . I swore to myself a solemn oath: ‘May my right hand forget its cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I ever fail to defend the rights of those men who have given their blood for me and my country this day and for their race forever and, God helping me, I will keep that oath.’
Think Piece!
See if you can paraphrase the remarks of General Benjamin Butler. How might some people think they are applicable today?
◀ In 1863, Congress passed the Conscription Act. It established a military draft aimed at building the Union Army. But there was a problem: Someone could pay $300 and avoid the draft. People who couldn’t afford it became enraged. Two days after the draft started, their rage exploded. There were anti-government riots, and there was anti-Black violence. (At the time, Black people were not considered citizens, and so they were exempt from the draft.) For four days, mobs terrorized and destroyed the city. Buildings were set ablaze. Black men were lynched or beaten to death. Union soldiers had to be sent to the city to bring back order. Here is what a rioter said about the situation in a letter to the editor of the New York Times:
You will, no doubt, be hard on us rioters tomorrow morning, but that $300 law has made us nobodies, vagabonds, and cast-outs of society, for whom nobody cares when we must go to war and be shot down. We are the poor rabble, and the rich rabble is our enemy by this law. Therefore we will give our enemy battle right here. . . .
REFLECTION
Reflect on what was said in the letter to the editor. What is your reaction to it? Do you agree or disagree with what the rioters did? Why?
◀ President Andrew Johnson declared the Civil War over on August 20, 1866. That was 16 months after Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. After the war, memorials honoring the Union were erected in New York and elsewhere. A few were completed soon after the end of the war. One of them is the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch in Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. Others were finished generations later.
