Mt. Pleasant Journal June 24, 1875
"The underground R. R. Convention which convened in Salem, Iowa on June
18th 1875, at the Methodist church that place, was called to order by
Joel Garretson nominating Joseph A. Dugdale President, who was unanimous
elected. The organization was then completed by the election of the
following officers - Vice- Presidents: Friend Joseph D. Hoag, Muscatine
Co., L. M. Holmes, Marshall Co., Margaret Woolman, Ruth Dugdale, Mr.
Joseph Vernon, Rev. Bennett Walters, Rev. Eber Crane, Hon. John Teesdale
of Henry Co., Rev. L. L. Hunting, Scott Co, Friend Nathan Bond, Friend
Elwood Osborn and Rev. John Cross of Lee Co. - Secretaries: R. B. Throop
and Miss Rachel Carney of Henry Co. - Business Committee: Dr. Geo Shedd
of Lee Co.; Rev L. L. Hunting, Scott Co.; Friend Elijah Holmes, Marshall
Co.; Friend Amos Vickers, Mahaska Co.; Rev. Wm. R. Cole, Rev. Joel
Garretson, Mrs. Anne E. Woolson, Friend Amos McMillan and Friend Joseph
Laird of Henry Co. ..."
(There were two sessions on June 18th and one on the morning of the
19th. Much time was spent in sharing and resolutions were made and
passed and letters shared. Three letters follow.)
Before adjourning it was decided to have the proceedings published in
pamphlet form, and those wishing the same are to apply to the President
Joseph A. Dugdale.
Does anyone have a copy? We really would like to see a copy!
LEVI COFFIN LETTER.
Joseph A. Dugdale- Dear Friend-
Thy letter of the 1 st inviting me to attend the meeting at Salem, of
the old line abolitionists and stockholders and conductors of the
Under-ground Rail Road, was received too late for me to arrange my
business so that I could attend without interfering with other
engagements, (not being at home when thy letter came.) I regret very
much that I cannot be with you. I shall be with you in spirit, if not in
body. It affords me great pleasure to get hold of the hand of an old
line Abolitionist and co-laborer in the anti-slavery cause, when brick
bats and rotten eggs were some of the arguments we had to meet. Those
were days that tried men’s souls. It cost something then to be an
abolitionist. It does me good now, in my old age, -nearly 77 years- to
meet with stockholders and conductors on the underground rail road and
to talk over our many perils and narrow escapes, and how the Lord helped
us in the work. I took stock at an early age, and as I grew in years I
increased my stock, until I became a large stockholder and was
promoted to the highest office on that road in the gift of the slave
hunters or bloodhounds in human shape, who were pursuing the poor
bleeding fugitive. They could not hear of their slaves after they got
into my hands. They lost the trail and said there must be a road
underground, and that Levi Coffin was the President. I accepted the
title and was ready to accept any title- fireman, brakesman, conductor
or president. I would work anywhere if by so doing I could save a poor
fugitive. I bore the title more than 30 years and aided over 3,000
fugitives to get on the road. I think the road was a success. I always
thought it was good stock, for it paid a good dividend. It made us feel
good all over when we heard of a shipment landing safely beyond the
lake. I held my place until the celebration of the 15 th amendment by
the colored people of Cincinnati. At that great meeting I publicly
resigned the office, telling them the work was done. I had been
permitted to witness the consummation of my prayers and desires. Now we
had no further use for the U.G.R.R. I suggested that we take up the
rails and dispose of them, applying the proceeds to the education of the
freedmen.
Thine truly,
LEVI COFFIN.
Mrs. L. Maria Child letter
FROM MRS. CHILD.
I am glad to hear that the old friends of the slave propose to meet
together to talk over past struggles and victories in the sacred cause
of human freedom and universal brotherhood. May it prove a pleasant and
edifying gathering. To yourselves it cannot be otherwise than
interesting to recall the exciting experiences of those times; while it
will be full of instruction and encouragement to the young, in view of
future struggles for the supremacy of the right. -In the progress of the
human race, conflicts will be perpetually
recurring; and blessed are those whose consciences are educated to stand
firm as a rock against any on-rushing tide of corruption or oppression.
I find it difficult to realize that the great moral warfare of
anti-slavery, with the powerful forces of despotism, has passed away
into the calm records of history; which are totally inadequate to give a
vivid idea of the tremendous struggle it involved. -Remembering many of
the difficulties and dangers we encountered, I frequently smile to hear
every body assert, now-a-days, that they were always opposed to slavery.
I have myself committed some State prison offenses in the course of the
overthrow of that vile and cruel system, and I never realized more
pleasure in anything I have done in the course of my life. It seems
strange indeed to remember that performances from which I derived such
solid satisfaction, were once penal offenses in all the States of this
Union.
Posterity can never realize the amount of activity, generosity, and
self-sacrifice, lavished on the anti-slavery cause for so many years.
Through a large portion of two of those years, I lived in the family of
Joseph Carpenter, a consistent member of the society of friends in New
Rochelle, N. York. The Dutch stoop in front of his kitchen was so often
filled with dark faced strangers, that I used to call it the coast of
Guinea. -He had secret hiding places for them, and his wagon was in
constant requisition to aid their flight into Canada. Friend Isaac T.
Hopper was always sending them on from the city of New York; and not
daring to state who and what they were, he was accustomed to give them a
loose slip of paper, on which was written: "I was a stranger and ye took
me in."
Joseph knew the hand-writing and understood the pass-word. He was the
most thoroughly good man I ever knew. Yet, strange to say, he was
regarded as a black sheep by a large majority of his own religious
society, and passed his life, almost isolated from spiritual communion,
except when his soul was strengthened and refreshed by attendance on
anti-slavery meetings. It is highly creditable to the numerous fugitives
who shared his hospitality, that they never took so much as an apple
from him, though they had been educated in Slavery’s school of theft.
I am with great respect, your friend.
L. MARIA CHILD.
William Lloyd Garrison letter
BOSTON, June 5, 1875.
Esteemed friend Dugdale. -It gave me very great pleasure to receive
your letter of the 28th ultimo, awakening as it did many tender
recollections of that eventual struggle to deliver the oppressed in our
land in which we so earnestly participated, and giving me the evidence
that your friendship continued as warm and steadfast as in the days of
old- a friendship that has always been as cordially reciprocated on my
part, though too seldom eliciting an epistolary expression. How I would
like to answer it, if circumstances
would permit, by speedily presenting myself as "a living epistle" at
your door at Mount Pleasant, instead of sending you this hastily written
sheet- for I have never yet planted my feet upon the soil of Iowa (a
State which I hold in high estimation for its intelligence,
virtue, industrial activity and hopeful development), and, moreover, I
have a strong desire to see you and your dear wife again in the flesh,
and to clasp the hand of your aged mother, for whom I cherish great
respect and veneration as one of the "mothers in
Israel." Besides, you informed me that there is soon to be held in your
State a meeting of "the conductors and stockholders in the old
Underground Rail Road in Iowa," some of whom resided in other States
during the reign of the Slave Power- the object being "to take each
other by the hand once more before they passed over the river." It would
amply repay one to make a much longer journey than it is from
Massachusetts to Iowa to be allowed to participated in such a meeting-
to look into the faces of the humane,
courageous, self-sacrificing, Fugitive Slave-Law defying men and women
(for the women did their full share), who, at the risk of fine,
imprisonment, and sometimes death itself, unreservedly gave heed to the
divine injunction- "Take counsel, execute judgement; make thy shadow as
the night in the midst of the noonday; hide the outcast; bewray not him
that wandereth; let mine outcasts dwell with thee; be thou a covert to
them form the face of the spoiler." Whether at early dawn, in the blaze
of day, or at the midnight hour the haunted fugitive knocked at their
door for pity and protection, they stood ever ready to furnish him with
needful food and raiment, poor wine and oil into his wounds, carefully
conceal him from the pursuing slave-hunters, and subject themselves to
any amount of personal discomfort and peril in conveying him (by how
many ingenious expedients!) beyond the chance of recapture. No cold or
heat was too intense, no storm too violent, no obstruction of snow or
ice too formidable, no by path too devious rugged, to make them pause in
their noble determination to "deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the
oppressor." No finer examples of human disinterestedness- of zeal and
courage inspired by the purest philanthropy and the deepest convictions
of rectitude- has the world ever witnessed. And no phase of the
Anti-Slavery conflict was more hazardous, or more eventful, or
relatively more important than this. O, the surprising guilt of our
nation at that period, with its boasted Declaration of Independence in
one hand and the Bible in the other, yet holding millions of hopeless
victims in an incomparably worse than Egyptian bondage, and subjecting
such as dared to "remember those in bonds as bound with them" to social
proscription, popular hate, religious condemnation and universal
contempt.
So many of those who were actively engaged in the liberating work of the
Underground Rail-Road have seen "the last of earth," that the
contemplated meeting can hardly be numerously attended. Yet it will be
none the less but rather all the more, an occasion of thrilling interest
on the part of such as may be gathered together, to whom I send the
greeting of an old co-laborer in the common struggle for whom I cherish
great admiration, and upon whom I invoke the Divine benediction.
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.
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