SLAVERY &
THE UNDERGROUND RR-
A personal experience
We punished our way through the dark woods of Camp Mowana that recent night with our path lit only by the feeble glow of an oil lantern. Here and there in the distant woods a campfire simmered.
And there was occasional shouting. And screaming. And gunshots.
We were a small group of runaway slaves from the country’s sordid past struggling to walk to Canada—with its promise of freedom.
We pretended to be a church choir on our way to Shelby for the next morning’s services being guided by friendly locals from haven to haven along this short segment of our trek.
We were terrorized by bounty hunters seeking a reward for quashing our dreams and returning us to the slavery of the Deep South.
We met an old preacher, Dr. James Cosby (above) who warned us of the slave-owner sympathizers who were likely to horribly mutilate the men of our group or resell their wives and daughters into even more sordid conditions.
A sympathetic landowner was helping us when the abusive matron of the property threatened our very existence. One of our number lay “dead” in a freshly dug grave—a ruse to deflect the matron’s deadly challenge.
We hid in a tiny compartment of a barn while bounty hunters screamed at another sympathetic soul who really was hiding us—the commotion muted by the thick barn walls—until we were forced to run to the safety of a nearby wood’s darkness.
Soon, on another black trail we had stumbled upon, another bounty hunter’s vicious dog lunged and snarled at us with extreme realism. The hair on the back of my neck stood up as we disappeared deeper into the woods.
We stumbled over roots and rocks. We were assaulted by low hanging branches. We tried to stay with a lame elder in our midst regardless of being previously warned to sacrifice any stragglers for the good of the group.
Then, in the deepest of night, we were met by a wagoner who helped us squash ourselves like cordwood into his tarp covered, horse-drawn antique from the period where we rode, and trundled and bounced, being sworn to absolute silence while our limbs became numb with compressed posture and cold.
Finally, our hour and a half, 2 mile slice of slave-like reality came to a successful conclusion beside a warming campfire while the creator of this stunning dose of painful history, the Reverend Paul Lintern, congratulated us on our newly achieved freedom.
It is estimated as many as 100,000 runaway slaves gained their independence using the Underground Railroad through this area.
Congratulations to those local citizens of the time who truly understood the meaning of the phrase “...all men are created equal.”
And there was occasional shouting. And screaming. And gunshots.
We were a small group of runaway slaves from the country’s sordid past struggling to walk to Canada—with its promise of freedom.
We pretended to be a church choir on our way to Shelby for the next morning’s services being guided by friendly locals from haven to haven along this short segment of our trek.
We were terrorized by bounty hunters seeking a reward for quashing our dreams and returning us to the slavery of the Deep South.
We met an old preacher, Dr. James Cosby (above) who warned us of the slave-owner sympathizers who were likely to horribly mutilate the men of our group or resell their wives and daughters into even more sordid conditions.
A sympathetic landowner was helping us when the abusive matron of the property threatened our very existence. One of our number lay “dead” in a freshly dug grave—a ruse to deflect the matron’s deadly challenge.
We hid in a tiny compartment of a barn while bounty hunters screamed at another sympathetic soul who really was hiding us—the commotion muted by the thick barn walls—until we were forced to run to the safety of a nearby wood’s darkness.
Soon, on another black trail we had stumbled upon, another bounty hunter’s vicious dog lunged and snarled at us with extreme realism. The hair on the back of my neck stood up as we disappeared deeper into the woods.
We stumbled over roots and rocks. We were assaulted by low hanging branches. We tried to stay with a lame elder in our midst regardless of being previously warned to sacrifice any stragglers for the good of the group.
Then, in the deepest of night, we were met by a wagoner who helped us squash ourselves like cordwood into his tarp covered, horse-drawn antique from the period where we rode, and trundled and bounced, being sworn to absolute silence while our limbs became numb with compressed posture and cold.
Finally, our hour and a half, 2 mile slice of slave-like reality came to a successful conclusion beside a warming campfire while the creator of this stunning dose of painful history, the Reverend Paul Lintern, congratulated us on our newly achieved freedom.
It is estimated as many as 100,000 runaway slaves gained their independence using the Underground Railroad through this area.
Congratulations to those local citizens of the time who truly understood the meaning of the phrase “...all men are created equal.”
Sparks streak skyward from a roaring fire while an apparition-like cast member of Follow the Drinking Gourd regales participants with stories of runaway slaves escaping to freedom on the Underground Railroad through Richland County in the middle 1850s.
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Editor’s note: This two-night, live reality event was conducted in mid-October and was a startling peek at slave life in the US just 150 years ago. There were at least 18 “stations” of the Underground RR established in Richland County; the most obvious of which stands today on the east side of Lexington Springmill Rd., just north of the intersection with Hanley Rd. It is a large farmhouse with a sandstone retaining wall along the road and a large yellow barn on the opposite side of the road.
2 comments:
hi its anna, brittany's friend. i enjoyed thi post-and my grandfather grew up in the house on lex-springmill! my family's claim to richland county fame :)
My family also has many memories of the Gass House. My grandfather and my mother were born in the house in 1896 and 1928. My grandfather and uncles built the yellow barn on the west side of the road in the late 1930's. They also planted the stand of evergreens on top of the hill above the house.
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