As historians and would-be historians reconstruct the Civil War in this sesquicentennial year, Levi Coffin emerges anew as a hero of that tragic era. His Quaker upbringing in Guilford County assured his opposition to slavery, but it was his boyhood observations that persuaded him to defy federal and state law to help escaped slaves achieve freedom. Among the fugitives he helped was Eliza Harris, a major character in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which is recounted in his voluminous work, Reminiscenses, based on diary entries, notes and memory.
Coffin’s conversion to Absolutism began with an incident when he was seven years old. Virgina and Maryland were the principal slave-rearing states, and to a great extent supplying slave labor to the southern market.
As Coffin wrote in Reminiscences, “The gangs of slaves were handcuffed and chained together, driven by a man on horseback who flourished a long whip, and goaded the reluctant and weary when their feet lagged on the long journey.
“One day I was by the roadside when I saw such a gang approach. The coffle of slaves came first, chained in couples on each side of a long chain. My father addressed the slaves pleasantly, ‘Well, boys, why do they chain you?’ One of the men, whose countenance betrayed unusual intelligence and deepest sadness, replied, ‘They have taken us away from our wives and children, and they chain us lest we should make our escape and go back to them.’”
After they had passed, Levi questioned his father. Uppermost in his mind was the thought, “How terribly we should feel if father were taken away from us.”
Another incident occurred in the spring when Levi had gone with his father to a famous shad fishery at the narrows of the Yadkin River. Two brothers, who owned the fishery, allowed their slaves the privilege of fishing at night and disposing of the fish on their own account.
Levi first aided a slave when he was 15 and found that one of the negroes in a coffle of slaves moving south, had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. Levi related this to his father who, assisted by the Friends Meeting-House, was able to contact the negro’s former owner. Together they found the kidnapped negro in Georgia and were able to help him regain his freedom.
His efforts were not always so successful. One day he was returning home from an errand when a party of slaves passed by. He met a negro trudging slowly, who asked if he had seen a party of movers. Levi told him he had seen such a party about half a mile away.
“I had heard of instances where families were separated – the wife and children being taken to another part of the country – and the husband and father following, keeping a short distance behind. Levi assumed that this was such a case. A week later he learned that some suspicious men had jailed the negro, claiming his papers were false. A short time later the slave’s master arrived to claim him.
Levi wrote: “While a chain was being riveted around the negro’s neck and handcuffs fastened on his wrists, his master upbraided him for having run away.
‘Weren’t you well treated?’ he asked.
‘Yes, massa.’
‘Then what made you run away?’
‘My wife and children were taken from me, massa, and I think as much of them as you do of yours or any white man does of his. Their massa tried to buy me too, but you would not sell me so I followed them.’
The master’s reply was, ‘I have always treated you well. Trusting you with my keys and treating you more like a confidential servant than a slave, but now you shall know what slavery is. Just wait ‘til I get you home.’”
First, the master tried torture to find where the negro had gotten the fraudulent pass. When the slave refused, he smashed his hand on the anvil in the blacksmith’s shop.
“As I stood by and watched the scene, my heart swelled with indignation. One end of the chain riveted to the negro’s neck was made fast to the axle of his master’s buggy, then the master drove off at a sweeping trot, compelling the slave to run at full speed or fall and be dragged by his neck. I watched them till they disappeared in the distance, and as long as I could see them, the slave was running.”