Freedom's Railway

Interview with William Lambert
Reminiscences of the Brave Old Days of the Famous Underground Line,
Historic Scenes Recalled, Detroit the Center of Operations that Freed Thousands of Slaves

When we had received the people at the lodge we then took them to the rendezvous, which was the house of J.C. Reynolds, an employee of the company then constructing the Michigan Central railway. He had been sent by Levi Coffin of Cincinnati, who was the head of the underground railway in the west. His residence was at the foot of Eighth street, just opposite the place where the first elevator was subsequently built. The house has long since been torn down. We would fetch the fugitives there, shipping them into the house by dark one by one. There they found food and warmth, and when, as frequently happened, they were ragged and thinly clad, we gave them clothing. Our boats were concealed under the docks, and before daylight we would have everyone over. We never lost a man by capture at this point, so careful were we, and we took over as high as 1,600 in one year. Some times we were closely watched and other rendezvous were used. Ald. Finney, Luther Beecher, McChubb and Farmer Underwood could tell you lots about these details. Finney's Barn used to be filled with them some times. It stood opposite the hotel property which bears Finney's name . . .

It would be a picture if you could only have seen it, never to be forgotten, if you could have witnessed many of the scenes of families reuniting and of freemen reaching Canada. For any labor, or cost, or danger, that was our ample reward. I guess most of the incidents that happened in Detroit are pretty well known. After we got to Michigan we didn't have a regular route, but we did have others. We used to work up the Wabash river to Ft. Wayne, and then cross into Washtenaw county, where Ann Arbor is, you know. There we had lots of friends and help. Then if the hue and cry had been sharply raised we would keep our people in concealment and get them over the ferry when we could. They used to lay in barns and all sorts of retreats and doubtless underwent many hardships, which at times caused them almost to regret their flight, but we got them through all right at last. Girls we often brought as boys, and women disguised as men, and men as women were frequent arrivals. When railways began to be built we used to pack them in boxes, and send them by express. We got thirty or forty through in that way, but the danger to their lives by reason of lack of careful handling and fear of suffocation made that means dangerous.

Well, there was a slave escaped from Arkansas some time in 1840 and we got him into Indiana among some abolitionists, who said he would be safe there. They taught him to read and so on and he came to Detroit. His name was Robert Cromwell. After awhile he went to Flint and opened a barbershop there. Now, one of the greatest difficulties we had was to keep fugitives from writing home and giving their addresses, or otherwise betraying their whereabouts. Cromwell thought he'd be cunning, so he wrote to his old master, dating his letter at Montreal, and telling what he was doing and so on, and asking his master, whose name was John Dun, to send him his sister, and he would send him $100. But he posted his letter at Flint, and it went forward with the post stamp of the same date as that within. Dun knew that no one could come to Flint from Montreal in one day, so he came to St. Louis and looked up a Flint newspaper in the exchanges of the St. Louis Republican, and there found Robert Cromwell's advertisement, "next door to the hotel" that was described and named in Robert's letter. About this time Robert began to think he had done a foolish thing, and becoming frightened hurried down to see me. He concluded to come to Detroit for a while and leave his shop in charge of some man. This he did, and then opened a little restaurant at the corner of Brush and Larned streets. His mother came to Flint and soon traced him here, but the slave law then was the one of 1790. It authorized the master to seize his slave and bring him before the judge of the United States court, who would make the necessary order to bring him back. Judge Ross Wilkins, of sainted memory, was then judge of this circuit, and the United States courthouse was the First national bank building at the corner of Jefferson and Griswold. Dun knew that to get any warrant or summons would be to put Cromwell on his guard and he consulted with the United States district attorney, at that time John Norvell, who told him he could seize his slave and bring him before Judge Wilkins, who would then have to make the order, but it would be impossible to do this in the streets, the man must be enticed to the court-house. Accordingly an officer, who was appropriately named Bender, went to Cromwell and told him to come to the United States court to give testimony as to the character of certain houses in the vicinity of his shop. Cromwell wanted to know what the United States court had to do with the character of the houses. Bender, said he knew nothing, had recently come there, and so on. Then the officer produced an unsigned subpoena. Cromwell laughed at this, and the officer then went away and returned to say that the judge had ordered him to fetch him. On this Cromwell went. Dun stood just inside the door of the building, and as soon as Cromwell entered he pushed it to and attempted to seize his former slave. Cromwell dashed for the window and tried to escape, giving the alarm. This was heard above and its nature suspected by Judge Wilkins, who at once fled from the court, it is said, to the attic. Anyway he disappeared. George Ball was the clerk of the court. He yelled down to Cromwell not to allow himself to be fetched up?for God's sake not to come up. By this time George DeBaptiste, myself, and a score of others, among them George Rogers, a lawyer, were on the ground, but we could not get into the court-house?the door was closed. Ball, however, came to the upper window and threw us out a key to come in by another door, and in two minutes we had Cromwell free from Dun and rushed him down to the foot of Shelby street, into a skiff, and into Canada. While this was done Dun was detained on the steps, the crowd growing momentarily larger and more threatening, a number of Irish among them crying out, "Where's the man stealer?" "Let us at him." When I came back Jefferson Avenue was filled with people. There stood Dun on the steps, towering over every one about him, and looking for a means of escape. All at once Dun made a dash. He thrust the crowd aside like chaff blown from a fanning-mill, and tore down Jefferson avenue, where a friendly door opened for him and closed to shut out the crowd. Just at this time the passage of a state law had been secured making it a penal offense "to inveigle or kidnap any fugitive slave to return him to slavery." Mark the wording. Well, Elder Monroe whose picture you have there and who died in Africa on the St. Paul Loando River, where he had gone to establish a colony of Episcopalians, took the lead in this affair and we demanded Dun's arrest under the law. It was hours before the officers fetched him out and brought him to Justice O'Byrne's office at the corner of Woodward and Jefferson avenues. We colored people demanded admittance, which was refused us, and we appealed to Mayor Van Dyke. We told him that Dun was from Maryland, and the United States court had jurisdiction. Our law point was bad, but we were many in number and resolute. The mayor made us a speech and then declared we should be admitted. It was decided to postpone the hearing until 9 o'clock the next day, and when a bankrupt merchant was offered as bail Elder Monroe objected. The judge threatened to put us out, and we asked him to begin. Then John Norvell offered himself as bail, but Monroe remembered that a mortgage sale of his property had recently been published, and objected to him. What would have happened I cannot say had not Dun cried out that he wanted no bail, that he preferred to go to jail. The mayor begged that no disgrace be brought upon the city by mob law. The state law should be enforced, he declared, and proposed that we form in a double line in the street, allow Dun to be brought down and to pass to the jail, then on the site of the public library, where we could see him enter and be assured that he would be kept. We agreed to this, and the colored people kept their word, but the Irish population had not so agreed, and the danger to Dun's life was very great. Just as we got to the jail a rush was made but it was stayed. Well Dun lay in jail till the next term ?three months' and being afraid of the mob let his trial go over, and lay in jail six months more. He was rich, and had big lawyers come up from St. Louis, but it was no use, and we would have sent him to state prison had it not been that the law read, "to return to slavery." He had inveigled and attempted to kidnap, but they were not able to prove that he did it to return him to slavery.

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Updated 06/12/2007

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