Underground To Canada

Barbara Smucker’s novel Underground to Canada may be a work of fiction, but it provides a realistic portrayal of an enslaved person’s journey from a plantation in the American South to the Canadian town of St. Catharines in the mid-19th century. During this period, the United States was legally, politically, and morally divided on slavery. Northern states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Vermont had declared themselves “free states” in which slavery was abolished. There was constant controversy over whether the federal government should permit the nation’s newer territories, such as Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska, to practice slavery; American abolitionists advocated for a total ban on slavery throughout the country. Meanwhile, the Southern states continued to allow white plantation owners to enslave millions of Black Americans. (By the outbreak of the Civil War in 1860, four million Black Americans were enslaved in Southern states such as Florida, Virginia, Kentucky, North and South Carolina, Louisiana, and more.)

Over the course of the 19th century, tens of thousands of enslaved Black Americans made the bold decision to escape slavery by running away to the Northern free states, and ultimately, to Canada. In doing so they risked being recaptured and punished, endured separation from friends and family, and had to navigate new landscapes and cultures. If escaped slaves successfully crossed the borders into these “free states,” where slavery was banned, why did they have to flee all the way to Canada? Two federal laws, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, allowed slave owners, their employees, and local sheriffs to pursue people who had escaped enslavement, and legally recapture them in any state in the country, regardless of whether it was a “slave” or “free” state. The federal government assisted these slave owners since the act of 1850 “made the federal government responsible for finding, returning, and trying escaped slaves” (“Fugitive Slave Act.” American Battlefield Trust).

These laws put escaped slaves in constant danger while they remained in the US. Some took the risk of being captured, and they established new lives in the Northern “free” states. Other enslaved people in the deep South fled to Mexico, which had already abolished slavery, but Canada was a more common destination. Over the decades abolitionists formed a network of safehouses and transportation routes called the Underground Railroad, which helped escaping slaves complete the arduous journey from their places of enslavement to freedom in Canada. This nickname refers to the analogy used by the abolitionists who defied the law to help escaping slaves: They saw themselves as “conductors” on the railroad and used the language of trains and goods as an easily understandable code to communicate privately about their plans. These abolitionists help Julilly and her friend Liza when they flee the Riley plantation in Mississippi.

Smucker adds to the realism of her work by including three characters based on real historical figures involved in the Underground Railroad: Alexander Ross, an abolitionist from Canada who identified himself as an ornithologist (one who studies birds), and Levi and Catherine Coffin, abolitionists from Ohio. Ross’s biography is murkier than the Coffins’. Having studied medicine for four years, he was apparently “posing as an ornithologist” (emphasis added) so that he could hold secret meetings with enslaved people and give them information about escaping to Canada (“Ross, Alexander Milton.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. 12). Levi Coffin, with his parents, had been helping slaves escape since he was a teenager. He and Catherine dedicated their lives to the same mission; their home was known as the “Grand Central Station of the Underground Railroad.” Levi and Catherine are thought to have helped more than 2,000 escaped slaves (another source says 3,000) make their way to freedom (“Levi Coffin.” National Park Service. 17 September 2017). These three historical figures are just one aspect that lends credibility to the novel; as Smucker writes in her note to the reader, the story is also “based on first-hand experiences of the narratives of fugitive slaves” (8).