Civil War History

Freeing the Weems Family: A New Look at the Underground Railroad Stanley Harrold In November 1855 an underground railroad agent spirited Ann Maria Weems, an enslaved fifteen-year-old girl who was disguised as a boy, out ofWashington, D.C. In front of the White House, Ann Maria met the white man who served as her conveyor to the North. She pretended to be his carriage driver until they passed the city limits. They spent the night at a Maryland slaveholder's home with Maria introduced as herconveyor's slave. When they reached Philadelphia, they went to the home of black underground railroad organizer William Still, who had dispatched the agent. Still had a photograph taken of Ann Maria in boy's attire to serve as a sentimental remembrance for those who had aided her. The girl stayed briefly in Philadelphia before Still sent her on to New York City, where she enjoyed the hospitality ofthe families ofblack clergymen Charles B. Ray and Amos N. Freeman as well as that of prominent white abolitionist Lewis Tappan. Then Freeman escorted Maria to the black settlement at Elgin, near Chatham, Canada, where her aunt and uncle awaited her.' The secrecy, the cute subterfuge of gender, and the implicit danger involved in Ann Maria Weems's escape from slavery appealed to a variety of emotions among the participating adults who doted on the child. Since such a story is still engaging nearly a century and a half after it originated, it is supportive of historian Larry Gara's 1961 observation in The Liberty Line: The Legend of the UndergroundRailroad that "few other legends in American history have gained the almost universal acceptance and popularity of the underground railroad."2 1 William Still, The Underground Rail Road: A Record of Facts, Authentic Narratives, Letters, &c. (1872; reprint, New York: Arno, 1968), 182-86; W. B. Williams to [Wilbur H. Siebert], Mar. 30, 1896, typescript, Siebert Papers, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; Monroe N. Work, "Life of Charles B. Ray," Journal ofNegro History 4 (Oct. 19 19): 370; Frederick Douglass Paper (Rochester , N.Y), Feb. 1, 1856; William H. Pease and Jane Pease, Black Utopia: Negro Communal Experiments in America (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1963), 84-108. Still and contemporaries referred to Elgin as the Buxton Settlement. Ray may also have had a picture taken of Ann Maria Weems. British publications spell Ann Maria's last name Weims; in such cases, I have altered the spelling to Weems, which was used in the United States. 2 Larry Gara. Liberty Line (Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1961), I. Civil War History, Vol. xlii. No. 4 © 1996 by The Kent State University Press 2Ç0CIVIL WAR HISTORY In the 1990s there are popularized television presentations about it and many school children learn romanticized versions of the deeds of Harriet Tubman and others who guided slaves from the South to the North or Canada during the years preceding the American Civil War. Among historians, however, the underground railroad has become a dead issue. The purpose of this essay is first to examine briefly how this has come to be the case and then to use the story of Ann Maria Weems, her family, and the events that led to their emancipation to illustrate that current assumptions among historians regarding the underground railroad may be too narrow. The Weems story suggests that a number of aspects of the underground railroad remain worthy of investigation. Among these is the issue of interracial cooperation raised in the brief account of Ann Maria Weems's escape that begins this essay. There is also the relationship among abolitionism, the practice of purchasing freedom of individual slaves, and assisted slave escapes. In addition, the Weems story reveals a great deal about international cooperation among abolitionists and the role of abolitionists and abolitionist sympathizers in the border South. It establishes the reality of extended clandestine abolitionist organization to save black families, reveals the nature of such organization, and delineates the role of the oppressed in the processes of purchasing freedom and/or effecting escape. Gara's publication of The Liberty Line in 1961 was a milestone in scholarly understanding of the underground railroad and the...