Three Generations on the Underground Railroad: The Gibbons Family of Lancaster County

Posted by on Apr 16, 2020 in | Comments Off on Three Generations on the Underground Railroad: The Gibbons Family of Lancaster County Shortly after sunset, a fugitive slave from Maryland tapped on a window of a modest farmhouse near Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania. Daniel and Hannah Gibbons walked swiftly to the door. The Quaker couple escorted the young man to the barn to sleep and in the morning summoned him back to the house. If the fugitive’s owner was in close pursuit, they would send him to another farm. If there seemed to be...
read more

“Restless Progress in America”: Drawing the Mason-Dixon Line

Posted by on Aug 22, 2017 in | 0 comments “When I found I had crossed that line,” recalled Harriet Tubman, “I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything . . . I felt like I was in Heaven.” Such was the power of the Mason-Dixon Line. Within 75 years of its completion to resolve an eight-decade-long dispute between two colonial proprietors, a boundary line drawn in the 1760s by two English...
read more

The Parker Sisters by Lucy Maddox

Posted by on Jun 6, 2016 in | Comments Off on The Parker Sisters by Lucy Maddox The Parker Sisters: A Border Kidnapping by Lucy Maddox Temple University Press, 256 pp., cloth $28.50 The border where Chester County, Pennsylvania, adjoined Cecil County, Maryland, was contested territory in the conflict between “free” and “slave” states in the decades before the Civil War. Lucy Maddox provides a thoroughly researched account of one notable incident in this history, the...
read more

The Black Press in Pennsylvania

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Black Press in Pennsylvania I The Black press in Pennsylvania played a leading role in the struggle for Afro-American freedom in the pre-Civil War period. After the war, Afro-American tabloids in the Commonwealth were among the first newspapers to call for the civil rights and enfranchise­ment of Afro-Americans in the South and North. Fre­quently, editors of these newspapers became elected politicians and they used their...
read more

Toward Freedom: Pittsburgh Blacks, 1800-1870

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Toward Freedom: Pittsburgh Blacks, 1800-1870 Throughout the antebellum period in the United States, two of the most volatile issues were the abolition of slavery and Blacks’ civil rights. Conventions, meetings, and written memorials to state and federal governmental bodies regarding these concerns abounded. Both Black and white residents of cities and towns became involved in the slavery question, while Black residents, primarily,...
read more

A Black Underground: Resistance to Slavery, 1833-1860

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on A Black Underground: Resistance to Slavery, 1833-1860 The Underground Railroad is an important historical link with which most Pennsylvanians are familiar. Ever since William Still, the Black histo­rian, published his famous record of fugitive aid in 1872, however, many have questioned whether in reality the Underground Railroad existed. Some say that fugitive aid in Pennsylvania was rendered individually and spontaneously. Others say that an...
read more

Thaddeus Stevens, Equality of Man Before the Creator

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Thaddeus Stevens, Equality of Man Before the Creator In his thirty-five year legislative career, Thaddeus Stevens garnered several reputations. Ex-Confederates called him “the scourge of the South,” an epithet which survived into the twentieth century. In D. W. Griffith’s classic film Birth of a Nation, character Austin Stoneman is unabashedly modeled on Thaddeus Stevens, complete with clubfoot and wig. For his en­deavors to...
read more

Two Stationmasters on the Underground Railroad: A Tale of Black and White

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Two Stationmasters on the Underground Railroad: A Tale of Black and White As clerk of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society’s General Vigilance Committee, William Still (1821-1902) had grown accustomed to surprises. Not only did the young, free black abolitionist coordinate the Eastern Line of the Underground Railroad by finding shelter and escape routes to the North for fugitive slaves, but also he recorded their heart wrenching stories of inhumane treatment...
read more

Pennsylvania Copperheads: Traitors or Peacemakers?

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania Copperheads: Traitors or Peacemakers? Panic swept through Philadelphia in 1860, gripping manufacturers and merchants in its throes as southern slave states threatened to leave the federal union. The South had grown into an enormous market for Philadelphia’s merchants, and the city’s textile manufacturers depended on Dixie to supply the cotton they needed. Fears of secession and resulting massive unemployment prompted Mayor Alexander...
read more

Black Settlement on Yellow Hill

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Black Settlement on Yellow Hill Anyone who has ever read about the Battle of Gettysburg or visited the historic American Civil War battlefield undoubtedly learned about the generals, the courageous soldiers who fought in the grisly three-day encounter, and the thousands that lost their lives on that hallowed ground in Adams County. The stories of the famous engagements that took place at Little Round Top, Devil’s Den, and the...
read more