The Amazing Underground Railroad by Kem Knapp Sawyer

Author:Kem Knapp Sawyer [Sawyer, Kem Knapp]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4645-0470-9
Publisher: Enslow Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2012-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

Image Credit: Library of Congress

Robert Purvis was a prominent Philadelphia merchant and black abolitionist. He and his wife Harriet organized antislavery societies and provided shelter to thousand of fugitives.

Robert Purvis kept records of fugitives who received help from the Vigilance Committee. Although he destroyed his records after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, he estimated that the committee provided aid to fugitives on the average of one per day.14 One of these fugitives, Madison Washington, returned to Virginia to rescue his wife and stopped at the Purvises along the way. But after he left their house he was captured, sold to a slave dealer, and put with other slaves onto the Creole, a ship bound for New Orleans, Louisiana. These passengers, however, never made it to their destination—the auction block. Washington staged a mutiny and redirected the ship to the Bahamas. The passengers stepped off the boat free men and women.

Robert and Harriet Purvis helped literally thousands of fugitives, and were highly respected members of the abolitionist community. People turned to them for both guidance and leadership. A case in point followed the arrest of John Brown. This fearless abolitionist had led a band of antislavery men in capturing the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, a town in the mountains of what is now West Virginia. Brown wanted to use the arsenal as a stronghold for fugitive slaves. The hanging of John Brown on December 2, 1859, rocked the nation. Robert Purvis was the one chosen to speak to the hundreds who gathered at National Hall on Martyr Day, the day of mourning for John Brown.

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