While Quakers were active in the Underground Railroad for fugitive slaves, the practice wasn't universally embraced within the Society of Friends. In fact, much of the illegal action across the North was undertaken by evangelical Protestants who even created the altar call at revivals to enlist fellow workers.
Yes, it's one more story in the American experience that needs to be better known, in all of its gritty reality.
As I describe in Quaking Dover, the Cartland family farm in Lee is believed to have been a stop on one of those lines to freedom. While documentation of such participation is rare, escaped slaved turned abolitionist Frederick Douglass was a frequent visitor to the farm, and like also its small Quaker meetinghouse and school.
The bigger question would be how did the fugitives get that far and where did the route head from there? Not everyone along the way was sympathetic, after all. Newburyport, Massachusetts, for one, was downright hostile and thus an unlikely place to jump ship. As for Portsmouth or Dover?
Establishing reliable yet invisible connections every ten or 20 miles would have been quite an accomplishment. What prompted households to risk everything to the moral cause? They were, after all, a threat to a vast economic system and its wealth.
It's one more another interesting twist to develop in future research through New Hampshire.
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