The Underground Railroad in Connecticut. Horatio T. Strother

I lost sight of them, I sat down by the road-side and wept, prayed, and wished myself back where I first started. I thought it was all over with me forever; I thought one while I would turn back as far as Frenchtown, and give myself up to be captured; then I thought that would not do; a voice spoke to me, “not to make a fool of myself, you have got so far from home (about two hundred and fifty miles), keep on towards freedom, and if you are taken, let it be headed towards freedom.” I then took fresh courage and pressed my way onward towards the north with anxious heart.

      Going on in the darkness, James toward morning was following a railroad track through a cut in a high hill. Here he had a terrifying experience:

      I heard a rumbling sound that seemed to me like thunder; it was very dark, and I was afraid that we were to have a storm; but this rumbling kept on and did not cease as thunder does, until at last my hair on my head began to rise; I thought the world was coming to an end. I flew around and asked myself, “What is it?” At last it came so near to me it seemed as if I could feel the earth shake from under me, till at last the engine came around the curve. I got sight of the fire and the smoke; said I, “It’s the devil, it’s the devil!” It was the first engine I had ever seen or heard of; I did not know there was anything of the kind in the world, and being in the night, made it seem a great deal worse than it was; I thought my last days had come; I shook from head to foot as the monster came rushing on towards me. The bank was very steep near where I was standing; a voice says to me, “Fly up the bank”; I made a desperate effort, and by the aid of the bushes and trees which I grasped, I reached the top of the bank, where there was a fence; I rolled over the fence and fell to the ground, and the last words I remember saying were, that “the devil is about to burn me up, farewell! farewell!”

      How long he lay there James did not know, but when he came to himself the “devil” had vanished. Despite his fright, he resumed his journey, shaking and trembling. Soon after sunrise he heard the rumbling sound again, and the “devil” came rushing toward him once more. As the infernal machine charged by, James could see through the coach windows the souls whom the fiend was carrying to hell. They were all white; not a colored face among them. As the train thundered out of sight, James pressed on in relief, for it was obvious that the devil was not interested in him even though in his former home he had been “a great hand to abuse the old gentleman.”

      By this time he was famished, and despite a close search of the ground he could find nothing fit to eat. At length he came to a farmhouse, where he screwed up his courage to ask for food despite his fear that he might well be turned over to slave-catchers. However, the farm people accepted without question his statement that he was going to visit friends in Philadelphia. For twenty-five cents they gave him a hearty breakfast, and he went on, feeling like a new man.

      By noon he reached New Castle, where he ran into Lorenzo and Zip once more. Together, they went to the waterfront, where they learned that a boat made the short run to Philadelphia twice daily. When the afternoon sailing was ready to leave, all three went aboard. James said:

      How we ever passed through New Castle as we did without being detected is more than I can tell, for it was one of the worst slave towns in the country, and the law was such that no steamboat, or anything else, could take a colored person to Philadelphia without first proving his or her freedom. What makes it so astonishing to me is, that we walked aboard right in sight of everybody, and no one spoke a word to us. We went to the captain’s office and bought our tickets, without a word being said to us.

      At Philadelphia the three parted on the dock. Lorenzo and Zip took a ship to Europe; James walked into the city, not knowing where he was going. Coming to a shoe store, he went in and asked the white proprietor for work as a shoemaker. The man told him No, but suggested that he might find work at another shoeshop up the street, whose owner was a colored man named Simpson.