Abolitionists and The Civil War
In 1857, Susan B. Anthony and William Lloyd Garrison spoke at an abolition meeting. In 1847 Frederick Douglass, a former slave who became an abolitionist leader, commenced publishing a newspaper "The North Star" in Rochester. Douglass delivered his fiery speech "The Meaning of July Fourth to the Negro" before the Rochester Ladies Antislavery Association at Corinthian Hall, Rochester, on July 5, 1852.
In the years leading up to the Civil War, numerous locations in the Rochester area were used as safe-houses to shelter fugitive slaves before they were placed on board boats (often on the Genesee River) for transport to Canada. The route was part of the famous Underground Railroad. The most common route used the 'lines' that led from Henrietta through Monroe County and into Rochester. Some of the better known 'stations' included: the Henry Quinby farm by Mendon Ponds Park, which today is by the Fieldstone Smokehouse; the David H. Richardson farm on East Henrietta Road near Castle Road; the Warrant farm in Brighton, 1956 West Henrietta Road; the old Frederick Douglass home on South Avenue near the current Highland Park; a cluster of houses along Exchange Street where numerous Quakers lived, and now where the Blue Cross Arena sits, and the home of Harvey Humphrey on Genesee Street. One contemporary described the Frederick Douglass homes as "a labyrinth of secret panels and closets, where he secreted the poor human wretches from the man hunters and the blood-hounds, who were usually not far behind.”,
Other 'stations' were located in the areas surrounding Rochester, including Brighton, Pittsford, Mendon and Webster. A station in North Chili, just west of Rochester, run by abolitionist Methodists was an important site in the formation of the Free Methodist Church, which was formed in 1860. The denomination's first college, Roberts Wesleyan College, was built on the site.
Read more about this topic: History Of Rochester, New York
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, civil and/or war:
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)
“The Count is neither sad, nor sick, nor merry, nor well; but civil count, civil as an orange, and something of that jealous complexion.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Those who dare to interpret God’s will must never claim Him as an asset for one nation or group rather than another. War springs from the love and loyalty which should be offered to God being applied to some God substitute, one of the most dangerous being nationalism.”
—Robert Runcie (b. 1921)