Cyrus Gates Farmstead - Underground Railroad Connection

Underground Railroad Connection

Slaves traveled from the South to the North from station to station mostly under the cover of darkness. Often, once runaways got into the states of Pennsylvania and Ohio, they were not in much danger of being captured by bounty hunters or the police. Runaways in New York often worked and did chores with the station owners during the day.

In 1850 the United States government, in trying to prevent a war between the slave and non-slave states, passed the new and more aggressive Fugitive Slave Act. This law gave bounty hunters from the South more rights to chase slaves into the North and forced Northern police officers into arresting and returning runaway slaves that they captured. Abolitionists hated the Fugitive Slave Act, and started working with more intensity and urgency to find ways to end slavery. Southern slave plantation owners hated Northern abolitionists because the abolitionists wanted to end slavery which in turn would mean that the plantation owners would lose their laborers, considered as their chattel.

The average slave was worth a lot of money to a slave owner-about $1,000 in the 1860s, so owners would pay bounty hunters to bring runaway slaves back to them or pay upon delivery of the runaway slave.