Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, the Reputed President of the Underground Railroad

Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, the Reputed President of the Underground Railroad by Levi Coffin

It is said that historians consider Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, published in 1876, to be one of the best firsthand accounts of the Underground Railroad. Coffin was born in what is now Greensboro, NC in 1798, so he was raised in the antebellum South and observed the evils of slaveholding first hand. As an adult he first moved to Indiana and then later to Ohio. In each location, while he did not try to help slaves escape, when he encountered escaped slaves who needed assistance, shelter, food, and clothing, he saw it as his Christian duty to provide the help his fellow humans needed. He did this quite openly and gained quite a reputation with the result that his home became such a major refuge that people started calling him the President of the famous Undergroud Railroad that helped escaping slaves reach safety. Even the famous book Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe used Levi and Catherine Coffin as models for the Ohio couple Simeon and Rachael Halliday who help the escaping slave Eliza after she crossed the Ohio River. It is estimated that over 3,000 escaping slaves received assistance from Levi and his wife Catherine.

Coffin was a warehouse manager and for 10 years he worked at developing a business of selling free goods, goods from the South that had not been produced with slave labor. In doing this he was not contributing to the establishment of slavery, promoted the Southerners who produced thier products with their own labor, and provided a source for goods free of the taint of slavery. However, he could not find the quantities and quality of goods to make the business profitable and had to give it up. In this section of the book, Coffin tells of his trips to the South to establish relations with free goods producers and his discussions with slave owners he meets in his travels.

Much of the book is taken up with the stories of individuals and groups of slaves who came to him for help in the years before the Civil War. On his trips to visit black communities in the North and Canada he met with many of the people he helped to freedom and reports on how they established themselves and their families.

During the Civil War his focus shifts to providing supplies and assistance to the camps of freed slaves behind the Union Army lines. In a single year he raised more than $100,000 for the Western Freedman's Aid Society which went to provide food, clothing, money, and other aid to the newly freed slave population in the United States west of the Appalachian Mountains.

Today almost everyone knows of Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust, but very few know of Levi Coffin, who helped around 3,000 slaves to freedom. He is a man who deserves much greater recognition thatn he has received.