Barefoot to Chicago

Uncovering stories of the freedom network in northeastern Illinois Decades before the Civil War, Illinois’s status as a free state beckoned enslaved people, particularly those in Kentucky and Missouri, to cross porous river borders and travel toward new lives. While traditional histories of the Underground Railroad in Illinois start in 1839, and focus largely on the romanticized tales of white men, Larry A. McClellan reframes the story, not only introducing readers to earlier freedom seekers, but also illustrating that those who bravely aided them were Black and white, men and women. McClellan features dozens of individuals who made dangerous journeys to reach freedom as well as residents in Chicago and across northeastern Illinois who made a deliberate choice to break the law to help.
Barefoot to Chicago charts the evolution of the northeastern Illinois freedom network and shows how, despite its small Black community, Chicago emerged as a point of refuge. The 1848 completion of the I & M Canal and later the Chicago to Detroit train system created more opportunities for Black men, women, and children to escape slavery. From eluding authorities to confronting kidnapping bands working out of St. Louis and southern Illinois, these stories of valor are inherently personal. Through deep research into local sources, McClellan presents the engrossing, entwined journeys of freedom seekers and the activists in Chicagoland who supported them.
McClellan includes specific freedom seeker journey stories and introduces Black and white activists who provided aid in a range of communities along particular routes. This narrative highlights how significant biracial collaboration led to friendships as Black and white abolitionists worked together to provide support for freedom seekers traveling through the area and ultimately to combat slavery in the United States.

Barefoot to Chicago charts the evolution of the northeastern Illinois freedom network and shows how, despite its small Black community, Chicago emerged as a point of refuge. While traditional histories of the Underground Railroad in Illinois start in 1839, and focus largely on the romanticized tales of white men, Larry A. McClellan reframes the story, not only introducing readers to earlier freedom seekers, but also illustrating that those who bravely aided them were Black and white, men and women.

Larry A. McClellan, emeritus professor of sociology and community studies at Governors State University, has been instrumental in adding listings to the National Park Service Network to Freedom register of the Underground Railroad. McClellan helped create GSU, was the mayor of University Park, and was a consultant for the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission. He is the author of The Underground Railroad South of Chicago and To the River: The Remarkable Journey of Caroline Quarlls, a Freedom Seeker on the Underground Railroad.
 

Prologue: The Great Chicago Exodus
April 1861. For refugees from slavery settled in Chicago and for those stopping on their way to Canada, the fear of capture and return was supposedly distant and unlikely. In March, Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as President. Yet in the early days of April, urgent news spread through the African American community in Chicago. Free Black residents, along with long settled and newly arrived refugees were raising the alarm. Chicago was no longer safe; it was essential for those identified as fugitives to get to Detroit and then quickly to Canada. Within four days, over 400 left, and in two weeks, more than 300 others joined the exodus. In these few days more than half of Chicago’s Black population was gone.
After Lincoln’s election in November 1860, South Carolina headed for secession, soon followed by six other states. By March of 1861, the entire nation, already fractured, was following the tension in Charleston – what would happen with Fort Sumter? The Fort, as an outpost of the United States Army, sat in the range of South Carolina’s guns and militia. Was the country falling into some sort of war among the states? “Civil War the Great Danger,” was the March 14th headline in the Chicago Journal.
In his inaugural address on March 4th, Lincoln started by assuring the South that his intent was not to overturn slavery, that, in fact, the laws for the return of fugitive slaves were in place and to be followed. Congruent with this affirmation, in scattered places across the North, Federal agents were making final efforts toward appeasement, gathering up fugitive slaves to be returned to their owners.
Russell A. Jones was the new Federal Marshal in Chicago, an appointment Lincoln announced on March 15th. A long time Lincoln supporter and ironically nominated to this position by Congressman and radical abolitionist Owen Lovejoy, Jones proved to be far more enthusiastic about the Fugitive Slave Law than any had foreseen. Near the end of March, Jones declared that he had “fellows of the right kidney,” willing to follow orders and capture all fugitives in the city, “guaranteeing promptness and dispatch in so doing.”
Then, on April 3rd, at 6:00 am, the Harris family was forced awake, their three children screaming as they were carried downstairs by deputies. Living in the second level of a small home on South Clark Street near Jackson Blvd., the Harris’s were in Chicago a little over a month, after escaping from a farm outside St. Louis. As the arrest happened, a large crowd gathered outside their home and called for vengeance against those involved. A private detective named Hayes, who was himself a fugitive slave, was in the area and, suspected of betraying the Harris family, he was attacked by the crowd.
Word spread that the family was taken to a depot where Marshal Jones conveniently arranged for a special train to whisk them away. Some incensed residents gathered at the train station, while others sought to intercept the train and rescue the family. Although they could not stop it, shots were fired at the train as it moved from the station. It carried the marshal’s deputies, the Harris family, and two men from St. Louis claiming ownership of the family. In court in Springfield the next day, they were declared fugitives and sent to St. Louis on the night train.
This brutal and rapid act focused and intensified the fears of fugitives in transit, settled refugees, and free people of color across Chicago. Over the next several days and nights, hundreds simply packed up and left, traveling by train, overland, and booking passages on ships leaving for Detroit. Some were observed leaving on foot, following train tracks heading for Detroit. The Chicago Journal warned: “We advise every colored fugitive in the city to make tracks for Canada as soon as possible. Don’t delay a moment. Don’t let grass grow under your feet. Stand not upon the order of your going but go at once. You are not safe here and you cannot be safe until you stand on English soil. . .Strike for the North Star."
Reviewing the actions of Marshal Jones, the Chicago Tribune noted that in the few weeks since his appointment, “in saloons and bar-rooms about town, the zealous Federal officer is praised, but good men and humane men hang their heads.” The paper declared that because of the eager “man-hunting,” many Black residents who lived in Chicago for years were now quickly departing.
Among the hundreds in transit, 30 fugitives were concealed aboard a lake schooner, to carry them around Michigan to Detroit and Canada. After the immediate initial departures, the most pressing task was aiding freedom seekers with limited resources. Long-time Underground Railroad activists negotiated for a fast, final train to freedom. On April 4th, 5th, and 6th, prominent Black abolitionist leaders met with church pastors, Black and white, and with white abolitionist colleagues and friends to help others leave the city. They met in the offices of Chicago attorney L. C. Paine Freer to organize fund-raising and sign a contract with the Michigan Southern Railroad. The meeting included Freer’s close friend, John Jones, other key leaders from the Black community, and additional long-time white activists.
The flurry of activity culminated on Sunday, April 7th. It started with religious services at the Zoar Baptist Church, the forerunner of Chicago’s Olivet Baptist Church and the  congregation of John and Mary Jones and other leading Black abolitionists. Thereafter, freedom seekers and their friends were “going from door to door, bidding each other good-bye and mingling their congratulations and tears.” For several blocks around the Michigan Southern depot, the streets were filled “with an excited multitude of colored people of both sexes. Large numbers of white people also gathered. . .” The loading process moved quickly under the leadership of several Black men assisted by some whites. 106 people squeezed in the cars of the Michigan Southern. “Each car was supplied with a cask of water. . .boiled beef, hams, beans, bread, and apples. Some of the party were old, but most of them were young men in their prime. . . There were quite a number of young families going to save the children from sharing the fate of a slave mother.”  It cost two dollars apiece to send them to Detroit. They were packed into four freight cars attached to the backend of a passenger train. It was a crowded ride to freedom.
Newspapers across the country carried the details of this remarkable exodus. Articles from the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times were copied and paraphrased by other papers including reports in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, and Massachusetts; even a small article in the Salt Lake City Mountaineer. The Chicago Journal referred to it as the “Exodus of the Colored Population to Canada;” the National Republican in Washington, D. C. headlined: “Great Stampede of Fugitive Slaves for Canada.” Curiously, in an issue filled with news about Fort Sumter and the outbreak of hostilities, the Weekly Standard of Raleigh, North Carolina, used the ancient Arabic reference to Muhammad’s flight from danger to present an account of the train trip of April 7th under the headline, “The Slave Hegira from Chicago – Flight of Over One Hundred Fugitives.”
In these intense, early April days in 1861, the Great Chicago Exodus made public the semi-secret networks of the Underground Railroad in Chicago. The pressing need brought to the forefront skills and experience gained from more than twenty years assisting fugitives on their way to freedom. For decades, the Chicago region had played a significant role in the movement of freedom seekers from the South and now it was all in the open.
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