the sharp crack of a rifle echoed through the forest, and the horse with a groan plunged to the ground. This checked the pursuing party and gave stimulus and speed to the feet of the fugitives. The slave-catchers were now afraid to advance, and retreated over the trail, and the fugitives, though badly frightened, were permitted to continue their march to freedom unmolested."

We have seen that the line of road on which this incident occurred was probably the oldest in Ohio. It did not long remain the only route. The earnest teaching of Lundy and Rankin was imparted to minds open to truth. Indeed the Quaker settlements, scattered here and there through Ohio, were many of them, already well grounded in abolition sentiments. The bands of slaves freed by conscientious or by conscience-stricken masters and early located in sections not yet populated by whites, and the little communities of free negroes in different parts of the State became at once important centres of underground enterprise. Such localities were fearless in the defense of their visitors and sometimes induced fugitives to settle among them. In portions of the State a goodly distance removed from the danger along the border such persons occasionally became the proteges of their white neighbors. When such a relationship had arisen the conditions of a new phase of the "Underground" system had been created. This phase seems to have been denominated the "Subterranean Pass Way" by John Brown. A recent biographer of Captain Brown explains this "Pass Way" as follows: "It represented ideas and methods in accord with and enlarging the work on the Underground Railroad. The essential difference was that the rescued fugitives or runaways should be planted in or near to a northern or western community and not brought under the British flag. One purpose (in Brown's mind) was to educate northern people to defend fugitives."

Towns and villages where Covenanters, Wesleyan Methodists and the Free Presbyterians had churches, are found to be stations of the Underground Road almost without exception, earlier or later in their ante-bellum history.

Aside from the influences already hinted at, which led to the

propagation of lines for fugitive travel, there is, of course, the iron-clad Ohio Fugitive-slave Law of 1823, and the cases of arrest and kidnaping that occurred under it. Then, too, the large strain of New England blood in the veins of our Ohio stock must be made due allowance for. It is this element so widely diffused over the Western Reserve that must, with the Quaker element, be held accountable for the numerous interlacing lines of that portion of the State, from Marietta to the lake.

On the east and west sides of the State there were many cross-line connections with Pennsylvania and Indiana routes, respectively.

I have taken the pains to measure on a map of Ohio the number of miles of Underground Road within our domain thus far unearthed. An accurate statement would be from twentyeight hundred to three thousand miles. The most active counties in the system as shown by a table of road lengths were Trumbull, with one hundred and fifty-three miles; Richland, with one hundred and twenty-three; Huron and Belmont, with one hundred and twenty each; Ashtabula and Jefferson, each with one hundred and seventeen; Lorain, with one hundred and eight, and Mahoning with one hundred and five. Eight or ten counties in the northwestern corner of the State did not engage in this passenger traffic. They are for the most part of too recent date. The remaining counties, with possibly one or two exceptions, had somewhere within their boundaries sections longer or shorter, of this invisible, yet serviceable road. The demands of secrecy were always carefully observed by those connected in any way with the thoroughfare, as we have seen. It is not strange, therefore, that records of the number of persons who used it in securing freedom were not kept, not even in the case of a particular branch of the road for a long enough time to fix closely for us an estimate of the whole number rescued. Guesses vary from forty thousand to eighty thousand. We have pretty satisfactory evidence that the brave black guide, Harriet Tubman, brought out several thousand, taking them through Pennsylvania. At least one operator in Ohio, for a long time. a resident of Cincinnati, forwarded three thousand over Ohio

and Indiana lines. I refer to the bold friend, Levi Coffin. Several other anti-slavery workers along the Ohio River no doubt aided between two hundred and three hundred slaves each. It is stated on pretty good authority that one William Lambert, who died in Detroit a few years ago, had helped not less than thirty thousand during the thirty-three years of his devotion to Underground operations. This seems almost incredible. In the present state of our knowledge it is uncertain business estimating the number of those rescued from bondage by Underground methods. As one unearths section after section of the old lines, however, and learns about the faithful service of many brave operators, one cannot avoid the conviction that the`half has not been told.

BOUNDARY LINE BETWEEN OHIO AND VIRGINIA.

INTRODUCTORY.*

Previous to 1783 Virginia never laid any claim to the Ohio River- or, in fact, to any territory west of the Alleghenies, because, "this region was originally a part of the vast district claimed by the French, and known as Louisiana. The Mississippi River was discovered by French missionaries, and was subsequently explored to its mouth by LaSalle, who, according to the customs of the nations of that day, took possession in the name of his sovereign, Louis XIV, of the vast region drained by its waters. After the French war, France, by the treaty of peace of 1763, ceded to Great Britain all her possessions east of the Mississippi River. When the war of the American Revolution broke out, the whole of the eastern part of the great Mississippi valley was claimed by Great Britain, and by the treaty of 1783 between that power and the United States this region was relinquished to our nation. It is true that various States of the Union laid claim during the Revolutionary war to large tractswest of the Alleghenies on the ground of old English charters, but their claims were conflicting, and it was the policy of Congress not to decide between them. Eventually all these States. made concessions of their claims, some with and some without reservations; but the probabilities are that the nation as a whole,

*In 1877 the Fish Commission of Ohio in their report concerning the Fish Culture in the State, considered also the subject of the territory over which Ohio laws, incident to this topic, could be enforced. This involved the question of the boundary line between Ohio and Virginia and between Ohio and Kentucky. The Commission suggested that the Legislatures of Ohio, Virginia and Kentucky respectively appoint Commissioners to fix the boundary lines of the State of Ohio along the middle of the navigable channel of the Ohio. The report then gives a statement of the history of this matter as given in the above Introductory. Then follows the argument of Mr. Vinton. Probably no one, certainly no Ohioan, ever gave such thought and study to this question. This matter was all incorporated in the report of the State Board of Agriculture for 1877, which report is now out of print and practically inaccessible. E. O. R.

which had really wrested the lands from Great Britain, was by the laws of nations the rightful owner of the region. These lands thus came from the French to the English by the treaty of 1763, and from the English to the United States by the treaty of 1783." According to the above, none of the States laid any claim to territory between the Alleghenies and the Ohio River, for," in June, 1783, the officers of the army, to the number of 288, petitioned Congress that the lands to which they were entitled might be located in 'that tract of country bounded north on Lake Erie, east on Pennsylvania, southeast and south on the river Ohio, west on a line beginning at that part of the Ohio which lies twenty-four miles west of the mouth of the river Scioto, thence running north on a meridian line till it intersects the river Miami, which falls into Lake Erie, thence down the middle of that river to the lake.' They speak of this tract as 'of sufficient extent, the land of such quality and situation, as may induce Congress to assign and mark it out as a tract or territory suitable to form a distinct government (or colony of the United States), in time to be admitted one of the Confederate States of America;' and also as 'a tract of country not claimed as the property of, or within the jurisdiction of, any particular State of the Union."" Special stress is placed upon the closing paragraph, viz., "a tract of country NOT claimed as the property of, or WITHIN THE JURISDICTION of ANY particular State of the Union." Whatever right or title Virginia had to the Ohio River must have been acquired between 1783 and the time when she ceded her claim to the general government in 1787, but there is no record of any such acquisition.

In 1846, in the office of the Cincinnati Gazette, there was printed the "Substance of an argument of Samuel F. Vinton, for the defendants, in the case of the Commonwealth of Virginia vs. Peter M. Garner and others, for alleged abduction of certain slaves; delivered before the General Court of Virginia, at its December term, A. D. 1845.”

Mr. Vinton devotes a number of pages to show that when a party claims the entire river as a boundary that then low watermark is the boundary line; then devotes a number of pages to a discussion of the laws of nations on this question. After

Vol. IV-5