nd all Friends' meetinghouses
became "liberty halls."

The disposition to aid the fugitive was by no means confined to the
North nor to Quakers in the South. Richard Dillingham, a young Quaker
who had yielded to the solicitations of escaped fugitives in Cincinnati
and had undertaken a mission to Nashville, Tennessee, to rescue their
relatives from a "hard master," was arrested with three stolen slaves
on his hands. He made confession in open court and frankly explained
his motives. The Nashville Daily Gazette of April 13, 1849, has words of
commendation for the prisoner and his family and states that "he was not
without the sympathy of those who attended the trial." Though Dillingham
committed a crime to which the death penalty was attached in some of
the States, the jury affixed the minimum penalty of three years'
imprisonment for the offense. As Nashville was far removed from Quaker
influence or any sort of anti-slavery propaganda, Dillingham was himself
astonished and was profoundly grateful for the leniency shown him by
Court, jury, and prosecutors. This incident occurred in the year before
the adoption of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. It is well known that in
all times and places which were free from partizan bitterness there
was a general natural sympathy for those who imperiled their life and
liberty to free the slave. Throughout the South men of both races were
ready to give aid to slaves seeking to escape from dangers or burdens
which they regarded as intolerable. While such a man as Frederick
Douglass, when still a slave, was an agent of the Underground Railroad,
Southern anti-slavery people themselves were to a large extent the
original projectors of the movement. Even members of the families of
slaveholders have been known to assist fugitives in their escape to the
North.

The fugitives traveled in various ways which were determined partly by
geographical conditions and partly by the character of the inhabitants
of a region. On the Atlantic coast, from Florida to Delaware, slaves
were concealed in ships and were thus conveyed to free States. Thence
some made their way towards Canada by steamboat or railroad, though most
made the journey on foot or, less frequently, in private conveyances.
Stalwart slaves sometimes walked from the Gulf States to the free
States, traveling chiefly by night and guided by the North Star. Having
reached a free State, they found friends among those of their own race,
or were t