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“Eleven run away slaves, belonging to citizens
of St. Louis, and for which a reward of $300 each, was offered, were
captured in this county yesterday, by individuals of this city,”
proclaimed Springfield’s Jan. 17, 1850 Illinois
State Register. That was the first of several articles over the next
week about this so-called slave stampede in Springfield. It wasn’t unusual for runaway slaves
to come through Springfield, but the large number in this group must have
made it stand out. Although follow-up articles in the Register and the Illinois State Journal differed
in their descriptions of how large the group was and how many slaves were
captured or escaped, two connected one man with the slaves — a
“colored person” named “Mr. Jenkins.”
The articles are contradictory and confusing: One
says Jenkins betrayed the slaves to their hunters, another says he helped
them escape, and still another says he was on a stagecoach the night in
question. However, they could indicate that Jenkins helped the slaves
escape to Bloomington by way of stagecoach. Mr. Jenkins, it turns out, was Abraham
Lincoln’s neighbor, giving his possible actions added significance. Local historian and Springfield attorney Dick Hart
discovered Jenkins’ abolitionist ties. When he was researching black
residents who lived in Springfield during Lincoln’s time, he came
across Jameson Jenkins. Hart found that Jenkins was a black (biracial,
actually) man who lived five doors south of Lincoln and that he transported
Lincoln from a Springfield hotel to the train depot on the day Lincoln left
for Washington, D.C., to assume the presidency. Jenkins was a drayman, a
wagon owner who transported goods and people. Hart was researching another topic one day when he
happened across a “Certificate of Freedom” for Jenkins. “I about fell off the chair,” he says.
“The certificate describes his journey from being a slave in the
Carolinas to coming to Guilford, N.C. — a Quaker town. . . . That was
the hub for the Underground Railroad in the South.” Jenkins was a
freeman when he traveled to Guilford, but freed blacks were sometimes
captured by pro-slavery supporters and resold into slavery, so they
had to be very careful when traveling. Jenkins ended up in Springfield by 1838. Hart assumes
that he took the Underground Railroad at least part of the way here.
According to Hart’s research, Jenkins and his family joined the
Second Presbyterian Church, known as Springfield’s abolitionist
church, in 1848 — two years before the slave stampede. Hart “put two and two together” and
determined that the man linked to the slave stampede was Lincoln’s
neighbor. (According to the 1850 Census, there was no other man named
Jenkins in Springfield at that time.) The Lincoln Home National Historic Site hired intern
Ebony Jenkins (no relation to Jameson) last summer to research Jenkins and
prepare a nomination for his former lot to be included in the National Park
Service Underground Railroad Network to Freedom, which helps commemorate
and preserve Underground Railroad sites. (The nomination was approved.) “I wasn’t able to confirm what really
happened during the slave stampede,” she says. “I believe
Jenkins took the slaves (to the next Underground Railroad stop) and the
articles were published to cause confusion, because by the time the stories
were published Jenkins was well on his way. I think it was a decoy to
distract people who might have been looking for the slaves.”
She wasn’t able to learn much more: “That
was the thing I found most frustrating. That’s so common with the
Underground Railroad, because it was secret. I have looked through reels
and reels of microfilm [of old Springfield newspapers] to see if there was
anything about him, as well as County and court records to see if charges
were brought against him for [helping slaves], but there was
nothing.”
Ironically, she did discover that 10 or 15 years after
the slave stampede Jenkins worked for the seat of law. He was a courthouse
messenger.
Even odder, Hart discovered that the abolitionist
church expelled Jenkins in August 1851 — a year and half after the
slave stampede — for “failing to answer charges of not
attending Church meetings and licentiousness,” according to
Hart’s booklet “Lincoln’s Springfield: The Underground
Railroad,” published by the Sangamon County Historical Society in
2006 and available at its downtown office. A big question: If Jenkins was a conductor on the
Underground Railroad, did Lincoln know it? No one knows for sure, but, says
Tim Townsend, Lincoln Home historian, “my guess is that he, like many
others, would have been aware of what was going on.”
Contact Tara McClellan McAndrew at TMcand22@aol.com.
This article appears in Mar 27 – Apr 2, 2008.
