These freedom-seekers took the biggest risk of all involved.

Historian Galin Berrier made this and other realities of the underground railroad clear at a Chautauqua lecture at William Penn University Thursday night. Berrier currently serves as an adjunct instructor at Des Moines Area Community College.

Berrier focused on the fact that much of what is known about the underground railroad has been told by white people assisting recently escaped African-Americans.

“The underground railroad is really very much more a black story than it is a white story,” said Berrier. “The underground railroad is first and foremost a story of blacks, to a great extent, freeing themselves.”

Like many free states during America’s slavery days, Iowa had a number of stops on the underground railroad. Berrier pointed out that many white Iowans helping recently escaped African-Americans had one thing in common — a religious conviction that said slavery was wrong.

Notable abolitionist denominations in Iowa included Abolitionist Quakers, Wesleyan Methodists and Free/Reformed Presbyterians, said Berrier.

Many abolitionist Iowans where originally from slave states like North and South Carolina, having moved here because of their distaste for it, said Berrier.

“Basically, what happened in the Carolinas is that short stable upland cotton became more and more popular,” he said. “The Quakers were getting pressured. The planters were coming in wanting to buy the land and wanting to bring their slaves with them. Quakers were not comfortable with that.”

Berrier said many Quakers sold their land to these slave-owners and used the money to purchase land in Iowa, a free state.

Many African-Americans who had escaped from slavery came to Iowa from Missouri, but there are accounts of them coming from the deep south, said Berrier. Unfortunately, many slave-owners in Missouri deliberately sold their slaves to states further south because Iowa was so nearby.

“Most slaves who tried to escape didn’t make it,” explained Berrier. “If they got sold south from a border state like Missouri, they knew the conditions would be a lot worse for them.”

There are a few misconceptions about how the underground railroad operated, said Berrier. He pointed out that, just because an older house has places like crawl spaces where people could hide, doesn’t mean freed slaves actually hid there. It would be more typical for freedom-seekers to hide from slave owners in wooded areas or barns along their underground railroad journey.

Berrier also pointed out that those African-Americans escaping slavery often did so in small groups of three or four. Most often those escaping were young men in their teens and early 20s, he added.

Most African-Americans seeking freedom along the underground railroad did not stay in Iowa, said Berrier. They usually traveled east to Chicago and further north as far as Canada. However, there is evidence of a few staying and having descendants in Iowa to this day, said Berrier.

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