ce."3 He learned that one of the slaves, named Stephen, was freeborn and a former indentured servant to Edward Lloyd, a Philadelphia Quaker, but had been kidnaped and sold into slavery. Coffin acting to free him arranged with Tom a "trusty negro, whom I knew well,"4 to take Stephen the next night to his father's house. After learning the details of Stephen’s case, the elder Coffin wrote Lloyd of his former servant's plight and after six months and a trip to court, eventually Stephen was liberated from slavery in Georgia. Coffin, aided by his older cousin, Vestal Coffin, helped many slaves to hide on his Father’s farm as they journeyed north. The two young men provided food and sought to free kidnaped blacks through legal means. Levi Coffin, his family, and the Quaker community continued to defy the laws of North Carolina that made helping a runaway slave very dangerous and costly in an effort to fight the injustice and oppression of blacks. However, like anyone else in North Carolina that sought to change the system that protected and prospered the elite rich white slave holders, Coffin and his family left North Carolina for Indiana. There he became known as the “President of the Underground Railroad” and went on and boldly fought to help slaves escape to Canada where they were beyond the reach of the fugitive slave laws. Another aspect of the Underground Railroad’s North Carolina legacy are the first person narratives of slaves that escaped from there. In these narratives and published reward posters we see the bravery and desperation that sent these people into the swamps, through freezing weather, and many times with no food in search of freedom. One of the narratives is of a North Carolina slave named Harry that escaped from his owner. Harry survived eighteen months in the swamps and later was assisted, along with two other slaves from North Carolina, by a man named Captain Fountain. Founta...
