A Sorry Free State

The land between the bluffs and the river is sacred.

The old town of Quindaro, at the northern edge of Kansas City, Kansas, was a stop on the underground railroad, where slaves crossed the Missouri River and found freedom in Kansas.

Quindaro's ruins rest uneasily in a forgotten neighborhood. Ten years ago, recognizing the site's importance, activists rallied, and the city nixed plans to establish a landfill there. But since then, inept city officials, an obnoxious activist and a stubborn black church have been unable to work together. And they're missing a chance to take advantage of a unique attraction at a time when black tourists spend tens of billions of dollars visiting historic sites across the United States.

Standing on the bluff, looking northeast over an industrial plain where the Missouri River flowed 150 years ago, it's still easy to imagine slaves escaping into Kansas.

Some drifted downstream from Parkville in boats. Others walked the river in the dead of winter, when it was frozen solid.

"Literally, they walked on water," says Jimmy Johnson, a teacher at Archbishop O'Hara High School whose great grandfather, a slave named George Washington, fled to Quindaro in 1862.

Records pertaining to the underground railroad are understandably sparse; most of the stories are passed down through families. But local historians have unearthed several enthralling accounts.

One was penned in the mid-1800s by Benjamin Franklin Mudge, a science professor at the Kansas State Agricultural College who harbored an escaped woman and her three children for several days. Mudge's chronicle of one escape he abetted reads in part:

As their master lived almost in sight across the river he soon learned where they were. A week ago today (Thursday) a half-breed Indian sent me word that their master was coming after them that day. I knew that he would not dare to use force in the daytime, but thinking that he might come after dark I went over to Mr. Storrs and borrowed his gun. He loaded it with 13 buckshot. Nobody appeared that day nor Friday nor Saturday. But Saturday night a little after midnight, I was aroused by a loud knocking at the door. I went to the door at the upper piazza and asked what they wanted.

There were three men on the steps. They said their master is here and 'We have come for those blacks that ran away from the other side of the river.'

My only answer was, 'You can't have them.'

They then said, 'We will have them for we've got enough men to tear the house down, so you had better let them go.'

I said, 'That makes no difference. I am well-armed and ready for you. My two boys are here to help me.'

They said that they did not want to harm anyone but only wanted their slaves.

I told them in reply, 'I don't want to harm any one but if any man undertakes to enter my house in the night without my permission, he will be very likely to get hurt.'

They then concluded that they would go see the Captain.

The men didn't come back until after Mudge had taken the fugitives to a former sheriff who lived in Franklin County. From there, they would go to Leavenworth, which was, Mudge writes, "full of contrabands."

The home of Quindaro abolitionist Clarina Nichols was, as she puts it in her writings, "dedicated to emancipation without proclamation." Nichols had an 8-foot-deep, 7-by-12-foot hiding space under a trapdoor in the floor. "One beautiful evening late in October '61," she writes, "as twilight was fading from the bluff, a hurried message came to me from our neighbor, Fielding Johnson. 'You must hide Caroline. Fourteen slave hunters are camped on the Park -- her master among them.'"

Caroline was lowered into the hideaway with comforters, a pillow and a chair, and Nichols put a washtub over the trap door. Caroline, however, spent an anguished night "trembling and almost paralyzed with fear of discovery" until 7 the next morning, when "the slave-hunters rode out of town into the interior. When evening fell again Caroline and another girl of whom the hunters were in pursuit found a safe conveyance to Leavenworth friends."

Other escaped slaves would stand near the hillside cemetery "and pick off their masters with long-barreled rifles as they were coming across the river to get them," according to a historical account published in the Wyandotte Westnewspaper. "If they missed and the master fell into the river, they would ambush him on land, and bury him in this cemetery."

The city has been compiling a historical account of Quindaro for its landmark commission. Prepared by city planner Larry Hancks, it draws from numerous sources, including field work done by archaeologist Larry Schmits. According to their research, Quindaro, they say, was settled "to develop a profitable and safe port of entry into Kansas for free-state settlers, as the established river ports such as Atchison and Leavenworth were largely in pro-slavery hands."

The land was owned by a mixed-race couple: Abelard and Nancy Brown Guthrie. Abelard was European, and Nancy was the daughter of a Wyandot chief. Her Wyandot name was Seh Quindaro, which settlers translated as "strength through union." As early as 1844, the Guthries were offering shelter on their farm to escaping slaves, most of them crossing from Parkville. By day they hid outside the town, in shallow caves or wooded bluffs or in the barns of farmers. By night they were conducted toward Nebraska by way of Lawrence, Oskaloosa and Holton, in addition to Leavenworth. "Slave catchers roamed the area," the report continues, "and even camped in Quindaro Park, in one documented instance kidnapping a young woman from a public road on the edge of town and taking her back to Missouri."