From the 1820’s until the 1860’s, the area of Vandalia in Cass County was known as Young’s Prairie. The Calvin, Penn, and Porter township area was also known as a hotbed of abolition, on account of all the Quakers that had settled there, and their moral opposition to slavery. The Quakers began organizing and formed the Society of Friends, an anti-slavery group, and by the late 1840’s they began helping runaway slaves escape to Canada via the Underground Railroad. Many pioneers of Vandalia became conductors and station masters on the railroad, which was a system of clandestine hideouts to shelter freedom seekers on their quest for liberty. Two lines of the railroad crossed at Cass County, one from Illinois and the other up through Indiana. Several homes, carriage houses, and cabins served as safe havens for those escaping to the north.
Many of the freedom seekers were escaping the slave state of North Carolina and some more came from Kentucky. It wasn’t long before a spy infiltrated the Quaker line of the Underground Railroad by the name of Carpenter. He pretended to be an abolitionist in town studying law, and was welcomed into local pioneer homes, only to betray them by drawing maps of the stations, and sending them back to the Kentucky slave traders in Bourbon County. Two groups of freedom seekers had escaped Kentucky in 1847, totaling over thirty slaves, and their Kentucky “owners” made the trek to Michigan to regain what they believed was their personal property.
They were thirteen in number, armed and angry. The date was August 20, 1847, and they arrived in the dead of night. They left their wagon about two miles south of one Railroad Station, Josiah Osborn’s farm at M-60 and Calvin Center Road. Then they split into groups, with plans to break into several of the houses to repossess their “property.” And that’s exactly what they did.
Some of them went to the Osborne farm, where they found a family of five hiding in a nearby cabin. The father and his two sons were caught and shackled to the bed while the mother and a daughter escaped out a window.
Other slave catchers went to the Joel East farm, led by Reverend A. Stevens, a Baptist minister. A mother and her baby were staying in a cabin on the East property, and when the mother heard them coming, she climbed out a window and hid in the woods, leaving her two year old baby on the bed. Reverend Stevens took her baby and used it as bait, making it cry outside until the mother came out of hiding and was captured.
Three slave catchers raided the Zachariah Shugart farm, where William Casey and his family were staying. Casey put up a valiant fight, but was overcome and severely beaten. Mrs. Casey ran off, and when reached by her young master, she overpowered him, and she was able to escape to warn Shugart.
Another slave named Merriman was captured on the Henry Shepard farm.
Five slaves were staying at the Stephen Bogue Farm. They were Joe Sandford, his wife and daughter, Rube Stevens, and Perry Sanford. Joe’s master, Jack Graves, captured Joe and his family. Perry and Rube were both able to escape to warn the others. Stephen Bogue ran off to get an arrest warrant for the slave catchers while another Quaker, William Jones rode on horseback to the Bogue farm to hold them at bay. The Kentuckians were armed with guns and bowie knives, and Jones bragged that he could shoot just as fast as they could, even though he was bluffing because he didn’t even own a gun. When Bogue rode up on them, along with about thirty other townsfolk, he had an arrest warrant for destroying his property. The Michiganders talked everyone into going to O’Dell’s Mill.
Hundreds of people had gathered at the Mill, including Quakers, free blacks, other abolitionists, and sympathetic townsfolk. When the Kentuckians arrived, with their nine captured slaves, the crowd grew restless and there was a real threat of more violence. But Josiah Osborne was able to settle down the crowd, and everyone agreed to let the Cassopolis courthouse decide the fate of both the slave catchers and the freedom seekers. The thirteen raiders believed the law was on their side because the 1793 Fugitive Slave Law made it clear that they had the right to recover their property.
And the law was on their side, but unfortunately for them, the judge was not. They made it to the courthouse, five miles away, by the next morning, and because the Cass County court commissioner was out of town, the Berrien County Court commissioner had to step in to preside over the case. His name was Ebenezer McIlvain, and he had a card up his sleeve. Ebenezer was a secret abolitionist and a conductor of the Underground Railroad in Niles. The slave catchers were jailed and bonded out, while their slaves were temporarily housed in Joshua Barnum’s tavern for their safety. The trial was adjourned for three days while the two sides prepared their cases.
When the trial resumed, McIlvain allowed the freedom seekers to testify against their masters. The Kentuckians presented paperwork showing legal ownership for the slaves, but Ebenezer wasn’t having any of it. He ruled for the freedom seekers on a technicality, insisting that the raiders’ proof wasn’t in the form of certified statutes. The case was dismissed. The nine freedom seekers were released and with the help of Zachariah Shugart and free black Henry Shepherd, they continued on the underground railroad to Schoolcraft and Battle Creek, and eventually to Canada, along with about thirty to forty others. The slave catchers were sent back to Kentucky, empty handed and with their tails between their legs. Since they didn’t need it, they left one of their wagons, and according to former slave Perry Sanford, the wheels were all tossed into Diamond Lake.
One might think this was the end of the story, but unfortunately it was not. The Kentuckians sued in civil court for the loss of their property and while the case ended up in a hung jury, court costs and lawyer fees caused much financial hardship on the Cass County defendants. The 1847 Kentucky Slave Raid also resulted in a much stiffer law being passed in the U.S. Congress called the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. This new law made it mandatory that officials and citizens had to cooperate in the return of escaped freedom seekers. Former slaves had no rights in court, and even freed black men and women could be “captured” on the testimony of a white man’s word. Such draconian laws turned public sentiment even more against slavery in the northern states, and several states refused to comply with the law. When the slave states seceded from the union, they cited the northern states refusal as a reason. All of this led up to the Civil War.
Today, the James E. Bonine house serves as a museum run by the Underground Railroad Society of Cass County. James Bonine and his wife Sarah served as stationmasters on the railroad and the museum is open to the public June through September, Monday through Friday from 2-5 P.M. You can visit their website here: https://www.urscc.org/
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