Thank you for your solid response.
Long before the term "Underground Railroad: came into being, Mohawk leader Joseph Brant ran a program to assist human beings held in slavery escape to Canada. During the Revolutionary War, an assistant to General Washington sent him a note that described how many of the men were joining Brant's fighting forces, especially a group camped in what is my hometown. This was a factor in Washington's planning of the brutal Clinton-Sullivan Campaign.
Around the time the Civil War was brewing, a number of households along the same path as used by Brant were part of the Underground Railroad. The doctor who lived in my house -- then the father-in-law of a US Senator -- is recorded in an 1880's history book as "peddling his blue pills and abolitionist pamphlets." Although largely forgotten -- much like the Brant forces -- the local Underground Railroad here existed in and around communities where a number of black human beings were held in slavery.
Now, I like studying history. It's one of the reasons I bought this house. I have artifacts from Brant's camps, including from where the people he helped escape from slavery were located. I think it is best understood in the manner explained in Gary Nash's 1974 book, "Red, White, and Black: The Peoples od early America." Local history documents, for example, that the active opposition to holding human beings in slavery included red, white, and black people. And, as you note, there were advantages to coordination between a local activist and his son-in-law in the Senate. Yet not everyone involved locally was part of the coordination.
At risk of sounding like I am wrenching the long arm of coincidence out of socket -- for I do not believe in "coincidence" -- some of those who now reside in the former Underground Railroad stations near me, all history buffs, have contacted me since word of the upcoming Supreme Court's decision was "leaked" to say that "history is calling." They are not the only ones involved, of course. And while I have not asked, I think the ones I communicate support Planned Parenthood, and would likely include some of those employed at the local PP offices, as opposed to those who have engaged in silent and loud "vigils" outside for years.This includes good people -- and not all white -- who have noted the term "Underground Railroad" in respect of good people standing up for what is right in a country divided and engaged in an uncivil war.
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