The Ghost of the Underground Railroad in the Pacific Northwest
A peculiar rumor spreads through Seattle of a coordinated, clandestine effort to relocate thousands of Black Southerners to Washington and Montana.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
It is reported, at Walla Walla, that a widespread movement is afoot to remove fifty thousand freedom-seeking people and farm laborers from the South to the new Washington Territory. J. W. Patterson, of the press, is in receipt of the details of this movement. He, who took a part in the great events of 1861, says the movement, Mr. Miller says, has been quietly carried on for some time. It continues until they have moved to Montana and Washington from end to end with refugees from the South and brought them. He says that the movement is so well organized and on such a solid basis that those who have the matter in charge are few who wish to reveal it. He claims that there are better leaders and railroads now than there were in old John Brown’s time, and though the ways are more formally extant, there is still the need for secrecy now and then. Mr. Miller maintains that there are no politics in this movement, and that its union and progress are purely due to sympathy for the Negro’s plight and a desire to ameliorate his condition in the American nation. The pretense that it is a Republican machination is sheer stupidity.
“He says that the movement is so well organized and on such a solid basis that those who have the matter in charge are few who wish to reveal it.”
This 1889 report captures the desperate, post-Reconstruction hope for a 'promised land' in the Pacific Northwest, mirroring the Great Migration that would follow decades later. It highlights how, even at the edge of the frontier, the specter of racial justice and the movement of oppressed populations remained a potent, if secretive, political force.
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