Civil War Centennial Stirs Memories;
Underground Railroad Had 'Depot' Here
By Shirley J<
When the first shot of the Civil
War was fired at Fort Sumter, on
April 12, 1861, Guilford College
(then New Garden Boarding
School) was already established as
a special station on a unique railway system — a system known
throughout the south as the "Underground Railroad."
The self-styled president of this
system was a former Guilford College teacher, Levi Coffin, who devoted his life to the emancipation
of Negro slaves.
As early as 1818 Coffin had openly revealed his sympathy for the
slaves by establishing a Sunday
school for them at nearby Deep
River, N. C.
Long before the Civil War began, Coffin married and moved to
Newport, Indiana. A past master
in the art of evasion, Coffin had
little difficulty in hiding and disguising slaves—with the help of
numerous secret passages in his
home.
All told, several hundred fugitive slaves were liberated through
his actions, none of which were
ever recaptured.
Run by both members and non-
members of the Society of Friends,
the 'Underground Railroad' was in
operation for several years. Those
active in transporting the slaves
developed secret signals and were
most careful in their selection of
routes, changing them often to
avoid detection by authorities. At
times the slaves en route to freedom were hidden in caves such as
the one near the home of Dr. and
Mrs. JFeagins, teachers of Philosophy and Languages here at Guilford College.
In addition to being agents on
the Underground Railroad, Quakers used their own funds to buy
slaves. Thus, even though the Society of Friends made a practice of
disowning members who practiced
slavery, the North Carolina Yearly
Meeting of Friends at one time
owned as many as 727 slaves. The
explanation is simple—the Quakers had to buy the slaves before
they could be freed.
Military Visits
During the Civil War, Guilford
College became a popular rendezvous for Quakers weary of war-
talk. And though within six miles
of Greensboro and its Confederate
recruiting station, the stalwart
pacifists could not be pushed into
taking part in the fratricidal bloodbath that was the Civil War.
According to one source, military men came only twice to the
school—once to take away a student who had enlisted before enrolling at Guilford, and once again
to order one of Guilford's former
presidents to muster. Needless to
say, the order went unheeded.
Civil Rights Greensboro
