Escape!

Escape!. The Roanoke River, Halifax, and the Maritime Underground Railroad.. , Eighteenth-century towns were important gatherinsg spaces for people from various backgrounds. Halifax, on the south bank of the Roanoke River and at the intersection of major roads, became a major trade center and port during this period. Taverns, print shops, and docks served as valuable sources of information that could be crucial to the success or failure of a runaway. Free blacks and sympathetic whites also provided them with the latest news and acted as a means of communication for secret activities. They also helped conceal the identities and hiding places of fugitive slaves., Halifax County often contained the largest population of enslaved residents in North Carolina. They worked as laborers, skilled trades, and craftspeople, gardeners, cooks, and, perhaps most important for the maritime underground railroad, ferrymen and boatmen. Runaway slaves such as Sparrow, Ephraim, Eliza, Juba, and countless others used their familiarity with the river to assist in their escape. Runaways also sought help among those friendly to their cause. A community of antislavery Quakers lived aross the river from Halifax. An 1830 newspaper article reported they removed more than 600 persons of color from North Carolina., The Roanoke River played a crucial role in the transportation of network of northeastern North Carolina and south central Virginia. Planters shipped goods downstream to the port at Edenton on the Albemarle Sound. The river also played a major role communications between enslaved and free black communities, as black boatmen plied the waters, spreading information to people along its banks. The river also provided protection from "pattyrollers" or slave patrols and helped speed the fugitive's escape to urban areas, swamps, the sounds, open seas, and, eventually, points northward to freedom.