KALAMAZOO, MI

-- It was the spring of 1837, and Henry Montague was a 19-year-old from Massachusetts who had just taken up residence in the pioneer village that would eventually become the city of Kalamazoo.

As Montague recalled in an interview seven decades later, one night he was at a town meeting in the village schoolhouse, at the corner of what is now South Street and Farmer's Alley in downtown Kalamazoo, when a man came to the door and beckoned for him.

"There's a man out here with a load of Negroes who wants to see you," the man said.

Montague stepped out and saw three African-Americans, accompanied by "a strongly built man garbed in the long coat and huge hat of the Quakers." The African-Americans were runaway slaves from Alabama and the Quaker needed Montague's help in transporting them to Galesburg, then on to Canada and freedom.

That group is considered to be the

, but they would be far from the last.

For the next quarter-century -- until the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation 150 years ago this month -- slavery and the abolitionist movement were among the most divisive issues in Southwest Michigan as well as the rest of the country.

It's an era back in the news as the result of a confluence of events: The Emancipation Proclamation anniversary; the box-office success of "Lincoln" and "Django Unchained," two Oscar-nominated movies about slavery, and Monday's inauguration kicking off the second term of the first African-American president -- coincidentally to be held on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

While slavery is most associated with the South, local historians say there's no question that the issue had a substantial impact on Kalamazoo-area residents, both politically and personally.

"Anti-slavery sentiment made its mark on the life and activity in Kalamazoo from the time of the arrival of the very first white settlers," said a 1929 story in the Kalamazoo Gazette. "While slavery had a few vociferous champions here, there existed in the community the sharp divergence of opinion that was to later plunge the nation into Civil War."

Donna Odom

In fact, some historians say it was two incidents in Southwest Michigan that inspired the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, setting in place the course of events that led to the war.

"A lot of people don't realize what a rich history we have here in Southwest Michigan," said Donna Odom, executive director of the



Local abolitionists

with the passage of the Northwest Ordinance in 1787, which prohibited slavery in territories governed by the ordinance. When Michigan became a state in 1837, a prohibition against slavery was put in the state constitution.

The new state drew outspoken abolitionists such as Montague, who later became steward of what is now the Kalamazoo Psychiatric Hospital; Hugh Shafter, the Galesburg resident who took in the runaway slaves from Montague; Isaac Pierce, a pioneer in Climax, and

, Kalamazoo County's first practicing physician, who lived in Schoolcraft.

Compared to abolitionists in the East, the abolition movement in Michigan took a much more activist approach, said Dr. Tom George, a former state senator and president of the Michigan Historical Society who has studied that era extensively.

"In the East, the thought of abolitionists was that slavery was an evil best addressed by prayer," George said. "In Michigan, you had a younger breed of abolitionists who sought to address this more by political means."

This map posted on the state of Michigan website shows the counties active in the Underground Railroad. The counties in dark orange -- including Cass, Kalamazoo and Calhoun -- were the most active.

The activism of the Michigan abolitionists fostered two developments: It put slavery on the front burner of Michigan politics and nurtured

, an informal network of abolitionists who actively helped runaway slaves escape to Canada.

Kalamazoo, Calhoun and Cass counties were among the most active areas in Michigan for harboring escaped slaves. It's estimated that 1,000 to 1,500 runaway slaves went through Kalamazoo County via the Underground Railroad between 1840 and 1860.

Local anecdotes from that era are numerous. There was the slave who, while going through the Underground Railroad in Battle Creek, happened on the daughter she hadn't seen in 10 years. There were the two Leonidas boys who went into a horse barn only to find two African-Americans sleeping on the hay; the barn's owner, Dr. John Walker, made the boys take an oath of secrecy and gave them a lecture on the evils of slavery. There was the time that a group of 45 slaves showed up at the Thomas home in Schoolcraft.

One of the more interesting stories is that of Dorothy Butler, who was a child slave in Kentucky when her mother, Nellie, overhead their slave owner talking about selling Dorothy and her older sister on the New Orleans slave market.

Emulating a scene from "Uncle Tom's Cabin," Nellie Butler convinced a man to row her family across the Ohio River and they headed north, ending up in Schoolcraft. Although most slaves went to Canada for fear of being captured and returned, the Butler family stayed and

went on to worked as a servant in "some of the finest homes in Kalamazoo," according to her obituary.

She was still living in Schoolcraft when she died in 1932 at age 78.

Fugitive Slave Act

In 1847, two of the most dramatic incidents involving the Underground Railroad occurred in Southwest Michigan: The infamous

in Marshall and the

near Vandalia in Cass County.

It all started with a

. He actually was a spy working for Kentucky slave owners seeking to retrieve runaway slaves being harbored by Quaker communities in Calhoun and Cass counties.

The man ingratiated his way into abolitionist circles and provided information to slave-hunters, who first conducted a raid to retrieve Adam Crosswhite, his wife and four children, who had escaped from Kentucky and settled near Marshall. A similar raid occurred months later in Vandalia at farms that were stations on the Underground Railroad.

Adam Crosswhite, who escaped slavery with his wife and children. They were living in Marshall in 1847 when his former slave master attempted to retrieve them.

In both cases, the slave-hunters were confronted by a mob of outraged abolitionists who blocked their efforts and allowed the African-Americans to escape to Canada. In both cases, the slave owners sued for loss of property.

In the Vandalia incident, the defendants paid court costs but the slave owners did not receive damages. In the Marshall incident, the slave owners won $1,926, an award paid by Zachariah Chandler, a Detroit businessman who wanted to prevent financial ruin for the defendants.

The two cases got widespread attention and infuriated Southern slave owners. Historians say the Kentucky families that lost their slaves in the two incidents were personal friends of Henry Clay, and the incidents persuaded him to introduce the notorious Fugitive Slave Act, which passed in 1850 and criminalized the behavior of those who enabled escaped slaves.

In the Kalamazoo area, as elsewhere, the Fugitive Slave Act had the effect of considerably slowing down activity on the Underground Railroad. But it fired up support for the anti-slavery movement and inspired the writing of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a major tipping point in shaping the views of white Northerners in regards to slavery.

Political winds

On the political front, the abolition movement went from being a fringe view decried as radical and extreme to one embraced by the political mainstream.

Although abolitionists were among the first settlers, their views were not warmly received at first.

One example: During a 1838 meeting of abolitionists at Alamo's Congregational Church, a mob came in and "threw red pepper in the stove and set dogs fighting in the pews," Montague recalled in a 1906 interview.

In that same interview, Montague recalled sitting at a Kalamazoo tavern the night before an abolitionist was to speak. At the next table, he overheard "a prominent woman offer to give her pillows if the men would tar and feather the speaker."

"Most people prior to 1850 were rather passive on the issue in the state of Michigan," said Carol Mull, an historian and author of "The Underground Railroad in Michigan," told the Detroit Free Press for an October 2012 story. "Most people just hoped it would go away on its own and didn't take an active role. The people who did faced censure from their neighbors and their communities for what was essentially breaking the law at that time -- helping people escape from slavery."

But over time, more and more Michigan residents began to oppose slavery. Not only was the moral outrage mounting, but there were fears that the expansion of slavery in states such as Kansas and Nebraska could put Michigan farmers at an economic disadvantage.

In 1837, Montague was a political radical; in 1854, Kalamazoo residents elected him to the state Senate. Epaphroditus Ransom, the only Kalamazoo resident to be elected governor, was governor as the Crosswhite case was heating up and he publicly sided with the anti-slavery activists.

Zachariah Chandler was a Detroit abolitionist who paid the damages in the Crosswhite case and served in the U.S. Senate from 1857 to 1875.

It's no coincidence that Abraham Lincoln came to Kalamazoo in his only visit to Michigan, and in that 1856 appearance, he focused on the evils of slavery. It was the anti-slavery movement that fueled the creation of the Republican Party, which held its first convention in Jackson.

After the Civil War began in 1861, many in Michigan were urging Lincoln to end slavery once and for all. A year before the Emancipation Proclamation was enacted on Jan. 1, 1863, 167 Schoolcraft residents signed a petition calling for the abolishment of slavery. Two months later, such a resolution was approved in the Michigan Legislature.

In Congress, both senators from Michigan were Radical Republicans who were ardent opponents of slavery. One was Chandler, the Detroit businessman who paid the fine in the Crosswhite case. The other was Jacob Howard, who helped draft both the 13th and 14th Amendments, which ended slavery and gave African-American men the right to vote.

Yet, while many Michiganders fought to end slavery, that didn't mean they believed in equal rights for blacks, said Odom of the Southwest Michigan Black Historical Society.



Lt. Henry Flipper

"Lots of African-Americans who were born in the South came here expecting more freedom," she said. ""What they expected and what they got were two different things."

As an example, a footnote to the abolitionist era: The son of Hugh Shafter, the Galesburg abolitionist, was William Shafter, the Army officer who court-martialed Lt. Henry O. Flipper, the first African-American to graduate from West Point.



Flipper was born a slave in Georgia in 1856. He graduated from West Point in 1877.

Four years later, he was under Shafter's command at Fort Davis, Texas, when he was accused of embezzlement. The trial ended with Flipper's dishonorable discharge from the Army.

Some historians think Flipper was targeted because of his race. "While (Shafter) tolerated black soldiers, he hated seeing a black officer," says the Wikipedia entry on Flipper.



In 1976, at the request of Flipper's descendents, the Army reviewed the case, found the conviction and punishment to be "unduly harsh and unjust" and recommended that Flipper’s dismissal be changed to a good conduct discharge.

President Bill Clinton pardoned Flipper in 1999.