19. Johnstown became a hotbed of abolitionist activity
The Main Line at Johnstown was another widely used means of aiding slaves escaping to the north, often by hiding them in freight shipments bound for Pittsburgh. Underground Railroad road agents often resorted to the portage to move slaves from Hollidaysburg to Johnstown, from whence they were moved along the canal in privately owned boats to waystations along the canal’s banks. Many of the waystations were where horses for the canal’s towpaths were stabled. After purchasing horses for the escaping slaves the agents provided them with either maps or guides to take them north to Lake Erie, where other road agents helped them enter Canada, where the Fugitive Slave Act did not apply.
How many slaves escaped via the Main Line and the Allegheny Portage Railroad will likely never be known, since the participants in the activity were breaking federal law. Few who engaged in illegal activities kept records documenting their crimes. Several former slaves established themselves in the communities, where they worked on the canal or the railroad while abolitionists provided them with papers documenting them as free blacks. They also shielded them from the slave hunters who prowled the canal towns bearing descriptions of escaped slaves. The Main Line, like the Ohio River, became a symbol of freedom for many escaping slavery in the antebellum South.