1880 AUSTIN BEARSE. Rare Autobiography of the Sea Captain of Underground Railroad.

An exceptionally rare autobiographical work by Austin Bearse [1808-1881] sea captain from Cape Cod who provided transportation for fugitive slaves as part of the Underground Railroad in the years leading up to the American Civil War.

Born in Barnstable, Massachusetts, as a youth he worked occasionally as a mate on slave-trading vessels off the coast of South Carolina and saw first-hand how cruelly the slaves were treated. Decades later, he recalled in his memoir that "they were separated from their families and connections with as little concern as calves and pigs are selected out of a lot of domestic animals." Often the families and friends of the departing slaves were allowed to spend the night on the ship before it set sail. When morning came, Bearse had the unpleasant duty of warning them that it was time to say goodbye, and, as he put it, "the shrieks and cries of grief at these times were enough to make anyone's heart ache.”

Affected by these experiences, Bearse became an abolitionist. He continued working as a seaman, but refused to trade below the Mason-Dixon line.

In 1847, at the request of Quaker agents Abigail and Lydia Mott, he smuggled a slave named George Lewis from Albany to Boston. There Lewis was reunited with his daughter, who had also run away. Bearse found Lewis a job, and the Reverend Leonard Grimes of the Twelfth Baptist Church raised the funds to ransom Lewis's wife and remaining children from the slaveholders. Bearse was hooked and became an active agent of the over water line of the Underground Railroad.

Soon after Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Bearse became a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee, a fugitive slave rescue organization with connections to the Underground Railroad. He then moved to City Point in South Boston specifically to engage as a harbor spy for the Committee, keeping an eye out for and reporting slave-catchers.

Coordinating with Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Wendell Phillips, Lewis Hayden, William Ingersoll Bowditch and other committee members, Bearse undertook repeated daring slave rescues in his 36-foot sloop, the Moby Dick.

In 1853 Bearse was interviewed by Harriet Beecher Stowe at the office of the Liberator as part of her research for A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin.

The present was issued just before his death and is very scarce on the market, not having appeared at auction since 1980 and with no examples in the trade at the time of cataloging. 

Bearse, Austin. Reminiscences of Fugitive-Slave Law Days in Boston. By Austin Bearse. Boston. Printed by Warren Richardson. 1880. 41pp.

A fair copy only, in wraps, but disbound. pages that are a bit chipped at extremities, a line of sellotape on the front cover, but generally bright with some toning. Well worth preserving.