Sydney Howard Gay (1814–1888)
This is another in a series of blogs about the abolitionists whose writings are included in my book, “Inspired by their Voices: Poems from Underground Railroad Testimonies” published by Mammoth Books. Sydney Howard Gay’s participation in New York City’s railroad dovetailed closely with William Still’s work in Philadelphia, whose story was covered in a previous blog entry.
Sydney Howard Gay did not come to the antislavery movement quickly or easily. Born in Hingham Massachusetts to an attorney father whose family had arrived on the Mayflower and a mother descended from Revolutionary War heroes, no one in his family embraced abolitionism.
Unsurprisingly, as a young adult, Sydney’s first concern was the need for a career. His father, who by all accounts was a dour and morose man, wanted a successor for his legal practice. When this path was rejected by his three older sons— Martin, Charles and Henry— Ebenezer Gay (1771-1842 ) turned to 15-year-old Sydney, who did attend Harvard for a year or two. His pursuit of a juris doctorate ended when he became ill and returned home to convalesce. Rejecting law, Gay was determined to become a merchant. None of the many entrepreneurial efforts that followed proved successful, and some were disastrous. The Panic of 1837 especially dampened any opportunity for success, and Sydney ended up in New Orleans in threadbare clothing and without a single customer.
While Syndey attempted to establish his mercantile business in New Orleans, his mother Mary Allyn (1780-1866) and sister Frances (1809-1893) attended a local lecture by the brilliant and passionate Angelina Grimké (1805-1879), who impressed them both. Learning of this, Sydney chastised Frances, calling abolitionists fanatics who should be avoided, and expressing the common and misplaced belief that enslaved people lived in comfort and were happy. When a local Anti-Slavery Society was formed, Frances had to assure Sydney that she would not join. Her brother wrote her, saying: “None with whom I am connected by blood or affection will, I trust, ever give their convictions to opinions the end of which will lay to waste a fair portion of our country and give up the inhabitants to civil war and all its horrid train.” (See “Secret Lives of the Underground Railroad,” pages 18-19.)
Desperate, and facing the upcoming cholera season in New Orleans, Syndey eventually returned home on a ticket paid by his disapproving father to find his mother and sister even more sympathetic to the abolitionist cause. Determined to convince them otherwise, he began a study of the subject as he searched for work in Hingham. In a letter he wrote recalling those times, he told of a change that came over him in the winter of 1839. He was living like a recluse in his family home, removed, as he said, from the vanities and temptations of the world. This state of mind stripped him of his insensitivity, his eyes were opened, and he became an abolitionist.
With this immense change of heart, Gay became as fanatical a believer as any he had criticized before. He opened a school in Hingham, became a vegetarian and gave up alcohol. Asked by his father to reconsider the possibility of taking up law, he again rejected the profession, realizing that he could never swear an oath to the Constitution since it permitted slavery. He began attending local anti-slavery meetings and writing abolitionist articles for the Hingham Patriot, which had been taken over by another abolitionist. This was his first involvement in a newspaper, and put him on a path to his career as a journalist and newspaper editor. His interest in the power of the printed word led to his work as an agent for other abolitionist newspapers such as William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator, the American Anti-Slavery Society’s National Anti-Slavery Standard and the New Hampshire Herald of Freedom. Finally, he was earning a salary, and his father lived to see it. Sydney began attending national antislavery conventions, even traveling as far afield as Indiana with Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) on a One Hundred Convention tour. These tours featuring lecturers were designed to bring the abolitionist message to as many people as possible. During the trips, Sydney sent reports to Garrison, who was impressed with his writing ability. This led to an offer from Garrison to edit the Standard.
Accepting the position after some trepidation, Sydney moved to New York City in 1843 and published his first edition of the journal on May 30, 1844. Syndey Howard Gay— once a failure in his father’s eyes and a worry to his mother— now had a calling. The job established his social circle, his sense of purpose, provided for his living expenses and assuaged long-standing feelings of inadequacy.
In 1845, Gay married Elizabeth Johns Neall (1819-1907), who was raised by prominent Quaker abolitionist and dentist Daniel Neall (1784-1846). Before her marriage, Elizabeth too was an activist involved in antislavery initiatives and the budding women’s rights movement. The couple had four children— Walter, Sarah, Martin and Mary— which ended Elizabeth’s activism. Her husband, however, found a way to increase his impact a hundredfold, at great personal risk.
During his 14 year tenure at the Standard, Gay used his office as an Underground Railroad depot, where escapees were interviewed to determine their needs, and aided. Most came from Philadelphia, sent by William Still and that city’s Vigilance Committee. Their desired destinations were either New England or Canada via upstate New York. Gay was joined in his efforts by an African American printer working at the Standard, William H. Leonard. Another key collaborator was a manumitted Black named Louis Napoleon— a porter who would meet escapees in New York, bring them to Gay’s office, shelter them at his own home, and then accompany them to the next station. Historians have estimated that Leonard accompanied 3,000 freedom seekers in total, an astounding number. Another famous conductor of the railroad came in contact with Gay during his tenure, too: Harriet Tubman. She passed through New York City at least twice as she accompanied runaways out of Maryland.
We know all of this because in 1855 and 1856, nearly ten years after he started his activities, Sydney began to record the arrival of freedom seekers to his office with all the attention to detail his editorial and journalistic experience brought to the table. The two volumes, which he titled “The Record of Fugitives,” go beyond simple notations about the escapee’s name and route. Like William Still in his impactful book, “The Underground Railroad” published in 1872, Gay’s records captured the stories of the runaways— their motivations, their experiences, their sorrows. The sheer volume of escapees assisted by the team reveal the important role New York City played in the railroad’s eastern seaboard activities.
Syndey’s motivations for starting his records are unknown. Perhaps the stories of the desperate people standing before him week after week finally drove him to document the injustices of their situation. Perhaps he sensed that his own tenure at the Standard was ending and he was driven to document his legacy. Perhaps someone asked him to start his journals in spite of the risks for some political or tactical reason. One thing Sydney never did record was his rationale.
Once he began his record-keeping, Gay’s approach was meticulous. He noted the escapee’s enslaved name, assumed name, former owner’s name, details about their escape, the names of agents along the railroad who assisted them, destinations they passed through, and how much money Gay put toward the next leg of their journey. Separately, he kept track of people making financial donations to the efforts coordinated by his group and the amount they donated. In the records that survive, over two hundred women, children and men are mentioned. More than half came from Philadelphia by train.
All of this activity was highly illegal. Gay’s records, in the wrong hands, could have resulted in severe financial penalties and jail time for himself, the donors and conductors, and recapture for the runaways. Unlike William Still, Gay never published his journals. Miraculously, his papers were preserved and now sit in the Rare Books and Manuscript Library of Columbia University as a treasure trove for historians studying the railroad and antebellum New York.
Gay’s contributions to the Underground Railroad did not end with the last entry in his journal. He continued assisting runaways through the newspaper’s offices until he resigned from the Standard in 1857. In a letter to his wife, Quaker and abolitionist Lucretia Mott (1793-1880) expressed her sorry at his resignation while encouraging Elizabeth to return to the public sphere. “Thou has had a long furlough in that beautiful Island-home— Come out now into public life & shew thyself, and help all the good causes along,” Lucretia wrote on May 7, 1858. “Sorry enough are we to lose Sydney’s able services in the Standard… how he will be missed at this coming Anniversary!”
Gay went on to editorial stints at the New York Tribune, the Chicago Tribune and the New York Evening Post. Given his accomplishments in his field, Harvard University— where he fell ill from stress and left a failure so many years before— awarded him with a diploma in 1877. Beyond his editing roles, he wrote historical nonfiction, collaborating with William Cullen Bryant on the multivolume “Popular History of the United States” published by Scribners in 1879, and authoring a respected biography of James Madison in 1884. It was published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company. In several chapters, Gay had the chance to comment on the history of slavery. Reflecting on the concessions made by the North during the Constitutional Convention, he wrote: ”Some hoped, perhaps, rather than believed, that slavery was likely to disappear ere long at the South as it was disappearing at the North. It is an impeachment of their intelligence, however, to suppose that they relied much upon any such hope. The simple truth is that slavery was then, as it continued to be for three quarters of a century longer, the paramount interest of the South… it can only be said for those who made [the concessions] that they did not see what fruitful seeds of future trouble they were sowing in the Constitution.”
Sydney Howard Gay died in 1888 after a fall left him paralyzed. He was in the midst of writing another book. Little did he know that the records he kept for those two years at the Standard would be his lasting legacy. Along with William Still’s narratives, Gay’s notes captured the stark realities of an institution that destroyed millions of lives, fractured a nation and led to its Civil War. They serve as a reminder to us all.
Sources
Foner, Eric. “Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad,” W. W. Norton and Co., 2015
Gay, Syndey Howard. “Record of Fugitives,” Columbia University Libraries. https://exhibitions.library.columbia.edu/exhibits/show/fugitives
__., “James Madison,” Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1891.
Papson, Don and Calarco, Tom. “Secret Lives of the Underground Railroad in New York City,” New York: McFarland & Company, Inc. 2015
Still, William. “The Underground Rail Road: A Record of Facts, Authentic Narratives, Letters &c. Narrating the Hardships, Hair-breadth Escapes and Death Struggles of the Slaves in their Efforts for Freedom, as Related by Themselves and Others or Witnessed by the Author; Together with Sketches of Some of the Largest Stockholders and Most Liberal Aiders and Advisers of the Road.” Philadelphia, 1872.