Coffin, Levi (1798-1877), was an American Quaker and abolitionist. He became known as the “president of the underground railroad.” The underground railroad was a system that helped enslaved Black Americans escape from the southern United States to the northern free states, Canada, and other places during the mid-1800’s. Coffin and his wife, Catharine, helped more than 2,000 enslaved people escape to freedom. They used their home in Newport (now Fountain City), Indiana, as a safe haven.
Coffin was born on Oct. 28, 1798, near New Garden (now in Greensboro), Guilford County, North Carolina. He was raised as a Quaker, and his family opposed slavery. His cousin was the American abolitionist and women’s rights leader Lucretia Coffin Mott.
As a boy, Levi Coffin was moved by an encounter with a group of handcuffed and chained enslaved people who were being taken from their families to be sold. In 1821, with his cousin Vestal Coffin, Levi organized a Sunday school for people who were enslaved. He used the Bible to also teach them to read.
In 1826, Coffin moved with his wife to Newport, where he became a merchant. From 1826 to 1846, Coffin and his wife hid escaped fugitives in their home and provided food, clothing, transportation, and other assistance to aid in their passage. The Coffins’ home lay on three major escape routes to the North. It became known as the “Grand Central Station” of the underground railroad—a reference to the bustling railroad station in New York City. Every person who took refuge with the Coffins reached freedom. One of the many enslaved people who hid in the couple’s home was “Eliza.” Her story is told in the famous antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851-1852), by the American author Harriet Beecher Stowe.
In 1847, the Coffins moved to Cincinnati and opened a warehouse that sold goods produced only by free labor. In 1854, Levi Coffin helped found an African American orphanage in that city. After President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Coffin worked for the establishment of the Freedmen’s Bureau, a federal agency to aid formerly enslaved people. In 1864, he went to England and helped form the Freedmen’s Aid Society, which assisted newly freed African Americans. Coffin died on Sept. 16, 1877.
See also Abolition movement ; African Americans (The antislavery movement) ; Emancipation Proclamation ; Slavery ; Underground railroad .
