Morgans focuses on slave escapes from the western border of Missouri and does not explicitly use the term stampede within the text, but his book covers a number of important group escapes, including some within our main project area (such as the one from Marion). The Marion County group escape was just one of many mass slave escapes profiled in James Patrick Morgans’ book, The Underground Railroad on the Western Frontier (2010). By Sunday morning, the group had reached nearby Menden.
The group traveled through the night, moving through Missouri and eventually arriving in Quincy, Illinois. The group of freedom seekers converged from their different escape points, joining together on a Saturday evening to cross the Mississippi River heading eastward. In November of 1853, 11 enslaved people escaped from six different farms in Marion County, located right along the Mississippi River. Marion County Map, Historical Atlas 1855.
