Abstract

Still's "Underground Railroad"

The article focuses on William Still's "The Underground Railroad." To readers of this work fifty years hence, the events with which it deals will scarcely seem more remote and improbable than they already do, at a distance of only a dozen years. It is not merely or principally the gulf between slavery and freedom which imagination finds it difficult to bridge. Of all the border states, Pennsylvania was the most accessible to fugitives from slavery, and as the organization just named was probably the most perfect and efficient of its kind, and served as a distributor to the branches in other states, its record doubtless covers the larger part of the field of operations of the Underground Railroad, or, in other words, of the systematic but secret efforts to promote the escape of slaves.