STILL'S
UNDERGROUND RAIL ROAD RECORDS,
REVISED EDITION.
(Previously Published in 1879 with title: The Underground Railroad)
WITH A LIFE OF THE AUTHOR.
NARRATING
THE HARDSHIPS, HAIRBREADTH ESCAPES AND DEATH STRUGGLES
OF THE
SLAVES
IN THEIR EFFORTS FOR FREEDOM.
TOGETHER WITH
SKETCHES OF SOME OF THE EMINENT FRIENDS OF FREEDOM, AND
MOST LIBERAL AIDERS AND ADVISERS OF THE ROAD
BY
WILLIAM STILL,
For many years connected with the Anti-Slavery Office in Philadelphia, and Chairman of the Acting
Vigilant Committee of the Philadelphia Branch of the Underground Rail Road.

Illustrated with 70 Fine Engravings by Bensell, Schell and Others,
and Portraits from Photographs from Life.

Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant that has escaped from his master unto thee. - Deut. xxiii 16.

SOLD ONLY BY SUBSCRIPTION.

PHILADELPHIA:
WILLIAM STILL, PUBLISHER
244 SOUTH TWELFTH STREET.
1886

pp.

WILLIAM STILL:
His Life and Work to this Time
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BY JAMES P. BOYD.
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OBJECT IN VIEW.

     For many years the friends of William Still have desired to see a sketch of his life in print.  The propriety of a memoir has been repeatedly urged in connection with his underground railroad records.  General Armstrong has warmly pressed him to furnish a biographical account of himself for the columns of the Southern Workman.  Other editors and educators, white and colored, have often expressed a kindred wish.
     He has not been unmindful of the compliment conveyed in these often requests, but business cares have so engrossed his thoughts and occupied his time that he has not, thus far, found it possible to comply with them.  And, though contrary to the good old adage, it may be that, in this instance, delay has not proved dangerous.
     It will be accepted as true that, so far as the colored race is concerned, time has vindicated postponement by multiplying possible readers, and, doubtless, too, by increasing their ability to understand and appreciate.  Moreover, the preparation of a new edition of the underground railroad records seems to offer an opportunity never before presented for the publication of such a sketch as has been in request.  Those records have already been largely read by the colored people of the South, and it is very probable they will be still more largely read by them, in view of the fact that they present so many quaint, curious, yet authentic, chapters of a history which most intimately concerns them, but which would never have become accessible to them nor the general public had its data to been carefully preserved and published by Mr. Still.
     It might, therefore, serve to gratify a rational curiosity to see, in connection with them, an account of the author's life.  And we doubt not it would be counted as pardonable pride on his part to wish, at this opportune moment, that his personal history might go out with his work.  But these make a low plane on which to move.  Other and higher motives exist for such publication of his life as is now attempted.
     Be it known he does not seek through the medium of this sketch to make himself conspicuous in any way.  He is a modest man, and content with the quiet, unworded favor of his kind.  But there is an example in his life, and he does seek, as every good man does, to set a lesson before the colored people of America which, even if they do not learn it by heart, may serve to acquaint them with the possibilities within their reach and encourage them to do that for themselves which none outside of themselves can do.
     William Still has seen his race bowed and broken by slavery.  He has contributed the best years of his life to a cause which loosen their chains and wiped the blot of man-ownership and involuntary servitude from our institutions.  That crisis passed, that event an achievement, he sees them in the midst of a problem whose solution is far more difficult.
     They could not contribute much directly to the cause of freedom.  Their yoke was too heavy and too securely fixed.  Their hands were shackled.  Their minds were clouded.  Their ambitions were blunted.  They could not grasp situations, save as a child reaches vacantly for the moon.  And not much was expected of them.  The moral forces at work outside of them, the political forces clashing high over them, the physical forces playing somewhat in their midst, and of which they at last got to be a part, these were the agencies which came to their rescue and made the chattels men.
     But now what of the problem?  They are men; yet in servitude to themselves, as all men are: slaves to a situation; serfs to surroundings.  Now no moral forces outside of themselves can avail them much. Now no political forces can contend for mastery over their heads, for they are, or ought to be, a part of them.  Now no physical forces can cleave chains, break barriers and shift situations except those in their own hands.
     True, they invite, and will ever have, sympathy.  True, they deserve, and will ever receive, encouragement.  But both sympathy and encouragement will be in direct ratio to the proofs they give of ability to serve and lift themselves.  The chains are off the slaves, but the solemn, hard responsibilities of life on the freedmen.  Are they equal to the task, nay, the duty, of self-emancipation?  Can they grow into factors of our institutions, as important as their numbers?  Can they organize industries and achieve wealth?  Can they climb up out of menial valleys on to the tableland of mechanics and artizanship?  Can they build and control schools?  Can they formulate and maintain codes, political, social, moral and religious?  Can they learn to do whatever white men of right do, and to be as influential and useful, in the midst of modern civilization, as white men are?
     Full of faith that the race need not, for all time, be an exceptional one on account of its color and previous enslaved condition, and that it can and will, under proper encouragement and with the gradually growing confidence which comes from favorable trials and accumulated experience, answer all these questions in the affirmative, we open for them the lesson, indeed the helping them in their upward march.
     What one of their number has done, under circumstances quite as adverse as any to be met with now or in the future, without regard to section, any other of their number or all may do.  Wherein one by his pluck and perseverance has overcome poverty, illiteracy, prejudice, has made for himself a large, growing, and profitable business, has become a useful and influential member of society, any other or all can do it.  Not in degree, perhaps, yet in kind, and that is all that is needed; for the colored race, like any other, will be judged by its possibilities and achievements as a race, and not by the failure of any one of its members to acquire as much wealth or attain as high a distinction as another.

PARENTAGE AND EARLY LIFE.

     Years on years ago, when slavery was strongly intrenched in church and state, when its hard and odious laws prescribing title in man and woman, regulating their purchase and safe-keeping, and providing for their recovery in case they run away, were as easily and readily enforced as any other laws, there lived a slave family on the eastern shore of Maryland whose husband and father could not acquiesce in the righteousness of bondage.
     He was a young man who had felt the brutality of mastership.  His back had been almost broken by a maul in the hands of a cruel master or overseer.  The authority that should have protected, had maimed him.  The burden of life, which was not easily borne by even the strongest, was thus made harder for him.  How could he help resenting an ownership which lacked a kindness not withheld from the lower animals?  How could he help detesting a mastery which harshly exacted, yet in a spirit of savagery made the victim incapable of responding to exaction?
     This slave, his wife and children, and the entire population of the negro quarters, passed by descent from an old to a young master.  The rivets which fastened their manacles were to broken by the death of the former owner, but held as securely under the new.  The land, the cattle, the slaves - things inanimate, things living and without souls, things living and with souls - passed, in obedience to inexorable law, from sire to son.
     With perceptions quickened by a transition which showed how title in man could, without his consent, be so fixed as to pass to a successor, and with full recollection of the previous brutal mastery, the young slave resolved to free himself from the legal conditions which bound alike the
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stones of the field, the beasts of the stall, and the members of his race.  He made known his intentions to his young master.  Parleying was of but  little worth, for the slave had mediated long and resolved like a Spartan.  His final overture was very much as if he had said, "Give me liberty, or give me death!"  The fact that it took the humbler form of, "Massa, I'd sooner die than stay a slave," robs it of none of its heroism.
     The young master doubtless saw that it would be impossible to change the determination of the slave, and felt that it would be policy under the circumstances to drive the best bargain he could.  So, on reflection, he determined to sell him to himself, or in other words to give him a chance to buy his freedom.   A price was named which was low in comparison with the prices of a later period, and it was accepted by the slave.  His former diligence was not doubly taxed to complete the hard task of working out his freedom.  Opportunities for making overtime and over-money were infrequent, but by dint of perseverance and economy he succeeded, and the coveted boon of freedom was his reward.*
     This once slave but now freeman was Levin Steel - afterwards changed to Still, the better to escape identity by Southern claimants and pursuers of his family.  Being free, he could not breathe an air tainted by slavery, nor brook the surroundings of bondage.  So, severing the sacred ties of family, bidding good-bye to his wife, Cidney, and the four children she had borne him - two boys and two girls - and trusting under God to a future which should be brighter for himself and loved ones than the past, he started North, and located in the neighborhood of Greenwich, New Jersey.
     The bereft wife felt more keenly than ever the weight of her yoke.  She too resolved to lift and break it, but not in the tedious, painstaking way her husband had done.  She would, for the sake of liberty and reunion, accept the trials and dangers of escape, and, if need be, the death which such an attempt often involved.  For days and weeks she wrestled with the problem.  For herself alone it would have been a simple one, but every plan was complicated by the presence of her children.  How could she rescue them also?  At last a scheme was perfected.  Under the influence of her mighty resolution, hopeful of such indirect aid as her husband could furnish, trusting to that Providence which made the way of the wilderness plain, she set out on her toilsome, fugitive journey.  Then came days made harrowing by waiting and watching and fear of detection, nights perilous with forced travel, times of despair as swamp and forest interposed, rivers intervened, or starvation threatened.  All the tribulations of an ordinary escape were intensified an hundred-fold as she secretly pushed her way Northward, weighted with care for her four children.

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* For a full account of the young slave's troubles in bondage, and the trials of his wife and family in escaping, see U. G. R. R. Records, pg. 9.

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     Success crowned her perils and sacrifices.  The father's heart and hand had been diligent in her movements, as she had anticipated.  the severed family were joyfully reunited.  An abode was provided near Greenwich.  The old name of Steel became Still, and every precaution was taken to preserve the secret of their past existence, and establish a new identity which should be to them a protection.*
     But the scent of the slave-hunter was not to be baffled by these precautions.  The trail was run, if not rapidly, yet unerringly, and in a few months the New Jersey hiding-place was discovered.  A capturing gang, terrible as an "army with banners," suddenly pounced upon the peaceful household, and the wife and four children were dragged back to their old slave-quarters on the Eastern Shore.
     Liberty's draught once tasted, the lips of the slave mother longed for it again.  More then ever, escaped would prove hard and dangerous.  Still her thoughts were never vacant of plans for a second attempt.  None seemed feasible which embraced her four children, the two eldest of which were boys, Levin and Peter, aged respectively six and eight years, the two youngest being girls, mere infants.  Agonizing as was the thought of severing her children and leaving a part of them behind, perhaps never to be seen again, she could not overcome the dreadful alternative by any ingenuity of hers.  Her own dear mother was there and in bondage.  She, at least, would be a friend and protector of those left behind.  Here was a ray of comfort amid the great cloud of agony; something to reconcile a maternal heart to a surrender sadder than that of death and burial.
     So a plan was at last worked out.  She would leave the boys, the oldest and strongest.  What tears watered the sad compulsion!  She would save the girls, the youngest and weakest.  Angel-approved are a mother's holy instincts!  The sorrowful night came.  Nerved for the hour and the solemn occasion, she rushed to the little straw bed on which her four were sleeping, kissed her boys farewell without waking them, clasped the two little girls in her strong, true arms, bade her mother good-bye, and trusting in God, began again the perilous march for freedom.  Of the trials met, hardships overcome, and dangers avoided, we will not make a twice-told tale.  She reached the free soil of Jersey, and rejoined her husband with her precious charge.
     Now greater precaution was necessary to elude pursuit and avoid discovery.  The old abode was not to be thought of.  A home was selected in depth of the Jersey pines in Burlington county, about seven mils to the east of Medford.  In this questered spot the father became an owner of about forty acres of land.  The neighborhood was thinly settled by people mostly poor, who subsisted by small farming, wood-cho9pping, charcoal burning, marl digging, cranberry picking and the like.  the life of
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     *See U. G. R. R., p. 9

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his surroundings  became the life of Levin Still.  Carefully guarding his family history, working peaceably and industriously, dealing honestly, walking reverently, he was permitted to escape the pursuit of the slave-hunter, and to enjoy, as much as circumstances would allow, the blessings of freedom.  His acres became his own.  Thrift brought its reward to him as to other men.  His family increased till it numbered eighteen children in all, the youngest of whom was William Still, the subject of our sketch.
     He was born October 7th, 1821.  When old enough, he began to work on the farm, on which was raised corn, rye, potatoes, and other vegetables.  The farming stock consisted of a horse and a yoke of oxen.  The farm help - the father and several stalwart sons - was quite out of proportion to the acres and the stock.  Other avenues of labor had to be sought.  They were readily found in the surrounding pines, the cedar swamps, the cranberry meadows, and the harvest fields, within a radius of seven to ten miles.  Into these all the boys, as they grew older entered.  It was nothing unusual for the Still boys to put up hundreds of cords of wood in a single winter.  At an early age William was an expert at chopping.  Wishing to show his skill one day, he cut and put up one cord of market wood before 12 o'clock, noon.  A wealthy merchant by the name of Samuel Finemore, residing at Lumberton, complimented him for this feat by saying "he had never seen it done before by a boy under sixteen," and to show his appreciation he rewarded him with a half dollar, which was thankfully received.
     A few miles from his home were the "Cedar Swamps."  Thither the boys often went to cut and prepare the class of timber which grew there for the market.  In the proper season, they were wont to go to the celebrated Atzion Cranberry Meadows, five or six miles south.  These meadows invited quite a number of promiscuous pickers, and as there were no restrictions in those days, they were a source of profit to all who chose to engage in the industry.  They were owned by Samuel Richards, who carried on the foundry business at Atzion, but whose residence was in Philadelphia.
     Seven miles westward lay Medford.  It was the centre of a rich agricultural section, mostly populated by thrifty Quakers.  This town was the chief trading point for the people of the pines.  Thither they carried their farm products, hauled their wood, and other commodities, and after exchanging them for groceries, marl, lime, and the like, the same made up their home or back load.  Among these farmers the boys were always sure of a long harvest period, kind treatment, and good wages.  Regularly they availed themselves of the opportunity thus presented.  Industry was the rule in the house of the elder Still, and the training of the children had been such that they were particularly proud of the reports they carried back from the harvest field.  To this price must be attributed an early resolution on the part of William, which he has never broken, and which contributed as much as any one thing could, to his healthful age, moral standing, and

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business success.  whiskey was served, according to custom, to the harvest hands.  One day William, oppressed by the heat and his efforts to do a full hand's work - a task for which he was quite young - was induced to take a drink.  It sickened him, and incapacitated him for further service, so that he was forced to return home and report a quarter of a day's lost labor.  Thus humiliated, he resolved never to touch the accursed stuff again.  If there is anything in his life of which he is proud, it is the faithful keeping of the vow then registered.
     His recollection of these old Quaker families for whom he used to harvest, from whom he received many kindnesses, is vivid and pleasant.  They numbered, among others, the Reeves, Stokes, Haines, Wilkinses, Braddocks, Ballingers, Shreeves, Hollingsheades, Evans, Doughtons and Fennimores, all intelligent, substantial people, and many of them closely identified with that great movement which culminated in the freedom of the slave race.
     Equally well he remembers the denizens of the pines, who were his more immediate neighbors.  Among them were the Smalls, Craines, Leyallens, Minjins, Smiths, Browns, Pipers, Millers, McCamerons, McNeals, Moores and Wellses, who, if not favored with much wealth and education, were yet a sturdy, independent people, with all the characteristics of the pioneer.  Close by his home dwelt an Indian family by the name of Moore.  It was the dwindled remains of the last Indian tribe that inhabited Southern New Jersey.  The members made their living by fishing, basket-making, etc.  There too was the old "Injin Mill," on the site of what was once the "Injin Town."
     It was at the house of Thomas Wilkins, an old bachelor, that an incident occurred which served to fix indelibly on William's youthful mind the atrocious character of the slave system.  Mr. Wilkins' immediate household consisted of himself and two aged sisters.  He had in his employ a great, strong, resolute colored man who had run away from bondage, and who had made up his mind never to be captured alive.  His master's gang tracked him to his hiding-place, and one dark, rainy night a colored decoy rapped at the door, saying he had a message to deliver to the slave, which could only be delivered in person.  Suspiciously and reluctantly the slave came down and cautiously opened the door.  As soon as it was ajar the gang rushed in and, knowing the strength and resolution of their victim, pounded upon him with bludgeon and fist to disable him.  the encounter was terrific.  Not until the poor fellow was beaten almost to a jelly did he succumb.  The handcuffs were securely fastened on one wrist, and as they were about to lock them on the other, Mr. Wilkins and his two sisters came to the scene.  Without weapon of any kind, aged and frightened almost out of their wits, one of them seized the fire shovel, ran it into the coals which had been covered for the night, and threw a shovelful of glowing embers

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HIS REMOVAL TO PHILADELPHIA

     Persuaded that city life would afford him better opportunities for such mental improvement as he desired, as well as for business success, than the country, he left New Jersey, in the spring of 1844, and came to Philadelphia.  His cash in hand did not exceed three dollars; his wardrobe was
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meagre, of city friends and counsellors he had none; but he had  better stock in trade than these, made up of steady, well-grounded habits, a good, stout heart, and a desire to succeed on the only sure basis of perseverance, economy and integrity.  Philadelphia was not as great then as to-day, but there was sufficient about its throng of people, its street mazes, its business hurly-burly, its uncertainties of home, place and occupation, to daze, if not unman, a simple country youth, unused to other noises than the low of cattle, and other intricacies than the twisting by-paths through the Jersey pine forests.
     Be it known the question of color had to be confronted also.  He knew what this meant amid his rural surroundings, for he had battled with it, and, as we have seen, successfully.  But now it would present itself under new phases.  How could he meet them?  Would they tie and hamper him so that the same laws of success which controlled white men would not operate in him favor?  Would his life in the metropolis be, on account of his color, a mere privation and discipline, with no progress, no influence, no substantial result, to speak in behalf of industry pursued, economy exercised, integrity cultivated and applied?  Cold he, in his new estate, and despite all obstacles, mould himself a man and establish himself as a useful factor amid urban surroundings?  These were momentous questions, which he could not answer then.  But he knew that time would answer them.  So, indulging the faith that honorable exertion must wear her crown, without respect to race, he sought an abode.
     This he found on Fifth street above Poplar.  It was an old frame shanty, of rickety construction and slim proportion, yet it sufficed to  bar the weather, and was quite a palatial as his limited means and uncertain prospects enabled him to afford.  It could scarcely be called urban, for it was quite adjacent to commons, corn-fields, potato-patches, and brick-yards.
     His first experience in city life after securing a home was not very well calculated to favorably impress a youth who had known nothing but the quietude of the country.  The Native American agitation was at its height.  Deep, volcanic rumblings were heard everywhere.  Soon the fires burst forth, and enveloped the entire city.  Law was silent in the presence of the mob.  The police were helpless.  For forty-eight hours the Native American adherents, promiscuously armed, rushed infuriately about the streets, attacking the Catholic supporters, scarcely less in numbers, similarly armed, and just as infuriate and blood-thirsty.  the clash was terrifically brutal and murderous.  Many Catholic churches and other valuable properties were burned.  The large church of that denomination, then in course of erection at the corner of Fifth street and Girard avenue, and within almost a stone-throw of William's stopping-place, was fired by the mob, and only escaped total destruction through the vigilance of the firemen.
     It became necessary to bring a stronger power than the police to bear on

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code was so unbending.  All in all, this was the pleasantest life he had led since be entered the city, and, in a mental and disciplinary point of view, it was by far the most profitable school he had ever attended.  He got a larger knowledge of books, new notions of men, public measures, and society in general, and learned many valuable lessons on the nature and necessity of duty, order and economy, from a source so high in wealth and station that their studied existence there was a surprise to him.  But, more than all, he learned that the appreciation of energy, industry, care, honor, honesty and sobriety was not, among people of wealth, intelligence and true refinement, limited by race or color, and that these qualities, persistently exercised, would redound to the credit of their possessor and eventuate in his elevation and advancement, no matter whether that possessor were white, black, red, brown or yellow.
     The following summer this good old lady went travelling and left the entire charge of the house in his keeping.  Such a mark of confidence could not but be flattering, and he felt that the qualities of head and heart he had relied on for promotion were standing him in good stead.  After he had been with her a little over a year she broke up housekeeping and went to boarding at the northwest corner of Thirteenth and Walnut streets, in the old Butler mansion, where the Philadelphia Club now has its quarters.  She took him with her, and there his duties modified by the changed situation, were the same as before.  In about six months she left the city and went to reside with her daughter, Mrs. Irwin, in New York.
     Her departure ended his engagement, and sorry enough he was to part with one who had taken such a kind  interest in him, and had contributed so much to his advancement, mentally, socially and morally.  His memory of this excellent lady will never fade, and his heart will never fail to be thankful for her favor, confidence and teaching, all of which, so suddenly and unexpectedly interjected into his career, and so directly promotive of his welfare, he cannot but regard as providential.
     He was now out in the world again, and his old-time thought of business for himself returned.  He had some money saved, and was anxious to test the truth of the adage, "A nimble sixpence is better that a slow dollar."  But nothing of a favorable business nature turned up, and, armed with a splendid reference from Mrs. Elwyn, he secured a place at service in the family of William Wurtz, on Walnut street, a retired merchant and an elder in Dr. Barnes' church.  Here he had plenty of work, and was not long in securing the confidence of his employer and his family.  The same concession as to his Sunday-school was cheerfully made, and many other favors shown.  Everything went smoothly till, in the fall of 1847, he heard that a clerk was wanted in the office of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, located at 107 North Fifth street.

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A MARRIED MAN AND IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY OFFICE.

     He made application for the position to Peter Lester, one of hte Executive Committee, who sent him to J. Miller McKim, the general agent, corresponding secretary, adn gentleman in charge of the office.  Mr. McKim received him kindly, and told him he had better write a letter to the Committee, making application for the place, which formality was doubtless suggested in order to get a knowledge of his composition and penmanship.  He addressed the committee as follows:

PHILADELPHIA, September 21, 1847.

J. M. McKIM, Esq.
     DEAR SIR: - I have duly considered your proposal to me, and I have come to the conclusion of availing my self of the privilege, esteeming it no small honor, to be placed in a position where I shall he considered an intelligent being, notwithstanding the salary may be small.
     Therefore, if you think proper to condescend to confer the favor upon me, I am at your service, sir.
     I have viewed the matter in various ways, but have only came to the one conclusion at last, and that is this:  If I am not directly rewarded, perhaps it may be the means of more than rewarding me in some future days.  I go for liberty and improvement.

Yours, Respectfully,                                  WILLIAM STILL.

     After time had been given the Committee to consider the letter, he called at the office and found that they were inclined to take him, provided the salary suited.  On inquiry as to what it was, they said $3.75 per week.  It was not an inviting sum, but the field was new; there was fine opportunity to get acquainted with leading anti-slavery people, and perhaps equal opportunity for him to turn his sympathies and energies to the account of his enslaved or escaping brethren, though it was understood that regular underground railroad work formed no part of the duties of hte place for which he was n applicant.  This delicate work was supposed to devolve on older, cooler and abler heads than those found on mere clerical shoulders.
     After some ............................
 

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     Letter from Hon. Henry Wilson:

PHOTO HERE

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PHOTO HERE

     This letter, easily and gracefully written, and manifesting the kindest disposition, is the reflex of a man.  Its author was the warmest hearted friend the colored race ever had.  His advocacy of all anti-slavery measures was earnest and able.  Not so learned as his illustrious colleague in the Senate, he was never embarrassed by theories, but dealt homely, trenchant blows for the cause in such a way as to secure him the respect of friends and enemies alike.  He was pre-eminently wise in his selection of time and methods.  The good he was capable of doing was never impaired by ahsty action or indiscreet speech.  Grave and politic, he got down close to vital principles, and left impressons which a loftier oratory or more florid rhetoric might have failed to make.  Great in deliberative influence, high in position, he was not separated from the masses, but was perhaps the most popular, really sympathetic, and truly representative great man the country has ever produced.

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     The book received the favorable endorsement of the press and met the approval of the friends of the colored race everywhere.  On receipt of the first complete copy sent out, that grand anti-slavery pioneer and veteran, William Lloyd Garrison, wrote him as follows:
 

     DEAR MR. STILL:  I have already delayed too long in thanking you for your presentation to me of your voluminous and well-executed work, "The Underground Railroad."  I have examined it with a deep and thrilling interest.  It is a most important portion of anti-slavery history, which but for your industry, research, and personal experience and knowledge, might nearly all have been lost to posterity.  Its reliableness, moreover, cannot be called in question.  It is, therefore, not "fiction founded upon fact," and embellished by a lively imagination, but fact without a particle of fiction, narrated in a simple, ingenuous straightforward manner, and needing no coloring whatever.  What a revelation it makes of the barbarities of the slave system, of the formidable obstacles which interposed to prevent a successful exodus from the house of bondage, of the terrible exposures and sufferings to which the fugitive slaves were subjected in their attempts to be free, of the daring and heroism required to run the risk of betrayal, recapture, starvation in the swamp, and drowning in the river, suffocation in the box, seizure by the two-legged and four-legged bloodhounds in hot pursuit, and a thousand other perils.  How it illustrates, too, the abject subserviency of the nation to the slave power, so that even in Boston the atrocious Fugitive Slave Law was as effectually enforced as it could have been in New Orleans; and in all our broad domains none could give shelter or assistance to the hunted and famishing victim, except at the peril of fine and imprisonment!  And yet, numerous as are the instances you have recorded, they are only samples of thousands of others which can never be chronicled, running through six generations.  May we trust our senses that there is an end of all this wickedness - that a final and marvellous deliverance has been wrought for all in bondage?  Yes, it is true, and there has been the same divine interposition as of old.  "And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows, and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians." . . . . "Thy right hand, O Lord, is become glorious in power; thy right hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemy."
     I hope that the sale of your work will be largely extended, not only that the large expense incurred by its preparation and printing may be liberally covered, but for the enlightenment of the rising generations as to the inherent cruelty of the defunct slave system, and to perpetuate such an abhorrence of it as to prevent any further injustice toward the colored population of our land.  It is a book for every household,

     In the same spirit wrote J. Miller McKim, another of the staunchest and most active friends the anti-slavery cause ever had:

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and the difficulties which had to be overcome by these men in the accomplishment of their purpose.
     A book so unique in kind, so startling in interest, and so trustworthy in its statements, cannot fail to command a large reading now and in the generations yet to come.  That you, my long-time friend and associate, are the author of this book is to me a matter of great pride and delight.    I thank you very much for the copy you have sent me and for the added honor you have done me in serving me next after the "old pioneer."  When you forward the next copy have the goodness to put your autograph on the fly leaf.
 

Yours ever faithfully,

J. M. McKIM.

     No tribute to the work was more welcome than that of Rev. Dr. Furness who had given so much of his valuable time to the reading of the proof-sheets.

Philadelphia, February 23, 1872

     TO WILLIAM STILL.

     Mr. Greeley expressed ...................................MORE TO COME

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{XLVIII]

{XLIX]

[L]

[LI]

[LII]

[LIII]
 

[LIV]

[LV]

[LVI]

[LVII]
 

[LVIII]

[LIX]
 

[LXI]

[LXII]

[LXIII]

[LXIV]
ness of the pro-slavery element, and his identity with abolition, he did not know at what moment he might be compelled to flee beyond the border in order to save his own life and the lives of his wife and children.
     But year after year passed, and he was permitted to remain.  The light of liberty grew brighter and the howls of the "Killers," "Schuylkill Rangers," "Bouncers," "Plug Uglies," "rioters," "Slave Hunters," and the ungodly, proscriptive element, by whatever name known, and grew fainter and fainter in the forests of ignorance.  His eldest child, Caroline Virginia was sent to the Friends' Institute for Colored Youth for several years, and until she was sufficiently advanced to take a higher course.  She was then sent to Oberlin College, Ohio, where she spent four years, all the while residing in the family of Professor Peck, a highly esteemed professor in the institution.  She graduated in the summer of 1868, with a class of forty-four members, and was the only colored graduate and youngest member.  at the anniversary of the Ladies' Literary Society, held during the commencement, she was elected to preside, an honor probably never before conferred upon one of her race under similar circumstances.
     After graduating she returned to Philadelphia and taught for a time in the House of Industry, one of the many noble charities of the city.  This occupation did not satisfy her ambitions, and she turned her attention to the study of medicine, with a view to entering on active practice.  After years of study in the Medical Department of Howard University, and in the Female Medical College of Philadelphia, she again graduated, and this time with a full professional diploma.  Going to Boston, she spent one year as a hospital physician.  Returning to her native city, she began regular practice, and is still engaged in it.
     The second child, William Wilberforce, was educated at Lincoln University, Pa., where he ranked among the honor men.  On graduating he delivered the mathematical oration, and three years afterwards the master's  oration.  Desiring to turn his attention to business, he afterwards completed a course of commercial accounts under the supervision of Samuel W. Crittenden, from whom he received a certificate of proficiency.
     The third child, Frances Ellen, received her preliminary education at the Institute of Colored Youth at Philadelphia, and afterwards attended Oberlin College.  She then took a normal course in a kindergarten institution, which qualified her to teach.  She is now teaching a kindergarten school in Philadelphia.
     The fourth child, Robert George, is at present (1883) a member of the senior class in Lincoln University, with a prospect of graduating in June.
     Here ends a narrative of a life which, beginning in a lowly way and progressing amid difficulties, grew into good and noble uses.  It is a life yet full of possibilities.  Let us hope that it will be spared for even better and nobler uses.

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