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"A brief history of the labors of a lifetime in behalf of the slave, with the stories of numerous fugitives, who gained their freedom through his instrumentality, and many other incidents." -- Title page.

Growing up in a Quaker family in the South in 1830, Levi Coffin did not support slavery, but he was exposed to its atrocities. Convinced that every person deserved to be free, Levi began helping slaves escape to the North along the Underground Railroad, and during the following 40 years he was able to help over 3,000 people find freedom.

'Levi Coffin and the Underground Railroad' recreates the human drama, pathos, excitement, and danger surrounding the attempts of American blacks in the 1800s to find release from oppression in the South. With cruelty to slaves indelibly impressed on his mind as a child, young Levi Coffin, a Quaker, was determined to spend his life improving their lot. In spite of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, he took seriously the admonition of Deuteronomy 23:15: Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee. Levi appealed to the consciences of fellow Quakers. He and his wife, Catherine, provided refuge, food, and moral support in their home during several decades for a stream of some 3,000 runaways headed for Canada. One of the slaves the Coffins assisted, Eliza Harris, became the leading character in Harriet Beecher Stowe's influential novel, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'. Frustrated by Coffin's successful efforts to help fugitives elude recapture, slave-hunters nicknamed him President of the Underground Railroad. The network of cooperative homes became known as stations or depots, the wagons as trains, the drivers as brakemen or firemen, and the hosts along the way as stationmasters or conductors. This book presents Levi Coffin's experiences in a way that will capture the interest and admiration of young and old alike.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1876.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1880 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV. MARRIAGE--REMOVAL TO INDIANA--I LOCATE AT NEWPORT AND ENGAGE IN MERCANTILE BUSINESS UNDERGROUND RAILROAD WORK DIFFICULTIES AND DANGERS OF THE WORK TRIP TO NORTH CAROLINA HEART-RENDING SCENE AT A SLAVE AUCTION--TEMPERANCE WORK AT NEWPORT. ON the 28th day of'tenth month, 1824, I was married to Catherine White, daughter of Stanton and Sarah White. We were brought up in the same neighborhood, and had been acquainted from childhood. She belonged to the Religious Society of Friends, and was then a member of Hopewell Monthly Meeting, to which place her father had removed a few years before, from his former residence near New Garden. We were married at Hopewell Meeting-House, after the manner and custom of Friends. My wedding-day was my twenty-sixth birthday; my wife was twenty-one the preceding month. Our attachment to each other was of long standing. She was an amiable and attractive young woman of lively, buoyant spirits. Her heart has ever been quick to respond to the cry of distress, and she has been an able and efficient helper to me in all my efforts on 104 behalf of the fugitive slaves, and a cheerful sharer in all the toils, privations and dangers which we have, in consequence, been called upon to endure. Soon after marriage I rented a house near my school, and here we first went to housekeeping. My school closed early in the spring, and I concluded to rest awhile from the arduous duties of teaching. Thinking that my health would be improved by the open-air exercise of farming, and having a very favorable offer made me of a comfortable house, without charge, in that neighborhood, and as much ground as I wished to cultivate, I prepared to engage in farming. This prospect was pleasant to us both, as my wife and I had been...

During the fourteen years Sydney Howard Gay edited the American Anti-Slavery Society's National Anti-Slavery Standard in New York City, he worked with some of the most important Underground agents in the eastern United States, including Thomas Garrett, William Still and James Miller McKim. Gay's closest associate was Louis Napoleon, a free black man who played a major role in the James Kirk and Lemmon cases. For more than two years, Gay kept a record of the fugitives he and Napoleon aided. These never before published records are annotated in this book. Revealing how Gay was drawn into the bitter division between Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, the work exposes the private opinions that divided abolitionists. It describes the network of black and white men and women who were vital links in the extensive Underground Railroad, conclusively confirming a daily reality.

Here are firsthand descriptions of the experiences of escaped slaves making their way to freedom in the North and in Canada in the years before the Civil War.