• Maps of the major escape routes • Identifies houses and sites where slaves found refuge • Chapter on Canada discusses the final destination Tells the story of the network that guided escaped slaves to freedom, its operation, its important figures, and its specific history in New York and New Jersey. Pinpoints major routes in the states, with maps and information for locating them today.

A photographer's evocative interpretation of the history and places along the slave's path to freedom

Southern New Jersey was a hotbed of slave fugitives, freedmen and abolitionists in the Civil War era. The proud 22nd Regiment of the United States Colored Troops included hundreds of Black New Jerseyans ready to fight for emancipation and the Union cause. Abolitionists such as Harriet Tubman, Abigail Goodwin and Benjamin Sheppard operated among key landmarks of the Underground Railroad in South Jersey counties such as Cape May, Cumberland and Salem. Slavery and the rights of Black Americans were at the forefront of the region's attention including stories such as a melee in a Cape May hotel between Black waiters and white patrons, the covert signaling of boats ferrying fugitive slaves across the Delaware River and the daring rescue of a runway slave from the hands of slave catches by local church worshipers. Author Ellen Alford reveals the history of abolition and the Underground Railroad in South Jersey.

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.

Includes detailed maps of the known routes and railroad sites. Organized in antebellum America to help slaves escape to freedom, the Underground Railroad was cloaked in secrecy and operated at great peril to everyone involved. The system was extremely active in Pennsylvania, with routes in all parts of the state.This book retraces those routes, discusses the large city networks, identifies the houses and sites where escapees found refuge, and records the names of the people who risked their lives to support the operation.

Provides a look at the network known as the Underground Railroad - that mysterious "system" of individuals and organizations that helped slaves escape the American South to freedom during the years before the Civil War. This work also explores the people, places, writings, laws, and organizations that made this network possible.

This up-to-date compilation details the most significant stops along the Underground Railroad. Places of the Underground Railroad: A Geographical Guide presents an overview of the various sites that comprised this unique road to freedom, with entries chosen to represent all regions of the United States and Canada. Where most works on the Underground Railroad focus on the people involved, this unique guide explores the intricacies of travel that allowed the "conductors" to carry out the tasks entrusted to them. It presents an accurate picture of just where the Underground Railroad was and how it operated, including routes and itineraries and connections between the various Railroad locations. Through information about these locations, the book takes readers from the beginnings of organized aid to fugitive slaves during the period following the American Revolution up to the Civil War. It delineates the possible routes fugitive slaves may have taken by identifying the rivers, canals, and railroads that were sometimes used. And it shows that a network, though decentralized and variable over time and place, truly was established among Underground Railroad participants.

A study of the life of a Maryland slave, his escape to freedom in New Jersey, and the trials that ensued. James Collins Johnson made his name by escaping slavery in Maryland and fleeing to Princeton, New Jersey, where he built a life in a bustling community of African Americans working at what is now Princeton University. After only four years, he was recognized by a student from Maryland, arrested, and subjected to a trial for extradition under the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act. On the eve of his rendition, after attempts to free Johnson by force had failed, a local aristocratic white woman purchased Johnson’s freedom, allowing him to avoid re-enslavement. The Princeton Fugitive Slave reconstructs James Collins Johnson’s life, from birth and enslaved life in Maryland to his daring escape, sensational trial for re-enslavement, and last-minute change of fortune, and through to the end of his life in Princeton, where he remained a figure of local fascination. Stories of Johnson’s life in Princeton often describe him as a contented, jovial soul, beloved on campus and memorialized on his gravestone as “The Students Friend.” But these familiar accounts come from student writings and sentimental recollections in alumni reports—stories from elite, predominantly white, often southern sources whose relationships with Johnson were hopelessly distorted by differences in race and social standing. In interrogating these stories against archival records, newspaper accounts, courtroom narratives, photographs, and family histories, author Lolita Buckner Inniss builds a picture of Johnson on his own terms, piecing together the sparse evidence and disaggregating him from the other black vendors with whom he was sometimes confused. By telling Johnson’s story and examining the relationship between antebellum Princeton’s Black residents and the economic engine that supported their community, the book questions the distinction between employment and servitude that shrinks and threatens to disappear when an individual’s freedom is circumscribed by immobility, lack of opportunity, and contingency on local interpretations of a hotly contested body of law. Praise for The Princeton Fugitive Slave “Fascinating historical detective work . . . Deeply researched, the book overturns any lingering idea that Princeton was a haven from the broader society. Johnson had to cope with the casual racism of students, occasional eruptions of racial violence in town and the ubiquitous use of the N-word by even the supposedly educated. This book contributes to our understanding of slavery’s legacy today.” —Shane White, author of Prince of Darkness: The Untold Story of Jeremiah G. Hamilton, Wall Street's First Black Millionaire “Collectively, Inniss’s work provides an exciting model for future scholars of slavery and labor. Perhaps most importantly, Inniss skillfully and compassionately restores Johnson's voice to his own historical narrative.” —G. Patrick O'Brien, H-Slavery

The Underground Railroad was perhaps the best example in U.S. history of blacks and whites working together for the common good. People of the Underground Railroad is the largest in-depth collection of profiles of those individuals involved in the spiriting of black slaves to freedom in the northern states and Canada beginning around 1800 and lasting to the early Civil War years. One hundred entries introduce people who had a significant role in the rescuing, harboring, or conducting of the fugitives—from abolitionists, evangelical ministers, Quakers, philanthropists, lawyers, judges, physicians, journalists, educators, to novelists, feminists, and barbers—as well as notable runaways. The selections are geographically representational of the broad railroad network. There is renewed interest in the Underground Railroad, exemplified by the new National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati and energized scholarly inquiry. People of the Underground Railroad presents authoritative information gathered from the latest research and established sources, many of them from period publications. Designed for student research and general browsing, in-depth essay entries include further reading. Numerous sidebars complement the entries. A timeline, illustrations, and map help put the profiles into context.

The Town of Chester in upstate Warren County, New York, was a secret haven for runaway slaves escaping to Canada along the Underground Railroad. The small Adirondack town holds as many as nine confirmed or suspected sites where fugitives once found shelter. Stories abound of residents discovering secret rooms containing beds and other artifacts within their homes. The first abolitionist pastor of the Darrowsville Wesleyan Church, Reverend Thomas Baker, reportedly hid fugitive slaves in the parsonage. Color photographs and interviews with current residents illuminate the region's hidden history with the Underground Railroad movement. With the support of the Historical Society of the Town of Chester, Donna Lagoy and Laura Seldman reveal these courageous stories of local families who risked everything in the pursuit of freedom for all.