pation, and while the bane of slavery was on the country, the
thrilling facts of this volume could not have been made public. Peace
and the blessing of freedom permit their publication, free circulation
and unmolested reading.

Of all the thousands who favored freedom for the slaves, who gloried in
the odium attached to anti-slaveryism, who witnessed the frequent
efforts of the bondsmen to escape, who aided them in their quest for
liberty, few dared to take notes of what they witnessed, and fewer still
dared to preserve them, lest they should be turned into witnesses
against them.

But one man, and that the author of this book, is known to have
succeeded in preserving anything like a full account of the workings of
the UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, as it was called before emancipation. These
records grew on his hands during the years he acted as Chairman of the
Philadelphia Branch of that celebrated corporation, until they reached
the extent of the present volume. They are made up of letters received,
of interviews held, of narratives taken down at the time, of real
reminiscence and authentic biography. Nothing imaginative enters into
the composition of the volume. It is simply succinct history, always
startling, sometimes bloody. The annals of no time since the Inquisition
are so full of daring ventures for life and liberty or heroic endurance
under most trying circumstances.

As a history of the UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, the work is most curious and
valuable. It tells of an ingenuity and faithfulness on the part of the
officials of the road which seems well-nigh marvellous. As its pages
reveal the methods by which aid was given to the escaping slave, one is
compelled to wonder almost as if he were facing a revelation. The
secrets of Masonry are not more mysterious than were the ways of these
officials who clothed, fed and comforted the fugitive, while they
apparently never knew his name or whereabouts. Even those who never
believed in the existence of an UNDERGROUND RAILWAY, or who, believing,
cursed its existence, will read its history, at this time, with the
relish of astonishment and the zest of discoverers.

But the book has a higher meaning and use. It is curious and hitherto
unprinted history to the white race. To the black race, and especially
that part of it once slave, it is more than a history of a time of
peril. It is for them what Exodus was to the fugitives from Egypt, a
history and an inspiration as well. They m