The Underground Railroad by William Still (best fiction books of all time txt) 📖
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From Bishop Payne of the A.M.E. Church, Philadelphia.
My official engagements and private duties have prevented me from reading your work on THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, throughout. But such portions as I have had time to read, convince me that as a stimulus to noble effort it has much value. It is also a grand monument of the past struggles of the Angel Spirit of Liberty with the Demon of American Slavery. It serves also as a Beacon Light for our future progress in the upward movement. It deserves a wide circulation through the Republic.
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"I cheerfully endorse the above."
S.M.D. WARD. (Bishop A.M.E. Church.)
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From letter of Hon. Ebenezer D. Bassett, U.S. Minister to Haiti.
The book must strike everyone who sees it as one of very commendable appearance; and to everyone who reads it, it must commend itself as one of remarkable interest. It is a work which cannot fail to reflect an unusual credit upon the care, industry and sterling ability of its author.
All hail to you, my dear fellow, for your success. When nearly four years ago you spoke often to me about your project of writing this book, I always told you I thought it would prove a success; but I tell you now, candidly, that although I never for a moment doubted your peculiar fitness to prepare such a work, yet I feared that when you came to see the time, industry, care and patience, which it would require aside from your pressing everyday business cares and perplexities, you might stop at the foot of the mountain and abandon the tedious ascent. But you have actually made the ascent and stand now on the top of the mountain. Hurrah for my old friend Still! Hurrah! Hurrah!! Hurrah!!!
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From. Prof. W. Howard Day, in "Our National Progress."
In his singularly and creditably brief preface, Mr. Still sincerely disclaims literary pretension; but creditable as is this to the author, we may say that the work is in style excellent reading, and that if it were not so, the narratives themselves are so thrilling, possess such a heart-reaching interest, that if these were literary crudities, they would be entirely placed in the background in the concentrated blaze of light which the author pours upon the bloody pathway of these victims of injustice, from 1851, when the terrors of the Fugitive Slave Law began, to the hour when Slavery and Rebellion were washed out in blood, together.
We have not space for a reprint of one of these interesting histories, but we are personally acquainted with the "facts" as related by Mr. Still, and the persons involved, and can attest the truth of the statements made. Some of these parties we have met in their flight, others in their temporary sojourn in the then so-called Free States; others we knew (Harriet Tubman and Moses among them) in their latest and safest refuge, (Canada,) under the protection of the Cross of St. George and St. Andrew. It was due to such that this book should be written. Their heroic deeds, in behalf of personal liberty of themselves and others, deserve commemorating. Their deeds of daring, winning victory at last, in the face of wily and unscrupulous men devoted to their capture, and sustained by the voice, the law and the cannon of the Government, ought to be written in unfading letters across the history of a people struggling upward to enfranchisement. It will teach the coming generations who were our fathers and our mothers; who there were in these years of agony who braved death to secure liberty and who upheld the noble banner of a dying race until their efforts, by God's blessing, made the race rise and live. All thanks to Mr. Still for thus placing this noble record of the free, and those struggling to be free, before the world.
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From, the Boston Journal, Boston, Mass.
The present volume is a narrative, or rather a collection of narratives, of the adventures of slaves on their way to freedom. The style is perfectly simple and unaffected, and it is well that it is so. The facts and incidents related are themselves so full of interest and dramatic intenseness as to need no coloring. The narratives throughout have the mark of truth upon them, and are based on authentic records. American history would not be complete without some such book as this, written by one within the circle of those devoted philanthropists who were so fearless and unremitting in their efforts for human freedom.
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From the Providence Press, Providence, R.I.
This large volume is full of facts. To read its pages is to bring the past up with vividness. Many of those who fought with the worse than Ephesus' beasts encountered by Paul, to wit, the man-hunters of the South, we knew personally, and their narratives as given in this volume we can vouch for, having received their accounts at the time, from their own lips. Historically the book is valuable, because it is fact and not fiction, although fifty years from to-day it will read like fiction to the then living.
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From the Newburyport Herald, Mass.
It is not a romance, but it is a storehouse of materials which will hereafter be used in literature, and be studied, not only by historians, dramatists and novelists, but also by those who will seek to comprehend and realize the fact, that there has been, in this country, a condition of society and law which made the Underground railroad possible.
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BY WILLIAM STILL.
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An Authentic Record of the Wonderful Hardships, Hairbreadth Escapes, and Death Struggles which mark the Track from Slavery to Freedom in the United States.
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This is one of the most remarkable volumes of the century. Its publication has only been made possible by a combination of circumstances which seldom attend the birth of a book. Before emancipation, 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 may learn from it of their heroes and how deeply the love of liberty was implanted in their bosoms. The Swiss never tire of the story of their Tell, nor the Welsh of that of their Glendower. Every nation has its exemplar, whose bravery and virtues are a perpetual lesson and source of admiration. The colored race may now read of its real heroes, its Joshuas, Spartacuses, Tells and Glendowers, among the list of those who silently broke their chains and dared everything in order to breathe the sweet air of liberty. They are not blazoned heroes, full of loud deeds and great names, but quiet examples of what fortitude can achieve where freedom is the goal.
It is time now that the colored race should know something of the steps which led from Egypt to Canaan, something of their own contributions to the grand march of the tribes across and beyond the Red Sea. There are no slaves beneath the starry flag. All may read who will, and what they will. For the colored man no history can be more instructive and inspiring than this, of his own making, and written by one of his own race. The generations are growing in light. Not to know of those who were stronger than shackles, who were pioneers in the grand advance toward freedom; not to know of what characters the race could produce when straightened by circumstances, nor of those small beginnings which ended in triumphant emancipation, will, in a short time, be a reproach.
This History of the hardships and struggles of those of their own race is more for them than for mankind at large. It furnishes the world proof that, though slaves, they were nevertheless men. It furnishes them proof that the heroic abounds in their race as in others, and that achievement follows persistent effort, as well with them as with others. The volume will be not only their admiration but constant encouragement. In its pages one is not invited to hard, dry reading. It is narrative in style, simple in language, and possesses the thrill and pathos of a novel. In all its parts it is an evidence of the saying that "Truth is stranger than fiction."
The author scarcely needs an introduction to the public. He is a scholarly, successful business man of Philadelphia, who has long been identified with churches, charities and every project for ameliorating the condition of his race. His word in all things is as good as his bond. An ardent member of the Anti-Slavery Society, and an active officer of the Underground Railroad Company, he made his book as a business man makes his ledger, viz.: by noting daily the transactions of the day. How he preserved them does not matter much now, but if a certain loft in the chapel of an old cemetery could speak, it might a tale unfold.
The volume is quite large and commanding in appearance. It consists of about 800 pages, clearly printed on beautiful white paper, making the largest book ever written by a colored person in this country.
An attractive feature of the book, one which has added largely to its cost, and one which greatly enhances its value to the reader, is its
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