Black man driving railroad story free#

“The Underground Railroad cause is increasing,” boasted Still in an 1856 newspaper article, “they cannot stop the cars.” Whatever the daily challenges abolitionists faced, Still reminded his allies that their cause was righteous and that it would triumph.Įventually, as the conflict over slavery erupted into the Civil War, Still stepped down from his position at the Anti-Slavery Society and the Vigilance Committee, but he never ceased his service to the cause of Black freedom. Carefully chosen publicity, revealing just enough tantalizing detail, could help the Vigilance Committee raise money and rally the morale of abolitionists in the face of the many daunting setbacks of the 1850s. Much of Still’s work was necessarily clandestine, but he gradually took on a more public role in the abolitionist movement, becoming one of the public faces of the Underground Railroad. When the white abolitionist John Brown was planning his assault on Harper’s Ferry, he sought Still’s advice and hoped to enlist Still in the effort.

When slave catchers threatened the safety of a group of fugitive slaves in Christiana, Pennsylvania, Still received intelligence of the plans of these slave catchers and passed it along to allies who were able to successfully drive off the slave hunters. When Henry Brown mailed himself in a box in order to escape slavery, Still was one of the men who was there to open that box in Philadelphia. This was the work that Still did, day in and day out, but his position at the center of this vast abolitionist network also involved him in some of the most dramatic events of the era. Still’s organization received support from as far away as Great Britain. To make all of this possible, the committee also raised money, with public events and private solicitations. At times it mobilized the Black community of Philadelphia and beyond to protect fugitives with physical force. It gathered information, always seeking to stay one step ahead of the slave catchers who roamed the streets of Northern cities and towns searching for fugitive slaves. The group offered food and comfort to those who had known little of this on their flight from bondage. The committee sometimes provided new clothes for fugitives it paid to bathe and shave fugitives to make them less conspicuous. When fugitives arrived in Philadelphia, members of the committee helped hide them (often in Still’s home) and then usually provided them with a means of traveling on. It maintained connections with allies in neighboring towns like Wilmington, Delaware, or Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, who would meet fugitives and send them on to Still. The committee coordinated with friendly ship captains, who sometimes secreted away passengers in cities like Richmond and Norfolk and provided them safe, if not comfortable, passage to the North. Still also became the chairman of Philadelphia’s Vigilance Committee, an organization loosely affiliated with the Anti-Slavery Society, which sought to aid fugitive slaves by any and all means necessary. Read more: What You Still Don’t Know About Abolitionists and Peter, knowing that she likely would never see them again. When Sydney fled a second time, she made the heartbreaking decision to leave behind her two eldest children, Levin, Jr. She joined her husband in New Jersey, but before long they were tracked down by slave hunters and dragged back to Maryland. When his wife, Sydney, was unable to do the same, she fled, taking with her the couple’s four children.

Levin Steel, William’s father, was able to purchase his freedom after years of saving. His parents had been enslaved on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

Black man driving railroad story free#

Still was born free, in the free state of New Jersey, the youngest of 18 children. Still devoted himself to supporting “agents” like Tubman, and to assisting the fugitive slaves-men, women, and children-who were themselves the true engine of the Underground Railroad. In contrast to his far better-known co-worker, Harriett Tubman, who famously traveled into her native Maryland over and over in order to guide others to freedom, Still’s work seems less dramatic. Still was the most important figure in this critical portion of the Underground Railroad, during the period when the network was more important and visible than ever before, and yet we know far less about him than we should.