These digital texts include statutes, articles, pamphlets, literature, and, most importantly, journals kept by the vigilance committees that constituted the organized core of the Underground Railroad.
1793 Fugitive Slave Act (February 12, 1793)
Source Type: Laws & Legal Documents
Editor's Rating: Essential
1850 Fugitive Slave Act (September 18, 1850).
Source Type: Laws & Legal Documents
Editor's Rating: Essential
American Anti-Slavery Society. Testimonies of Capt. John Brown at Harper's Ferry with his Address to the Court. New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1860.
Source Type: Articles & Pamphlets
American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. The Fugitive slave bill: its history and unconstitutionality : with an account of the seizure and enslavement of James Hamlet, and his subsequent restoration to liberty. New York: W. Harned, 1850.
Source Type: Articles & Pamphlets
Borome, Joseph A. "The Vigilant Committee of Philadelphia." Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 92 (January 1968): 320-351.
Source Type: Diaries & Journals
Editor's Rating: Essential
In 1968, Joseph Borome edited records from the Philadelphia "Vigilant" Committee (or Association) for the Pennsylvania Magazine of History & Biography that included detailed records of assistance provided to fugitive slaves passing through Philadelphia between 1839 and the early 1840s. Journal entries include physical descriptions of fugitives, summaries of their routes of escape and notations about expenses.
Boston Vigilance Committee. "Account Book of Francis Jackson." 1850-1855. Vigilance Committee of Boston Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MA. Data compiled by Alison Woitunski for Primary Research (W. Dean Eastman, Project Director).
Source Type: Diaries & Journals
Editor's Rating: Essential
Francis Jackson was the treasurer of the Boston Vigilance Committee. A team of Boston-area high school teachers and students have posted digital transcriptions of his account books (maintained by the Massachusetts Historical Society) which record fugitive aid transactions and member expenses from 1850 to 1855.
Brown, William Wells. The Escape; or, A leap for freedom : a drama, in five acts. Boston, MA: J.B. Yerrinton and Son, 1858.
Source Type: Literature
Editor's Rating: Essential
Generally regarded as the first black American playwright, William Wells Brown frequently read this drama about a fugitive escape to anti-slavery meetings. Brown had been born into slavery in Kentucky in 1814. After his own escape in 1834, he served for several years as an Underground Railroad agent while working on steamboats in Lake Erie. Brown's own slave narrative, published in 1849, was very influential and he was widely regarded as one of the most prominent African Americans of the middle of the nineteenth century.
DeWitt, Robert M. The Life, trial, and execution of Captain John Brown, known as "Old Brown of Ossawatomie," with a full account of the attempted insurrection at Harper's Ferry. Compiled from official and authentic sources. Including Cooke's confession, and all the incidents of the execution. New York, R. M. DeWitt [c1859].
Source Type: Articles & Pamphlets
Griest, Ellwood. John and Mary; or, The Fugitive Slaves, a Tale of South-Eastern Pennsylvania. Lancaster: Inquirer Printer and Publishing Company, 1873.
Source Type: Literature
Howe, Samuel G. The Refugees from slavery in Canada West : Report to the Freedmen's Inquiry Commission. Boston, MA: Wright & Potter, 1864.
Source Type: Articles & Pamphlets
May, Samuel J. The Fugitive Slave Law And Its Victims. New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1860.
Source Type: Articles & Pamphlets
New York Committee of Vigilance. The First annual report of the New York Committee of Vigilance for the year 1837 : together with important facts relative to their proceedings. New York: Piercy and Reed, 1837.
Source Type: Diaries & Journals
Editor's Rating: Essential
The New York Vigilance Committee was the forerunner for other vigilance operations in northern cities. This annual report demonstrates how such committees could organize publicly to protect free black residents from kidnapping without hindering their covert efforts to aid fugitives.
Schweninger, Loren. "Race & Slavery Petitions Project." University of North Carolina at Greensboro. 2000-2003.
Source Type: Laws & Legal Documents
Sheffield, J.F. "Enslaved and a Fugitive. A Quadroon's Experience in Ante-Bellum Days," The New England Magazine 6 (June-July 1887): 76-82.
Source Type: Articles & Pamphlets
St. Louis Circuit Court Historical Records Project. "Freedom Suits Case Files, 1814-1860." St. Louis Circuit Court. Missouri State Archives -St. Louis. 2000-2006.
Source Type: Laws & Legal Documents
Still, William. "Journal C of Station No. 2, William Still, 1852-1857, Vigilance Committee of Philadelphia," PAS Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.
Source Type: Diaries & Journals
Editor's Rating: Essential
William Still not only headed the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee during the 1850s, but also somehow managed to keep records of their efforts. "Journal C of Station 2" stands as the most comprehensive contemporary manuscript source on the Underground Railroad anywhere in the country. While the full collection remains preserved at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, extensive excerpts from the journal now appear online at an HSP exhibit that includes a wide variety of resources for teachers.
Still, William. The Underground Railroad. Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, 1872.
Source Type: Recollection
Editor's Rating: Essential
After the Civil War, William Still reviewed his journals and other papers from his days as head of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee and produced a memoir of the experience that remains the single most important source on the operations of the Underground Railroad. Still's recollection actually contains hundreds of pages of contemporary documents, includes excerpts from the vigilance committee journals, letters, newspaper clippings and numerous fugitive slave notices.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom's Cabin. 2 vols. Boston, MA: John P. Jewett, 1852.
Source Type: Literature
Whittier, John Greenleaf. "The Branded Hand" in Poems. Boston, MA: Benjamin B. Mussey & Co., 1850.
Source Type: Literature