What exactly was the Underground Railroad?
Slaves ran away from their owners right from the beginning. Before slavery was abolished in Canada and the more industrialized northern states within the USA, escaping slaves would simply hide out in the deep woods, and often were allowed to join nearby Indian tribes. In 1834, a runaway slave, hotly pursued by his master, leapt into and swam a wide river. His master saw him wade ashore on the other side, but when the master and his henchmen got to the other side, there was no trace of the slave. The outraged master remarked that the slave must have gone on an underground road. A short and highly informative book about the Underground Railroad is titled: “When We Get to Heaven: Runaway Slaves on the Road to Peterboro” by Norman K. Dann, PhD, of Peterboro, New York. The publisher is Log Cabin Books and it was published earlier this year. Peterboro was the home of staunch – and very very wealthy – abolitionist Garret Smith. It was Smith who financed John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. Th
