The Underground Railroad: A Reference Guide (Guides to Historic Events in America)

The Underground Railroad provides the richest portrayal yet of the first large scale act of interracial collaboration in the United States, mapping out the complex network of routes and safe stations that made escape from slavery in the American South possible.

Kerry Walters' stirring account ranges from the earliest acts of slave resistance and the rise of the Abolitionist movement, to the establishment of clandestine "liberty lines" through the eastern and then-western regions of the Union and ultimately to Canada. Separating fact from legend, Walters draws extensively on first-person accounts of those who made the Railroad work, those who tried to stop it, and those who made the treacherous journey to freedom—including Eliza Harris and Josiah Henson, the real-life "Eliza" and "Uncle Tom" from Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle ToM&Apos;s Cabin.