* * * * *
_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!!!
* * * * *
_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.
* * * * *
_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.
* * * * *
_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.
* * * * *
_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.