50 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
the place of refuge for many thousands of fugitives from bondage. 
The lone north star was the cynosure of their watching eyes. On 
many a midnight march it guided their footsteps till they reached 
our shores. It is estimated that more than 30,000 negro slaves found 
freedom in Canada. These were helped on their way to the land of 
liberty by a philanthropic organization known as the Underground 
Railway. Of this organization, of its methods, its results, and some 
of its principal agents, we purpose in this paper to give some account. 
From the nature of the case the operations of the “ Underground 
Railway ” had to be conducted in secret. Few details of its work 
were placed on record. Its agents for very practical reasons “ did 
good by stealth and blushed to find it fame.’ They lived in an 
atmosphere of suspicion and espionage. When discovered they were 
marked men, exposed to punishment by the law, and were subject to 
extra judicial disabilities, annoyance and persecution, and were some- 
times done to death as martyrs of liberty. The literature of the 
subject is therefore meagre. It is scattered through reports of legal 
trials, newspaper and magazine articles and a number of books and 
sketches, reminiscence and biography. A few Underground Railway 
agents were indiscreet enough to commit to writing the record of 
their operations, some of which, for a time preserved, it was found 
necessary to destroy. Nevertheless, a number of works have been 
compiled on this subject. 
The most considerable of these is Still’s “ Underground Railway 
Records,” a large volume of 780 pages, which appeared in 1872 and a 
second edition in 1883. Mr. Still for some years before the war took 
an active part in the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, and had much 
personal intercourse with the fugitives whom he harboured and helped 
to Canada. Levi Coffin, an apostle of abolition, a distinguished mem- 
ber of an uncompromising anti-slavery family, has written a large 
volume of reminiscences of the stirring events in which he was 
so prominent. Theodore Parker, of Boston, an active abolitionist, 
made a large collection of manuscript and printed documents on this 
subject which is now in possession of the Boston Public Library. 
That philanthropic Canadian, Dr. Alexander M. Ross, who bore 
a brave part in aiding the escape of fugitives, has in his “ Recol- 
lection and Experiences of an Abolitionist” recorded many stirring 

nated part of a state, the people whereof should then be in rebellion, should 
be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” It was not, indeed, till June 28rd, 
1864, that all laws for the rendition of slaves to their masters were repealed, 
and on January 31st, 1865, by a constitutional amendment, slavery was for- 
mally abolished throughout the entire Union, and the fourteenth amendment 
of the constitution absolutely forbade compensation being made either by the 
United States or by any state. 
