"Dear friend"

by Judith Bentley

A history of the Underground Railroad as seen through the writings of two conductors. Thomas Garrett was a Quaker storekeeper in Wilmington who led fugitives from slave-holding Delaware to the free state of Pennsylvania. He was a generous, peace-loving man, genuinely concerned about his "passengers." In Philadelphia, fleeing slaves were offered brief sanctuary by William Still, a free black. He was a clerk at the Anti-Slavery Society, and himself the son of a fugitive slave. The two men maintained a steady correspondence, and although Still's letters were destroyed, many of Garrett's letters are quoted here. Still also kept careful records of those he helped, and his accounts are some of the few firsthand records available about the Underground Railroad.