The first full-length biography of William Still, one of the most
important leaders of the Underground Railroad.
William Still:
The Underground Railroad and the Angel at Philadelphia is the
first major biography of the free black abolitionist William Still,
who coordinated the Eastern Line of the Underground Railroad and was
a pillar of the Railroad as a whole. Based in Philadelphia, Still
built a reputation as a courageous leader, writer, philanthropist,
and guide for fugitive slaves. This monumental work details Still’s
life story beginning with his parents’ escape from bondage in the
early nineteenth century and continuing through his youth and
adulthood as one of the nation’s most important Underground
Railroad agents and, later, as an early civil rights pioneer. Still
worked personally with Harriet Tubman, assisted the family of John
Brown, helped Brown’s associates escape from Harper’s Ferry after
their famous raid, and was a rival to Frederick Douglass among
nationally prominent African American abolitionists. Still’s life
story is told in the broader context of the anti-slavery movement,
Philadelphia Quaker and free black history, and the generational
conflict that occurred between Still and a younger group of free
black activists led by Octavius Catto.
Unique to this book
is an accessible and detailed database of the 995 fugitives Still
helped escape from the South to the North and Canada between 1853 and
1861. The database contains twenty different fields—including name,
age, gender, skin color, date of escape, place of origin, mode of
transportation, and literacy—and serves as a valuable aid for
scholars by offering the opportunity to find new information, and
therefore a new perspective, on runaway slaves who escaped on the
Eastern Line of the Underground Railroad. Based on Still’s own
writings and a multivariate statistical analysis of the database of
the runaways he assisted on their escape to freedom, the book
challenges previously accepted interpretations of the Underground
Railroad. The audience for William Still is a diverse one,
including scholars and general readers interested in the history of
the anti-slavery movement and the operation of the Underground
Railroad, as well as genealogists tracing African American ancestors.