There are many sources from which material for a study of fugitive slaves may be gathered. Almost any work upon the slavery question touches sooner or later upon this topic, and the difficulties arise rather from the amount of the literature which must be examined than from lack of information. No formal bibliography of the subject, or of any phase of it, has been found; it has therefore been necessary to go through a large body of material, and to sift out references which bear upon the subject.
2. Libraries.
The labor has been much facilitated by the completeness and convenient arrangement of the literature bearing upon slavery in the libraries of Cambridge and Boston. The Harvard College Library possesses two unique collections of slavery pamphlets, one the bequest of Charles Sumner, the other the gift of Colonel T. W. Higginson; and the Card Catalogue of the Library is a comprehensive guide to a large alcove of other books. The great collections of the Boston Public Library have also been made accessible by the full Card Catalogue of that Library. The Boston Athenæum has also furnished valuable material; and in the Massachusetts State Library is an excellent set of State Statutes, which has been freely used. I have not been able to consult the antislavery collection of the Cornell Library at Ithaca.
3. Secondary works.
The material upon fugitive slaves, as upon any topic, may be divided into two classes, secondary and original. The general and local histories which come under the first class have been of good service as guides to further investigation. The Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, by Henry Wilson, takes up the whole question of slavery in a thorough manner, and devotes special attention to the debates in Congress. Though long and ill-arranged, it is comprehensive and trustworthy. Unfortunately, the work is not provided with foot-notes. Williams's History of the Negro Race, and Greeley's American Conflict, are other surveys of the whole subject. For a discussion of political forces and constitutional questions, Von Holst is the best authority, while Hurd, besides enumerating the statutes from colonial times down, considers the subject with great clearness from a judicial point of view, describes many cases, and in foot-notes gives references to others.
Studies of colonial slavery are found in Lodge's English Colonies in America and Doyle's English in America. Several special essays have been printed on slavery in Massachusetts; Deane's and Moore's Notes on Slavery, and Washburn's Extinction of Slavery in Massachusetts. Little attention is in any of these works given to fugitive slaves.
To another class belong books descriptive of the institution of slavery. Mrs. Frances Kemble wrote about life on a Southern plantation before the war, and the Cotton Kingdom and other volumes by Frederick Law Olmsted give many interesting details, and furnished me with much material for the chapter on Fugitives and their Friends.
4. Biographies.
Biographies of antislavery men are likely to contain information on fugitive slave cases. The Life of Isaac T. Hopper is full of accounts of his ways of aiding flight, and for the same reason the Life of Gerrit Smith is exceedingly interesting. Birney's Life of James G. Birney deals little with fugitives. The biographies of Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, Arthur and Lewis Tappan, John Brown, Garrison, Phillips, and the Grimké sisters, may also be mentioned. Others, like those of Jonathan Walker, L. W. Paine, Daniel Drayton, captain of the schooner Pearl, W. L. Chaplin, Work, Burr, and Thompson, and the recently published Life of Rev. Calvin Colman, relate simply the stories of trials and imprisonments for aiding fugitives, and are often more in the nature of original than secondary sources.