I am happy to find that material for this interesting work exists. I had feared that much which will be here recorded, would perish with the brave and worthy men who were personally interested. These verities of history contain the interest of romance, and our children's children will read them with wonder and admiration.
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From, Hon. S.P. Chase, late Chief Justice U.S. Supreme Court.
Your book will certainly be an interesting one. No one probably has had equal opportunities with yourself of listening to the narratives of fugitive slaves. No one will repeat them more truthfully, and no stories can be more fraught with interest than theirs. Let us rejoice, that, in our country, such narratives can never be heard again.
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From Wm. Lloyd Garrison.
I congratulate you that, after much patient research, careful preparation, and untiring labor, you have completed your voluminous work on "THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD." I am sure your work will be found to be one of absorbing interest, worthy of the widest patronage, and historically valuable as pertaining to the tremendous struggle for the abolition of chattel slavery in our land. No phase of that struggle was so crowded wifh thrilling incidents, heroic adventures, and self-sacrificing efforts as the one you have undertaken to portray, and with which you were so closely connected, to wit: "THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD." While it will be contemplated with shame, sadness, and astonishment, by posterity, it will serve vividly to illustrate the perils which everywhere confronted the fugitives from the Southern "house of bondage," and to which those who dared to give them food and shelter were also subjected.
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From Gen. O.O. Howard.
You could not prepare a work that would afford more instruction and interest to me than a detailed history of the operations of the so-called "UNDERGROUND RAILROAD." I am delighted at the casual examination I have been permitted to give it. Thousands will rise up to call you blessed for your faithful record of our "legalized crime," and its graphic terrible consequences set forth by you in such true pictures and plain words.