In his singularly and creditably brief preface, Mr. Still sincerely disclaims literary pretension; but creditable as is this to the author, we may say that the work is in style excellent reading, and that if it were not so, the narratives themselves are so thrilling, possess such a heart-reaching interest, that if these were literary crudities, they would be entirely placed in the background in the concentrated blaze of light which the author pours upon the bloody pathway of these victims of injustice, from 1851, when the terrors of the Fugitive Slave Law began, to the hour when Slavery and Rebellion were washed out in blood, together.
We have not space for a reprint of one of these interesting histories, but we are personally acquainted with the "facts" as related by Mr. Still, and the persons involved, and can attest the truth of the statements made. Some of these parties we have met in their flight, others in their temporary sojourn in the then so-called Free States; others we knew (Harriet Tubman and Moses among them) in their latest and safest refuge, (Canada,) under the protection of the Cross of St. George and St. Andrew. It was due to such that this book should be written. Their heroic deeds, in behalf of personal liberty of themselves and others, deserve commemorating. Their deeds of daring, winning victory at last, in the face of wily and unscrupulous men devoted to their capture, and sustained by the voice, the law and the cannon of the Government, ought to be written in unfading letters across the history of a people struggling upward to enfranchisement. It will teach the coming generations who were our fathers and our mothers; who there were in these years of agony who braved death to secure liberty and who upheld the noble banner of a dying race until their efforts, by God's blessing, made the race rise and live. All thanks to Mr. Still for thus placing this noble record of the free, and those struggling to be free, before the world.
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From, the Boston Journal, Boston, Mass.
The present volume is a narrative, or rather a collection of narratives, of the adventures of slaves on their way to freedom. The style is perfectly simple and unaffected, and it is well that it is so. The facts and incidents related are themselves so full of interest and dramatic intenseness as to need no coloring. The narratives throughout have the mark of truth upon them, and are based on authentic records. American history would not be complete without some such book as this, written by one within the circle of those devoted philanthropists who were so fearless and unremitting in their efforts for human freedom.
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From the Providence Press, Providence, R.I.
This large volume is full of facts. To read its pages is to bring the past up with vividness. Many of those who fought with the worse than Ephesus' beasts encountered by Paul, to wit, the man-hunters of the South, we knew personally, and their narratives as given in this volume we can vouch for, having received their accounts at the time, from their own lips. Historically the book is valuable, because it is fact and not fiction, although fifty years from to-day it will read like fiction to the then living.
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From the Newburyport Herald, Mass.