Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
H. U. JOHNSON.
FROM
DIXIE TO CANADA
Romances and Realities
OF THE
UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
DEDICATION.
To the millions of happy grand-children of a generationfast leaving the stage of action, and whomust get their knowledge of the Rebellion and its causesfrom the lips of those who saw and participated or fromthe pages of history, as we, the grand-parents, got oursof the Revolution from those long since passed away,and from the written records of that thrilling period,this little volume of unique but wonderful history issincerely and most affectionately dedicated by one of theGrandfathers.
PREFACE.
The years intervening since the abolition ofAmerican slavery leave a majority of our peopleignorant of its workings, and of mattersconnected with it, except as they are gleaned fromthe pages of history, or from the lips of those nowgrown old.
It is not the purpose of this little volume to discussthe history of the “peculiar institution” in detail,but simply to give so much of it as will make appreciablethe cause for another one equally “peculiar,”known for the last twenty years of its existence as theUnderground Railroad,—a name for a mode ofoperation, and not of a corporation or material object.
During the years of its operation, secrecy was acardinal, an imperative principle of its management,as the following pages will make apparent. On thebreaking out of the War of the Rebellion, thus puttingan end to its operations, every other subject was swallowedup in the excitement of the great struggle, andsubsequently in that of Reconstruction. Thus theRoad dropped measurably out of sight, leaving butmeager reports and archives to tell the story of itsworking.
The promptings of a desire to leave to posteritysome realistic record of this, one of the most wonderfuland thrilling features of our national history,