ess, it was an impractical, impossible, wild, and
visionary scheme that could not be carried to the extent its
projectors designed. It lost strength yearly, until all were convinced
that the Negro would be emancipated here and remain here; that it was
as impossible to colonize a race of people as to colonize the sun,
moon, and stars.

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD organization was perhaps one of the most
useful auxiliaries the cause of agitation had. It could scarcely be
called an organization. Unlike the other societies, it did not print
its reports.[26] Like good Samaritans, its conductors did not ask
passengers their creed; but wherever they found human beings wounded
in body and mind by slavery, they gave them passage to the "Inn" of
Freedom on Canadian soil.

In a sense, the Underground Railroad was a secret organization. This
was necessary, as the fugitive-slave law gave the master the right to
pursue his slave when "fleeing from labor and service in one State
into another," and apprehend him by due process of Federal law. The
men who managed this road felt that they should obey God rather than
man; that the slave's right to his freedom was greater than any law
the nation could make through its representatives. So the Underground
Railroad was made up of a company of godly men who stretched
themselves across the land, from the borders of the sunny slave States
to the snow-white shores of Canada. When men came up out of the hell
of slavery gasping for a breath of free air, these good friends
sheltered and fed them; and then hastened them off in the stillness of
the night, with the everlasting stars as their ministers, toward
Canada. The fugitives would be turned over to another conductor, who
would conceal them until nightfall, when he would load his living
freight into a covered conveyance, and drive all night to reach the
next "station"; and so on until the fugitives found themselves free
and safe under the English flag in Canada.

This was the safety-valve to the institution of slavery. As soon as
leaders arose among the slaves, refusing to endure the yoke, they came
North. Had they remained, the direful scenes of St. Domingo would have
been enacted, and the hot, vengeful breath of massacre would have
swept the South as a tornado, and blanched the cheek of the civilized
world.

ANTI-SLAVERY LITERATURE wrought mightily for God in its field.[27]
Frederick Douglass's book, "My Bondage and My Freedom"; Bishop
Loguen