Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division

William Still, The Underground Rail Road: A Record of Facts, Authentic Narratives, Letters, &c. (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1872)

Although enslaved people ran away from the very beginning (early in the seventeenth century), the last sixty years of the "Peculiar Institution" saw a massive increase in the number of fugitives who sought refuge in the North, Canada, and Mexico.