E. Statement of Historic Contexts
F. Associated Property Types
G. Geographical Data
H. Summary of Identification and Evaluation Methods
Endnotes
Theme Study Home

I. MAJOR BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

The underground railroad story rests on an understanding of American slavery and antislavery in which slave resistance is assumed.  The scholarly literature of the last thirty or more years has documented that resistance and also established the nature and importance of a sense of community among slaves and free blacks.  While thrilling tales of escapes and secret signs often dominate the underground railroad story, the story primarily reveals the extent to which enslaved African Americans could and did carry out their own plans for escape and, when possible, join forces with white antislavery advocates.

Many American historians, writing in the 1890s and early 1900s characterized the slave system as benign and the slaves as docile and content.  In order to do this, they had to minimize the importance of fugitives from slavery who were featured in popular works of history and fiction at the time. There was a popular audience then, as now, for tales of hair-breadth escapes and secret tunnels and many such books and articles were inspired by local narratives.  Local sources included oral histories, memoirs, newspaper articles, and other memorabilia of the underground railroad, primarily collected by those sympathetic to abolitionism.  The most extensive collected primary sources of that era, as noted in the text, are found in Wilbur Siebert, The Underground Railway from Slavery to Freedom (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1898) and William Still, The Underground Railroad (reprint ed. Arno Press: New York, 1968/orig. ed. Philadelphia, 1872).  Siebert gathered documents and reminiscences from aged abolitionists or their descendants in the 1890s.  Still, an active participant in the Philadelphia Underground Railroad, used his notes, correspondence, and memory after the Civil War to attempt to reconstruct each narrative for publication.

Whatever the level of veracity in these legends, they did assume the cruelty and inhumanity of slavery and the desire of fugitives to escape.  Among many trained historians of the period, the tendency was to minimize the activities of fugitives.  U.B. Phillips' book, American Negro Slavery  (New York: D. Appleton, 1918) was the culmination of this tendency and it dominated the field for decades.  Philips portrayed escape from bondage as insignificant to the history of slavery.  It was not until the 1950s that  historians reviewed the evidence and came to conclusions which interpreted slavery and the slave quite differently.  In doing so, they used the previously underutilized work of African American scholars such as Benjamin Quarles, W.E.B. DuBois and Carter G. Woodson and of white historians such as Herbert Aptheker.  Much of this early research appeared in the Journal of Negro History which began publication in 1916 under the editorship of Carter G. Woodson and often provided a venue for the publication of excellent scholarship on African American life in the decades before 1970 when the official American history journals were almost closed to that topic.

A selective list of some of the best of the older studies includes Alice Felt Tyler, Freedom's Ferment: Phases of American Social History from the Colonial Period to the Outbreak of the Civil War (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1949, 1962); Aileen Kraditor, Means and Ends in American Abolitionism: Garrison and his Critics on Strategy and Tactics, 1834-1850 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1969); Whitney Cross, The Burned Over District (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1950); Lewis Filler, The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960); Benjamin Quarles, Allies For Freedom: Blacks and John Brown (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974); Stephen B. Oates, To Purge this Land With Blood (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1970).

Works by Kenneth Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Antebellum South (New York: Vintage Press, 1956) and Stanley Elkins, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1959) saw slavery as harsh, and, in Elkins' case, as robbing the enslaved of a sense of self.  These two books sparked a generation of research, beginning in the 1960s, which examined every aspect of the system of slavery and generally concluded that slavery, although deeply damaging to the African American, did not destroy the possibility of independent thought and action.

Recent useful collections of slave narratives, letters, speeches, editorials and newspaper accounts include Peter C. Ripley, et al., eds. The Black Abolitionist Papers 5 vol. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985-93); John Blassingame, Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977); and Charles Blockson, The Underground Railroad (New York: Prentice Hall, 1987); William Andrews, To Tell A Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760-1865. (Urbana,IL: University of Illinois Press, 1986).  The best examination of evidence done thus far in order to separate the myth from the reality of the underground railroad is Larry Gara, The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad (reprint ed. 1996 Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1996/orig. ed. Lex.,1961).  His first and last chapters are an account of exaggerated and romanticized texts and newspaper accounts and they are worth checking to avoid reliance on dubious and unsubstantiated texts.  Gara notes that the antislavery movement was divided over aid to fugitive slaves, that free blacks and slaves provided most assistance to fugitives, and that many of the underground activities were at least partly aboveground, as was the case with the northern Vigilance Committees. He may underestimate the organized activity of black abolitionists as suggested in Marion Wilson Starling, The Slave Narrative: Its Place in American History (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1988).

The list of ex-slave memoirs is long indeed and there is, as yet, no compilation that claims to be comprehensive. Nor is there a list that would tell researchers from where the memorialists escaped or their destinations. Frederick Douglass wrote three autobiographies, but the most vivid may be Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845).  For his work as an abolitionist, see My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881, rev. 1892). Another escaped slave who became an abolitionist was William Wells Brown, Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave, A Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself (Boston: Antislavery Office, 1848).

Since Gara's book was written, the 1930s WPA oral histories of slavery and the fugitive slave memoirs of the late antebellum era (1830-1860) have been fine combed for references to runaways and the underground railroad.  While the abolitionists were the primary publishers of slave narratives, about one-half of the six thousand slave narratives were preserved by five other sources of publication: the court record, the popular or sensational journal, the church record, the independent printer, and the Federal Writers' Project Administration WPA, mentioned above. These collections are described in Marion Wilson Starling, The Slave Narrative (cited above).  Most of the thousands of Federal Writers' Project oral interviews are collected in George Rawick, general editor, The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography,(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Company, 1977).  Charles T. Davis and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., eds., The Slave's Narrative (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985) are concerned with what can be read between the lines of various slave narratives and offer useful examples of interpretation.  In addition, R.J.M. Blackett, Beating Against the Barriers: Biographical Essays in Nineteenth-Century Afro-American History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), and Gilbert Osofsky, ed., Puttin' on Ole Massa (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1969) note which fugitive memoirs were written by the fugitive, which were told to an editor or amanuensis, which were edited much later, which were entirely false, and which were changed substantially between one edition and the other.

An excellent place to begin the history of antislavery in North America is Merton Dillon, Slavery Attacked: Southern Slaves and their Allies, 1619-1865 (Baton Rouge, 1990).  Overviews of the abolitionists may be found in James Stewart, Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery and Benjamin Quarles, Black Abolitionists (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969).

The best summary of the philosophical development of antislavery in the Western tradition is David Brion Davis, Slavery and Human Progress (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984). Thomas Haskell makes the argument for that benevolent movements, such as abolitionism, and the growth of a middle class society are linked in "Capitalism and the Origins of the Humanitarian Sensibility,"  American Historical Review 90/3-4 (April and June, 1985).

The religious debate over slavery is usually cited as beginning in the mid-eighteenth century with the Society of Friends (Quakers) in England and America who grew to view slavery as an evil. Although they were not the only religious group to struggle against slavery, they became the best known.  For an account of their spiritual journey, see Jean Soderlund, Quakers and Slavery: A Divided Spirit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985) and Hugh Barbour, et. al., Quaker Crosscurrents: Three Hundred Years of Friends in the New York Yearly Meeting (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995).  Roger Bruns, ed., Am I Not a Man and a Brother? The Antislavery Crusade of Revolutionary America (New York: Chelsea House, 1977) contains a collection of the primary documents condemning colonial slavery from the Germantown Friends' Protest Against Slavery (1688) to the debate at the Constitutional Convention (1787).

The religious debate over slavery caused denominational divisions and the development of Biblical arguments for and against slavery.  The rise of evangelical Protestantism at the same time as Enlightenment-based arguments for American independence and liberty are explored in such books as Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for The Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1982).  Three excellent books on the development of a black theology and cosmos rooted in both Christianity and slavery are Albert Raboteau, Slave Religion: The Invisible Institution (New York: Oxford University Press. 1978); Mechal Sobel, Trabelin' On: The Slave Journey to an Afro-Baptist Faith (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979); and Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974). Denominational histories of American Protestantism recount the development of their theology over slavery and note the point in history at which they split into southern and northern sects over that issue.  For an overview, see Donald G. Mathews, Religion in the Old South (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977) and Samuel S. Hill, Jr. The South and the North in American Religion (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1980).

Useful overviews of the changing interpretations of slavery and of black life in the south include John B. Boles. Black Southerners, 1619-1869 Lexington, Ky, 1983  and Peter Parish, Slavery: History and Historians. New York: Harper and Row, 1989. John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), argues that slaves were able to overcome many of the obstacles that were designed to keep them separate from each other and dependent on the masters, as does Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925. (New York: Vintage Books, 1976).  The creation and persistence of African American cultural identity  is discussed in Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Thought from Slavery to Freedom New York, 1977, and  Thomas Weber, Deep Like the Rivers: Education in the Slave Quarter Community, 1831-1865. For the operation of the underground railroad in the North, see Chapter 3 "Links to Bondage" in James Oliver Horton, Free People of Color: Inside the African-American Community (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993).

An excellent primary source is the multi-volume study entitled Judicial Cases Concerning American Slavery and the Negro. edited by Helen T. Catterall (Washington: Carnegie Institution, 1926 29).  Catteral has abstracted all the court cases concerning slavery until 1866 and related cases until 1875.  Many of these cases concern fugitive slaves and her abstract permits the reader to find and read the entire case.  Since her work, other scholars have abstracted other aspects of the law and the slave codes.  These are an excellent source for local research.

Slave insurrection or revolt was never successful in the United States and was often betrayed before it began. Herbert Aptheker's American Negro Slave Revolts (New York: International Publishers, 1943), is often  criticized for his tendency to accept all evidence for slave revolt, but is massively comprehensive.  Useful studies of organized rebellion include Douglas R. Egerton, Gabriel's Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 and 1802 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), Stephen Oates, The Fires of Jubilee. (1975), a biography of Nat Turner, and Peter Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion (New York: Knopf, 1974).  David Walker's Appeal, an angry and eloquent indictment of slavery by a black man whose writing influenced northern antislavery and prompted southern reaction, is available in several edited editions: Herbert Aptheker, ed.  "One Continual Cry: David Walker's Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829-1830): Its Setting, Its Meaning. New York: Humanities Press, 1965 and, in the same year, Charles Wiltse, ed.  David Walker, Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (New York: Hill and Wang, 1965).

During the  Civil War, thousands of slaves left their homes for the Union lines.  These "contraband," as they came to be known, sought work with the Union Army or attempted to pass through the lines to freedom on the other side.  Their story may be found in  IRA Berlin, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie Rowland, eds., Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation 1861-67, Series II, The Black Military Experience (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

The local historian attempting to research the underground railroad in a particular region will find much useful information and a context for research in Carol Kammen  On Doing Local History: Reflections on What Local Historians Do, Why, and What it Means (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press for AASLH, 1986) and David E. Kyvig and Myron A. Marty, Nearby History: Exploring the Past Around You (reprint ed. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 1996). Beth Savage, ed., African American Historic Places (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1996) contains many examples of African American sites and a set of essays which place them in context.

Excellent work is being done currently and researchers should be aware of such books as  Randolph Paul Runyon, Delia Webster and the Underground Railroad (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996) and Stuart Seely Sprague, ed., His Promised Land: The Autobiography of John P. Parker Former Slave and Conductor on the Underground Railroad (New York: Norton, 1996) and Nat Brandt, The Town that Started the Civil War (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1990).  Some of the best recent work on related topics includes John R. McKivigan, The War Against Proslavery Religion: Abolitionism and the Northern Churches 1830-1865 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984); Roy E. Finkenbine, Michael F. Hembree, and Donald Yacovone, eds. Witness for Freedom: African-American Voices on Race, Slavery, and Emancipation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); Robert William Fogel, Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1989); Peter Calcine American Slavery, 1619-1877 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993); Lewis Perry and Michael Fellman, Antislavery Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Abolitionists (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979); Jean Fagan Yellin and John C. Van Horn, The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women's Political Culture in Antebellum America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994); Ronald Walters, American Reformers, 1815-1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978); Gary Collison, Shadrach Minkins: From Fugitive Slave to Citizen (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997); Peter Ripley, et al. Witness for Freedom (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993).

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE PUBLICATIONS

The following National Park Service publications contain information on the Underground Railroad and how to apply the National Register and National Historic Landmarks Criteria for Evaluation when preparing nominations

Division of Publications, National Park Service. Underground Railroad Official National Park Handbook. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1998.

National Park Service. Slavery and Resistance, CRM 21:4.Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1998.

National Park Service, Underground Railroad Special Resource Study. U.S. Department of the Interion, National Park Service, Denver Service Center, September, 1995.

National Register, History and Education, National Park Service. Exploring A Common Past: Researching and Interpreting the Underground Railroad. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1998.

National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service.  National Register Bulletin: How to Apply the National Register Criteria for Evaluation. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, revised 1997.

National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service.  National Register Bulletin: How to Complete the National Register Registration Form. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, revised 1997.
 
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