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The Underground Railroad 7 Much of the Railroad’s activity was clandestine. But chapter 4 focuses on overt rescues of fugitives in danger of being returned to slavery once they reached the North. Chapter 5 examines settlements of fugitives in the “Canaan land” of Canada. In addition to the bibliography, the nar- rative is complemented by a timeline, a number of primary documents (including a generous selection of fugitives’ narratives) pertaining to the Underground Railroad, and biographical sketches of nearly 30 key fi gures in the movement. Many of the stories about the Underground Railroad that have cap- tured the national imagination have caught on because they’re the ex- citing stuff of dime-novel melodrama—secret hideaways in safe houses, subterranean tunnels, hair-raising night raids by slave patrols, desperate slaves fi ghting off bloodhounds, heroic rescues of incarcerated fugitives. Yet because it’s sometimes diffi cult to distinguish fact from folklore in such tales, we can fi nd ourselves uncertain about how literally to take them. But one thing about the Underground Railroad is indisputable: the nobility of the people, fugitives and agents alike, associated with it. The Railroad era was a bright, shining moment in the history of the United States in which a relatively small number of black and white men and women made sacrifi ces and risked retribution to offer aid to people fl eeing servitude and degradation. John Parker, an ex-slave and Railroad conduc- tor, said it well: “The success of the fugitives was absolutely dependent upon a few conscientious men [and women] north of the [Mason-Dixon] line who received no compensation, in fact, made themselves poor serv- ing the helpless fugitives who came to their door.”13 The story of the Un- derground Railroad reminds us of the heights to which human beings can reach when, afl ame with a sense of justice, they dedicate themselves to undermining oppressive social structures. Surely this is what Henry David Thoreau was implying when he declared that the Underground Railroad had “tunneled under the whole breadth of the land.” NOTES The chapter epigraph is from Henry David Thoreau’s 1853 lecture “A Plea for Captain John Brown,” in Henry David Thoreau: Collected Essays and Poems , ed. Elizabeth Hall Witherell (New York: Library of America, 2001), 412. 1 . 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, Section 7. A condensed version of the Act is included in the appendix to this book.