Excerpt
IntroductionI Am a Man Among Men
In the spring of 1857, the anti-slavery Vigilance Committee of Philadelphia copied into its confidential Underground Railroad Record an excerpt from a letter it had received from Abram Harris, a former slave who had escaped from his master in Charles County, Maryland.
Some weeks earlier, Harris had reached the Philadelphia station along the Underground Railroad that transported fugitive American slaves to safety in Canada. He traveled by night, barely eluding the slave catchers who were hot at his heels. The friend with whom he fled was not so lucky. He died along the journey, the first instance of death on the Underground Rail Road in this region,” the Record states.
The Vigilance Committee kept meticulous notes on the slaves who passed through its territory and what happened to them after they departed Philadelphia. Harris, the Record notes, was a man of medium size, tall, dark chestnut color.” He could read and write a little and was very intelligent.” The Committee recorded that it fed and housed Harris before handing him over to another conductor and dispatching him farther north to the next depot on the Underground Railroad.
The Record doesnt say how Harris reached his final destination in Canada. He could have hidden in a boat that sailed from the young metropolis of Buffalo, New York, across Lake Erie to a private dock on the Canadian shore. Or perhaps a New England abolitionist guided him at night over the sparsely guarded, wooded border in Vermont. However he achieved his freedom, Abram Harris expressed his relief and happiness. Written from the newfound safety of Canada, the former slaves letter sings with joy.
Give my love to Mr. _____ and family,” he writesthe name of the Philadelphian who helped him was redacted in case the Record fell into the wrong hands--and tell them I am in a land of liberty! I am a man among men!”