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William Still

William Still

The Underground Railroad and the Angel at Philadelphia

by William C. Kashatus

41 b&w illustrations

ebook

Published: April 2021

ISBN 9780268200381

$25.99

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Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award: Biography, Silver Medal

The first full-length biography of William Still, one of the most important leaders of the Underground Railroad.

William Still: The Underground Railroad and the Angel at Philadelphia is the first major biography of the free Black abolitionist William Still, who coordinated the Eastern Line of the Underground Railroad and was a pillar of the Railroad as a whole. Based in Philadelphia, Still built a reputation as a courageous leader, writer, philanthropist, and guide for fugitive enslaved people. This monumental work details Still’s life story beginning with his parents’ escape from bondage in the early nineteenth century and continuing through his youth and adulthood as one of the nation’s most important Underground Railroad agents and, later, as an early civil rights pioneer. Still worked personally with Harriet Tubman, assisted the family of John Brown, helped Brown’s associates escape from Harper’s Ferry after their famous raid, and was a rival to Frederick Douglass among nationally prominent African American abolitionists. Still’s life story is told in the broader context of the anti-slavery movement, Philadelphia Quaker and free black history, and the generational conflict that occurred between Still and a younger group of free black activists led by Octavius Catto.

Unique to this book is an accessible and detailed database of the 995 fugitives Still helped escape from the South to the North and Canada between 1853 and 1861. The database contains twenty different fields—including name, age, gender, skin color, date of escape, place of origin, mode of transportation, and literacy—and serves as a valuable aid for scholars by offering the opportunity to find new information, and therefore a new perspective, on runaway enslaved people who escaped on the Eastern Line of the Underground Railroad. Based on Still’s own writings and a multivariate statistical analysis of the database of the runaways he assisted on their escape to freedom, the book challenges previously accepted interpretations of the Underground Railroad. The audience for William Still is a diverse one, including scholars and general readers interested in the history of the anti-slavery movement and the operation of the Underground Railroad, as well as genealogists tracing African American ancestors.

“There has been a need for a good biography of William Still. This sweeping book situates Still at the center of the workings of the Underground Railroad as well as other abolitionist-related activities of the period. William Still provides a sense of the world of which Still was a part and the many roles he played in this activist movement.” —Spencer R. Crew, author of Thurgood Marshall: A Life in American History

"With this book, William C. Kashatus has delivered a valuable addition to the growing body of serious literature on the Underground Railroad. His attention to the details of Still's life both before and after his engagement in abolitionist work provides a new and rounded picture of a man who for too long remained a vague figure behind his well-known compendium of information on the fugitive slaves who passed through Philadelphia." —Fergus M. Bordewich, author of Bound for Canaan

"William C. Kashatus's contribution expands the bandwidth of African American historiography on the Underground Railroad and William Still. For those who want a closer look at an extraordinary and multidimensional human being, William Still provides an expert and sophisticated view." —Kelisha B. Graves, editor of Nannie Helen Burroughs

"William C. Kashatus has given us what will probably be the definitive biography of William Still. He has also deepened our understanding of the experiences of fugitive slaves and the people who aided them before the Civil War." —Thomas Hamm, editor of Quaker Writings

"William C. Kashatus’s William Still, along with providing a rich account of the great abolitionist and archivist of the Underground Railroad, brilliantly conveys the courage, the resourcefulness, and the intelligence of the slaves escaping towards freedom. This is history as it should be written: poignant, passionate, and trenchant." —Kenneth A. McClane, author of Color: Essays on Race, Family, and History

"William C. Kashatus’s William Still is a double tribute to the heroism of this fascinating man as well as to that of the many freedom-seekers who made the journey out of the house of bondage and of those who aided them." —Christopher A. McAuley, author of The Spirit vs. the Souls

"Kashatus’s detailed biography of William Still, with its stories of courageous slaves plotting daring escapes, and moving accounts of free Black people who were kidnapped and taken into slavery, reveals the interracial cooperation involved in helping escaped slaves reach freedom, and honors the man who, at his death in 1902, was named 'Father of the Underground Railroad.'" —Foreword Reviews (Starred Review)

"In the first scholarly biography of [William] Still, Kashatus highlights the critical roles Still and other Black Americans played along the entire Underground Railroad, and the risks they took to aid enslaved people. A penetrating analysis of Still’s interviews reveals new and important insights into the enslaved people who made the journey into freedom. . . . An essential work that is a must-read for those interested in the Underground Railroad and Black history in the U.S." —Library Journal (Starred Review)

"Kashatus’s biggest contribution to the historiography of the Underground Railroad is the analysis he provides of the information collected by William Still. Using both Still’s Underground Railroad and his unpublished Journal C of Station No. 2 of the Underground Railroad, Kashatus has compiled significant trends that characterize the freedom seekers." —Hidden City

"William C. Kashatus's new biography of abolitionist William Still is the first scholarly biography of the activist. It is also a very accessible text, suitable for a broad audience. . . . The biography accomplishes the important task of introducing Still and his significance to a wide readership." —Quaker History

"William Still stands poised to be the authoritative biography of the ‘Angel at Philadelphia’ for a generation to come." —American Historical Review

On August 6, 1850, Peter Freedman, an ex-slave who had recently purchased his freedom, arrived at the office of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society (PASS) in Philadelphia. The City of Brotherly Love was a nerve center of abolitionist activity due to its large Quaker and free black populations. There he met William Still, a free black abolitionist and director of Philadelphia's General Vigilance Committee (PVC). Freedman, worn down by years of hard labor, looked much older than his fifty years. For more than an hour, the former slave recounted his life's story explaining that he was searching for his mother from whom he had been separated some forty years earlier. Still sat and listened, transfixed by the tragic tale.

According to Freedman, he and his younger brother Levin were "kidnapped" from their mother, who he referred to as "Sidney." "Carried south," Levin died a slave in Alabama, but Peter earned the $500 necessary to purchase his own "ransom" from his owner, a Jewish merchant named Joseph Friedman. With no knowledge of the last names of his mother and father, or where he was born, Peter set out to find his mother. His search took him to Philadelphia where he planned to have notices read in the African American churches of the city in the hope that some of the older members might recall his mother's circumstances.

As Still listened to the stranger's story, he was struck by the similarities to his own mother's past. Charity Still was born, raised and wed in slavery on Maryland's Eastern Shore. She and her husband, Levin, were the young parents of four small children, two boys and two girls. Levin purchased his own freedom, resettled in Burlington County, New Jersey, and became a farmer, hoping to save enough money to secure the manumission of his wife and their children who remained in bondage. Charity and her two daughters rejoined Levin after a successful escape, but were forced to leave behind her two sons, eight-year-old Levin and six-year-old Peter. But the similarities ended there.

Could "Sidney" actually be Charity Still?

Though William was the youngest of the fourteen children Charity had borne in freedom, he was the one most curious about his mother's bondage. That curiosity and, according to family lore, the knowledge that he had two older brothers, who remained in slavery, inspired him to take a job as clerk of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society in 1847.

Indeed, Charity Still had reason to be secretive about her early life. After she escaped, she changed her name from "Sidney" in order to protect her safety and that of her rescued daughters. At the same time, she remained heart-broken over the two sons she had left behind.

Listening to Peter's tale, William couldn't help but notice the facial resemblance between Freedman and his mother. "I could see in the face of my new-found brother the likeness of my mother," he wrote of the moment he realized that Peter was the older brother he had never met. "My feelings were unutterable."

The next day, the two brothers traveled to Burlington, New Jersey, just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, where Peter was reunited with his eighty-year-old mother. Four years later, Peter, with William's help, freed his wife and three children who he left behind in slavery. They settled on a ten-acre farm in Burlington, where Peter lived until he died in 1868.

The reunion with his long-lost brother Peter reinforced Still's commitment to assist fugitives who also longed to be reunited with their families. To that end, he and his wife, Letitia George, often hid runaways in their own home at 832 South Street. He also communicated with dozens of station masters and conductors. With their assistance, Still coordinated the movements of hundreds of fugitives along the Eastern Line of the Underground Railroad from Northern Virginia to Canada. Although his activities were in direct violation of the federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Still assisted nearly 1,000 slaves to freedom between 1853 and 1861. In the process, he earned the endearing moniker, "Angel at Philadelphia.”