Agents on the Underground Railroad

Agents on the Underground Railroad. . , When Harriet Tubman engaged with the Underground Railroad, she tapped into a secret network of people who firmly believed it was time to end slavery. There were always some enslaved people who seized opportunities to flee to freedom, but by the 1830s, a diverse group of like-minded people were motivated to actively help slaves escape. Some risked their lives during the dangerous and unlawful work of hiding, transporting, feeding, or clothing escapees. Others worked to expand the organized antislavery movement and political sentiment., William Still , William Still worked for the Vigilance Committee in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and secretly kept records of all of the slaves he helped to freedom. "…of all the blacks that worked in the Underground Railroad, all names pale before that of Harriet Tubman, whose base of operations included the slave states themselves.", Thomas Garrett , Thomas Garrett, a Quaker merchant in Wilmington, Delaware, provided food, money, and shoes to slaves on their way to William Still in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He once said of Tubman, "I never met with any person of any color who had more confidence in the voice of God, as spoken direct to her soul.", Samuel Green , Samuel Green was a free Methodist minister and an Underground Railroad conductor here in Dorchester County, Maryland. Harriet helped guide his son to freedom in 1854. Reverend Green was imprisoned in 1857 for possessing a copy of the anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe., Frederick Douglass , Frederick Douglass was born in Talbot County, Maryland, in 1818 and escaped from slavery in 1838. He was an author and orator and a leader in the antislavery movement. Of Tubman he said, "One colored woman who escaped eight years ago made several returns at great risk, and brought fifty others from the house of slavery."