Additional resources for this issue of History Now Lincoln and the War Underground Railroad Confederate Emancipation Women and Home Front

Books

These four books provide the best general background on the Underground Railroad and its role in the coming of the Civil War:

Blight, David W. Blight, ed. Passages To Freedom: The Underground Railroad in History and Memory. Washington [D.C.]: Smithsonian Books, c2004. Lavishly illustrated, with fifteen scholarly essays.

Bordewich, Fergus M. Bound For Canaan : The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America. New York: Harper Collins, 2005.

Gara, Larry. The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1961. Reprinted 1996.

Harrold, Stanley. Border War: Fighting Over Slavery Before the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.

There are also a number of excellent and readable studies of particular escapes, Underground Railroad agents or anti-slavery communities that can help bring alive this topic, including:

Baker, H. Robert. The Rescue of Joshua Glover: A Fugitive Slave, the Constitution, and the Coming of the Civil War. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006.

Clinton, Catherine. Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom. New York: Back Bay/Little Brown, 2004.

Collison, Gary. Shadrach Minkins: From Fugitive Slave to Citizen. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.

Franklin, John Hope and Loren Schweninger. Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Hagedorn, Ann. Beyond the River: The Untold Story of the Heroes of the Underground Railroad. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002.

Horton, James Oliver and Lois E. Horton. In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community, and Protest Among Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Larson, Kate Clifford. Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero. New York: Ballantine, 2004.

Maltz, Earl M. Fugitive Slave on Trial: The Anthony Burns Case and Abolitionist Outrage. Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, c2010. Fascinating account of a case in Boston.

Parker, John P. His Promised Land: The Autobiography of John P. Parker, Former Slave and Conductor on the Underground Railroad. Edited by Stuart Seely Sprague. New York: W.W. Norton, c1996.

Ricks, Mary Kay. Escape on the Pearl: The Heroic Bid for Freedom on the Underground Railroad. New York: William Morrow, c2007. 1848 attempt of Washington, D.C., slaves to escape on the schooner Pearl.

Ruggles, Jeffrey. The Unboxing of Henry Brown. Richmond, Va. : Library of Virginia, 2003. Saga of Henry "Box" Brown, a slave who shipped himself north from Virginia to freedom.

Slaughter, Thomas P. Bloody Dawn: The Christiana Riot and Racial Violence in the Antebellum North (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

Smardz Frost, Karolyn. I've Got a Home in Glory Land : A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad. New York: Farrar, Straus,Giroux, 2008 . Story of Thornton and Lucie Blackburn, fugitive slaves who made their way to Canada.

And more recently on abolitionists:

Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, c2005.

Lubet, Steven. Fugitive Justice: Runaways, Rescuers, and Slavery on Trial. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, c2010.

McKivigan, John R. McKivigan, ed. Abolitionism and American Law. New York: Garland Pub., 1999. With excellent essays on Prigg v. Pa., and Ableman v. Booth.

Maltz, Earl M. Slavery and the Supreme Court, 1825-1861. Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, c2009. Analysis of the eight major cases involving slavery to come before the Supreme Court before the Civil War.

This edition of pamphlets gives a sense of Southern opinion after Lincoln’s election:
Wakelyn, Jon L. Wakelyn, ed. Southern Pamphlets On Secession, November 1860-April 1861. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, c1996.

Websites

Make sure to re-read the September 2005 issue of History Now on the abolitionist movement as well as the resources listed there:
http://www.gilderlehrman.org/historynow/09_2005/index.php

The House Divided Project at Dickinson College has produced several notable online resources on the Underground Railroad:
http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/ugrr (digital classroom)
http://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/9588 (research engine)
http://deila.dickinson.edu/slaveryandabolition/ (books & pamphlets including the full-text of William Still’s Underground Railroad (1872)

Frederick Douglas's 1845 memoir is online at:
http://www.docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass/douglass.html

See also the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom from the National Park Service:
http://www.nps.gov/ugrr/TEMPLATE/FrontEnd/index.cfm

You can also consult North American Slave Narratives from Documenting the American South at University of North Carolina:
http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/

Philadelphia Vigilance Committee records from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania:
http://www.hsp.org/default.aspx?id=890

And the Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection from Cornell University:
http://digital.library.cornell.edu/m/mayantislavery/

Finally, Boston Vigilance Committee records from social studies teacher Dean Eastman and Beverly H.S. students at:
http://www.primaryresearch.org/pr
(see detailed records under tabs for Voluntary Associations and African Americans in Antebellum Boston)