Refugees from Slavery: Autobiographies of Fugitive Slaves in Canada

In the mid-1850s, Boston abolitionist Benjamin Drew visited numerous Canadian towns, interviewing scores of refugees from Southern slave states and taking notes of what they had to say. For reasons of safety, he protected the identity of his informants and used fictitious names.
Drew's subsequent book was an immediate response to a volume by a Boston preacher who opposed abolition. Drew's soul-stirring account, the culmination of countless fugitive slave autobiographies that preceded it, str...