6. Slave Biographies and Autobiographies
A recital of the life and sufferings of many colored refugees hi books
written by themselves or by sympathetic friends, and published in
various free states during the two or three decades preceding 1860,
tended to increase the Northern feeling against slavery and doubtless
also to carry to many minds convictions that found a partial expression
in underground efforts. These books contain descriptions of slave life
on the plantation and tell with the omission of particulars, which it
would have been imprudent at the time to relate, the story of the escape
to liberty. The omission of these particulars renders these sources of
little use in tracing the secret routes to Canada followed by the refugees,
or in confirming, in part or in whole, the routes of others. In the case
of Frederick Douglass, the gaps and omissions appearing in the first
autobiography are filled with much valuable information in the second,
written after slavery was abolished. The books by Josiah Henson, the
Rev. J. W. Loguen and Austin Steward are interesting as the narratives
of negroes of superior ability who spent a part at least of their time
after self-emancipation in Canada, and could therefore write intelligently
on the condition of their people there.
