15. Secondary Works
One will seek in vain in the secondary works for an adequate account
of the Underground Railroad, or a proper estimate of its importance,
whether one looks in the general histories of the United States, such as
the works of Von Holst, Schouler, and Rhodes, the more condensed
books of which we have an example in Prof. J. W. Burgess's The Middle
Period, or the histories of slavery, like Wilson's Rise and Fall of the Slave
Power in America, Greeley's American Conflict, Williams' History of the
Negro Race, and Willey's History of the Anti-Slavery Cause in State and
Nation. These works are important for their dïscussions from different
points of view of the political forces and constitutional questions involved
in the struggle for emancipation, and in general they present descriptions
of the famous contested fugitive slave cases and cases of rescue, but they
have failed, on account of the small amount of evidence hitherto available,
to arrive at a proper view of the political significance of the underground
system.
