Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. Their first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway,...

"In the fall of 1863, the Union army is in control of the Mississippi River. Much of Louisiana, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge, is occupied. The Confederate army is retreating toward Texas, and being replaced by Red Legs, irregulars commanded by a maniacal figure, and enslaved men and women are beginning to glimpse freedom. When Hannah Laveau, an enslaved woman working on the Lufkin plantation, is accused of murder, she goes on the run with...

On a moonless night in the spring of 1851, a young slave makes a bid for freedom with only the North Star to guide him. Novelist and historian Robert Morgan brings to full and vivid life the story of a runaway slave named Jonah Williams, who, on his eighteenth birthday, flees the South Carolina plantation on which he was born with only a few saved coins, a knife, and the clothes on his back. No shoes, no map, no clear idea of where to head, except...

Describes the underground railroad which helped slaves escape to freedom.

"The Civil War South comes to vivid life in this electrifying story of a woman's plight and a legacy of deceit that echoes for generations. When Major Gryffth Hockaday is called to the front lines of the Civil War, his new bride is left to care for her husband's three-hundred-acre farm and infant son. Placidia, a mere teenager herself living far from her family and completely unprepared to run a farm or raise a child, must endure the darkest days...

Samuel, an eleven-year-old Kentucky slave, and Harrison, the elderly slave who helped raise him, attempt to escape to Canada via the Underground Railroad. Eleven-year-old Samuel was born as Master Hackler's slave, and working the Kentucky farm is the only life he's ever known, until one dark night in 1859, that is. With no warning, cranky old Harrison, a fellow slave, pulls Samuel from his bed and, together, they run. The journey north seems much...

Before slavery was abolished in the United States, more than 100,000 slaves escaped to freedom with help from the Underground Railroad. A secret network of safe houses, the Underground Railroad is an important part of American history. Underground Railroad workers such as Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass devoted their energy and even risked their own safety to help enslaved blacks escape to freedom. Additional features to aid comprehension include...

"Polly was used to people coming and going at her house at all times of the night because her family ran an Underground Railroad station. Strangely, tonight there was more noise than usual, and Mother said noise was the enemy. That night in June 1857, Mother called urgently for Polly to get down to the secret room and bring water with her. When Polly was able to get the heavy sloshing bucket down the narrow stairs, she saw Mother kneeling by a young...

In Uncle Tom's Cabin , Harriet Beecher Stowe created America's first black literary hero as well as the nation's antecedent protest novel. The novel's vast influence on attitudes towards African American slavery was considered an incitation towards the American Civil War; conjointly, its powerful anti-slavery message resonated with readers around the world at its time of publication. With unashamed sentimentality and expressions of faith, Harriet...

"No one knows where the term Underground Railroad came from--there were no trains or tracks, only "conductors" who helped escaping slaves to freedom. Including real stories about "passengers" on the "Railroad," this book chronicles slaves' close calls with bounty hunters, exhausting struggles on the road, and what they sacrificed for freedom. With black-and-white illustrations throughout and a sixteen-page black-and-white photo insert, the Underground...