The Underground Railroad eBook

William Still
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,446 pages of information about The Underground Railroad.

The Underground Railroad eBook

William Still
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,446 pages of information about The Underground Railroad.

The trial which ensued from the above, came off before Chief Justice Taney, at New Castle.  My revered friend, Thomas Garrett, and myself, were there convicted of harboring fugitive slaves, and were fined accordingly, to the extent of the law; Judge Taney delivering the sentence.  A detailed account of said trial, will fully appear in the memoirs of our deceased friend, Thomas Garrett.

* * * * *

SAMUEL RHOADS

Was born in Philadelphia, in 1806, and was through life a consistent member of the Society of Friends.  His parents were persons of great respectability and integrity.  The son early showed an ardent desire for improvement, and was distinguished among his young companions for warm affections, amiable disposition, and genial manners, rare purity and refinement of feeling, and a taste for literary pursuits.  Preferring as his associates those to whom he looked for instruction and example, and aiming at a high standard, he won a position, both mentally and socially, superior to his early surroundings.  With a keen sense of justice and humanity, he could not fail to share in the traditional opposition of his religious society to slavery, and to be quickened to more intense feeling as the evils of the system were more fully revealed in the Anti-slavery agitation which in his early manhood began to stir the nation.

A visit to England, in 1834, brought him into connection and friendship with many leading Friends in that country, who were actively engaged in the Anti-slavery movement, and probably had much to do with directing his attention specially to the subject.  Once enlisted, he never wavered, but as long as slavery existed by law in our country his influence, both publicly and privately, was exerted against it.  He was strengthened in his course by a warm friendship and frequent intercourse with the late Abraham L. Pennock, a man whose unbending integrity and firm allegiance to duty were equalled only by his active benevolence, broad charity, and rare clearness of judgment.  Samuel Rhoads, like him, while sympathizing with other phases of the Anti-slavery movement, took especial interest in the subject of abstaining from the use of articles produced by slave labor.  Believing that the purchase of such articles, by furnishing to the master the only possibility of pecuniary profit from the labor of his slaves, supplied one motive for holding them in bondage, and that the purchaser thus became, however unwittingly, a partaker in the guilt, he felt conscientiously bound to withhold his individual support as far as practicable, and to recommend the same course to others.

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The Underground Railroad from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.