Likenesses of Liberty and Resistance in William Still’s The Underground Railroad

Still helped to assure readers of the seriousness and reliability of his account by publishing this dignified portrait of himself as the frontispiece of The Underground Railroad. The print’s rich, velvety tones were created by John Sartain, an ardent abolitionist and the preeminent mezzotint artist in the United States.

Still included many other portraits to personalize the narrative accounts. This engraving represents the author’s mother, Charity Still (c. 1775–1857), who had raised several children in bondage before William was born. Like other enslaved parents, she had made the heart-wrenching decision to leave some family members behind when she fled to freedom.

Following an initial failed attempt, she escaped to New Jersey with two daughters, leaving her two sons on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

Charity Still’s young sons Peter (1801–1868) and Levin Jr. (1799–1831) were immediately sold and spent the next decades passing from one enslaver to another in Kentucky and Alabama. In 1850, Peter managed to purchase his liberty. Hopeful of reuniting with his family, he sought assistance from the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society—only to discover that his interviewer was his own brother, William Still. Their joyous reconnection encouraged William Still to keep careful records of his interviews in the hope of reuniting other families.

William Still recorded the stories and portraits of other women who dressed as men to avoid suspicion while traveling alone. Ann Maria Weems (c. 1840 – after 1863) waited several years for the chance to flee the Maryland farm where she was closely surveilled. 

Her opportunity finally came in 1855. Dressed in a boy’s cap, bow tie, and jacket, the teenager took the reins of a horse-drawn carriage and drove to Philadelphia with a white male accomplice. Upon her arrival, William Still had her photographed in the masculine attire that had disguised her identity.

Jane Johnson (1814–1872) liberated herself and her two young sons in full view of their enslaver, Col. John Hill Wheeler (1806–1882) of North Carolina. While passing through Pennsylvania, a free state that did not recognize slavery, Johnson smuggled word to William Still about her desire to be free.

Risking her newfound freedom, Johnson made a surprise appearance in court to testify on behalf of Williamson and the dockworkers. Accompanied by abolitionist women including Lucretia Mott, she impressed one reporter with the “lady-like air, propriety of language, and timidity of manner that predisposes the audiences in her favour.” Following the trial, Johnson settled in Boston, where she provided aid to others seeking freedom.

Samuel D. Burris (1813–1863) was born free in Delaware, a state with strict laws against aiding those fleeing bondage. African Americans convicted of providing such assistance were fined, imprisoned, and sold into slavery for seven years. Undaunted, Burris became a conductor on the Underground Railroad, leading many people out of Delaware to freedom in Pennsylvania. In 1847, he was found guilty of assisting fugitives from slavery and imprisoned for fourteen months.

Members of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society rescued him from bondage by covertly purchasing his freedom at auction. After moving to California in 1852, Burris raised funds to educate, house, and feed formerly enslaved individuals.

Abraham Galloway (1837–1870) told William Still that the injustice of “toiling month after month the year round to support his master and not himself” drove him to seek freedom by persuading a ship captain to smuggle him out of North Carolina. Aware that turpentine was burned on northbound vessels to smoke out stowaways, Galloway covered his head and chest with oil cloth. The Vigilance Committee in Philadelphia photographed Galloway and kept the oil cloth as evidence of his dangerous escape.

During the Civil War, Galloway's familiarity with the terrain of North Carolina enabled him to serve as a Union spy, passing intelligence to General Benjamin Butler (1818–1893). He also recruited free and enslaved African Americans to enlist in the Union’s newly formed regiments of Black troops, such as those represented in this 1863 recruitment poster.

After the war, Galloway became an outspoken advocate for legal and social equality for African Americans as well as voting rights for women. In 1864, he met with President Abraham Lincoln to advocate for Black suffrage. As Galloway put it, “If the Negro knows how to use the cartridge box, he knows how to use the ballot box.” Disregarding the deferential behavior demanded by white supremacists and defying threats by the Ku Klux Klan, Galloway served as a senator in the North Carolina General Assembly of 1868–69.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911) was born free in Baltimore, Maryland, and educated at a school established by her abolitionist uncle. She published her first volume of poetry at the age of twenty-one and later contributed poems to anti-slavery newspapers. At the invitation of abolitionist societies, she toured the country lecturing on women’s rights and temperance. 

In 1866, Harper gave a speech at the Eleventh National Woman’s Rights Convention in New York City, asserting that African American women faced the double burden of racism and sexism and must be included in the fight for equality.

William Still understood the power of portraiture to animate the verbal accounts of people who had resisted enslavement and broken free from the chains of bondage. The engravings in The Underground Railroad put human faces on feats of courage and resilience that might otherwise have seemed superhuman. Through his copiously illustrated book, Still countered debasing white supremacist stereotypes with authentic likenesses of liberty and resistance.