Chapter 21 - Page 2

explicit, the means of
escape might be ascertained, and, possibly, those means be
rendered, thereafter, no longer available to the liberty-seeking
children of bondage I have left behind me. No antislavery man
can wish me to do anything favoring such results, and no
slaveholding reader has any right to expect the impartment of
such information.

While, therefore, it would afford me pleasure, and perhaps would
materially add to the interest of my story, were I at liberty to
gratify a curiosity which I know to exist in the minds of many,
as to the manner of my escape, I must deprive myself of this
pleasure, and the curious of the gratification, which such a
statement of facts would afford. I would allow myself to suffer
under the greatest imputations that evil minded men might
suggest, rather than exculpate myself by explanation, and thereby
run the hazards of closing the slightest avenue by which a
brother in suffering might clear himself of the chains and
fetters of slavery.

The practice of publishing every new invention by which a
slave is known to have escaped from slavery, has neither
wisdom nor necessity to sustain it. Had not Henry Box Brown and
his friends attracted slaveholding attention to the manner of his
escape, we might have had a thousand _Box Browns_ per annum. The
singularly original plan adopted by William and Ellen Crafts,
perished with the first using, because every slaveholder in the
land was apprised of it. The _salt water slave_ who hung in the
guards of a steamer, being washed three days and three nights--
like another Jonah--by the waves of the sea, has, by the
publicity given to the circumstance, set a spy on the guards of
every steamer departing from southern ports.

I have never approved of the very public manner, in which some of
our western friends have conducted what _they_ call the _"Under-
ground Railroad,"_ but which, I think, by their open
declarations, has been made, most emphatically, the _"Upper_-
ground Railroad." Its stations are far better known to the
slaveholders than to the slaves. I honor those good men and
women for their noble daring, in willingly subjecting themselves
to persecution, by openly avowing their participation in the
escape of slaves; nevertheless, the good resulting from such
avowals, is of a very questionable character. It may kindle an
enthusiasm, very pleasant to inhale; but that is of no practical
benefit to themselves, nor to the slaves escaping. Nothing is
more evident, than that such disclosures are a positive evil to
the slaves remaining, and seeking to escape. In publishing such
accounts, the anti-slavery man addresses the slaveholder, _not
the slave;_ he stimulates the former to greater watchfulness,