of the best men in the nation were stockholders; men of wealth and influence, men in office, State and national,—men, women and children identified themselves with its affairs. It had the aid and approval of the most distinguished philanthropists of the age, and many far-seeing politicians, descrying the conflict between slave and free labor, took sides with the latter. It was a deep-laid scheme, having in view the restoration of God-given rights to helpless, hunted fugitives, making slaveholders realize that money paid for human chattels was an insecure investment, resulting in gradual emancipation, and finally in total abolition with the consent of the slaveholders themselves. Having thus slightly sketched the formation of the Company of the Underground R. R. and its object, I will narrate the wanderings of Jo Norton.
"UNDERGROUND RAILROAD—A MYSTERY NOT YET SOLVED"
Such was the heading of an article in one of the morning papers in the city of Washington, on Saturday morning of the last week in October, 1839, from which I copy as closely as I can from memory, not having time to look up the paper:
“The abolition incendiaries are undermining, not only our domestic institutions, but the very foundations of our Capitol. Our citizens will recollect that the boy Jim, who was arrested while lurking about the Capitol in August, would disclose nothing until he was subjected to torture by screwing his fingers in a blacksmith’s vice, when he acknowledged that he was to have been sent north by railroad; was to have started from near the place where he stood when discovered by the patrol. He refused to tell who was to aid him—said he did not know—and most likely he did not know. Nothing more could be got from him until they gave the screw another turn, when he said, “the railroad went underground all the
