to Render the Private Public: William Still and the Selling of the Underground Rail Road
IN HIS BOOK The BLACK Man (1863), William Wells Brown, well known abolitionist and author of the controversial Clotel; or, the President's Daughter, described William Still's interest in the plight of slaves: "The long connection of Mr. Still with the antislavery office, in a city through which fugitive slaves had to pass in their flight from bondage, and the deep interest felt by him for the freedom and welfare of his race have brought him prominently before the public." Brown's assess ment of Still places his life and work in the public sphere. Although William Still (1821-1902) was a well-known antislavery agitator, the nature of his work as head of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee required him to be more circumspect in his actions than Brown implies. While Still performed Herculean labors on behalf of the fugitive slave population in the antebellum period, he chose to keep a low public profile. He lectured on the evils of slavery in the United States and Canada but was not a part of the influential transatlantic abolitionist community. Still was a visible member of Philadelphia's free black community, and this is where he exerted his greatest influence and earned his reputation as a prominent antislavery man. It was not until the postbellum period, how ever, that Still, through the publication of his book The Underground Rail Road, would be positioned to make the fruits of his private labors public. By doing so Still provided one of the most substantial records of how African Americans, through independent action and interracial alliance, undermined the institution of slavery.1 The publication of The Underground Rail Road in 1872 heightened