Underground Railroad

I have always been fascinated by those who have risked their lives for someone as the people who ran the Underground Railroad did. Harriet Tubman comes to mind, a woman who repeatedly jeopardized her life, with the work she did for the Underground Railroad. This week's NEW YORKER discusses the challenges of this operation and the risks involved. The opening of the review by Kathryn Schulz tells us that, "The crate arrived, via overland express, one spring evening in 1849. Three feet long, two feet wide and two and a half feet deep, it had been packed the previous morning in Richmond, Virginia, then carried by horse cart tot he local office of the Adams Express Company. From there, it was taken to the railroad depot, loaded onto a train, and, on reaching the Potomac, transferred to a steamer where, despite its label-THIS SIDE UP WITH CARE-it was placed upside down until a third passenger tipped it over and used it as a seat. After arriving in the nation's capital, it was loaded onto a wagon, dumped out at a train station, loaded onto a luggage car, sent on to Philadelphia, unloaded onto another wagon, and finally delivered to 31 North Fifth Street. The person to whom the box had been delivered, James Miller McKim, was waiting to receive it. When he opened it, out scrambled a man named Henry Brown, five feet eight inches tall, two hundred pounds, and as far as anyone knows, the first person in the United States history to liberate himself from slavery."

Hard to imagine-isn't it? Such courage and such drama and such sacrifice. And, of course, the fortitude that goes with all of that. Above all else, the fact that he arrived alive.