Thomas Smallwood, born into slavery in 1801 near Washington, D.C., bought his freedom, began organizing mass escapes from slavery by the wagonload, and wrote about the escapes in newspaper dispatches. Though he liberated hundreds and gave the Underground Railroad its name, Smallwood never got the credit he deserved, says Scott Shane, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of Flee North: A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery’s Borderland.

Shane recounts the exploits of Smallwood and his white colleague, Charles Torrey. He sets these men against the backdrop of the slave trade in the United States, which forced 1 million enslaved people south, tearing their families apart.

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