Abolition and the Underground Railroad in South Jersey: Not Without a Fight (PB) (2023)

Southern New Jersey was a hotbed of slave fugitives, freedmen and abolitionists in the Civil War era.

The proud 22nd Regiment of the United States Colored Troops included hundreds of Black New Jersians ready to fight for emancipation and the Union cause. Abolitionists such as Harriet Tubman, Abigail Goodwin and Benjamin Sheppard operated among key landmarks of the underground railtoad in South Jersey counties such as Cape May, Cumberland and Salem. Slavery and the rights of Black Americans were at the forefront of the region's attention inlcuding stories such as a melee in a Cape May hotel between Balck waiters and white patrons, the covert signaling of boats ferrying fugitive slaves across the Delaware River and the daring resucue of a runway slave from the hands of slave catches by local church worshipers.

Author Ellen Alford reveals the history of abolition and the underground railroad in South Jersey.