Works Cited

Sheridan Ford 

In The Underground Railroad, Still describes Ford as a twenty eight year-old man who "was tall, and well-made, and possessed of a considerable share of intelligence." After being whipped severely by his master and hearing of being auctioned off in the near future, Ford decided to enlist the help of the committee running the Underground Rail Road in order to escape his dismal fate. Still recounts Ford's flight to freedom:

The first day of the woods he passed in prayer incessantly, all alone. In this particular place of seclusion he reamined "four days and nights," "two days suffered severely from hunger, cold and thrist." However, one who was a "friend" to him, and knew his whereabouts, managed to to get some food to him and consoling words; but at the end of the four days this friend got inot some difficulty and thus Sheridan was left to "wade through deep waters and head winds" in an almost hopeless state. There he could not consent to stay and starve to death. Accordingly, he left and found another place od seclusion-with a friend in the town- for a pecuniary consideration. A secret passage was procured for him on one of the steamers running between Philadelphia and Richmond, Va. When he left his poor wife, Julia, she was then "lying in prison to be sold," on the simple charge of having been suspected of conniving at her husband's escape. As a woman she had known something of the "barbarism of slavery," from every-day experience, which the large scars about her head indicated-according to Sheridan's testimony. She was the mother of two children, but had never been allowed to have the care of either of them. The husband, utterly powerless to offer the least sympathy in word or deed, left his dark habitation of cruelty, as above referred to, with no hope of ever seeing wife or child again in this world. (53)

As Still suggests in this narrative, men and their wives and children were often separated as a result of this flight. The desire to avoid any more sufferings and, more often than not, to preserve one's life, resulted in the disintegration of the basic family unit. Still concludes in this particular account that Ford reached Boston as he had planned.