Flee North by Scott Shane

A riveting account of the extraordinary abolitionist, liberator, and writer
Thomas Smallwood, who bought his own freedom, led hundreds out of
slavery, and named the underground railroad, from Pulitzer Prizewinning author and journalist, Scott Shane. Flee North tells the story for
the first time of an American hero all but lost to history.
Born into slavery, Thomas Smallwood was free, self-educated, and working as
a shoemaker a short walk from the U.S. Capitol by the 1840s. He recruited a
young white activist, Charles Torrey, and together they began to organize
mass escapes from Washington, Baltimore, and surrounding counties to
freedom in the north.
They were racing against an implacable enemy: men like Hope Slatter, the
region's leading slave trader, part of a lucrative industry that would tear one
million enslaved people from their families and sell them to the brutal cotton
and sugar plantations of the deep south.
Men, women, and children in imminent danger of being sold south turned to
Smallwood, who risked his own freedom to battle what he called the most
inhuman system that ever blackened the pages of history." And he
documented the escapes in satirical newspaper columns, mocking the
slaveholders, the slave traders and the police who worked for them.
At a time when Americans are rediscovering a tragic and cruel history and
struggling anew with the legacy of white supremacy, this book - the first to tell
the extraordinary story of Smallwood - will offer complicated heroes, genuine
villains, and a powerful narrative set in cities still plagued by shocking racial
inequity today.

Scott Shanewas a reporter for 15 years at The New York Times, where he
was twice a member of teams that won Pulitzer Prizes, and before that for 21
years at The Baltimore Sun . His two previous books are Dismantling Utopia,
a firsthand account of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Objective Troy,
the story of an American terrorist killed in a drone strike on orders of President
Obama. In 2019-2020 he was a fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns
Hopkins University, where he has taught courses on media and on the
Russian attack on the 2016 American presidential election

Celadon Books
On Sale: Sep 19/23
6.12 x 9.25 • 336 pages
Includes one front matter map and black-and-white
images throughout. Plus one 8-pg color photographic
insert.
9781250843210 • $40.00 • CL - With dust jacket
History / US / 19Th Century