By Nat Brandt with Yanna Kroyt Brandt
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2010, All Rights Reserved
Editor’s note: This article is excerpted from the book In the Shadow of the Civil War: Passmore Williamson and the Rescue of Jane Johnson and appears here through the courtesy of the authors.
It was “very warm,” William Still thought, “intensely hot” in fact for a mid-July day in Philadelphia. Still was wearing a top hat as a shield against the blazing late-afternoon sun, but otherwise he had chosen to don the jacket of the suit he wore to work. It couldn’t have been comfortable in the heat, for Still was striding quickly down Fifth Street, an urgent note in his hand. A “colored boy” he had never seen before had handed him the note at the office of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society.
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