The Writings of Thomas Smallwood

Thomas Smallwood was a shoemaker by day and an organizer of mass escapes from slavery by night. Eleven years after purchasing his freedom from slavery, Smallwood took to the press and, over a 16-month stretch starting in 1842, pseudonymously penned numerous dispatches, satirizing and excoriating slaveowners, many of whom he referred to by name, all while offering sobering reflections on the depravity of slavery. With a pen that Smallwood would call his 'lash', he leveraged mockery to flip the oppressive racial power structure of America — Smallwood even insisted copies of his dispatches be sent directly to the slaveholders he named. These dispatches, in which Smallwood was the first to in print use the now famous term 'The Underground Railroad', are the only accounts of escape to be written in real time, imbuing Smallwood’s subversive wit with an immeasurable depth of urgency and defiance.

Oftentimes left out of contemporary discussions of abolitionist writers, this collection of dispatches — edited by and featuring notes from Scott Shane, the author of the first book on the Smallwood’s life — will introduce readers to Smallwood’s influential writings and highlight one of the forgotten voices of abolitionism in the United States.