A Letter from the Baltimore Jail
In a letter written to Milton M. Fisher from Cell Number 3 in the Baltimore Jail on 16 November 1844, Abolitionist Charles T. Torrey describes his role in the Underground Railroad.
Torrey, a celebrated abolitionist martyr at the time of his death, played an important role in the early years of the Underground Railroad. He worked with free blacks and former slaves in the District of Columbia and Maryland, and drew upon the local knowledge of his African American colleagues and the sympathy and support of members of the white antislavery community to pioneer routes northward for "companies" of fugitive slaves that he helped to escape to freedom. In his letter to Fisher, Torrey freely—and indiscreetly—claimed that it had been his "happiness" to free about 400 people, "who, otherwise, would have lived, and, most of them died, in slavery."
