Jermain Wesley Loguen

A gripping biography of a man who escaped slavery to become an influential abolitionist, famously known as the “King of the Underground Railroad” Jermain Wesley Loguen (1813–1872) was a fugitive from slavery, an abolitionist, and a minister, teacher, and political activist. He worked alongside Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, and his home in Syracuse, New York, was among the most publicized Underground Railroad stations in the northern states. Loguen’s political commitments in the years before the Civil War were carried out at great personal risk, for he had liberated himself from slavery in Tennessee and was in constant danger of being captured and reenslaved under the Fugitive Slave Law. Defiantly, however, he refused to purchase his own freedom, an act that he believed would have legitimized the rights of slaveholders. In addition to aiding fellow fugitives from slavery, Loguen worked tirelessly to promote Black equality and uplift throughout upstate New York and Canada. After Emancipation, he extended his work to aid freedpeople in the South and to advocate for Black equality on a national scale. In this engaging study, Angela F. Murphy follows Loguen from his early years through his transformation into one of the brightest stars in the constellation of abolitionists and reformers in New York.