In 1847 he removed to Cincinnati, and took charge of one of the most important points in the system of the U. G. R. R. Cincinnati is built on the northern bank of the Ohio River, and thus stood on the very frontier of the slave-land, the opposite shore belonging to the slave state of Kentucky. Here his work went on for about fifteen years, till the war put an end to slavery in the United States. He tells in his _Reminiscences_ many a stirring story of the escape of fugitives that he passed on to Canada. For these we must refer our readers to the book itself. He was so active, enterprising, and successful that he received the name of ‘President of the Underground Railroad.’ Everywhere he had the fullest confidence reposed in him by the coloured people; and often those who had escaped to Canada would send him their savings, to be employed in buying their relatives and friends out of captivity in the South by a fair bargain with the planters. It may be safely said that his whole life was passed in the cause of promoting the freedom of the slave; and he always found willing helpers and allies, mostly men of his own religious persuasion. He always confined his operations to concealing the slaves that came or were brought to him, and helping them upon their way to Canada or to some free state. He would never actually lure a slave from a plantation; and he condemned any active or forcible resistance to the law, even when it was exercised upon the side of slavery. A man of quite a different stamp was John Fairfield, another agent of the Underground Railroad, but whom Levi Coffin with his Quaker peace principles could never forgive for making the revolver an auxiliary in his work. ‘With all his faults,’ he says, ‘and misguided impulses and wicked ways, Fairfield was a brave man; he never betrayed a trust that was reposed in him, and he was a true friend to the oppressed and suffering slave.’ Fairfield was a Virginian; and his earliest exploit had been to run away to Canada from his uncle’s plantation taking one of the slaves with him. From that time till he died he passed an adventurous life, visiting once or twice in the year Virginia or Kentucky, establishing relations with the slaves upon a plantation, and then leading them to Canada. He was soon known to many of the refugees settled there, and they would ask him to bring them their relatives from the Southern plantations, sometimes offering him money they had saved as payment for his exertions.