In a sense, the Underground Railroad was a secret organization. This was necessary, as the fugitive-slave law gave the master the right to pursue his slave when "fleeing from labor and service in one State into another," and apprehend him by due process of Federal law. The men who managed this road felt that they should obey God rather than man; that the slave's right to his freedom was greater than any law the nation could make through its representatives. So the Underground Railroad was made up of a company of godly men who stretched themselves across the land, from the borders of the sunny slave States to the snow-white shores of Canada. When men came up out of the hell of slavery gasping for a breath of free air, these good friends sheltered and fed them; and then hastened them off in the stillness of the night, with the everlasting stars as their ministers, toward Canada. The fugitives would be turned over to another conductor, who would conceal them until nightfall, when he would load his living freight into a covered conveyance, and drive all night to reach the next "station"; and so on until the fugitives found themselves free and safe under the English flag in Canada. This was the safety-valve to the institution of slavery. As soon as leaders arose among the slaves, refusing to endure the yoke, they came North. Had they remained, the direful scenes of St. Domingo would have been enacted, and the hot, vengeful breath of massacre would have swept the South as a tornado, and blanched the cheek of the civilized world. ANTI-SLAVERY LITERATURE wrought mightily for God in its field.[27] Frederick Douglass's book, "My Bondage and My Freedom"; Bishop Loguen's, "As a Slave and As a Freeman"; "Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro," by the Rev. Samuel Ringgold Ward; "Twenty-two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman," by the Rev. Austin Stewart; "Narrative of Solomon Northup," "Walker's Appeal,"--all by eminent Negroes, exposed the true character of slavery, informed the public mind, stimulated healthy thought, and touched the heart of two continents with a sympathy almost divine.