His Promised Land: The Autobiography of John P. Parker, Former Slave and Conductor on the Underground Railroad by John P. Parker, Stuart Seely Sprague

An unusual and stirring account of the rarely told story of how the underground war against slavery was foughtand sometimes won. This narrative, never before published, was dictated to a newspaperman after the Civil War. It follows John P. Parker, a determined young slave who is forced from his family in Virginia and made to walk to Alabama, where he is sold to a doctor. Escaping to New Orleans, after a series of harrowing near-captures, he is found by his master and returned to Mobile. He convinces a widow to buy him and earns his way out of slavery through working in a foundry. Moving to Ohio, Parker becomes a major member of the abolitionist movement in Ripley, a stronghold of the Underground Railroad.