The Vigilance Network: Secret Society That Moved Freedom Seekers Through Philadelphia

The Vigilance Network illuminates the actions of a group of unsung American heroes—the Black and white abolitionists who, driven fiercely by their beliefs and dogged by personal demons, fought threats, prison, and social ostracism to guide freedom seekers in the decades before the Civil War. The Vigilance Network illuminates the actions of a group of unsung American heroes—the Black and white abolitionists who, driven fiercely by their beliefs and dogged by personal demons, fought threats, prison, and social ostracism to guide freedom seekers in the decades before the Civil War. While much of Carrie Hagen’s narrative focuses on the offices of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia, located just a block away from Independence Hall, she also follows escapees on the Underground Railroad from Maryland to Ontario. Indeed, characters drive the largely unknown narratives that sit at the center of The Vigilance Network: Robert Purvis, William Still, Lucretia Mott, Hetty Reckless, William Parker, Jane Johnson, and even a brief appearance from Harriet Tubman. By following both abolitionists and escapees—who were sometimes one and the same—through the streets of Philadelphia and its suburbs, Hagen reconstructs the Vigilance Network’s largely unknown role in the Underground Railroad. A fast-paced and deeply researched work of narrative nonfiction, The Vigilance Network also connects the causes of today’s systemic social injustice to this deep history and reveals what can happen when people refuse to let fear or self-consciousness keep them from assisting the vulnerable.