THOMAS SMALLWOOD (1801-1883) was born into slavery near Washington, D.C., purchased his freedom, educated himself and became a shoemaker in the nation's capital. In the early 1840s, he organized an underground railroad operation that freed more than 200 people from slavery in the Washington-Baltimore region, while writing satirical newspaper dispatches about the escapes under a pseudonym. In his newspaper pieces, he gave the underground railroad its name. When the local police caught on, Smallwood made his own daring escape to Toronto, Canada, where he started a business manufacturing saws and published a short memoir in 1851. He never returned to the United States.

SCOTT SHANE was a newspaper reporter for 21 years at The Baltimore Sun and 15 years at The New York Times, where he shared two Pulitzer Prizes. He is the author of Flee North: A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery's Borderland, the first book on Thomas Smallwood. His other books are Dismantling Utopia, an eyewitness account of the fall of the Soviet Union, and Objective Troy, about an American terrorist killed in a drone strike ordered by President Obama. He lives in Baltimore.