Born into slavery outside Washington, D.C., in 1801, he had largely educated himself and bought his own freedom 11 years before. And one day early that August he took up his pen and made literary history, becoming the first to use a phrase that would resound through the subsequent decades of slavery and to the present day: underground railroad. In researching a book about Mr. Smallwood, likely the most fascinating and important African American activist and writer you’ve never heard of, I stumbled upon the solution to an old historical mystery: Where did the Underground Railroad get its name? The answer: from Mr. Smallwood’s newspaper dispatches, overlooked until recently in aging newsprint stacked in a Boston Public Library warehouse. As I read through these extraordinary letters, a rare real-time account of escapes and a lost masterpiece of satire, I came across the first use of “underground railroad” from the Aug. 10, 1842, edition of Tocsin of Liberty, an abolitionist newspaper published in Albany.

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Persons: Thomas Smallwood, enslavers, Smallwood, you’ve, antic, ’ Organizations: Washington , D.C, U.S . Capitol, Railroad, Public Library, Washington Locations: Washington ,, Washington , Baltimore, Albany, N.Y, Liberty