Hill, John Henry

Life Span
to
    Full name
    John Henry Hill
    Birth Date Certainty
    Estimated
    Death Date Certainty
    Estimated
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    Black
    Origins
    Slave State
    No. of Spouses
    1
    Occupation
    Other
    Other Occupation
    Carpenter
    Relation to Slavery
    Slave or Former Slave
    Other Affiliations
    Abolitionists (Anti-Slavery Society)

    John Henry Hill (Still, 1872)

    Scholarship
    JOHN HENRY never forgot those with whom he had been a fellow-sufferer in Slavery; he was always fully awake to their wrongs, and longed to be doing something to aid and encourage such as were striving to get their Freedom. He wrote many letters in behalf of others, as well as for himself, the tone of which, was always marked by the most zealous devotion to the slave, a high sense of the value of Freedom, and unshaken confidence that God was on the side of the oppressed, and a strong hope, that the day was not far distant, when the slave power would be "suddenly broken and that without remedy."
    William Still, The Underground Rail Road (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1872), 190.

    John Henry Hill, Correspondence in Still’s Underground Rail Road (Still, 1872)

    Scholarship
    In these letters, may be seen, how much liberty was valued, how the taste of Freedom moved the pen of the slave; how the thought of fellow-bondmen, under the heel of the slave-holder, aroused the spirit of indignation and wrath; how importunately appeals were made for help from man and from God; how much joy was felt at the arrival of a fugitive, and the intense sadness experienced over the news of a failure or capture of a slave. Not only are the feelings of John Henry Hill represented in these epistles, but the feelings of very many others amongst the intelligent fugitives all over the country are also represented to the letter. It is more with a view of doing justice to a brave, intelligent class, whom the public are ignorant of, than merely to give special prominence to John and his relatives as individuals, that these letters are given.
    William Still, The Underground Rail Road (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1872), 190-191.
    How to Cite This Page: "Hill, John Henry," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/index.php/node/25070.