The Film: Interview Transcripts: Greg Wilson

Greg Wilson, historian and Miller descendant on
risks and rewards
The people of Sugar Grove (Pennsylvania) were reviled by the southern sympathizers or "Peace Democrats" who lived in nearby Warren.  Yet these people had nothing to gain and everything to lose, by being a part of the Underground Railroad.  Being an abolitionist was one thing; hiding a slave was another.  You could be fined $1,000 - which for a lot of people was more than the value of everything they owned.

President Lincoln himself said that the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin did more to bring on the Civil War than any other single event.  Stowe rightfully believed that it was only through the eyes of the fugitives themselves that the nation would truly understand the horrors of slavery ... and what it meant to finally find freedom.

.the power of religious conviction