When Isaac Hopper was a sixteen-year-old tailor's apprentice in Philadelphia, he helped a fugitive slave to escape. It was the beginning of a long and valued life of service.

Throughout the troubled decades before the Civil War the stubborn little Quaker devoted himself to his chosen career as advocate for the oppressed. His house became a famous way station on the Underground Railroad, and his energy as a legal defender of freedmen and escaping slaves was legendary. He was active, too, on behalf of prisoners, apprentices, and the mentally ill. William Lloyd Garrison wrote of him, "a friend more true and brave... humanity has never found."

Yet this friend of humanity was no grim reformer, but a warmhearted whimsical man, with a peppery temper and a quick sense of humor. Margaret Bacon has told his exciting life story with enthusiasm and insight.

From the dust jacket