SOURCE: Stowe, Harriet B. Preface to The Garies and Their Friends. 1857. Reprint, pp. v-vi. New York: AMS Press, 1971.

In the following preface to the 1857 edition of Webb's The Garies and Their Friends, Stowe characterizes the work as a “simple and truthfully-told story” of the plight of free blacks, emancipated slaves, and fugitive slaves in antebellum Philadelphia.

The book which now appears before the public may be of interest in relation to a question which the late agitation of the subject of slavery has raised in many thoughtful minds; viz.—Are the race at present held as slaves capable of freedom, self-government, and progress?

The author is a coloured young man, born and reared in the city of Philadelphia.

This city, standing as it does on the frontier between free and slave territory, has accumulated naturally a large population of the mixed and African race.

Being one of the...