Henry O. Wagoner (February 27, 1816 – January 27, 1901) was an abolitionist and civil rights activist in Chicago and Denver. In the 1830s, as a free black man in Maryland, he worked on a farm and worked to free slaves with a loose group of individuals that is known as the Underground Railroad. He left Maryland in 1838 under suspicion for his activities and settled in Illinois and eventually Chicago after spending a few years in Chatham, Ontario. Continuing to work with the Underground Railroad, he was also a typesetter and journalist for radical anti-slavery newspapers before the abolition of slavery in Chicago. Around this time he befriended Frederick Douglass, with whom he would remain close throughout his life. During the American Civil War (1861–1865), he helped recruit black soldiers