The Liberty Line

Download or read book The Liberty Line written by Larry Gara and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 1996-03-01 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The underground railroad - with its mysterious signals, secret depots, abolitionist heroes, and slave-hunting villains - has become part of American mythology. But legend has distorted much of the history of this institution, which Larry Gara carefully investigates in this important study. Gara show how pre-Civil War partisan propaganda, postwar reminiscences by fame-hungry abolitionists, and oral tradition helped foster the popular belief that a powerful secret organization spirited floods of slaves away from the South. In contrast to that legend, the slaves themselves had active roles in their own escapes from slave states. They carried out their runs to the North, receiving aid only after they had reached territory where they still faced return under the Fugitive Slave Law. Thus, The Liberty Line places fugitive slaves in their rightful position: the center of their struggle for freedom.