The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad Reprint Edition

“A classic.” — New York Times

“Larry Gara’s Liberty Line, published in 1961, is unquestionably the most influential book on the Underground Railroad of the last 50 years.” — World History

“”History has been utterly wrong in ascribing to the abolitionist movement a thoroughgoing and smoothly run underground transportation system for runaway slaves. In The Liberty Line, the legend’s ghost is fortunately and finally exorcised, and about time.” Saturaday Review” —

“”The book is an unusually valuable piece of academic research. Well written, on an important subject, it provides salutary correction to a well-entrenched myth.” Chicago Tribune” —

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.