Come ride on the "Liberty Line"
Dublin Core
Title
Come ride on the "Liberty Line"
Subject
Misconceptions of the Underground Railroad
Description
The advertisement offers free travel to Canada those “who may wish to improve their health and circumstances.” A WIURR conductor, John Cross, of Knoxville, submitted this widely reproduced illustration to the Western Citizen. In 1842 he had been assaulted for harboring two women, Susan Borders and Hannah Morrison, and their three children, who had escaped illegal enslavement in Randolph County, Illinois. Cross was an ordained Congregational minister who came to Illinois from New York in 1839. The “Liberty Line” was not a real railroad, but a network of sympathetic northerners who helped escaped slaves flee to freedom, many to Canada, were slavery had been abolished. The representation of the "Liberty Line" as a train likely contributed to later misconceptions of the antislavery human network as an actual railroad line.
Creator
New York Public Library Digital Gallery
Publisher
House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, http://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/21748
Date
July 1844
Rights
None asserted
Format
jpeg photograph
Language
English
Type
image with text
Identifier
WIUGRR #13
Coverage
Illinois, United States
Still Image Item Type Metadata
Original Format
paper illustration
Files
Citation
New York Public Library Digital Gallery, “Come ride on the "Liberty Line",” Traces of Western Illinois' Underground Railroad, accessed May 19, 2024, https://timroberts.org/wiugrr/items/show/13.