Newspaper advertisement of the Underground Railroad
The advertisement, first appearing in the Chicago Western Citizen in July 1844, offers free travel to Canada those “who may wish to improve their health and circumstances.” It was submitted by a WIURR conductor, John Cross, of Knoxville. In 1842 Cross 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 its representation as such likely contributed to later misconceptions of the antislavery human network as an actual railroad line.
