The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad [Paperback]

Larry Gara (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1996 | ISBN-10: 0813108640 | ISBN-13: 978-0813108643

" 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 this history. Larry Gara shows how pre-Civil War partisan propanda, postwar remininscences 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 much popular belief, however, the slaves themselves had active roles in their own escape. They carried out their runs, receiving aid only after they had reached territory where they still faced return. The Liberty Line puts slaves in their rightful position: the center of their struggle for freedom.

Editorial Reviews

Review

""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" --

""A classic." New York Times" --

Product Details

• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky (March 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813108640
• ISBN-13: 978-0813108643
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,087,142 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A level-headed masterpiece, August 17, 2009

By 

bibliophile (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad (Paperback)

The truth about the Underground Railroad is difficult to establish, because the operators were violating federal law and consequently kept few records. Most of the early books about it were based on recollections of participants or their children, collected long after Emancipation, and most of these reflected the perspectives of the whites who helped the escaping slaves. It is to Gara's book and his other writings that we owe the major reexamination of the entire phenomenon. He refocuses the discussion on the fugitives themselves, giving a much more balanced picture of how it all happened. It is true, of course, that thousands of whites helped to spirit the fugitives to safety; but it was the slaves themselves who risked everything, who traveled hundreds of miles on foot, in the dark, through swamps and rivers and fields, in search of freedom. The whites--at great personal risk, too--simply helped. Gara has revolutionized our understanding of the UGRR, and his little book is a genuine classic.