The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad (review)

Book Reviews117 "Sir John Hawkins," "The Trade," and "The Slave at Work," provides a very sketchy and highly generalized set of pictures. Slavery in the English colonies receives the major emphasis. Part two, entitled "Emancipation," is primarily the story of the English reform agitation, legal decisions and Parliamentary moves which led to the 1833 statute providing for gradual compensated emancipation within the British empire. There is considerable attention given to the contributions of Granville Sharp, Thomas Clarkson, and William Wilberforce. Freedom from Fear is a highly readable, though sketchy, account of its subject. At times the author seems to go out of his way to defend or explain British participation in slavery and the slave trade. He credits the Quakers with starting the popular reaction against slavery and leading the agitation which brought on its ultimate extinction. Mildred E. Danforth's A Quaker Pioneer: Laura Haviland, Superintendent of the Underground relates the life of one of the American antislavery reformers. In 1829 Laura S. Haviland and her family moved to Michigan Territory, where she became active in the antislavery movement and assisted some fugitive slaves. She also founded Raisin Institute, a school for colored and white children. She frequently visited Cincinnati, where she helped Levi Coffin's work with the fugitive slaves in that area. During the Civil War Laura Haviland visited hospitals and distributed supplies to the freedmen. Mildred Danforth's book is based primarily on her subject's autobiography , A Woman's Life Work, which appeared in 1887, but it is more coherent and better organized than the original. However, the author has accepted the facts in the reminiscent account without critical evaluation, and has borrowed, as well, its abolitionist point of view. The book describes a saintly person with virtually no shortcomings. In its pages the institution of slavery emerges as wholly evil, managed by a southern ruling class devoid of charity or honor. It adds very little to our knowledge of Laura Haviland and perpetuates an oversimplified picture of both slavery and the movement against it. Grove City CollegeLarry Gara The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad. By Larry Gara. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. 1961. 201 pages. $5.00. The subtitle, "The Legend of the Underground Railroad," discloses the theme of The Liberty Line. Here, in summary, is the story of the Legend, with corrections as Dr. Gara sees them: Slaves in the Ante-Bellum South Universally Yearned for Freedom. On the contrary, for most Southern Negroes slavery as a way of life offered the best alternative they knew or cared for. When they did run away, usually on impulse or to escape punishment, they took to the woods or the swamp, or even to the Southern city, rather than risk the dangerous journey towards the North Star and the unknown perils of free soil and Canada. In the Legend the Northern, White — often Quaker — Abolitionist Occupies the Hero's Role. In fact, fugitive slaves themselves usually planned 118Bulletin of Friends Historical Association and largely executed their own escape, with little or no help from anyone. Other slaves or free Negroes gave much more assistance to fugitives than did white people, North or South. The Legend Portrays Slaveowners and Slavecatchers as Evil Demons. In real life Southern opinion and policy on slavery covered a wide range of humart feeling and action. Many Southerners voluntarily manumitted their slaves, some even re-settling them on free soil outside the South. The Legend disregards the human factor in slaveholding, and in the processes of flight, pursuit, capture, or escape. Righteous New Englanders and Mid-Westerners of New England Stock Usually Conducted the Railroad. Wicked Southerners Denounced it. Or, from the Southern Point of View: the Underground Demonstrated Yankee Lawlessness and Lack of Respect for the Constitution. Such stereotypes simply fed the fires of abolitionist and proslavery propaganda, Northern and Southern alike. The Words "Quaker" and "Underground Railroad Operator" Can almost Be Used as Synonyms. Some Quakers, particularly in Delaware, Southeastern Pennsylvania, and Indiana, assisted fugitive slaves on their way northward, but even more opposed such doings as unlawful and creaturely activity. The leading Quaker spirits in the Underground often found themselves at odds with their more...