Larry Gara

In his book The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad, historian Larry Gara maintains that pre–Civil War propaganda and post–Civil War exaggerations have distorted much of the history of the Undergound Railroad. In the following viewpoint adapted from his book, Gara argues that while many antislavery whites and free northern blacks did help slaves escape, the mythology of the Underground Railroad has overshadowed the active role that slaves played in their own escape. Runaway slaves usually made the most difficult part of their escape through the South alone, writes Gara. The aid that northern abolitionists most often provided was in the form of preventing runaways from being captured and returned under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

Of all the legends growing out of the Civil War era and the slavery...