Grapevine Dispatch: The Voice of Antislavery ...

Safe houses, trustworthy individuals, pathways, abandoned shelters, and unattended skiffs--these were crucial pieces of information that were spread, through word or song, from plantation to plantation, by way of the "grapevine." Throughout the Borderlands, this communication would help the slave to find freedom, by way of the Underground Railroad. The conductors and abolitionists on both sides of the Ohio River--consisting of slaves, free men of color, white and black residents, religious men, and other sympathetic citizens--were likely to suffer bodily inflictions, imprisionment, and monetary loss for aiding these fugitives in their flight from slavery and quest for freedom. Caroline Miller skillfully relates their stories through interviews, newspaper accounts, court cases, government records, and other published and unpublished accounts, so that these times, and these people are not forgotten.