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Heart of History
Before the Civil War ended slavery, Maryland was a state divided. Home to the country's largest communities of free blacks, Maryland was also a slave state where nearly 90,000 men, women, and children were held in bondage. Slaveholders were neighbors to those who supported emancipation -- particularly the Society of Friends, or Quakers.
Freedom in the North lay just beyond Maryland's border. Many enslaved individuals liberated themselves by escaping through this region. A loose network took shape that assisted fugitives in their flight from bondage. It came to be called the Underground Railroad.
Crossed by several routes to freedom, Montgomery County sat at the heart of it all. Its landscape became the backdrop for events that made history, and its people, important players in one of the nation's most trying eras. |