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Songs of the Illinois Freedom Road – Music of the Underground Railroad

Saturday, August 23, 2:00 pm, Visitor Center Auditorium

Songs of the Illinois Freedom Road is the powerful new musical performance featuring the songs, stories, and struggles of the Illinois Underground Railroad. Lincoln Log Cabin will present this performance of award-winning folk musician Chris Vallillo. The show features rare first-person accounts of freedom seekers who passed through Illinois. Highlighted stories include John and Mary Little, who traveled on foot 140 miles to Chicago, and George Burroughs, a black Canadian who worked on the Illinois Central Railroad where he helped smuggle escapees to freedom.

Vallillo extensively researched the subject using primary source documents such as the 1857 Slave Narratives of Canada and the WPA Slave Narratives as well as the most recent scholarship on the subject. Vallillo combines these powerful stories with eleven historic songs that were sung by the enslaved to inspire and share knowledge among themselves There is no cost to attend the performance, and no reservations are required. This event is partially funded by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.

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North of Slavery: The Matson Slave Trial
Presented by Sam Wheeler

Saturday, September 13, 2:00 pm, Visitor Center Auditorium

In 1845 Kentucky slaveowner Robert Matson brought several of his slaves to Illinois, where he put them to work on his farm in Coles County. Two years later an enslaved woman named Jane Bryant fled the farm with her four children. Matson turned to the judicial system in Illinois, hiring attorney Abraham Lincoln to help him reclaim his human property. The ensuing freedom suit reveals the complexity of the institution of slavery, its implications for the “free state” of Illinois, and the role the institution played in the Civil War. The talk will examine the critical role the Illinois Supreme Court played in ensuring Illinois developed as a free state and explore why the future Great Emancipator was on the wrong side of history in this case.

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Slavery and Lincoln’s Friends

September 28, 2 pm, Visitor Center Auditorium

Brian “Fox” Ellis will present “Slavery and Lincoln’s Friends.”  This presentation takes place during Lincoln Log Cabin’s Harvest Frolic event. We all know Lincoln was a rail splitter, but what does that mean? He was not a fiery radical abolitionist, though many of his friends were; he was for the gradual dissolution of slavery, which was still too radical for other colleagues. In this program, we will hear the story of the first slave a young Lincoln the Lawyer freed, and hear the stories of some of his friends who were actively engaged in the Underground Railroad.