On July 4th, 1842, Caroline Quarlls left family, friends, and the only life she’d known behind in St. Louis, Missouri. As the child of a slave mother and a slave owner father, her young life was one of drudgery and obedience until that fateful Independence Day when she illegally took a steamboat across the Mississippi River from St. Louis to Alton, Illinois, in the hope of reaching freedom. With the help of abolitionists, the sixteen-year-old traveled through Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan on what has become known as the Underground Railroad. Each step of the way, Quarlls was...