Freedom Crossing

Today, as we left our campground to come back home, we made a quick stop in Lewiston, New York. Lewiston is a gorgeous and very historic community that is very "walker-friendly".

My photograph is sheer disappointment, as it was impossible to get a very good angle on this...one of my most favorite memorials. The morning sun was rising and no matter how I adjusted the little Canon camera, it seems the photos were a mess.

This monument depicts two scenes. The first, in the front, is of a Lewiston resident (from the !800's) named Josiah Tryon, who helped escaped African-American slaves flee across the river to freedom. Canada and England had already abolished slavery, yet it continued in the United States southern states. Tryon, along with a small band of like-minded citizens, risked their lives to help these people get across the rvier...it is a very narrow passage here.

The second scene depicts Laura Eastman (a Lewiston historical ficticious heroine) pointing across the river and showing a slave how close freedom was!

Every time I see this monument, I am so deeply moved and humbled....I cannot understand how a person could imagine that he or she could own another human being...slavery had to be one of man's harshest treatments of his own kind.