Fugitive Slave

An unidentified fugitive slave sits between two armed members of the 22nd Wisconsin Regiment in a carte-de-visite photograph made at J. P. Ball's Photographic Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio, in September 1862. With the aid of the Underground Railroad, many runaway slaves fled across the Ohio River from Kentucky to reach freedom in Ohio. This image was probably made to depict a newly freed woman who was henceforth under the protection of the Union army.