Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad was an organized network of secret routes and safe houses for fugitive slaves to escape to the abolitionist Northern United States and Eastern Canada during the era of slavery in the United States. Slaves escaped from slavery as early as the 16th century; many of their escapes were unaided. However, a network of safe houses generally known as the Underground Railroad began to organize in the 1780s among abolitionist societies in the North. It ran north and grew steadily until President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. The escapees sought primarily to escape into free states or into Canada. The Underground Railroad started at the place of enslavement. The routes followed natural and man-made modes of transportation: rivers, canals, bays, the Atlantic Coast, ferries and river crossings, roads and trails. Locations close to ports, free territories, and international boundaries prompted many escapes. The network, primarily the work of free and enslaved African Americans, was assisted by abolitionists and other individuals sympathetic to the cause of the escapees. The slaves who risked capture and those who aided them were collectively referred to as the passengers and conductors of the Railroad, respectively. Various other routes led to Mexico, where slavery had been abolished, and to islands in the Caribbean that were not part of the slave trade. An earlier escape route running south toward Florida, then a Spanish possession (except 1763–1783), existed from the late 17th century until approximately 1790. During the American Civil War, freedom seekers escaped to Union lines in the South to obtain their freedom. One estimate suggests that by 1850, approximately 100,000 slaves had escaped to freedom via the network. According to former professor of Pan-African studies J. Blaine Hudson, who was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University...