The Underground Railroad was a decentralized network of White abolitionists, free Blacks, former slaves, Mexicans, Native Americans, and others opposing slavery in the United States who established secret routes and havens to help slaves escape bondage. The system operated between circa 1780 and 1865, when slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment.
The Underground Railroad was neither underground nor a railroad, and the origin of the name is debated. It is generally understood to have first appeared in a newspaper article in 1839. The term was defined and explained by the African American abolitionist William M. Mitchell (circa 1826 to circa 1879) in his work, The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom (1860):
A slave, in the State of Kentucky, came to the conclusion that he was not a mere thing, as the law termed him, but a man with immortal destinies in common with other men…He accordingly eloped, and his master followed in hot pursuit to the Ohio River, which divides the slave from the free States; here he lost track of his escaped chattel…Being disappointed, and the loser of a thousand dollars, and having no object on which to vent his dirty spleen, he turned upon the poor Abolitionists, and said, "The d-d Abolitionists must have a railroad under the ground by which they run off niggers." The significant term "underground" emanated from this circumstance…And the means by which the slaves still disappear, like the one just alluded to, beyond the probability of recovery, so suddenly, and with such rapid progress, we very appropriately call a railroad! This is the derivation of the term "Underground Railroad."
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Although the Underground Railroad is commonly understood as running from the slave states in the south to the free states in the north and Canada, it also ran south to Spanish Florida and Mexico and west into so-called Indian Territory. Slaves also fled by sea to islands in the Caribbean. The routes north are the best known, owing primarily to the work of the railroad's most famous conductor, Harriet Tubman (circa 1822-1913), the "Father of the Underground Railroad", William Still (1819-1902), and the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) who operated a 'station' on the railroad.
The number of slaves who used the 'railroad' to escape bondage is unknown, but estimates - based on arrivals documented in Canada, abolitionist records, William Still's The Underground Railroad Records (1872), and similar documents – place the number at around 500,000 by 1865. This number is all the more impressive when one considers the risks taken by all those who participated in refusing to obey unjust laws – such as the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 – in placing themselves and their families in danger for the sake of others they did not know and, in most cases, would never see again.
Slavery in Colonial America & the USA
Although slavery in colonial America is usually dated to 1619 – when around 20 enslaved Africans arrived at the Jamestown colony of Virginia – these people, though en route to being sold as slaves, were traded to Governor Yeardley (1587-1627) for provisions and were regarded as indentured servants, working for 4-7 years before they were granted their freedom and land. One of these, Anthony Johnson, later had a slave of his own.
The first slaves in colonial America were Native Americans following the Pequot War (1636-1638) when Pequots were sold into slavery in Bermuda, the West Indies, or to farmers in the colony of Massachusetts. Institutionalized chattel slavery of Africans did not begin until 1640 at the Jamestown Colony and was fully institutionalized by the 1660s. By 1700, all of the 13 colonies held slaves, mainly Africans, and the only objection to this practice on record comes from the Quakers of Pennsylvania in 1688, who condemned slavery as immoral and anti-Christian. Quakers would later make up the majority of those who served on the Underground Railroad's northern routes.
Following the American Revolution, the slave trade continued and, in fact, increased as more land was taken from the Native peoples of North America and more free labor was required to work it. There had been slave rebellions prior to the birth of the United States – notably the Stono Rebellion of 1739 – and others afterwards including Gabriel's Rebellion (1800), the 1811 German Coast Uprising, Denmark Vesey's Conspiracy (1822), and Nat Turner's Rebellion (1831), but, usually, slaves chose to escape bondage on their own or in small groups and, in this, they were sometimes – though not always – assisted by the Underground Railroad.
The Railroad, Terminology & Freedom Seekers
Not all escaped slaves, then known as fugitives or runaways, but today termed freedom seekers, sought the help of the Underground Railroad or even knew it existed. They used various methods to slip their bonds, including forged free passes that designated them as free Blacks or simply flight to swamps and mountains or Native American communities to the West. In order to make use of the Underground Railroad, one had to know that such an organization existed, and spreading the word was the work of some of the members known as agents.
The 'railroad' used various terms to define members' responsibilities, and some of these included:
- agents – those who alerted enslaved people to the railroad's existence.
- conductors – those who guided freedom seekers from their place of enslavement to safe houses and, ultimately, to freedom
- station masters – those who operated safe houses and hid freedom seekers in their homes or places of work
- stockholders – those who provided financial support for the railroad but did not directly participate
Freedom seekers were referred to as 'cargo' or 'passengers'; the Ohio River, separating slave from free states, was called 'River Jordan'; and Canada, where freedom seekers were safe from slave catchers, was 'the Promised Land' or 'Heaven'. How these terms were coined, when, or by whom, is unknown.
An agent, sometimes a former slave, sometimes a free Black, and sometimes a sympathetic White person, would alert the enslaved to the Underground Railroad and direct them to a meeting place where the conductor would then guide them to the next stop. In order to minimize the threat of betrayal and exposure, each person only knew their specific responsibilities and did not even know each other's names, as they used aliases.
The conductor would bring the 'cargo' to the station master, who would provide them with food and other necessary supplies before sending them on to the next 'station' on the railroad and, in the case of the northern routes, ultimately to Canada.
Northern Routes
The Underground Railroad's northern routes are often described as though they were set paths which every conductor used to transport their passengers to freedom, but this is not so, as explained by scholar Andrew Delbanco:
Despite the implication of the metaphor, the "railroad" – or "liberty line," as it was sometimes called – had no settled routes, or schedules, or close coordination among its several branches. It ran between Kentucky and Ohio, or over the border from Maryland into Pennsylvania, or along the Eastern Seaboard, where some runaways – most famously, Frederick Douglass – did indeed travel by train as well as by foot, horse, carriage, or ship. It was a loose confederation of independent cells of which the membership was sometimes a single person making a snap decision to hide a runaway rather than turn him in. It was improvisational. It traversed cities and farming villages, mill towns as well as college towns such as Carlisle, Pennsylvania (Dickinson College), Lafayette, and Gettysburg, where students who called themselves the "Black Ducks" were known to create diversions to distract local authorities when runaways were rumored to be in the neighborhood.
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Conductors might be acquainted with only one route or, as in the case of Harriet Tubman, many different ones. There was no central authority, no governing body, no committee dictating when a slave or group of slaves were to be liberated or where they should be brought. An agent, after alerting slaves to the possibility of escape along the 'railroad', sent them to the conductor, who chose whatever route seemed best. Some conductors, like Tubman, were known to many station masters and traveled the entire length from the Southern states to Canada. Others, like John Berry Meachum and his wife, Mary Meachum, preferred to move their passengers in a very different way.
John and Mary Meachum purchased enslaved people and put them to work in their barrel-making factory. The former slaves received on-the-job training and were paid a wage, part of which they were expected to save to eventually pay the Meachums back; the money was then used to purchase other enslaved people. Once a former slave had acquired practical skills to enable future employment, John ferried them across the river from Kentucky to Illinois, where they were free and could then go wherever they pleased.
John Brown (1800-1859), who was a station master, operated a safe house (station) in Pennsylvania and was also active in New York and Ohio before moving to Kansas. Brown finally came to believe that only violence would end slavery and led the Pottawatomie Massacre of 25 May 1856, in which pro-slavery citizens and slave-catchers were slaughtered. He famously led the raid on the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in 1859, with the aim of starting a slave insurrection, but was captured by the local militia and hanged. None of these people operated under any "Underground Railroad" authority; they simply did what they felt they could do.
The only aspect of the Underground Railroad that could possibly be defined as a "governing body" was the vigilance committees, and the most famous of these were the New York Committee of Vigilance and the Vigilant Association of Philadelphia (which William Still was part of). These groups coordinated escapes from the South as often as they could. Passengers on this 'railroad' first arrived in Philadelphia and were then sent on to New York or Boston, and from there, if they wished, on to Canada. Abolitionist, former slave, and author, Harriet Jacobs (circa 1813-1897) is among the many assisted in their flight to freedom by the Philadelphia abolitionists.
Among the other best known 'passengers' helped directly by the Vigilant Association of Philadelphia were Henry Box Brown (circa 1815-1897), who had himself mailed from Richmond, Virginia to Philadelphia in a box, and Lear Green (circa 1839-1860) who traveled from Baltimore, Maryland, to Philadelphia in a sea chest. In both cases, the Association provided an address the freedom seekers were shipped to, retrieved the box or chest, and gave the escaped slave a place to rest and get their bearings before beginning their new life as a free person.
Southern & Western Routes
Slaves that were held closer to the free states of the North, obviously, had a better chance of successfully escaping in that direction than those held further south. Even so, many slaves held as far south as lower Georgia still tried to flee north. Others attempted flight to Mexico, where slavery had been abolished in 1829, or west to Indian Territory, where they hoped to be taken in by sympathetic bands of Native Americans beyond the reach of US authorities.
The flight south was nothing new in the 19th century, as Spanish Florida had become a haven for freedom seekers in the mid-18th century. In 1738, Fort Mose was established near modern-day St. Augustine, was garrisoned by escaped slaves from the British Colonies of North America, and became the first legally recognized free Black settlement on the continent. The Spanish authorities only required that escaped slaves convert to Catholicism and serve in the militia to be regarded as free.
On 9 September 1739, the educated slave Cato (also known as Jemmy) led the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina, with the goal of reaching freedom in Spanish Florida, probably hoping to join the community at Fort Mose. The rebellion was put down by local militia, and the rebels were executed (though what happened to Cato is unknown), but this did not stop other freedom seekers from following that same route.
Slaves escaping to Mexico through Texas were sometimes helped by a local vigilance committee, by Mexicans, Native Americans, or sympathetic Whites. Abolitionists in Kansas Territory also helped slaves escape (usually to the North), a notable example being Dr. John Doy who was arrested in 1859 as a 'slave stealer', taken to Missouri, and sentenced to five years in prison before he was rescued by his friends who became known as The Immortal Ten. Many slaves from South Carolina and Georgia fled to Florida, where they were welcomed by the Seminole nation, intermarried, and became their own band, the Black Seminoles.
Native Americans could be especially helpful to freedom seekers as many of them, in the 19th century, had ancestors who had been sold as slaves to the British colonists, escaped, and returned to their band or nation, as Delbanco notes:
"Unlike an imported slave or servant," as one historian points out, "the Indian was at home in the American forest and could survive in it. Consequently, he was more likely to escape and had a better chance of succeeding." By comparison, Africans and their descendants proved to be more plentiful, easier to obtain, and, once they were distributed to buyers, a more secure form of human property.
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Even so, the Native Americans, once contacted by a freedom seeker, could make that person disappear along the "railroad" south or west just as easily as conductors in the northern states were doing. One's success depended on reaching a sympathetic band, however, as some Native Americans might just as easily enslave a freedom seeker or bring him or her back to their owner for a reward, just as a Mexican or an unsympathetic White might do.
If a freedom seeker could connect with a sympathetic band of a Native American nation, however, or was successful in following a conductor across the border into Mexico, they would be free. After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed by the US Congress, no escaped slave was safe within the borders of the United States, and even free Blacks could be taken, claimed to be runaways, and enslaved. The safest destination for any freedom seeker, therefore, was anywhere beyond the recognized borders of the United States, whether north, south, west, or east, by sea, to the islands of the Caribbean.
Conclusion
As noted, the Underground Railroad was in operation between circa 1780 and 1865, when the passage of the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, made the effort unnecessary. At this time, many who had never had anything to do with the Underground Railroad claimed to have been its secret supporters and champions, as Delbanco notes:
After the Civil War, the complex reality of the Underground Railroad faded into an enveloping glow of myth. To read postwar accounts of the prewar years, one might think that every farmhouse in the North had been a station, everyone's father or grandfather had been a conductor, every home had had a secret pantry or attic where fugitives were sheltered while bounty hunters pounded on the door. Claiming to have served on the Underground Railroad became a way of laying claim to what the historian David Blight calls an "alternative veteranhood" – a way to satisfy the "yearning to bask in the glory of the old abolitionist generation."
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In reality, it will probably never be known who or how many people served the cause of the Underground Railroad. As their actions were illegal under the laws of the United States, they were certainly not keen on broadcasting their involvement. Whether Black, Mexican, Native American, or White, male or female, everyone who chose to help a slave win freedom took enormous risks, including fines, imprisonment, social ostracization, or even death.
The story of these nameless heroes and heroines is told today through the exhibits at the National Museum of African American History & Culture, the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park, and the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park of Auburn, New York – as well as many other museums and historic sites – celebrating the lengths to which people went to win their freedom and those who helped others do the same.
