The Underground Railroad was a defacto network of people who helped fugitive slaves escape to the North and to Canada. It consisted of individuals acting largely independently of each other with knowledge only of other nearby individuals willing to aid runaway slaves move north. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 provided for 6-month imprisonment and $1,000 for anyone aiding, sheltering, or feeding a runaway slave. In spite of this, the Underground Railroad moved hundreds of slaves northward to freedom each year.

Runaway slaves escaped the south and gained their freedom mainly on their own efforts. In most cases, the aid given them by whites and by the Underground Railroad was trivial compared to the perils of traveling through slave states to reach the relative safety of the north. There were some whites and some former slaves who ventured south to help but the vast majority of runaway slaves received no aid until they were north of the Ohio river.

Harriet Tubman

Born a slave in Maryland in 1820. She later became the most famous conductor to lead slaves to freedom.

Settled in Philadelphia -- known as the “Moses of her people.”

She risked her life making 13 trips into slave states to liberate her fellow African-Americans.

By 1856 there was a $40,000 reward for her capture. She was never caught.

The first documented reference to the existence of organized aid to runaway slaves is in an 1786 letter from George Washington to Robert Morris: runaway slaves, he said, were helped by a “society of Quakers, formed for such purposes.”

In another letter, written to William Drayton on November 20, 1786, Washington explains that he had tried to return one of Drayton's runaway slaves to him sending him under guard to Baltimore. The slave, however, escaped and was able to elude recapture through the help of “numbers who had rather facilitate an escape than apprehend a run-away”.

The system grew, and around 1831 it was dubbed “The Underground Railroad,” after the then emerging steam railroads. The system even used terms used in railroading: the homes and businesses where fugitives would rest and eat were called “stations” and “depots” and were run by “stationmasters,” those who contributed money or goods were “stockholders,” and the “conductor” was responsible for moving fugitives from one station to the next.

Many of the conductors and stationmasters on the Underground Railroad were Quakers. This does not mean that a majority of Quakers supported or approved of the Underground Railroad. Many disapproved of it and many Quakers were disowned from their meetings for being too involved in the “worldly concern” of slavery.

Because of its extensive border with two slave states -- Virginia (now West Virginia) and Kentucky -- Ohio was the most important single state operating the Underground Railroad. Out of 3,200 workers on the Railroad in the northern states, better than 1,500 of them were in Ohio.

Southerners habitually exagerated the threat of organized efforts against slavery.

Any beseiged people will (witness Americans after the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Washington, D.C.) exagerate their sense of fear.

Political leaders take advantage of this fear.

John C. Calhoun in 1849 ranted against orginized efforts to “entice, decoy, entrap, inveigle, and seduce slaves to escape from their masters, and to pass them secretly and rapidly” into Canada.

This exagerated fear of the Underground Railroad in the south is evidenced in many ways.

The Nashville Convention of 1850 reported that “organizations were formed to carry off slaves from the South, and to protect them by violence from recapture.”

In 1857 Edmund Ruffin warned of abolition agents active in the South.

(Larry Gara, The Liberty Line, p. 154 Google Books)

Ex-slaves and slaves were important components to the Underground Railroad. Slaves passed information about methods of escape by word-of-mouth, in stories, and through songs. Runaways escaped to the North along a loosely connected series of routes that stretched through the southern border states. Guided north by the stars and sometimes singing traditional songs like “Follow the Drinking Gourd,” most runaways travelled at night on foot and took advantage of the natural protections offered by swamps, bayous, forests, and waterways.

Some who escaped from the South travelled into the western territories, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Some runaways took refuge in cities such as Baltimore and New Orleans and blended into the free black population. Staying in the United States, even a northern state, did not make them legally free. Only if they left the United States did a runaway slave gain freedom.

The most interesting characteristics of the Underground Railroad lies in the mystery of it and its lack of organization. Accounts are scarce for individuals who actually participated in its activities. Usually agents hid or destroyed their personal journals to protect themselves and the runaways.