Underground Railroad
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The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early to mid-19th century. It was used by enslaved African Americans primarily to escape into free states and from there to Canada.[1] The network, primarily the work of free African Americans (and some whites as well),[2] was assisted by abolitionists and others sympathetic to the cause of the escapees.[3] The slaves who risked capture and those who aided them are also collectively referred to as the passengers and conductors of the Railroad, respectively.[4] Various other routes led to Mexico,[5] where slavery had been abolished, and to islands in the Caribbean that were not part of the slave trade.[6] An earlier escape route running south toward Florida, then a Spanish possession (except 1763–1783), existed from the late 17th century until approximately 1790.[7][8] However, the network generally known as the Underground Railroad began in the late 18th century. It ran north and grew steadily until the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Abraham Lincoln.[9] One estimate suggests that, by 1850, approximately 100,000 slaves had escaped to freedom via the network.[9]
Origin of the name
Eric Foner wrote that the term "was perhaps first used by a Washington newspaper in 1839, quoting a young slave hoping to escape bondage via a railroad that 'went underground all the way to Boston'".[10][11] Dr. Robert Clemens Smedley wrote that following slave catchers' failed searches and lost traces of fugitives as far north as Columbia, Pennsylvania, they declared in bewilderment that "there must be an underground railroad somewhere," giving origin to the term.[12] Scott Shane wrote that the first documented use of the term was in an article written by Thomas Smallwood in the August 10, 1842, edition of Tocsin of Liberty, an abolitionist newspaper published in Albany. He also wrote that the 1879 book Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad said the phrase was mentioned in an 1839 Washington newspaper article and that the book's author said 40 years later that he had quoted the article from memory as closely as he could.[13][14]
Political background
For the fugitive slaves who "rode" the Underground Railroad, many of them considered Canada their final destination. An estimated 30,000 to 40,000 of them settled in Canada, half of whom came between 1850 and 1860. Others settled in
With heavy lobbying by Southern politicians, the
Routes
Underground Railroad routes went north to free states and Canada, to the Caribbean, to United States western territories, and to Indian territories. Some fugitive slaves traveled south into Mexico for their freedom.[24] Many escaped by sea, including Ona Judge, who had been enslaved by President George Washington.[25]
North to free states and Canada
Structure
Despite the thoroughfare's name, the escape network was neither literally underground nor a railroad. (The first literal underground railroad did not exist until 1863.) According to John Rankin, "It was so called because they who took passage on it disappeared from public view as really as if they had gone into the ground. After the fugitive slaves entered a depot on that road no trace of them could be found. They were secretly passed from one depot to another until they arrived at a destination where they were able to remain free."[27] It was known as a railroad, using rail terminology such as stations and conductors, because that was the transportation system in use at the time.[28]
The Underground Railroad did not have a headquarters or governing body, nor were there published guides, maps, pamphlets, or even newspaper articles. It consisted of meeting points, secret routes, transportation, and
Routes
The Underground Railroad benefited greatly from the geography of the U.S.–Canada border: Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and most of New York were separated from Canada by water, over which transport was usually easy to arrange and relatively safe. The main route for freedom seekers from the South led up the Appalachians, Harriet Tubman going via
Terminology
Members of the Underground Railroad often used specific terms, based on the metaphor of the railway. For example:
- People who helped fugitive slaves find the railroad were "agents"
- Guides were known as "conductors"
- Hiding places were "stations" or "way stations"
- "Station masters" hid escaping slaves in their homes
- People escaping slavery were referred to as "passengers" or "cargo"
- Fugitive slaves would obtain a "ticket"
- Similar to common gospel lore, the "wheels would keep on turning"
- Financial benefactors of the Railroad were known as "stockholders"[34]
The
William Still,[36] sometimes called "The Father of the Underground Railroad", helped hundreds of slaves escape (as many as 60 a month), sometimes hiding them in his Philadelphia home. He kept careful records, including short biographies of the people, that contained frequent railway metaphors. He maintained correspondence with many of them, often acting as a middleman in communications between people who had escaped slavery and those left behind. He later published these accounts in the book The Underground Railroad: Authentic Narratives and First-Hand Accounts (1872), a valuable resource for historians to understand how the system worked and learn about individual ingenuity in escapes.
According to Still, messages were often encoded so that they could be understood only by those active in the railroad. For example, the following message, "I have sent via at two o'clock four large hams and two small hams", indicated that four adults and two children were sent by train from Harrisburg to Philadelphia. The additional word via indicated that the "passengers" were not sent on the usual train, but rather via Reading, Pennsylvania. In this case, the authorities were tricked into going to the regular location (station) in an attempt to intercept the runaways, while Still met them at the correct station and guided them to safety. They eventually escaped either further north or to Canada, where slavery had been abolished during the 1830s.[37]
To reduce the risk of infiltration, many people associated with the Underground Railroad
The resting spots where the freedom seekers could sleep and eat were given the code names "stations" and "depots", which were held by "station masters". "Stockholders" gave money or supplies for assistance. Using biblical references, fugitives referred to Canada as the "Promised Land" or "Heaven" and the Ohio River, which marked the boundary between slave states and free states, as the "River Jordan".[42]
The majority of
Traveling conditions
Although the freedom seekers sometimes traveled on boat or train,[45] they usually traveled on foot or by wagon, sometimes lying down, covered with hay or similar products, in groups of one to three escapees. Some groups were considerably larger. Abolitionist Charles Turner Torrey and his colleagues rented horses and wagons and often transported as many as 15 or 20 people at a time.[46] Free and enslaved black men occupied as mariners (sailors) helped enslaved people escape from slavery by providing a ride on their ship, providing information on the safest and best escape routes, and safe locations on land, and locations of trusted people for assistance. Enslaved African-American mariners had information about slave revolts occurring in the Caribbean, and relayed this news to enslaved people they had contact with in American ports. Free and enslaved African-American mariners assisted Harriet Tubman in her rescue missions. Black mariners provided to her information about the best escape routes, and helped her on her rescue missions.
Routes were often purposely indirect to confuse pursuers. Most escapes were by individuals or small groups; occasionally, there were mass escapes, such as with the Pearl incident. The journey was often considered particularly difficult and dangerous for women or children. Children were sometimes hard to keep quiet or were unable to keep up with a group. In addition, enslaved women were rarely allowed to leave the plantation, making it harder for them to escape in the same ways that men could.[47] Although escaping was harder for women, some women were successful. One of the most famous and successful conductors (people who secretly traveled into slave states to rescue those seeking freedom) was Harriet Tubman, a woman who escaped slavery.[48][49]
Due to the risk of discovery, information about routes and safe havens was passed along by word of mouth, although in 1896 there is a reference to a numerical code used to encrypt messages. Southern newspapers of the day were often filled with pages of notices soliciting information about fugitive slaves and offering sizable rewards for their capture and return. Federal marshals and professional bounty hunters known as slave catchers pursued freedom seekers as far as the Canada–U.S. border.[50]
"Reverse Underground Railroad"
Freedom seekers were not the only black people at risk from slave catchers. With demand for slaves high in the Deep South as cotton was planted, strong, healthy blacks in their prime working and reproductive years were seen and treated as highly valuable commodities. Both former slaves and free blacks were sometimes kidnapped and sold into slavery, as in the well-documented case of Solomon Northup, a New York-born free black who was kidnapped by Southern slavers while visiting Washington, DC. "Certificates of Freedom," signed, notarized statements attesting to the free status of individual Blacks also known as free papers, could easily be destroyed or stolen, so they provided little protection.
Some buildings, such as the
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
Under the terms of the
for the return of property.Congress was dominated by Southern congressmen because the population of their states was bolstered by the inclusion of
Arrival in Canada
Most former enslaved, reaching Canada by boat across
Estimates vary widely, but at least 30,000 slaves, and potentially more than 100,000, escaped to Canada via the Underground Railroad.
Another important destination was
Upon arriving at their destinations, many freedom seekers were disappointed, as life in Canada was difficult. While not at risk from slave catchers due to being in a different country, racial discrimination was still widespread.[62][63][64] Many of the new arrivals had to compete with mass European immigration for jobs, and overt racism was common. For example, in reaction to Black Loyalists being settled in eastern Canada by the Crown, the city of Saint John, New Brunswick, amended its charter in 1785 specifically to exclude Blacks from practicing a trade, selling goods, fishing in the harbor, or becoming freemen; these provisions stood until 1870.[65]
With the outbreak of the Civil War in the U.S., many black refugees left Canada to enlist in the Union Army. While some later returned to Canada, many remained in the United States. Thousands of others returned to the American South after the war ended. The desire to reconnect with friends and family was strong, and most were hopeful about the changes emancipation and Reconstruction would bring.
Folklore
Since the 1980s, claims have arisen that quilt designs were used to signal and direct enslaved people to escape routes and assistance. According to advocates of the quilt theory, ten quilt patterns were used to direct enslaved people to take particular actions. The quilts were placed one at a time on a fence as a means of nonverbal communication to alert escaping slaves. The code had a dual meaning: first to signal enslaved people to prepare to escape, and second to give clues and indicate directions on the journey.[66]
The quilt design theory is disputed. The first published work documenting an oral history source was in 1999, and the first publication of this theory is believed to be a 1980 children's book.[67] Quilt historians and scholars of pre-Civil War (1820–1860) America have disputed this legend.[68] There is no contemporary evidence of any sort of quilt code, and quilt historians such as Pat Cummings and Barbara Brackman have raised serious questions about the idea. In addition, Underground Railroad historian Giles Wright has published a pamphlet debunking the quilt code.
Similarly, some popular, nonacademic sources claim that spirituals and other songs, such as "Steal Away" or "Follow the Drinking Gourd", contained coded information and helped individuals navigate the railroad. They have offered little evidence to support their claims. Scholars tend to believe that while the slave songs may certainly have expressed hope for deliverance from the sorrows of this world, these songs did not present literal help for runaway slaves.[69]
The Underground Railroad inspired cultural works. For example, "Song of the Free", written in 1860 about a man fleeing slavery in Tennessee by escaping to Canada, was composed to the tune of "Oh! Susanna". Every stanza ends with a reference to Canada as the land "where colored men are free". Slavery in Upper Canada (now Ontario) was outlawed in 1793; in 1819, John Robinson, the Attorney General of Upper Canada, declared that by residing in Canada, black residents were set free, and that Canadian courts would[70] protect their freedom. Slavery in Canada as a whole had been in rapid decline after an 1803 court ruling, and was finally abolished outright in 1834.
Legal and political
When frictions between North and South culminated in the Civil War, many Black people, both enslaved and free, fought for the Union Army.[71] Following Union victory in the Civil War, on December 6, 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution outlawed slavery except as punishment for a crime.[72] Following its passage, in some cases the Underground Railroad operated in the opposite direction, as people who had escaped to Canada returned to the United States.[73]
Criticism
I have never approved of the very public manner in which some of our western friends have conducted what they call the Underground Railroad, but which I think, by their open declarations, has been made most emphatically the upperground railroad.
He went on to say that, although he honored the movement, he felt that the efforts at publicity served more to enlighten the slave-owners than the slaves, making them more watchful and making it more difficult for future slaves to escape.[74]
Notable people
- Ann Bamford
- John Brown
- Owen Brown (father)
- Owen Brown (son)
- Samuel Burris
- Obadiah Bush
- Levi Coffin
- Elizabeth Rous Comstock
- George Corson[75][76]
- Moses Dickson[77]
- Frederick Douglass[78][79]
- Asa Drury
- George Hussey Earle Sr.
- Calvin Fairbank
- Bartholomew Fussell
- Matilda Joslyn Gage
- Thomas Galt[80]
- Thomas Garrett[81]
- Sydney Howard Gay[82]
- Josiah Bushnell Grinnell
- Frances Harper
- Laura Smith Haviland[83]
- Lewis Hayden[84]
- John Hunn[85]
- Roger Hooker Leavitt
- Jermain Wesley Loguen[86]
- Samuel Joseph May[87]
- John Berry Meachum
- Mary Meachum[88]
- William M. Mitchell[89]
- Solomon Northup[90]
- John Parker[91]
- Elijah F. Pennypacker
- Mary Ellen Pleasant
- John Wesley Posey[92]
- Amy and Isaac Post
- John Rankin[93]
- Alexander Milton Ross
- David Ruggles[94]
- Gerrit Smith[95]
- George Luther Stearns
- William Still[96]
- John Ton
- Charles Turner Torrey[97]
- William Troy
- Harriet Tubman[98]
- Martha Coffin Wright
- John Van Zandt
- Bernardhus Van Leer
- Silvia and John Webber
South to Florida and Mexico
Background
Beginning in the 16th century, Spaniards brought enslaved Africans to
In 1806, enslaved people arrived at the Stone Fort in Nacogdoches, Texas seeking freedom. They arrived with a forged passport from a Kentucky judge. The Spanish refused to return them back to the United States. More freedom seekers traveled through Texas the following year.[100]
Enslaved people were emancipated by crossing the border from the United States into Mexico, which was a Spanish colony into the nineteenth century.[101] In the United States, enslaved people were considered property. That meant that they did not have rights to marry and they could be sold away from their partners. They also did not have rights to fight inhumane and cruel punishment. In New Spain, fugitive slaves were recognized as humans. They were allowed to join the Catholic Church and marry. They also were protected from inhumane and cruel punishment.[100]
During the War of 1812, U.S. Army general Andrew Jackson invaded Spanish Florida in part because enslaved people had run away from plantations in the Carolinas and Georgia to Florida. Some of the runaways joined the Black Seminoles who later moved to Mexico.[100] However, Mexico sent mixed signals on its position against slavery. Sometimes it allowed enslaved people to be returned to slavery and it allowed Americans to move into Spanish territorial property in order to populate the North, where the Americans would then establish cotton plantations, bringing enslaved people to work the land.[100]
In 1829, Mexican president
Pressure between free and slave states deepened as Mexico abolished slavery and western states joined the Union as free states. As more free states were added to the Union, the lesser the influence of slave state representatives in Congress.[101][100]
Slave states and slave hunters
The Southern Underground Railroad went through slave states, lacking the abolitionist societies and the organized system of the north. People who spoke out against slavery were subject to mobs, physical assault, and being hanged. There were slave catchers who looked for runaway slaves. There were never more than a few hundred free blacks in Texas, which meant that free blacks did not feel safe in the state. The network to freedom was informal, random, and dangerous.[104]
U.S. military forts, established along the Rio Grande border during the Mexican–American War of the 1840s, captured and returned fleeing enslaved people to their slaveholders.[105]
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 made it a criminal act to aid fleeing escaping enslaved people in free states. Similarly, the United States government wanted to enact a treaty with Mexico so that they would help capture and return bonds-people. Mexico, however, continued their practice to allow anyone that crossed their borders to be free. Slave catchers continued to cross the southern border into Mexico and illegally capture black people and return them to slavery.[102] A group of slave hunters became the Texas Rangers.[105]
Routes
Thousands of freedom seekers traveled along a network from the southern United States to Texas and ultimately Mexico.[106] Southern enslaved people generally traveled across "unforgiving country" on foot or horseback while pursued by lawmen and slave hunters.[104] Some stowed away on ferries bound for a Mexican port[102][106] from New Orleans, Louisiana and Galveston, Texas.[103] There were some who transported cotton to Brownsville, Texas on wagons and then crossed into Mexico at Matamoros.[103]
Sometimes someone would come 'long and try to get us to run up north and be free. We used to laugh at that.
—Former slave Felix Haywood, interviewed in 1937 for the federal Slave Narrative Project.[103]
Many traveled through North Carolina, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, or Mississippi toward Texas and ultimately Mexico.[102][106] People fled slavery from Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).[103] Black Seminoles traveled on a southwestern route from Florida into Mexico.[24][107]
Going overland meant that the last 150 miles or so were traversed through the difficult and extremely hot terrain of the Nueces Strip located between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. There was little shade and a lack of potable water in this brush country.[104][a] Escapees were more likely to survive the trip if they had a horse and a gun.[104]
The
Assistance
Some journeyed on their own without assistance, and others were helped by people along the southern Underground Railroad.[102] Assistance included guidance, directions, shelter, and supplies.[104]
Black people, black and white couples, and anti-slavery German immigrants provided support, but most of the help came from Mexican laborers.[104][106] So much so that enslavers came to distrust any Mexican, and a law was enacted in Texas that forbade Mexicans from talking to enslaved people.[103] Mexican migrant workers developed relationships with enslaved black workers whom they worked with. They offered guidance, such as what it would be like to cross the border, and empathy. Having realized the ways in which Mexicans were helping enslaved people to escape, slaveholders and residents of Texan towns pushed people out of the town, whipped them in public, or lynched them.[104][106]
Some border officials helped enslaved people crossing into Mexico. In Monclova, Mexico a border official took up a collection in the town for a family in need of food, clothing, and money to continue on their journey south and out of reach of slave hunters.[105] Once they crossed the border, some Mexican authorities helped former enslaved people from being returned to the United States by slave hunters.[103]
Freedom seekers that were taken on ferries to Mexican ports were aided by Mexican ship captains, one of whom was caught in Louisiana and indicted for helping enslaved people escape.[101]
Knowing the repercussions of running away or being caught helping someone runaway, people were careful to cover their tracks, and public and personal records about fugitive slaves are scarce. In greater supply are records by people who promoted slavery or attempted to catch fugitive slaves. More than 2,500 escapes are documented by the Texas Runaway Slave Project at Stephen F. Austin State University.[104]
Southern freedom seekers
Advertisements were placed in newspapers offering rewards for the return of their "property". Slave catchers traveled through Mexico. There were Black Seminoles, or Los Mascogos who lived in northern Mexico who provided armed resistance.[106]
Sam Houston, president of the Republic of Texas, was the slaveholder to Tom who ran away. He headed to Texas and once there he enlisted in the Mexican military.[108]
One enslaved man was branded with the letter "R" on each side of his cheek after a failed attempt to escape slavery. He tried again in the winter of 1819, leaving the cotton plantation of his enslaver on horseback. With four others, they traveled southwest to Mexico at the risk of being attacked by hostile Native Americans, apprehended by slave catchers, or attacked by "horse-eating alligators".[101]
Many people did not make it to Mexico. In 1842, a Mexican man and a black woman left Jackson County, Texas on two horses, but they were caught at the Lavaca River.[109] The wife, an enslaved woman, was valuable to her owner so she was returned to slavery. Her husband, possibly a farm laborer or an indentured servant, was immediately lynched.[104]
Fugitive slaves changed their names in Mexico. They married into Mexican families and relocated further south of the American-Mexican border. All of these factors makes it hard to trace the whereabouts of the formerly enslaved people.[106] A database at Stephen F. Austin State University has a database of runaway slave advertisements as part of The Texas Runaway Slave Project. The Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression initiated a Federal Writers' Project to document slave narratives, including those who settled in Mexico. One of them was Felix Haywood, who found freedom when he crossed the Rio Grande.[106]
Rio Grande stations
Two families, the Webbers and the Jacksons, lived along the Rio Grande and helped people escape slavery. The husbands were white and the wives were black women who had been formerly enslaved.[106] It is not known if Nathaniel Jackson purchased the freedom of Matilda Hicks and her family, but in the early 1860s they moved to Hidalgo county, where they settled and lived as a family. He was a white southerner and she was an enslaved woman, who had been childhood sweethearts in Alabama.[106] He was the son of her slaveholder,[102] who helped a group of seven families in 1857 and others cross into Mexico.[104]
Silvia Hector Webber was born enslaved in West Florida and in 1819 was sold to a slaveholder in Clark County, Arkansas. The slaveholders's son, John Cryer, illegally brought Silvia to Mexican Texas in 1828, four years after Mexico had deemed the slave trade into Mexican territory against the law. Silvia, however, with the help of John Webber secured her and her 3 children's freedom papers in 1834.[110] Together Silvia and John lived an antislavery life and often harbored fugitives from slavery in their ranch and house. Silvia was known to transport freedom seekers, on a ferry she licensed at her ranch, onto freedom in Mexico.[111]
Arrival in Mexico
Fugitive slaves who made it to Mexico lived with the knowledge that they could be illegally kidnapped by slave catchers or blackbirders.[104] Slave hunters who tried to kidnap former slaves from Mexico could be taken to court or shot.[101]
There was little support from their new communities and few opportunities for employment. They did not have official paperwork that stated that they were free.[104] They were, though, able to enter into indentured servitude contracts and join military colonies.[101]
Some people, after they settled in Mexico, returned to the United States to help family members escape and to guide them to Mexico.[101]
Colonies
There were abolitionists from the north who petitioned the Mexican government to establish colonies for free and runaway blacks. Benjamin Lundy, a Quaker, lobbied for a colony to be established in what is now Texas during the early 1830s, but he was unable to do so when Texas legalized slavery when it separated from Mexico and became the Republic of Texas (1836).[102] Black Seminoles successfully petitioned for land and established a colony in 1852. The land is still owned by their descendants.[102]
Scholarship
The Texas Runaway Slave Project, located in
Alice L. Baumgartner has studied the prevalence of people who fled slavery from the Southern states to Mexico. She published South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War.[100] Thomas Mareite completed a doctoral dissertation at Leiden University on the social and political experiences of enslaved people who escaped from the U.S. South to Mexico, titled Conditional Freedom: Free Soil and Fugitive Slaves from the U.S. South to Mexico's Northeast, 1803–1861.[112] Roseann Bacha-Garza, of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, has managed historical archeology projects and has researched the incidence of enslaved people who fled to Mexico.[105][113] Mekala Audain has also published a chapter titled "A Scheme to Desert: The Louisiana Purchase and Freedom Seekers in the Louisiana-Texas Borderlands, 1804–1806" in the edited volume In Search of Liberty: African American Internationalism in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World.[114] Maria Esther Hammack completed her doctoral dissertation on the subject in 2021 at the University of Texas at Austin.[105]
National Underground Railroad Network
Following upon legislation passed in 1990 for the National Park Service to perform a special resource study of the Underground Railroad,
The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park, which includes Underground Railroad routes in three counties of Maryland's Eastern Shore and Harriet Tubman's birthplace, was created by President Barack Obama under the Antiquities Act on March 25, 2013.[118] Its sister park, the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn, New York, was established on January 10, 2017, and focuses on the later years of Tubman's life as well as her involvement with the Underground Railroad and the abolition movement.[119]
In popular culture
Inspirations for fiction
- The Underground Railroad is a 2016 novel by Colson Whitehead. It won the 2016 National Book Award and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[120]
- The Underground Railroad is a 2021 streaming televisionlimited series, based on Whitehead's novel.
- Underground is an American television series that premiered in 2016, on WGN America.
Literature
- David Walker (1829) Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World
- Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852) Uncle Tom's Cabin
- Caroline Lee Hentz (1854) The Planter's Northern Bride
- William M. Mitchell (1860) The Under-Ground Railroad[121]
- Sarah Hopkins Bradford (1869) Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman; (1896) Harriet Tubman, Moses of Her People
Music
Underground Railroad was a company created by Tupac Shakur, Big D the Impossible, Shock G, Pee Wee, Jeremy, Raw Fusion and Live Squad with the purpose of promoting and helping young black women and men with creating records, allowing them to initiate and develop their musical careers.[122][123]
Comics
In Big Jim and the White Boy, David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson's upcoming graphic novel retelling of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Big Jim and Huck become Underground Railroad agents as they journey through Civil War-era United States to rescue the former's enslaved family.[124]
See also
- Ausable Chasm, NY, home of the North Star Underground Railroad Museum
- Caroline Quarlls (1824–1892), first known person to escape slavery through Wisconsin's Underground Railroad
- Fort Mose Historic State Park
- List of Underground Railroad sites
- Reverse Underground Railroad
- Tilly Escape
- Timbuctoo, New York
- Uncle Tom's Cabin Historic Site near Dresden, Ontario
Notes
References
- ISBN 978-1-55277-581-3.
- ISBN 978-1494767983.
- ^ "Underground Railroad". dictionary.com. Archived from the original on October 3, 2015. Retrieved July 17, 2011.
'A network of houses and other places abolitionists used to help enslaved Africans escape to freedom in the northern states or in Canada ... ' —American Heritage Dictionary
- ^ "The Underground Railroad". Public Broadcasting Service. Archived from the original on June 22, 2018. Retrieved July 25, 2007.
- ^ Leanos, Reynaldo Jr. (2017). "This underground railroad took slaves to freedom in Mexico, PRI's The World, Public Radio International, March 29, 2017". Minneapolis, MN: Public Radio International. Archived from the original on October 18, 2020. Retrieved September 4, 2019.
- ^ Leesa Jones Interview Transcript, 2020-01-07 [SHE.OH.017]. January 7, 2020.
- ^ Smith, Bruce (March 18, 2012). "For a century, Underground Railroad ran south". Associated Press. Archived from the original on March 21, 2012. Retrieved March 23, 2012.
- Sun-Sentinel. Archivedfrom the original on February 13, 2018. Retrieved February 10, 2018.
- ^ a b Vox, Lisa, "How Did Slaves Resist Slavery?" Archived July 11, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, African-American History, About.com, Retrieved July 17, 2011.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-393-35219-1., pp. 6-9
- ISBN 0-9658955-3-X., p. 131
- ISBN 978-0-8117-3189-8.
- ^ Shane, Scott (September 11, 2023). "How the Underground Railroad Got Its Name". The New York Times. Retrieved September 11, 2023.
- ^ Shane, Scott, Flee North A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery's Borderland (Macmillan, London,2023), pp. 117-118.
- ^ Henry, Natasha; McIntosh, Andrew (January 31, 2020). "Underground Railroad". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on May 9, 2021. Retrieved March 2, 2022.
- ISBN 978-0-19-066429-9. Archivedfrom the original on March 2, 2022. Retrieved March 2, 2022.
- from the original on March 2, 2022. Retrieved March 2, 2022 – via JSTOR.
- ^ Potter, David, 1976 pp. 132–139
- ^ Bordewich, Fergus, 2005, p. 324
- ^ Gara, Larry. Underground Railroad. National Park Service. p. 8.
- ^ Douglass, Frederick (July 5, 1852), "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro" Archived July 4, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, History Is a Weapon, Retrieved July 17, 2011.
- ^ Potter, David, 1976, p. 139
- ^ "Avalon Project – Confederate States of America – Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union". Avalon.law.yale.edu. Archived from the original on February 20, 2019. Retrieved June 7, 2016.
- ^ ISBN 9781476602301.
- ^ Russell, Tonya, "Underground Railroad’s forgotten route: Thousands fled slavery by sea", The Washington Post, October 15, 2023
- ^ Larson, p. xvii.
- ^ Ritchie, Andrew (1870). The soldier, the battle, and the victory : being a brief account of the work of Rev. John Rankin in the anti-slavery cause. Cincinnati: Western Tract and Book Society. pp. 96–97.
- ^ Blight, David, 2004, p. 3.
- newspapers.com.
- ^ "The Underground Railroad". National Geographic Society. November 16, 2011. Archived from the original on August 1, 2017. Retrieved August 1, 2017.
- ISSN 1558-7266.
- ^ History of Salem Township, Washtenaw County, Michigan. Salem Area Historical Society. 1976. p. 56.
- ^ Pinsker, Matthew (2000). Vigilance in Pennsylvania: Underground Railroad Activities in the Keystone State, 1837–1861. Lancaster: PHMC.
- ^ Blight, David, 2004, p. 98
- ^ "History – National Underground Railroad Freedom Center". Freedomcenter.org. Archived from the original on August 17, 2018. Retrieved June 7, 2016.
- ^ Blight, David, 2004, p. 175
- ASIN B00264GNTU. Archivedfrom the original on December 14, 2018. Retrieved July 25, 2015.
- ^ Cedarville University (February 12, 2018). "Underground Railroad Hiding Places". Slideshow Images. Archived from the original on April 24, 2021. Retrieved February 28, 2021.
- ^ "Point of interest at Oakland City—site of barn of Col. James W. Cockrum used as an underground railroad station". Wabash Valley Visions & Voices Digital Memory Project. 1930s. Archived from the original on April 15, 2021. Retrieved February 27, 2021.
- ^ "The Underground Railroad". National Museum of African American History and Culture. March 15, 2017. Archived from the original on March 10, 2021. Retrieved February 28, 2021.
- ^ "The Smith Underground Railroad Station :: Ohio :: Henry Robert Burke :: Lest We Forget". lestweforget.hamptonu.edu. Archived from the original on April 15, 2021. Retrieved February 28, 2021.
- ^ "Underground Railroad Codes" (PDF). Myths and Codes of the Underground Railroad. Safe Passage. Greater Cincinnati Television Educational Foundation. p. 20. Archived (PDF) from the original on June 12, 2018. Retrieved June 29, 2013.
- ^ Dictated by Robert Jackson a.k.a. Wesley Harris on November 2, 1853. "Engravings by Bensell, Schell, and others."
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- Calarco, Tom (2008). People of the Underground Railroad: A Biographical Dictionary. ISBN 978-0313339240. Archivedfrom the original on July 29, 2020. Retrieved June 23, 2020.
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- Forbes, Ella (1998) But We Have No Country: The 1851 Christiana Pennsylvania Resistance. Africana Homestead Legacy Publishers.
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- Hagedorn, Ann (2004). Beyond the River: The Untold Story of the Heroes of the Underground Railroad. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-87066-5.
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- Hendrick, George; Hendrick, Willene (2003). Fleeing for Freedom: Stories of the Underground Railroad As Told by Levi Coffin and William Still. Ivan R. Dee Publisher. ISBN 1-56663-546-2.
- Hudson, J. Blaine (2002). Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad in the Kentucky Borderland. McFarland & Company. ISBN 0-7864-1345-X.
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Further reading
- Blackett, R. J. M. (2013). Making Freedom: The Underground Railroad and the Politics of Slavery. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
- Bolton, S. Charles. Fugitivism: Escaping Slavery in the Lower Mississippi Valley, 1820-1860 (University of Arkansas Press, 2019).
- Curtis, Anna L. (1941). Stories of the Underground Railroad. Archived from the original on March 31, 2012. (Stories about Thomas Garrett, a famous agent on the Underground Railroad)
- Diemer, Andrew K. (2022). Vigilance: The Life of William Still, Father of the Underground Railroad. Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 9780593534380.
- Frost, Karolyn Smardz (2007). I've Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374531256.
- Jones, Leesa Bailey (January 7, 2020). "Leesa Jones Interview". State Archives of North Carolina (Oral History). Interviewed by Ellen Brooks. Washington, N.C.
- ISBN 0-345-45627-0.
- Still, William (1872). The Underground Railroad: A Record of Facts, Authentic Narratives, Letters, &c., Narrating the Hardships, Hair-Breadth Escapes and Death Struggles of the Slaves in Their Efforts for Freedom, As Related by Themselves and Others, or Witnessed by the Author. Philadelphia: Porter & Coates. (Classic book documenting the Underground Railroad operations in Philadelphia).
- Public domain ebook at Project Gutenberg
- Book at Internet Archive
- The Underground Railroad public domain audiobook at LibriVox
- Strother, Horatio (1962; reissued 2011). The Underground Railroad in Connecticut. Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 9780819560124.
- Tilley Turner, Glennette (2001). The Underground Railroad in Illinois. Newman Educational Pub. ISBN 978-0938990055.
- Walker, Timothy D., ed. (2021). Sailing to Freedom: Maritime Dimensions of the Underground Railroad. University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 978-1625345936.
- Whitehead, Colson (2016). The Underground Railroad; winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2017 for its poetical, mythical reflection on the meaning of the Railroad in American history.
Folklore and myth
- "Documentary Evidence is Missing on Underground Railroad Quilts". historyofquilts.com. Archived from the original on May 14, 2011. Retrieved December 15, 2004.
- "New Jersey's Underground Railroad Myth-Buster: Giles Wright is on a Mission to Fine Tune Black History". Historic Camden County.
- "Putting it in Perspective: The Symbolism of Underground Railroad quilts". quilthistory.com. Archived from the original on February 4, 2013. Retrieved December 15, 2004.
- "Underground Railroad Quilts & Abolitionist Fairs". Womenfolk.com.
External links
- Underground Railroad: Language of Slavery
- Underground Railroad Studies
- Underground Railroad Timeline
- Friends of the Underground Railroad
- National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
- Underground Railroad Research Institute at Georgetown College Archived May 15, 2019, at the Wayback Machine
- Underground Railroad in Buffalo and Upstate New York: A bibliography by The Buffalo History Museum
- Newspaper articles and clippings about the Underground Railroad at Newspapers.com