Although the Fugitive Slave Act included heavy fines and prison terms for helping a runaway, whites and free African Americans continued their work with the Underground Railroad. This informal, but well organized system, begun in the early 1830's, helped thousands of enslaved persons escape. Members called ‘conductors', transported runaways north in secret, gave them shelter and food along the way, and saw them to freedom in the Northern states or Canada, with some money for a fresh start.Dedicated people, many of them African Americans, made dangerous trips into the South to guide enslaved persons along the Underground Railroad to freedom. The most famous of these conductors was Harriet Tubman, herself a runaway. She risked many trips to the South.

In Des Moines , Iowa , Isaac Brandt used secret signals to communicate with conductors on the Underground Railroad - a hand lifted palm outwards, for example, or a certain kind of tug at the ear. ‘I do not know how these signs or signals originated,' he later remembered, ‘but they had become well understood. Without them, the operation of the system of running slaves into free territory would not have been possible.'

Levi Coffin, a Quaker born in North Carolina , allowed escaped African Americans to stay at his home in Indiana , where three Underground Railroad converged….An estimated 2,000 African Americans stopped at Coffin's red brick house on their way to freedom. Coffin later moved to Cincinnati , Ohio , where he assisted another 1,300 African Americans who had crossed the river from Kentucky to freedom. A thorn in the side to slaveholders, the Underground Railroad deepened Southern mistrust of Northern intentions.

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Bailey, Thomas A. and David M. Kennedy, The American Pageant: A History of the Republic: Tenth Edition . D.C. Heath and Company, Lexington , Massachusetts , 1994.

Even more disagreeable to the South was the loss of runaway slaves many of whom were assisted north by the Underground Railroad. It consisted of an informal chain of ‘stations' (anti-slavery homes), through which scores of ‘passengers' (runaway slaves) were spirited by ‘conductors' (usually white and black abolitionists) from the slave states to the free-soil sanctuary of Canada .”

The most amazing of these ‘conductors' was an illiterate runaway slave from Maryland , fearless Harriet Tubman. During nineteen forays into the South, she rescued more than three hundred slaves, including her aged parents, and deservedly earned the title ‘Moses.' Lively imaginations later exaggerated the role of the Underground Railroad and its ‘station masters,' but its existence was a fact.

 “Estimates indicate that the South in 1850 was losing perhaps 1,000 runaways a year, out of its total of some 4 million slaves. In fact, more blacks probably gained their freedom by self-purchase or voluntary emancipation than ever escaped. But the principle weighed heavily with the slavemasters. They rested their argument on the Constitution, which protected slavery, and on the laws of Congress, which provided for slave-catching. ‘Although the loss of property is felt,' said a southern senator, ‘the loss of honor is felt still more.'

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Banks, James A., with Barry K. Beyer, Gloria Contreras, Jean Craven Gloria Ladson-Billings, Mary A. McFarland, and Walter C. Parker, United States Adventures in Time and Space . Macmillan McGraw-Hill, New York , New York , 1997.

Many slaves who did escape got help on the Underground Railroad. This was not a real railroad, but a system of secret routes that escaping captives followed to freedom. On this ‘railroad,' the slaves were called ‘passengers.' Those who guided and transported them were ‘conductors.' The places where slaves hid along the way were called ‘stations.' People who fed and sheltered them were ‘stationmasters.' Enslaved people often used songs to signal their plan to escape. One song, ‘Follow the Drinking Gourd,' gave directions for escaping north in code.…Each of the rivers in the song was an actual river. For example, the ‘great river' was the Ohio River . The ‘drinking gourd' was the Little Dipper. One of the stars in the Little Dipper is the North Star, which escaping slaves used to guide them north.

Levi Coffin, a Quaker from Indiana , was one of many people who helped slaves to escape. His wife, Catherine Coffin fed, clothed, and hid the slaves in their house. What they did took great courage. If caught, they could have been hanged. Because their work was so secret, we will never know how many people actually worked or escaped on the Underground Railroad.

In 1849, Harriet Tubman heard that she and other slaves on her Maryland plantation were to be sold further south. Tubman knew that life was even harder for slaves on the large cotton plantations there. She told her husband, John, ‘There's two things I've a right to: death or liberty. One or the other I mean to have. No one will take me back alive.' Tubman fled from the plantation in the middle of the night and headed for the house of a white woman known to help escaping slaves. The woman gave her two slips of paper with the names of families on the route north who would help her. These were Tubman's first ‘railroad rickets.' Tubman traveled at night, mostly through swamps and woodlands. After traveling 90 miles, she reached the free soil of Pennsylvania . Tubman returned many times to guide her family and many others to freedom. She was given the nickname, ‘Moses,' after the Hebrew prophet who led his people out of slavery in Egypt . Thousands of dollars were offered for Tubman's capture. More than 300 slaves owed their freedom to her.

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Cayton, Andrew, with Elisabeth Israels Perry, Linda Reed, and Allan M. Winkler. America : Pathways to the Present: Modern American History . Pearson Prentice Hall, Needham , Massachusetts , 2003.

Risking arrest, and sometimes risking their lives, abolitionists created the Underground Railroad, a network of escape routes that provided protection and transportation for slaves fleeing north to freedom. The term railroad referred to the paths that African Americans traveled, either on foot or in wagons, across the North-South border and finally into Canada, where slave-hunters could not go. Underground meant that the operation was carried out in secret, usually on dark nights in deep woods. Men and women known as conductors acted as guides. They opened up their homes to the fugitives and gave them money, supplies, and medical attention. Historians' estimates of the number of slaves rescued vary widely, from about 40,000 to 100,000.

The most famous conductor was a courageous famous slave named Harriet Tubman, who herself had escaped from a plantation in Maryland in 1849 and fled north on the Underground Railroad. Tubman…returned just the next year to rescue family members and lead them to safety. Thereafter, she made frequent trips to the South, rescuing more than 300 slaves and gaining the nickname ‘the Black Moses.'

Roark, James L., with Michael P. Johnson, Patricia Cline Cohen, Sarah Stage, Alan Lawson, and Susan M. Hartmann, The American Promise: A History of the United States . Bedford / St. Martin's, Boston Massachusetts, v. 1 to 1877, 2 nd edition, 2002.

Outside the public spotlight, free African Americans in the North and West contributed to the antislavery cause by quietly aiding fugitive slaves. Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery in Maryland in 1849 and repeatedly risked her freedom and her life to return to the South and escort slaves to freedom. Few matched Tubman's heroic courage, but when the opportunity arose, free blacks in the North provided fugitive slaves with food, a safe place to rest, and a helping hand. This ‘underground railroad' ran mainly through black neighborhoods, black churches, and black homes, an outgrowth of the antislavery sentiment and opposition to white supremacy that unified virtually all African Americans in the North. While a few fortunate southern slaves rode the Underground Railroad to freedom in the North, millions of other Americans uprooted their families and headed west.

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Suter, Jonanne. Fearon's United States History . Fearon Education, Belmont , California , 1990.

It was a warm summer night in 1851. Outside the slave cabins, a woman sang a song called ‘Steal Away.' The men, women, and children in the cabins heard the song. It was a signal to wrap the few things they owned and make their escape.

The woman singing the song was Harriet Tubman. She was born a slave, but she had escaped to the North, promising to return one day to help others.

She made good on her promise. Harriet Tubman went back to slave country 19 times. She helped lead more than 300 black people to freedom. Slave catchers tried to capture her, but they never could. Tubman always managed to get away. At one time rewards for her capture totaled about $40,000.

Harriet Tubman was a conductor on the Underground Railroad. This was not really a railroad, and it was not really under the ground. It was a secret means of escape for slaves.

Other Definitions of the Underground Railroad  

“The slave and his particular friends could only meet in private to transact the business of the Underground Rail Road ground. All others were outsiders. The right hand was not to know what the left hand was doing. Stockholders did not expect any dividends, nor did they re-quire special reports to be published. Indeed prudence often dictated that even the recipients of our favor should not know the names of their helpers, and vice versa they did not desire to know theirs. The risk of aiding fugitives was never lost sight of, and the safety of all concerned called for still tongues. Hence sad and thrilling stories were listened to, and made deep impressions; but as a universal rule, friend and fugitive parted with only very vivid recollection of the secret interview and with mutual sympathy; for a length of time no narratives were written. The writer, in common with others, took no notes. But after the restoration of Peter Still, his own brother (the kidnapped and the ransomed), after forty years' cruel separation from his mother, the wonderful discovery and joyful reunion, the idea forced itself upon his mind that all over this wide and extended country thousands of mothers and children, separated by Slavery, were in a similar way living without the slightest knowledge of each other's where-abouts, praying and weeping without ceasing, as did this mother and son. Under these reflections it seemed reasonable to hope that by carefully gathering the narratives of Underground Rail Road passengers, in some way or other some of the bleeding and severed hearts might be united and comforted; and by the use that might be made privately, if not publicly, of just such facts as would naturally be embraced in their brief narratives, re-unions might take place….While the writer holds the labors of Abolitionists generally in very grateful appreciation, he hopes not to be regarded as making any invidious discriminations in favor of the individual friends of the slave, whose names may be brought out prominently in this work, as it is not with the Anti-Slavery question proper that he is dealing, but simply the Underground Rail Road. In order, therefore, fittingly to bring the movements of this enterprise to light, the writer could not justly confine himself to the Acting Committee, but felt constrained to bring in others-Friends- who never forsook the fugitive, who visited him in prison, clothed him when naked, fed him when hungry, wept with him when he wept, and cheered him with their warmest sympathies and friendship.”

William Still, The Underground Railroad (Philadelphia, PA: Porter & Coates, 1872), 4-5.

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“It is quite apparent, that the Underground Railroad was not a formal organization with officers of different ranks, a regular membership, and a treasury from which to meet expenses….In truth, the work was everywhere spontaneous, and its character was such that organization could have added little or no efficiency.”

Wilbur H. Siebert, The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom (New York: Russell & Russell, 1898), 67, 69.

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“The Underground Railroad was simply a form of combined defiance of national laws, on the ground that those laws were unjust and oppressive. It was the unconstitutional but logical refusal of several thousand people to acknowledge that they owed any regard to slavery or were bound to look on fleeing bondmen as the property of the slaveholders, no matter how the law read. It was also a practical means of bringing anti-slavery principles to the attention of the lukewarm or pro-slavery people in free states ; and of convincing the South that the abolitionist movement was sincere and effective.”

“Introduction” by Albert Bushnell Hart in Wilbur H. Siebert, The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom (New York: Russell & Russell, 1898), viii-ix.

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"Far from being secret, [the Underground Railroad] was copiously and persistently publicized, and there is little valid evidence for the existence of a widespread underground conspiracy."

Larry Gara, The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad (orig. pub. 1961-- Lexington : University Press of Kentucky , 1996), 193.

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“[The Underground Railroad] refers to the movement of African-American slaves escaping out of the South and to the allies who assisted them in their search for freedom."

C. Peter Ripley, et.al., The Underground Railroad (Handbook 156, Washington DC: National Park Service, 1998), 45.

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“Estimates of the number of slaves who made it to freedom in the North vary considerably. It is probable, however, that perhaps one or two thousand per year were successful during the post-1830 period. Not all of them traveled along the routes of the Underground Railroad, however. Whatever the exact number, it is clear that the fugitives who made it to freedom in this manner represented, as one historian said, a “mere trickle from among the millions of slaves.” By contrast, tens of thousands of slaves ran away each year into the woods, swamps, hills, backcountry, towns, and cities of the South. Indeed, running away in the South was commonplace.”

John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 367n.

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