The Underground Railroad
An escape network that worked because it was never written down
See it on the timeline →In depth
The Underground Railroad was neither underground nor a railroad, but a network of people who hid and passed on enslaved people escaping north. The network is hard to document precisely because secrecy was the condition of its working, and later accounts have both exaggerated its scale and understated how much of the work was done by free Black communities. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 made citizens of northern states legally obliged to assist in captures, and is a principal reason the slavery question could no longer be held as a regional matter. Canada received an estimated thirty thousand.
For children
A secret network of people helped enslaved people escape north to free states and to Canada. Harriet Tubman, who had escaped herself, went back around thirteen times and brought out some seventy people without losing a single one.
Sources
- Blight, Passages to Freedom (2004)
- Larson, Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman (2004)
Connects to
Report a correction
Found something that does not hold? Tell us — sources help, but are not required.
Report a correctionPart of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org ·