 Map of Underground Railroad routes into the Northern United States and to modern-day Canada | |
| Founding location | United States |
|---|---|
| Territory | United States, and routes to British North America, Mexico, Spanish Florida, and the Caribbean |
| Ethnicity | African Americans and other compatriots |
| Activities |
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| Allies | |
| Rivals | Slave catchers, Reverse Underground Railroad |
| Part of a series on |
| Forced labour and slavery |
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The Underground Railroad was used by freedom seekers from slavery in the United States and was generally an organized network of secret routes and safe houses.[1] Enslaved Africans and African Americans escaped from slavery as early as the 16th century and many of their escapes were unaided,[2][3][4] but the network of safe houses operated by agents generally known as the Underground Railroad began to organize in the 1780s among Abolitionist Societies in the North.[5][6] It ran north and grew steadily until the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln.[7] The escapees sought primarily to escape into free states, and from there to Canada.[8]
The network, primarily the work of free and enslaved African Americans,[9] was assisted by abolitionists and others sympathetic to the cause of the escapees.[10] The enslaved people who risked capture and those who aided them are also collectively referred to as the passengers and conductors of the Railroad, respectively.[11] Various other routes led to Mexico,[12] where slavery had been abolished, and to islands in the Caribbean that were not part of the slave trade.[13] An earlier escape route running south toward Florida, then a Spanish possession (except 1763–1783), existed from the late 17th century until approximately 1790.[14][15] During the American Civil War, freedom seekers escaped to Union lines in the South to obtain their freedom. One estimate suggests that, by 1850, approximately 100,000 slaves had escaped to freedom via the network.[7] According to former professor of Pan-African studies, J. Blaine Hudson, who was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Louisville, by the end of the American Civil War 500,000 or more African Americans self-emancipated themselves from slavery on the Underground Railroad.[16]
- ^ Hudson 2015, pp. 1, 6, 10.
- ^ Special Resource Study, Management Concepts Underground Railroad. U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Denver Service Center. 1995. p. 19.
- ^ "What is the Underground Railroad?". Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Retrieved September 9, 2024.
- ^ "New Jersey's Underground Railroad Heritage". New Jersey Historical Commission. New Jersey State Library. Retrieved September 18, 2024.
- ^ "Historic Context for the Underground Railroad". Researching and Interpreting the Underground Railroad. The National Park Service. Retrieved September 8, 2024.
- ^ "The Underground Railroad c.1780 - 1862". Africans in America. PBS. Retrieved September 9, 2024.
- ^ 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.
- ^ Cross, L.D. (2010). The Underground Railroad: The long journey to freedom in Canada. Toronto, ON: James Lorimer Limited, Publishers. ISBN 978-1-55277-581-3.
- ^ Hunter, Carol (December 20, 2013). To Set the Captives Free. Reverend Jermain Wesley Loguen and the struggle for freedom in central New York 1835–1872 (2nd ed.). Hyrax Publishing. p. 139. 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.
- ^ McIver, Stuart (February 14, 1993). "Fort Moses's Call To Freedom. Florida's Little-known Underground Railroad Was the Escape Route Taken by Slaves Who Fled to the State in the 1700s and Established America's First Black Town". Sun-Sentinel. Archived from the original on February 13, 2018. Retrieved February 10, 2018.
- ^ Hudson 2015, p. 10.