Far from being truly underground, or even a railroad, the Underground Railroad was in fact a loosely organized network of individuals who assisted slaves as they escaped bondage in pre–Civil War America. Between the 1820s and 1860s, an untold number of enslaved African Americans fled over multiple land and water routes to freedom. Slaves from the border states stretching along the Ohio River had an increased chance of success due to their closeness to free soil in the North. Many continued on to Canada. Slaves from Texas crossed the Rio Grande into Mexico. Slaves from Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama escaped to live with the Seminole Indians in Florida or the Caribbean. Some groups of fugitives set up self-sufficient “maroon societies,” living out their lives in remote areas such as the Great Dismal Swamp along the Virginia–North Carolina border.
As rail transportation became increasingly popular in the 1830s, metaphors emerged to describe the clandestine movement of slaves on the run. “Passengers” escaped along “lines,” transported by “conductors” and aided by “agents” who had made the arrangements. The “stations” were safe houses where the fugitives hid and were offered food, clothing, and temporary shelter.
There are several claims as to the origin of the term “Underground Railroad.” One involves a slave named Tice Davids, who ran away from Kentucky to Ripley, Ohio, in 1831. When Davids’s owner could find no trace of him, he said that his slave had “gone off on an underground road.” By the 1840s the Underground Railroad evolved into a secret network of individuals, families, and small groups taking in slaves who came to them from the previous station and making sure they made it to the next.
It was never a large-scale operation with membership or national regulation. Most “conductors” knew only a handful of people involved with the railroad, and very few were familiar with an entire route. Any form of participation was recognized as an act of civil disobedience. Given the constant threat of fines, imprisonment, or even death, it was work that had to be done in the utmost secrecy. While accurate statistics are unavailable (to protect the participants, most of the paperwork was either nonexistent or destroyed), it is estimated that less than 2 percent of America’s four million enslaved people escaped to freedom. The “father of the Underground Railroad,” William Still, in the course of his work for the Pennsylvania Anti-slavery Society, did manage to preserve an accurate record. Much of what we know today about the Railroad is due to his diligence.
The period of greatest activity for the Underground Railroad began with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. With this new law, slave owners could legally pursue their runaways into the free states of the Union, capturing them on free soil and forcibly taking them back to a slave state. Ironically, the passage of this law only strengthened the abolitionist movement and bolstered the determination of those activists involved in the Underground Railroad.
Even aided by individuals associated with the Underground Railroad, slaves on the run often had to rely on their own resources. Most conductors could take them only as far as the next station (anywhere from one to thirty miles). To outwit the bounty hunters and their bloodhounds, they sometimes camouflaged their scent by running through a river or a creek, or a snake-infested swamp. Sometimes they doubled back to throw off the hunt. Often runaways were not dressed appropriately and suffered from hunger and other privations. Very few had money, and most were unable to read.
Typically traveling at night, fugitives might get a head start if they left on a Sunday or a holiday, when their absence might not immediately be noticed. Young men statistically had the highest chance of success. Unencumbered by family, they could cover greater distances. They were also more often familiar with the surrounding area, especially if they had been hired out on various jobs around the community. Once they connected with a “conductor,” however, they typically put their lives in the hands of a complete stranger. Uncertain of whom they could trust, fugitive slaves were in constant fear of being caught. If they were captured, punishment was swift, and they were often whipped or sold. Being sent to the Deep South, with its reputation for cruel treatment, was a threat slaves feared as much as whipping.
If their light skin allowed them to “pass” for white, escapees might look for a nice set of clothes and try to board a train or boat to freedom. An ingenious fugitive even had himself mailed north. Some fugitives who successfully escaped sought out black communities where they could blend in with those already free. However, the illegal slave trade was a highly profitable business, which gave way to the kidnapping of free blacks. Men, women, and children—either born free or escaped from bondage—carried their free papers with them, yet still were not always safe. The border states with large black populations were particularly vulnerable to kidnapping because of their proximity to slave states.
Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Levi Coffin, and Sojourner Truth are a few of the famous names associated with the Underground Railroad, but there are a host of unsung heroes as well, all with inspirational stories. Individuals such as John P. Parker, Seth Concklin, Peter Still, and the Rankin family often risked their own freedom and health by assisting others in their escapes from bondage. Slaves like Solomon Northup, Harriet Jacobs, and Mary Walker had to wait years until the opportunity and assistance to escape presented itself.
Historically there has been an overemphasis on the participation of white abolitionists in the Underground Railroad movement, and an underrepresentation of involvement by African Americans. The true stories contained in It Happened on the Underground Railroad attempt to shed light on black agency.
The institution of slavery, from its start in 1619 to the end of the Civil War in 1865, is an unspeakable stain on America’s history. This book is a tribute to the courage of those—enslaved and free, black and white, women and men, young and old—who devoted their lives to helping others obtain their freedom.