Underground Railroad

Underground Railroad

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	Fleeing from slavery into the Northern United States or Canada Aiding freedom seeking slaves
Allies	Religious Society of Friends Congregational church Wesleyan Church Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America Vigilant Association of Philadelphia
Rivals	Slave catchers, Reverse Underground Railroad

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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]