The network of freedom seekers, routes, safe houses, and allies through which enslaved African Americans escaped bondage before and during the Civil War.
The Underground Railroad was neither a railroad nor, for the most part, underground. The National Park Service defines it as the efforts of enslaved African Americans to gain their freedom by escaping bondage, together with the people who aided them. It existed wherever slavery was legal, from the institution’s beginnings through the end of the Civil War, and it became more organized after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Its participants borrowed the vocabulary of the new railroads: Harriet Tubman said of her years as a conductor that she never ran her train off the track and never lost a passenger.
Freedom seekers did most of the work themselves. They traveled on foot and by river, canal, ferry, and coastal ship; used disguises, forged papers, and careful planning; and headed for the free states, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Europe, and the western territories. The maritime trades carried news and offered work and cover. Those who helped included enslaved and free Black people, American Indians, and white allies of many faiths and backgrounds.
Tubman escaped from Maryland in the fall of 1849 and made about thirteen trips back between 1850 and 1860, bringing out more than seventy family members and friends. In Philadelphia, William Still chaired the Vigilance Committee, and he and his family aided close to a thousand freedom seekers; the records he kept became The Underground Rail Road (1872). Boston abolitionists formed their own Vigilance Committee in October 1850, and in February 1851 a group led by the Black abolitionist Lewis Hayden rescued the freedom seeker Shadrach Minkins from federal custody.
Because the work depended on secrecy, it left few written records, which makes first-hand accounts like Still’s, and the narratives of people such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, especially valuable. Today the National Park Service’s Network to Freedom program recognizes sites and programs connected to the Underground Railroad.
See also: Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Dred Scott v. Sandford, Emancipation
Sources
- National Park Service, “What Is the Underground Railroad?” Link
- National Park Service, Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park, “Harriet Tubman.” Link
- Colored Conventions Project, “William Still.” Link
- National Park Service, “The Fugitive Slave Laws and Boston.” Link
Related on Black-History.com
Cite this page
- MLA
- “Underground Railroad.” Black-History.com, 30 Sept. 2026, https://black-history.com/glossary/underground-railroad/.
- APA
- Black-History.com Editors. (2026, September 30). Underground Railroad. Black-History.com. https://black-history.com/glossary/underground-railroad/
- Chicago
- Black-History.com Editors. “Underground Railroad.” Black-History.com. September 30, 2026. https://black-history.com/glossary/underground-railroad/.
By the Black-History.com editors. Last reviewed 30 September 2026. To suggest a primary source or a correction, write to editors@black-history.com or use our corrections form.