They provided food, supplies, money and job recommendations to the arriving slaves, and even held fundraising bake sales under the banner, ‘Buy for the sake of the slave’. ![]() In the larger cities of the North, like New York, Boston and Philadelphia, ‘vigilance committees’ sprang up and supported the Railroad. ![]() This meant that they mastered certain routes and stations without ever knowing the Railroad’s full extent. Those involved – who ranged from escaped slaves to wealthy white abolitionists and church leaders – tended to stay in small groups. So the slaves became ‘passengers’, safe houses became ‘stations’, and the guides, like Harriet Tubman, were called ‘conductors’.Īlthough often represented as meticulously organised, with maps of set routes and elaborate systems of communication, the Underground Railroad was a loosely connected network. It was all kept a secret, hence ‘underground’, and used terms from the burgeoning railway. Safe houses would be dotted along the routes, managed by sympathisers. Sometimes, though, a route included transportation, such as boats or wagons. ![]() Guides led them along the indirect routes, which often meant walking through the wilderness, crossing rivers and climbing mountains to avoid detection. The name doesn’t mean actual trains ran up and down America in tunnels (not in the early 19th century, at least) but refers to a system of hidden routes, there to help escaped slaves reach the free states of the North or Canada.
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