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The underground railroad may be defined as the organized effort to assist runaway slaves in their dash for freedom. Since slipping away from one's master was a hazardous step, most runaways required help. The underground railroad was the popular name for the process of receiving these fugitives, hiding them overnight and then conducting them to the next station en route to freedom. In addition to helping runaways, this movement had a decidedly disturbing effect on slavery, making such property all the more risky. Wilbur H. Siebert, the foremost scholarly authority on the underground railroad, came to the conclusion that it was "one of the greatest forces which brought on the Civil and, and thus destroyed
slavery." Whites and blacks alike assisted in this work, white Levi Coffin helping nearly three thousand escapees. But, as recent studies have shown, black underground railroad operators were of major importance. A slave in flight would trust a black operator whereas a white operator might make him uneasy. Moreover, to Negroes in the North no other phase of the abolitionist program was as satisfying as that of assisting a fugitive. Of the blacks who worked in the underground railroad all names pale before that of Harriet Tubman, whose base of operations included the slave states themselves. But second only to Mrs. Tubman was William Still of Philadelphia. In December 1852 a group of Philadelphia abolitionists, most of them, like Still, members of the Pennsylvania Anti Slavery Society, formed a General Vigilance Committee. Fugitive assistance groups often took the name "vigilance." To carry out its operations, the Philadelphia group appointed a four-man Acting Committee, headed by Still, charging them with raising funds, "attending to every case that might re- quire their aid," and keeping a record "of all their doings." |
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| Slaves devised many innovative schemes to escape. One of the most daring was planned by Henry "Box" Brown, a slave from Richmond, Virginia, who had friends put him in a wooden crate and shipped to an Underground Railroad agent in Philadelphia. |
From: Trials and Triumphs by Lawrence Hill |
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