- Established by the Quakers and others who were against slavery to help slaves reach freedom
- Most actively used between 1850-1860
- Hundreds of thousands of slaves escaped to freedom
- The Railroad led from the southern states where slavery was prominent all the way to Canada where slavery did not exist
- The use of the railroad and the consistent slaves escaping began to hurt the plantation owners who needed their slaves to work, and they became angry with having no support in retrieving their slaves.
The Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was the start of the abolitionist efforts to free slaves and reach equality, and was a major contributing factor to the start of the Civil War.