![]() ![]() However, in some places, especially after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, the Underground Railroad was deliberate and organized. The decision to assist a freedom seeker may have been spontaneous. Many freedom seekers began their journey unaided and many completed their self-emancipation without assistance, but each subsequent decade in which slavery was legal in the United States, there was an increase in active efforts to assist escape. ![]() These acts of self-emancipation labeled slaves as "fugitives," "escapees," or "runaways," but in retrospect " freedom seeker" is a more accurate description. At first to maroon communities in remote or rugged terrain on the edge of settled areas and eventually across state and international borders. ![]() ![]() Wherever slavery existed, there were efforts to escape. The Underground Railroad-the resistance to enslavement through escape and flight, through the end of the Civil War-refers to the efforts of enslaved African Americans to gain their freedom by escaping bondage. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say - I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger. Harriet Tubman, photographed by Harvey Lindsley. ![]()
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