Underground Railway

(proper noun)

a network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century black slaves in the United States to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause

Related Terms

  • neutrophil
  • chattel slavery
  • manumission

Examples of Underground Railway in the following topics:

  • Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement

    • Resistance to slavery also took other forms including institutions such as the Underground Railway that helped escaping slaves make their way to freedom.
  • Railways

  • The Rise of Unions

    • Molly Maguire history is sometimes presented as the persecution of an underground movement that was motivated by personal vendettas, and sometimes as a struggle between organized labor and powerful industrial forces.
    • The strike, along with the support of the American Railway Union, soon brought the nation's railway industry to a halt.
    • The strike collapsed, as did the American Railway Union.
  • Theatre and Novels

    • The counterculture of the 1960s gave rise to new forms of media such as underground newspapers, literature, theater, and cinema.
    • In mid-1966, the cooperative Underground Press Syndicate (UPS) was formed.
    • A UPS roster published in November 1966 listed 14 underground papers, 11 of them in the United States.
    • There also existed an underground press network within the U.S. military.
    • The GI underground press produced a few hundred titles during the Vietnam War.
  • The Underground Railroad

    • The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses used by nineteenth-century slaves to escape to free states and Canada.
    • The escape network of the Underground Railroad was not literally underground or a railroad.
    • It was figuratively "underground" in the sense of being a covert form of resistance.
    • Estimates vary widely, but at least 30,000 slaves, and potentially more than 100,000, escaped to Canada via the Underground Railroad.
    • A worker on the Underground Railroad, Tubman made 13 trips to the South, helping to free more than 70 people.
  • Peacetime Economy

    • In the spring of 1946, a national railway strike, unprecedented in the nation's history, brought virtually all passenger and freight lines to a standstill for over a month.
    • When the railway workers turned down a proposed settlement, Truman seized control of the railways and threatened to draft striking workers into the armed forces.
    • Although the resolution of the crippling railway strike made for stirring political theater, it actually cost Truman politically: his proposed solution was seen by many as high-handed, and labor voters, already wary of Truman's handling of workers' issues, were deeply alienated.
  • The Agrarian and Populist Movements

    • Railways had been extended into frontier states, and farmers resented the absentee ownership of these railways by New York capitalists.
    • In 1867, the Grange began efforts to establish regulation of the railways as common-carriers, by the states.
  • Stem Modifications

    • Stem modifications, either aboveground, underground, or aerial, enable plants to survive in particular habitats and environments.
    • A rhizome is a modified stem that grows horizontally underground; it has nodes and internodes.
    • A bulb, which functions as an underground storage unit, is a modification of a stem that has the appearance of enlarged fleshy leaves emerging from the stem or surrounding the base of the stem, as seen in the iris .
  • The Labor Wars

    • Discontented workers joined the American Railway Union (ARU), led by Eugene V.
    • Paul Railway, appointed as a special federal attorney with responsibility for dealing with the strike.
    • 1894 strike by the American Railway Union.
  • Slavery and Liberty

    • The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses used by black slaves to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists who were sympathetic to their cause.
    • The escape network was not literally underground nor a railroad, but consisted of meeting points, secret routes, transportation, safe houses, and assistance provided by abolitionist sympathizers.
    • However, the severity of this measure led to gross abuses and defeated its purpose; the number of abolitionists increased, the operations of the Underground Railroad became more efficient, and refugees from slavery continued to flee toward the North.
    • Many slaves fled through the Underground Railroad, seeking freedom in the North.
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