underground railroads
Beneath-surface train systems
Underground railroads are clandestine networks for moving people to safety, named after the most famous one—the system of secret routes and safe houses that helped enslaved people escape to free states and Canada before the American Civil War.
The term now applies to any covert operation smuggling refugees or fugitives: an underground railroad for dissidents fleeing the regime.
- escapeFlight from captivity
- freedomAbsence of constraint
- freedom seekersThose escaping captivity
- conductorsThose who direct ensembles
- station mastersRailway platform supervisors
Harriet Tubman · stations · safe houses · false bottoms · abolition · slavery · fugitive · North Star · hidden · tunnels · secret · routes · passengers · quilts · lanterns · midnight · Canada · free soil
- Cold WarBerlin Wall, Iron Curtain, arms race, Warsaw Pact, Cuban Missile Crisis
underground railroadsslave patrols
Organized catchers of runaways
slave catchers · fugitive slave laws · slave markets · plantation system · chattel slavery
underground railroadsslave catchers
Pursuers of escaped bondspeople
slave trade routes · Middle Passage · slave auctions · plantation system · bounty hunters
underground, railroad, railroads, under, ground, roads, grounded, grounding, grounds