![]() 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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