5 Myths about the Underground Railroad
1. The Underground Railroad relied on codes in quilts and songs.
By Judith Wellman
People are enthralled with finding codes for the Underground Railroad. Believing that the Underground
Railroad was always a secret movement, they look everywhere for secret passwords. One of the most
persistent—and least defensible—stories is that quilts were used as codes. No evidence has ever been
found, however, to support this belief. No one who used the Underground Railroad ever mentioned a quilt
code. Many stories about the code make little sense, in terms of what historians actually do know about
the way the Underground Railroad operated. And many quilt patterns supposedly used on the
Underground Railroad were not developed until the 20th century.
Simple codes may have been used in other ways, however. Harriet Tubman, for example, sometimes used
songs as clues. In the 1860s, Tubman told Sarah Bradford that she had sung “Bound for the Promised
Land” to tell her friends that she was leaving slavery. In 1854, Tubman indicated in a letter to Jacob
Jackson, Underground Railroad agent in Maryland, that Jackson should tell her brothers that the “Old
Ship of Zion” was coming. This may have been a reference to the title of a widely known song. As
recorded by Bradford, Tubman sang a song “Moses Go Down” to fugitives to warn them that it was not
safe to come out. If she sang “Hail, oh hail, ye happy spirits” twice, then her charges knew they could
safely emerge.1
Some supposed Underground Railroad songs still lack good documentation. For example, despite more
than 200 recordings and dozens of books identifying it as an Underground Railroad song, the origins of
Follow the Drinking Gourd remain unclear. It was first published in 1928.
Much work remains to be done to document potential Underground Railroad codes.
2. The Underground Railroad was operated by white Quakers.
By Amy Cohen
Although members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) were among the earliest, most active
abolitionists and played a major role in helping enslaved blacks to escape, the Underground Railroad was
actually a cooperative effort between whites of several different denominations and free blacks. White
Kate Clifford Larson, Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, American Hero (New York: Ballantine, 2003); Sarah
Bradford, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman (Auburn: W.J Moses, 1869), 26-27.
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members of the Unitarian, Wesleyan, and Presbyterian churches also participated in the work of the
Underground Railroad alongside Quakers.
Free blacks were active on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. African Americans in the North helped
by providing food and shelter to fugitives, by donating money and goods, and by going South to help the
enslaved to escape. Some black "conductors" even disguised themselves as slaves and snuck onto
plantations to assist aspiring runaways.
While the work of Harriet Tubman and William Still is well known, the work of other African American
participants in the Underground Railroad such as Phoebe Myers, John P. Parker, and Samuel Burris has
also been documented. Like their white counterparts, however, most blacks involved in the Underground
Railroad strove to keep their identities secret because helping people to escape bondage was illegal.
Furthermore, if caught, free blacks risked being sold into slavery.
Thus while historians know that white Quakers played a significant leadership role on the Underground
Railroad, chances are that the names of many people who helped this enterprise to succeed will forever
remain obscure.
3. The Underground Railroad began with Harriet Tubman in the 1850s.
By Christopher Densmore
When Harriet Tubman escaped from enslavement in 1849, the Underground Railroad had already been in
operation for decades. The United States had a long history of conflict between those who wished to
capture runaway slaves and those who applauded freedom seekers and gave them assistance when
possible.
In 1786, George Washington complained about “an organization of Quakers” in Philadelphia that would
hinder rather than aid in the capture of runaway slaves. The US Constitution [Article IV, Section 2,
Clause 2] adopted in 1787 included a provision for the return of “fugitives from labor” (which included
runaway slaves), and in 1793 the US Congress passed the first Fugitive Slave Act.
For as long as there had been slavery, enslaved people had tried to escape their enslavement by flight, and
some historians think of any attempted escape as being part of the “Underground Railroad.” If the
Underground Railroad is more narrowly defined as a system of routes, largely aimed toward the “free
states” of the North or Canada, and where freedom seekers might find some assistance, the system in
southeastern Pennsylvania dates at least to the later years of the 1700s, long before Harriet Tubman or
Frederick Douglass were born. However, few parts of the Underground Railroad ever became as well
organized and effective as that run by William Still at Philadelphia in the 1850s.
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4. The Underground Railroad helped funnel escaped slaves from the southern
United States to Canada.
By Richard Newman
Although British Canada became the most important sanctuary for runaway slaves before the Civil War, it
was not the only site black freedom seekers pursued. Fugitives escaped to a variety of places that offered
them either liberty or sanctuary. In colonial times, enslaved people from South Carolina and Georgia
escaped to Spanish Florida, which promised them freedom. After the American Revolution, enslaved
people ran to Pennsylvania, which had passed the nation’s first gradual abolition law in 1780. While the
Pennsylvania law did not grant runaway slaves immediate liberty, abolitionist lawyers and free blacks in
the Quaker State did help many freedom seekers gain liberty by the early 1800s. By the 1820s, runaway
slaves from Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and even New Jersey sought sanctuary in Pennsylvania.
In the antebellum era, southern slaves escaped to several northern states in hopes of freedom. In the
1830s, celebrated black activist Frederick Douglass departed his Maryland plantation, eventually settling
in Massachusetts. He soon moved to Rochester, New York, where he helped other runaway slaves secure
freedom. Freedom seekers went to Iowa, Michigan, and Ohio, where black and white abolitionists vowed
to protect them. Some fugitives stowed away on ships going to the British Caribbean (where slavery was
outlawed in the 1830s). Even in the Deep South, enslaved people tried to gain their freedom by escaping
to Mexico, which banned bondage.
But British Canada did become a key destination for escaping slaves after the passage of a stronger US
Fugitive Slave Law in 1850. More fearful of slave-catchers than ever, thousands of runaway slaves (and
even many free blacks) resettled in Canada. Some never returned to the United States.
5. Most fugitives from slavery were young black men.
By Judith Wellman
People commonly believe that most of those who escaped on the Underground Railroad were young men.
Some evidence supports this perception, but much material suggests that women and children formed a
large part of the fugitive population.
Certainly, young men had more opportunities to escape, in part because their occupations were more
likely to allow some travel and they were less likely to have childcare obligations. Two historians
analyzed newspaper advertisements seeking the return of runaway slaves, and found that only 19 percent
of the ads sought women.
Anecdotal evidence, however, suggests a different story: that women often traveled to freedom alone or
as part of larger groups of families and friends. Harriet Tubman, for example, helped bring not only
herself and her brothers out of slavery, but also many female members of her family. In Rochester, New
York, in the 1850s, Amy Post welcomed a group of fifteen people traveling out of slavery, all related to
the oldest woman in the group. Although the woman and her children were free, they had married people
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in slavery, so their spouses and some of the grandchildren were in danger of being sold.2 The famous
“Cambridge twenty-eight,” who escaped from Cambridge, Maryland, in October 1857, included five adult
women and ten children, as well as thirteen adult men.3
In upstate New York, census records support this anecdotal evidence. African Americans were listed by
individual name in the federal census (and in state census records in New York and Iowa), beginning in
1850. If African Americans listed their birthplaces as a southern state, Canada, or unknown, they may
have escaped from slavery before settling in New York State. (They may also, of course, have been free
people of color.) Analyses of African Americans listed in census records in three areas of upstate New
York—Cayuga County, Seneca County, and Syracuse—suggest that women comprised a substantial
minority of this group. In 1860, for example, 42 percent of the total of 136 possible freedom-seekers in
those areas were women who listed their birthplaces as a southern state.
2
Amy Post, “The Underground Railroad,” in William Peck, Semi-Centennial History of the City of Rochester, 458-462.
3
William Still, The Underground Rail Road (Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, 1872).
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