USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Despite the thoroughfare’s name, the escape network was neither literally underground nor a railroad. (The first literal underground railroad did not exist until 1863.)

Detailed explanation-2: -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.

Detailed explanation-3: -In the early 1800s, Quaker abolitionist Isaac T. Hopper set up a network in Philadelphia that helped enslaved people on the run.

Detailed explanation-4: -In truth, says Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Eric Foner, the Underground Railroad consisted of “local networks of anti-slavery people, both Black and white, who assisted fugitives in various ways, ” from raising funds for the abolitionist cause to taking cases to court to hiding runaways in safe houses.