The system of secretly transporting runaway slaves through the northern states to Canada. See William Steel, ‘The Underground Railroad,’ 1872; and Booker Washington’s ‘Life of Frederick Douglass,’ 1906, ch. ix.
1846. Amend the amendment by adding $50,000 for the perfection of the Bebb and Schenck subterranean railroad, on which to carry their odoriferous friends from Kentucky to Canada.—Mr. Fries of Ohio, House of Repr., March 18: Cong. Globe, p. 523.
1846. I am told that [the amendment] proposes a subterranean railway for carrying the blacks from Kentucky to Canada.—Mr. Schenck of Ohio: same place, date, and page.
1857. This Greeley is one of their popular characters in the East, and one that supports the stealing of niggers and the underground railroad.—John Taylor at the Bowery, Salt Lake City, Aug. 9: ‘Journal of Discourses,’ v. 119.
1859. When a man’s slave runs away and comes to their houses, they will feed him and send him into Canada through the underground railroad.—Mr. John A. Logan of Illinois, Dec. 9: Cong. Globe, p. 85.
1860. I will say that we have in Iowa, as they have, I believe, in all the free States, what they call an underground railroad, and this man John Brown … had a rendez-vous at a place called Tabor.—Mr. Curtis of Iowa, House of Repr., Jan. 4: id., p. 331.
1860. Such of their slaves as the underground railroad does not take off to the North and to Canada will be sent down to the cotton States to be sold.—Mr. Iverson of Georgia, U.S. Senate: id., p. 49/2.
1860. [The Republican party insists that] slavery, where it now exists, shall be surrounded by a cordon of free Sates, infested by Abolitionists, liberty-shriekers, underground railroads, and border ruffians.—Mr. Philip St. G. Cocke, Richmond Enquirer, Dec. 21, p. 4/1.
1861. [Certain States] added to the insult of the passage of Personal Liberty bills, Underground Railroad operations, not only in the Border States, but the entire South.—Mr. Polk of Missouri, in the U.S. Senate: O. J. Victor, ‘The History … of the Southern Rebellion,’ i. 227.
1861. Mr. Powell [of Kentucky] said [in Congress], the fast Underground Railroad is well known.—Id., i. 273.
