The Underground Railroad was a secret system of individuals who
assisted fugitive slaves in their quest for freedom prior to the
Civil War. The term, used between about 1830 and 1860, refers to
the swift, "invisible" way in which the slaves escaped. Usually
they hid during the day and moved at night. The fugitives and
the people who helped them used railroad terms as code words:
hiding places were "stations," people who aided the runaways
were "conductors," and the runaways themselves were "passengers"
or "freight." In addition to white members of the Underground
Railroad, fugitive slaves relied heavily on fellow slaves and
free blacks, who rarely betrayed them. The most famous black
leader in the movement was Harriet Tubman, a nonliterate runaway
slave who became known as the "Moses" of her people. She
returned to the South, including the Blue Ridge Mountains, 19
times to help about 300 African Americans escape to freedom. The
Underground Railroad and the abolitionist movement in North
Carolina, as elsewhere