Images

This map illustrates the political landscape of the United States in 1861, just as the nation stood on the brink of civil war. It highlights the division between free and slave states, the status of U.S. territories, and the emerging Confederacy...

Portrait of abolitionist Dr. John Doy, by Thomas Holman, 1860. The print was published in John Doy's The Narrative of John Doy, of Lawrence, Kansas: "A Plain, Unvarnished Tale."

A photograph of John Doy and the Immortal Ten, a militant abolitionist group, in Lawrence, Kansas Territory, taken by Amon Gilbert DaLee, 1859. From left to right, the photograph features Major James B. Abbott, Captain Joshua A. Pike, Jacob...

A hand-colored lithograph of the Niagara Suspension Bridge, showing the Niagara Falls in the background, by Charles Parsons (1821-1910). Freedom Seekers on the Underground Railroad often reached freedom in Canada by crossing this bridge...

Routes of the Underground Railroad, a network of secret routes and safe havens to help slaves escape, illustration from The underground railroad from slavery to freedom by Wilbur Henry Siebert, 1898.

A June 1945 photograph of the ruined Brandenburg Gate in Berlin after the battle for th at city at the close of the German-Soviet War, the Eastern Front of the Second World War (1939-45). (German Federal Archives)

William Still (1819-1902), the abolitionist known as the "Father of the Underground Railroad" for the records of escaped slaves he kept and later published as The Underground Railroad Records in 1872, c. 1898.

The Reverend William M. Mitchell (c. 1826 to c. 1879), former overseer, abolitionist, and author of The Underground Railroad (1860), the only full-length work published on the subject while slavery was still legal in the USA and efforts to...

Lear Green (c. 1839-1860), a former slave who had herself shipped in a crate from Baltimore, Maryland, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to escape slavery, illustration from The Underground Railroad by William Still, 1872.

Sir Roger Manwood (1525-1592), watercolor, copy by George Perfect Harding, after an unknown artist, early 19th century. National Portrait Gallery, London.