The Underground Railroad was a dramatic protest against slavery in the United States. It confronted human bondage without any direct demands or intended violence, but its efforts played a significant role in the destruction of slavery. The operations of secret escape networks began in the 1500s, and were later connected with organized abolitionist activity of the 1800s. It was not "underground" or a "railroad," but a loosely constructed network of escape routes that originated in the South, wove through the North, and eventually ended in Canada. Escape routes also extended into western territories, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Typically, enslaved African Americans who fled from plantations and cities northern to Virginia were more likely to take refuge in northern states, Canada, and western territories. Those who lived in the Deep South often ensured their freedom by escaping into Mexico and the Caribbean. Among other locations to which they fled were maroon societies, Native American groups like the Seminoles, and large southern cities such as Baltimore, New Orleans, and Charleston, South Carolina. .
The Underground Railroad was named unofficially in 1833. An enslaved runaway, Tice Davids, fled from Kentucky and may have taken refuge with John Rankin, a White abolitionist, in Ripley, Ohio. The determined owner chased Davids to the Ohio River, but Davids suddenly disappeared without a trace, leaving his owner bewildered and wondering if the slave had "gone off on some underground road." The success of Davids' escape spread among the enslaved on southern plantations. The popularity of the railroad train produced the second part of the name. One of the earliest recorded organized escapes may have occurred in 1786 when Quakers in Philadelphia assisted a group of runaways from Virginia to freedom. One year later, Isaac T. Hopper, a Quaker teenager, "began to organize a system for hiding and aiding fugitive slaves.