Compiled by the student-faculty team from the House Divided Project at Dickinson College, this online research guide to the Underground Railroad aims to provide teachers, students and preservationists with easy access to a wide range of free digital tools that can assist in their important work on this topic.
FEATURED WEBSITES
- Black Abolitionist Archive (UDetroit/Mercy)
- Dickinson & Slavery (House Divided Project)
- Freedom on the Move (Cornell)
- Network to Freedom (NPS)
- Slave Stampedes on the Southern Borderlands (NPS / Dickinson)
- Slavery & Abolition (Dickinson)
- Texas Runaway Slave Project (East Texas Research Center)
PRIMARY SOURCES
Federal Laws and Codes
- US Constitution: Fugitive Slave Clause (1787) with debate August 28, 1787
- Fugitive Slave Act (1793)
- Fugitive Slave Act (1850)
- Contraband of War (1861)
- Confiscation Acts (1861-62)
- Revised Articles of War (March 13, 1862)
- Repeal of 1850 Fugitive Slave Act (June 1864) with Senate debate (April)
Supreme Court
- The Amistad (1841)
- Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842)
- Jones v. Van Zandt (1847)
- Strader v. Graham (1851)
- Moore v. Illinois (1852)
- Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) with multi-media resources
- Ableman v. Booth (1859)
State Laws
- California fugitive slave law (1852)
- Illinois black codes
- Iowa black codes
- Maryland fugitive statutes
- Massachusetts personal liberty law (1855)
- Pennsylvania personal liberty law (1826)
- Vermont personal liberty law (1843)
Case Compilations
- Paul Finkelman, ed., Fugitive Slaves and American Courts (2007)
- Samuel J. May, ed., Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims (1856)
- Marion Gleason McDougall, Fugitive Slaves, 1619-1865 (1891)
Vigilance committee and other contemporary records
- Boston: Vigilance accounts (1850-55)
- New York: Sydney Gay’s Record of Fugitives (1855)
- Philadelphia: Record of Cases (1839-44) and Journal C, Station 2 (1852-57)
- William Still, Underground Railroad (1872) with McGowan Index and Temple U
- Jireh Platt UGRR diary (1848-59) (NPS / Dickinson)
- Zachariah Shugart Account Book (1838-1854) (Huntington Library)
Government Records & Miscellaneous
- African American Experience in Ohio (Ohio History)
- Afro-Louisiana History, 1719-1820 (Gwendolyn Hall)
- John Brown / Boyd Stutler Collection (West Virginia)
- Century of Lawmaking / Congressional Globe (LoC)
- Executions 1826-1850 and 1851-1900 (Death Penalty USA)
- Freedmen’s Bureau Records (NARA / FamilySearch)
- Freedmen & Society Society Project (UMaryland)
- Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History (GLI)
- Illinois Servitude & Emancipation Records (IL Secy State)
- Territorial Kansas Online, 1854-1861 (Kansas State Historical)
- Official Records: War of Rebellion –Fugitive Slaves 1861-62 (Simmons)
- Race & Slavery Petitions (UNC/Greensboro)
- Slavery Era Insurance Registry (State of California)
- St. Louis Circuit Court Freedom Suit Files (Missouri Archives)
- Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (Emory)
Letters & Diaries
- Frederick Douglass Papers (LoC)
- Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (ALA)
- Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln (PAL)
- Abraham Lincoln Papers (LoC)
- AL to Chase 6/9, Chase to AL 6/13 and AL to Chase 6/20 on fugitive law (1859)
- AL to Schuyler Colfax “for your eye only” July 6 (1859) with Colfax reply
- John Gilmer to AL, Dec. 1860 with AL reply on personal liberty laws (1860)
- Owen Lovejoy Letters & Writings (Ed. by William & Jane Moore, 2004)
- Witness for Freedom: African American Voices (Ed. by Ripley/Finkenbine 1993)
- Quakers & Slavery (Bryn Mawr/Haverford/Swarthmore)
Speeches & Pamphlets
- Frederick Douglass, Fugitive Slave Law speech to Free Soil Convention (1852)
- Charles D. Drake, Personal Liberty Laws (1861)
- Samuel G. Howe, Refugees from Canada (1864)
- Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address (1861)
- Samuel J. May, ed., Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims (1856)
- Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Pamphlets (Cornell)
- Joel Parker, Personal Liberty Laws (1861)
- Robert Purvis denouncing David Paul Brown, Sr. (1857)
- Lewis Tappen, Fugitive Slave Bill and James Hamlet (1850)
- Slaves and the Courts (LoC)
- Sen. Daniel Webster on proposed fugitive law, July 17 (1850)
- Justice Levi Woodbury, Charge to Grand Jury (1851)
Recollections
- Henry “Box” Brown, Narrative with Stearns (1849), By Himself (1851)
- William Wells Brown, Narrative (1847)
- Levi Coffin, Reminiscences (1880)
- William and Ellen Craft, Running a Thousand Miles (1860)
- Frederick Douglass, Narrative (1845), My Bondage (1855), Life & Times (1881)
- Benjamin Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery (1856)
- Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1860)
- Jermain W. Loguen, Rev. J.W. Loguen as Slave and Freeman (1859)
- Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave (1853)
- James W.C. Pennington, Fugitive Blacksmith (1849)
- William Still, Underground Railroad (1872) with McGowan Index and Temple U
- Peter Still with Kate E. R. Pickard, The Kidnapped and the Ransomed (1856)
- North American Slave Narratives (DocSouth / UNC)
- Slave Narratives: Online Anthology (UVA)
- Slave Narratives from WPA (1936-38) (LoC)
- Southern Homefront, 1861-1865 (DocSouth / UNC)
- Siebert Underground Railroad Collection (Ohio History)
Arts and Literature
- William Wells Brown, “The Escape” (1858) with handout (NHC)
- Ellwood Griest, John and Mary, or The Fugitive Slaves (1873)
- Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom’s Cabin with essay (GLI)
- John Greenleaf Whittier, Anti-Slavery Poems (1848-88)
- Walt Whitman and Fugitive Slave Law
SECONDARY SOURCES
Harriet Tubman
-
- Biography by Catherine Clinton (2004)
- Biography by Kate Larson (2004)
- Memory study by Milton Sernett (2007)
- America’s Library Tubman Profile (for younger students)
- TEACHABLE DOC: Revealing letter about Tubman’s operations (1854)
- TEACHABLE DOC: Early letter calls Tubman a “hero” (1857)
- TEACHABLE DOC: Tubman’s Civil War pension claim (1898)
- ARTIFACTS: Tubman relics at Smithsonian with article and video
- CASE: Charles Nalle (Troy, NY, 1860) with news report and book
- Myth-making biography by Sarah H. Bradford (1886)
- NPS Historic Site (Cambridge, MD)
Myths, Memory, Folklore and Monuments
- NY Times, “In Douglass Tribute, Slave Folklore and Fact Collide” (2007)
- Fergus Bordewich on quilt code myths (2007)
- Leigh Fellner website / e-book on UGRR Quilt Code (2006)
- Joel Bresler website on Follow the Drinking Gourd myths (2008-12)
- Scholastic on Myths of the Underground Railroad (2015)
- Ethan Kytle and Carl Geissert on post-war UGRR memories (2015)
Classroom Resources
- LESSONS: Teaching with Primary Sources (EIU / LoC)
- LESSONS: K-12 units with Runaway Ads (House Divided)
- GAMES: Flight to Freedom simulation (Bowdoin College)
- GAMES: Underground Railroad interactive (National Geographic)
- GAMES: Escape from Slavery (Scholastic)
- REF: BlackPast.org: Online Guide to African American History (2007-)
- REF: Mary Ellen Snodgrass, Underground Railroad Encyclopedia (2015)
Full Text Journal Articles
- Joseph Borome, “Vigilant Committee of Philadelphia” PMHB (1968)
- Larry Gara, “William Still and the Underground Railroad,” Pa History (1961)
- Michael Wayne, “Black Population of Canada West,” HS/SH (1995)
- Paul Finkelman, “States’ Rights, Southern Hypocrisy,” Akron Law Rev (2012)
- Harold Schwartz, “Fugitive Slave Days in Boston,” New Eng Q (1954)
- Julius Yanuck, “Force Act in Pennsylvania,” PMHB (1968)
Classic Scholarship (Full View)
- Sarah H. Bradford, Harriet: The Moses of Her People (1886)
- Frank Edward Kittredge, The Man with the Branded Hand (1899)
- Marion Gleason McDougall, Fugitive Slaves, 1619-1865 (1891)
- Wilbur H. Siebert, The Underground Railroad (1899) with Collection and Index
- R.C. Smedley, History of the Underground Railroad (1883)
Last modified in June 2023