The Underground Railroad in Tennessee

The Underground Railroad is a compelling metaphor first used about 1834 to describe the fl ight of slaves from the slaveholding states of the South to the free states of the North. Neither underground nor railroad, the term referred to unnumbered routes over which fugitive slaves might secretly escape to freedom, usually with assistance from persons along the way. It was their bold efforts to free themselves
that prompted helpful responses by free blacks and whites.

Persistent traditions suggest the haunting term “Underground” was coined in 1831 by a frustrated Kentucky slaveholder who unsuccessfully pursued his slave Tice Davids across the Ohio River at Ripley. Suddenly losing all trace of Davids, the master exclaimed, “He must have gone off on an underground road.” A few years later the advent of railroads with speedy steam-powered locomotives brought the Underground Railroad name into general use. A participant explained, “It was so called because they who took passage on it disappeared from public view as really as if they had
gone into the ground. After the fugitive slaves entered a depot on that road, no trace of them could be found.”

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