From the time slavery was introduced to the Colonies until it was abolished in 1865, enslaved people tried to escape it. Ten stamps from the U.S. Postal Service commemorate the Underground Railroad, as their resistance efforts became known.
Most remained anonymous, but some left their mark on history. The pane of 20 stamps depicts 10 men and women who escaped slavery and/or helped others escape.
The Underground Railroad was a "railroad" in name only, and it started as a loosely organized secret network long before the invention of transportation via steel rail. It was powered not by coal but by human courage and imagination — that of freedom seekers themselves and of the "operatives" who assisted them. As railroads grew in the 1830s and 1840s, the secret network adopted their terminology. "Stationmasters" and "conductors" now assisted "passengers" traveling from one "station" to another on the "Underground Railroad."
In the northern states, free Blacks, religious groups, and Native Americans played significant roles. The Underground Railroad operated in the South, too. Over time, what had been a loose underground network coalesced into a more smoothly functioning system as it responded to the increasing numbers of freedom seekers and a corresponding rise in attempts to thwart escapes.