The Underground Railroad
After passages of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, even the free states of the North were considered unsafe for runaway slaves. The Underground Railroad, the secretive lines of communication and safe houses that carried many slaves along a very dangerous path from the South to freedom in Canada, was active throughout central New York State. Many stops were in the Finger Lakes region. Auburn was home of Harriet Tubman, a former slave who conducted more than 300 people to freedom. The Seward House in Auburn was also an important stop on the Underground Railroad. Frederick Douglass, abolitionist and publisher of the newspaper The North Star, lived in Rochester and is buried in Mt. Hope Cemetery there. For more information on the Underground Railroad in New York and principal abolitionist activists, see www.nyhistory.com/ugrr/links.htm.
