Lincoln Discussion Symposium

The National Park Service describes the Underground Railroad thusly:

the underground railroad is classified by the National Park Service as, “[a] story [unlike] nothing else in American History: a secret enterprise that today is famous, an association that many claim but few can document, an illegal activity now regarded as noble, a network that was neither underground nor a railroad, yet a system that operated not with force or high finance but through the committed and often spontaneous acts of courage and kindness of individuals unknown to each other.”

Sounds right to me. In the Detroit area we have multiple buildings and sites that have signs posted denoting them as “railroad stops” along the way to freedom. There is even a statue on the bank of the Detroit River depicting runaway slaves heading towards Canada.