A fugitive slave, Douglass became a skilled abolitionist speaker, praised for “wit, argument, sarcasm, and pathos.” He urged blacks to pursue vocational education and the vote; his print shop in Rochester, New York, was a depot on the underground.

Indefatigable worker in the Philadelphia underground, Still kept rare day-to-day records, which were published in 1872. A successful coal merchant, he continued to campaign against discrimination.

One of the earliest, most vitriolic abolitionists, he devoted full time to the cause, speaking against slavery and the Constitution that permitted it. By 1841 he was calling upon the North to secede.

Daughter of a black agent in the Wilmington underground, the Quaker-educated teacher moved to Canada, where as a writer and editor she preached permanent emigration from the States.

Raised to be self-supporting by a Quaker father, the teacher spoke out for temperance, women’s rights, and abolition, despite vehement prejudice against women in public affairs. Later she led the fight for women’s suffrage.

So trustworthy a slave that his owner made him an overseer, Henson, while transporting slaves to Kentucky, resisted others’ efforts to free them all. Harriet Beecher Stowe attributed a similar episode to Uncle Tom in her novel. Henson eventually escaped to Canada, led others to safety, and traveled as abolitionist and businessman.

“No day dawns for the slave, nor is it looked for. It is all night—night forever,” said this fugitive, son of his Tennessee master and a slave woman. Underground agent and ordained minister, he helped 1,500 escapees and started black schools in New York State.

A well-educated Quaker wife and mother, she preached eloquently for abolition, women’s rights, and temperance. She stood with William Garrison for immediate emancipation.

Remembered for bucolic verse, the Quaker poet gave powerful voice to the abolition movement. He early joined the Republican Party, founded partly to halt the spread of slavery.

Before founding a detective agency, this Scottish immigrant managed an underground depot at his cooper’s shop near Chicago.

“Among the manliest of men, and the gentlest of spirits,” wrote William Lloyd Garrison about the Wilmington businessman who aided more than 2,700 slaves to freedom.

Imprisoned for helping seven slaves sail from Florida bound for the Bahamas, he was branded on the hand with SS for “Slave Stealer.” After release he became a “conspicuous witness against slave power” for the abolitionists.

Born into slavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made more than nineteen missions to rescue more than 300 slaves using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. She later helped John Brown recruit men for his raid on Harpers Ferry, and in the post-war era struggled for women's suffrage.

Henry "Box" Brown was a 19th-century Virginia slave who escaped to freedom by arranging to have himself mailed to Philadelphia abolitionists in a wooden crate after 33 years of slavery. For a short time he became a noted abolitionist speaker and later a showman, but later lost the support of the abolitionist community, notably Frederick Douglass, who wished Brown had kept quiet about his escape so that more slaves could have escaped using similar means.