Browse Items (325 total)

A painting by C.T. Weber depicting Levi Coffin and his wife Catherine helping freedom seekers along the Underground Railroad at their home outside of Cincinnati, Ohio.

A sheet music cover illustrated with the likeness of Frederick Douglass fleeing from slavery. The song was composed and dedicated for Douglass who escaped to freedom in 1838 from Maryland to Massachusetts. Douglass went on to become an abolitionist…

These caves in Salem Township in Washington County, Ohio, were used by freedom seekers to hide in along their journey on the Underground Railroad.

A lithograph illustrating the criticism of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The Act passed by Congress allowed for the arrest of freedom seekers and encouraged regular citizens to aid in their capture.

This illustration, from the 1888 book The Story of Ohio by Alexander Black, shows a stop on the Underground Railroad along a creek or river in Ohio. Freedom seekers often used boats or even swam across rivers or walked across frozen water while…

John Brown was known as a militant abolitionist who wanted to raise an army to fight slavery. In 1855, he and five of his sons attacked a pro-slavery town in Kansas, killing five of the settlers. Brown planned a raid in 1859 on the federal arsenal at…

A broadside announcing a talk by T.B. McCormick, an abolitionist from Indiana. Broadsides were created as temporary documents or posters, announcing events, proclamations and lectures. The lecture advertised here took place in Eaton, Ohio in 1857.

Burns was arrested and tried under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 in Boston in 1854, sparking protests and riots by Boston abolitionists and residents.