How some enslaved Black people stayed in Southern slaveholding states – and found freedom

Instead of using the secret routes along the Underground Railroad to find freedom in the North, thousands of enslaved Black people fled to free Black communities in Southern slaveholding states.

By: Viola Franziska Müller, University of Bonn, The Conversation

Outlets: The Conversation

Published: February 7, 2026

Words: 1,128

Last Updated: 1 month, 1 week ago

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By Viola Franziska Müller, University of Bonn

For generations, the Underground Railroad has been the quintessential story of resistance against oppression.

Yet, the story is incomplete.

What is far less known is that the majority of enslaved people who fled Southern slavery before the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation never crossed the Mason-Dixon line to freedom in the Northern states.

Instead, they remained within the slaveholding Southern states.

As a scholar of slavery, …

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