The Underground Railroad - stock illustration

Vintage illustration features The Underground Railroad, a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early to mid-19th century, and used by enslaved African-Americans to escape into free states and Canada. The painting shows a large family of black slaves, fugitives from the south, being sheltered from the snow by Levi Coffin and his wife. The Quaker family helping the slaves details two common stereotypes about the underground railroad: helpless slaves and their heroic Quaker saviors.