Draft-age Americans being counselled at the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme office in August 1967. Photo: Photo: Laura Jones and Bennett Jones Phillips, http://www.baldwinstreetgallery.com via Wikimedia Commons.
The second Underground Railroad
Andrew Wood looks at escaping draft resisters during the Vietnam war era
Historically, the term ‘Underground Railroad’, used in North America, described a loosely organised system that enabled fugitive slaves to escape from the Confederate States to Canada or areas of safety in the Union states, during the civil war period. It was run by local groups of Union abolitionists. The term – and others like ‘passengers’, used for escaping slaves; ‘stations’ for homes where they were sheltered; and ‘conductors’ for those who guided them – gave the impression that the Underground Railroad was a highly systematised, secret organisation. In reality, most of the help given to fugitives was offered spontaneously, not only by abolitionists and self-styled members of the system, but by anyone who sympathised with runaway slaves. Quakers were particularly prominent as ‘conductors’, as were Unitarians and Mennonites.
