Chesapeake waterways were vital to the Underground Railroad, a secret network of routes used to escape slavery. Waters that had carried captured Africans into ports for sale later became pathways to freedom for their descendants. In Maryland, freedom seekers traveled north along major routes, including journeys from this spot to Philadelphia. Baltimore was a hub of rail lines, shipping routes, and roads used in many flights to freedom. Railroads were risky but quick, and several people reached freedom by train, including Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and Henry "Box" Brown. Between 1790 and 1860, more than one million enslaved people living in the Chesapeake were sold south, and the threat of family separation prompted thousands to try to escape. Many passed through the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, one of the most direct paths to safety in Philadelphia. Hundreds of boats came through Chesapeake ports every day, and some freedom seekers traveled north with forged papers, by hiding aboard vessels, or with help from abolitionist seafarers.