A large proportion of the fugitives belonged to this maltreated class.

Others were goaded to escape by the prospect of deportation to the Gulf States.

The fugitives generally followed the beaten line of travel to the North and West.
In 1826 Levi Coffin became a merchant in Newport, Indiana, a town near the Ohio line not far from Richmond.

In the town and in its neighborhood lived a large number of free negroes who were the descendants of former slaves whom North Carolina Quakers had set free and had colonized in the new country.

Coffin found that these blacks were accustomed to assist fugitives on their way to Canada.