Slavery and the Underground Railroad at the Epps Plantations, Petersburg National Battlefield

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Slavery and the Underground Railroad at the Epps Plantations, Petersburg National Battlefield

M. Tyler-McGraw

With the passage of the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Act in 1998, the National Park Service (NPS) undertook a national initiative to identify and preserve Underground Railroad resources and to interpret the story of the Underground Railroad for visitors to NPS sites. Even before passage of the Act, it was clear that research on the Underground Railroad would not be limited to NPS sites, but would inevitably connect communities and peoples across state and national borders and would yield much new information about the varied systems of slavery from which fugitives made their escape. This study of slavery and runaways from the Eppes plantations near City Point and Petersburg, VA, was originally planned as one part of a three-part history study of the Underground Railroad that would include three NPS sites within the Northeast Region of the NPS. Those sites were Boston African American National Historic Site (MA), Hampton National Historic Site (MD), and Petersburg National Battlefield (VA). The primary goal of this multi-site study was to demonstrate the widespread activity of the Underground Railroad and its connections from region to region and nation to nation. A secondary goal was to place the Underground Railroad within the context of African American life at those three sites, two of which were upper South plantations using enslaved labor.