claim that spirituals and other songs, such as "Steal Away" or "Follow the Drinking Gourd", contained coded information and helped individuals navigate the railroad. They have offered little evidence to support their claims. Scholars tend to believe that while the slave songs may certainly have expressed hope for deliverance from the sorrows of this world, these songs did not present literal help for runaway slaves. The Underground Railroad inspired cultural works. For example, "Song of the Free", written in 1860 about a man fleeing slavery in Tennessee by escaping to Canada, was composed to the tune of "Oh! Susanna". Every stanza ends with a reference to Canada as the land "where colored men are free". Slavery in Upper Canada (now Ontario) was outlawed in 1793; in 1819, John Robinson, the Attorney General of Upper Canada, declared that by residing in Canada, black residents were set free, and that Canadian courts would protect their freedom. Slavery in Canada as a whole had been in rapid decline after an 1803 court ruling, and was finally abolished outright in 1834. Legal and political When frictions between North and South culminated in the Civil War, many Black people, both enslaved and free, fought for the Union Army. Following Union victory in the Civil War, on December 6, 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution outlawed slavery except as punishment for a crime. Following its passage, in some cases the Underground Railroad operated in the opposite direction, as people who had escaped to Canada returned to the United States. Criticism Frederick Douglass was a writer, statesman, and had escaped slavery. He wrote critically of the attention drawn to the ostensibly secret Underground Railroad in his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845): He went on to say that, although he honors the movement, he felt that the efforts at publicity serve more to enlighten the slave-owners than the slaves, making them more watchful and making it more difficult for future slaves to escape. Notable people Ann Bamford John Brown Owen Brown (father) Owen Brown (son) Samuel Burris Obadiah Bush Levi Coffin Elizabeth Rous Comstock George Corson Moses Dickson Frederick Douglass Asa Drury George Hussey Earle Sr. Calvin Fairbank Bartholomew Fussell Matilda Joslyn Gage Thomas Galt Thomas Garrett Sydney Howard Gay Josiah Bushnell Grinnell Frances Harper Laura Smith Haviland Lewis Hayden John Hunn Roger Hooker Leavitt Jermain Wesley Loguen Samuel