 The Reverse Underground Railroad operated for 85 years, from 1780 to 1865.The name is a reference to the Underground Railroad, the informal network of abolitionists and sympathizers who helped smuggle escaped slaves to freedom, generally in Canada but also in Mexico where slavery had been abolished.Free African Americans were often kidnapped from the southernmost free states, along the borders of the slave states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, but kidnapping was also prevalent in states further north, such as New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, as well as in abolition-minded regions of some Southern states, such as Tennessee.