Underground Railroad is established in Boston.

(ca.) The term, now thought to be derived from a remark by a slavecatcher that is mockingly coined by Thomas Smallwood in an abolitionist newspaper edited by Charles Coffey in Albany New York, refers to the system formed by free African-Americans to assist enslaved people seeking freedom in the North. In Boston, it is reputed to be an outgrowth of the Freedom Association and centered primarily on the north slope of Beacon Hill, especially Holmes Alley. The organization is supplanted by the Committee for Vigilance, made up of blacks and whites, in 1849.