By 1850, it was commonly believed that a systematic, and well-organized "Underground Railroad" assisted fugitive slaves throughout the South to escape slavery. Most of these runaways, perhaps one or two thousand each year, escaped from slave states close to the North or from coastal regions where they fled by hiding on ships or boats. Few received any help from abolitionists until they made it into a free state. Once there, safe houses and other African Americans often helped the fugitives from slavery to make it safely to northern cities and even to Canada. Some fugitives did escape from the Deep South, but the idea of an established Underground Railroad was more myth than fact. Abolitionists often dramatized these escapes in anti-slavery newspapers, and slaveholders who wanted strong fugitive slave laws enforced by the federal government also spread stories about an underground railroad with stations all over the South. For a lesson focusing on the people involved in the Underground Railroad, click here.