Missouri’s Underground Railroad history is not as well documented as in free states. With the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed for slaves to be returned to bondage and prosecuted those who assisted them, assisting runaways was a dangerous business. However, since Missouri bordered more than one free state, it can be assumed that some of the state’s slaves escaped to freedom and that somebody helped them along the way.

The Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing in St. Louis is the state’s first documented site on the National Park Service's National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. The
crossing is named for a free black woman who helped slaves flee across the Mississippi River to freedom in Illinois.

One May morning in 1855, authorities captured several slaves who had escaped into Illinois, including some owned by Missouri Botanical Gardens founder, Henry Shaw. Meachum was charged in criminal court with assisting the escaping men and women, but her fate is not known. However, a plaque on the St. Louis Riverfront Trail, about 500 yards north of the Merchants Bridge, marks the place on the Missouri side where the drama began.

Other Underground Railroad stories include John Brown’s coming into Missouri in 1858 and liberating at least 10 slaves, then returning to Kansas and escorting the liberated men and women through Nebraska and Iowa, where they were stowed away on a freight car to Chicago, then Detroit and onto Windsor, Ontario in Canada and freedom. During this exercise, one slave owner in Missouri was killed, no doubt further inflaming sentiments.