<P> Similarly, some popular, nonacademic sources 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 . </P> <P> 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 . </P> <P> When frictions between North and South culminated in the Civil War, many blacks, slave 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 . Following its passage, in some cases the Underground Railroad operated in the opposite direction, as fugitives returned to the United States . </P> <P> Frederick Douglass, writer, statesman, and an escaped slave, wrote critically of the Underground Railroad in his seminal autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave: </P>

Where did the underground railroad start and where did it end