Tens of thousands of enslaved African Americans surreptitiously traveled the Underground Railroad north toward freedom, bravely risking re-enslavement, torture, and even death if caught. Several routes from safe-house to safe-house passed through Cincinnati, just across the Ohio River from slaveholding Kentucky. At some point in the mid-1860s—likely after the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act in June 1864—this group of formerly enslaved people gathered with Quaker abolitionist Levi Coffin in the Cincinnati studio of James Presley Ball, one of the period’s most prominent African American photographers. Frederick Douglass declared the quality of Ball’s photography "one of the best answers to the charge of natural inferiority we have lately met with." Indeed, Ball’s photograph eloquently records the group, now fitted with new clothes, shoes, and bibles, leaning into one another and held close, bearing expressions of both wariness and determination. It seems likely that these unnamed men, women, and children were among the estimated 3,000 "passengers" that Coffin (back center) and his wife Catharine helped escort on their journey to freedom.