Of the definite problems of the great sectional contest, the lake states had a concrete as well as a theoretic knowledge. They were located on the northern frontier of the United States, and they dipped down from one hundred and fifty to two hundred and sixty miles into the south. Inevitably they became the scene of fugitive slave migration. In spite of the strict laws of the United States and the bitter protests of the South, the escaped slave found friends when he slipped over the border into the free states, and was helped by them into Canada, where his safety was assured. Since 1815 there had been a regularly organized system of passing these runaways from one place to another on the northern route, a system which so baffled and mystified the unsuccessful masters in their search that they had given it the name of the “Underground Railroad.” The route through Ohio was the shortest of these lines. Only a little more than two hundred miles lay between the slave states south of the Ohio River and freedom. Along the river were twenty-two or twenty-three stations, and every port on Lake Erie was a point of departure. The five principal outlets were Toledo, Sandusky, Cleveland, Ashtabula, and Fairport, and through these stations there was an ever increasing procession of fugitives. Within this one state it has been calculated that there were nearly three thousand miles of “underground road.” Western Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois had their roads, converging at Erie, Detroit, Toledo, Michigan City, and Chicago. Such was the anti-slavery sentiment on which Lincoln could rely.