Having the Underground Railroad as the starting point for a research paper is a fairly narrowed down topic; however, there are lots of different directions that you could go with the research. I will list some topic ideas below.

• Who were the major players involved with the Underground Railroad? This would include possible information about who or what group decided to start the system. Additionally, you could include information about how many of the "workers" were white vs. black.
• Why was the Underground Railroad necessary?
• Why did people risk their lives to help runaway slaves?
• How many slaves did the system get to freedom? What was the success rate of the Underground Railroad?
• What dangers did escaping slaves face between stations, and what dangers did they face at each station.
• Were any stations discovered? What was the punishment for the men and women that worked the Underground Railroad?
• If the Underground Railroad was known about, what kind of organized efforts were made to shut it down?
• How exactly were slaves moved from station to station? Did a message go ahead of the slaves in order to alert the next station that escaping slaves would be arriving? If messages were relayed from station to station, what kind of code (if any) was used?
• Once freedom was reached, did any of the escaped slaves become a part of the Underground Railroad in order to help other slaves?