The Underground Railroad, published by the National Park Service and bestseller for United States Government Printing Office, is a colorful Park Service handbook that provides details of the many ways that blacks took to escape slavery in the Southern United States before the Civil War. The Underground Railroad provided an opportunity for sympathetic white Americans to play a role in resisting slavery, and brought together, men and women of both races to begin to set aside assumptions about the other race and to work together on issues of mutual concern.