The 2013 National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom (NTF) Conference commemorated the Sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation. The theme, The War for Freedom: The Underground Railroad During the Civil War, contested traditional notions that the Underground Railroad ended with the start of the war. As the battle over whether the nation should accept or abolish slavery waged on, people continued to use escape and flight as a means of resisting enslavement.