Lornelle Mendoza DeMarco USI History H 28 May 2016 The Underground Railroad During the Civil War, African Americans in the south struggled to obtain their basic human rights from the government and were degraded in society. As slaves, they had to endure torture and hard labor for a long period of time. One particular slave, named Harriet Tubman, sought a way to save her people from their suffering and she created the Underground Railroad with many abolitionists by her side. Together, they built a system that would impact slave 's lives north negatively and positively. The Underground Railroad transformed American history by helping a portion of the slave community escape to the north, but at the same time, it also ignited the ratification …show more content…
One of the most famous "conductors" of this secret system was Harriet Tubman, and in total, she guided more than 300 slaves to their freedom (Sawyer, 65). Her journey started when she helped her sister 's family, her brother and her parents escape to safety, where she became a big contributor to the Underground Railroad. She would lead slaves to the North by escorting them to a train station where they boarded a locomotive that went to Wilmington, Delaware (Sawyer, 65). Other abolitionists pitched in as well, such as George W. C. Lucas; he came up with the idea to use a "false-bottomed wagon" where runaway slaves would hide so no one could suspect them (Sawyer, 66). Another abolitionist that helped improve the Underground Railroad was Reverend Charles T. Torrey, who conceived the idea of using an already existing route for others to follow, which helped 400 fugitive slaves escape (Sawyer, 67). All of the contributions from these different abolitionists improved the Underground Railroad and successfully helped as many as 100,000 slaves flee from captivity ("Myths of the Underground Railroad"). Some of the freed slaves went to Canada, where they could not be convicted, some went to the free northern states and a few went to "Florida and rural, isolated communities of blacks in the South," ("Myths of the Underground Railroad"). Through the Underground Railroad, many of the escaped …show more content…
Since many slaves were being liberated, they were disappearing from their jobs, making slave owners suspicious. Eventually, the matter was brought up to the government, where they coined the idea of the Fugitive Slave Act. This act called for any escaped slaves to be returned back to their owners, and if anyone helped them escape, they would be punished ("Fugitive Slave Acts"). Due to the Underground Railroad becoming a success, the government had the act ratified and put into play. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was immediately and heavily criticized by the North. "Northerners bristled at the idea of turning their states into a stalking ground for bounty hunters and... the law was tantamount to legalized kidnapping," ("Fugitive Slave Acts"). In 1850, additions were made to the act and the revised Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 allowed officials to neglect the right to a jury trial for the slaves. It also allowed for the citizens to collect the runaways and not just local government officials ("Underground Railroad, The"). However, the North did not follow or enforce this act. The South decided to take a closer look into the runaways, which ultimately led to the end of the Underground
The Underground Railroad was a vast, loosely organized network of people who helped aid fugitive slaves in their escape to the North and Canada. It operated mostly at night and consisted of many whites, but predominately blacks. While the Underground Railroad had unofficially existed before it, a cause for its expansion was the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act allowed for runaway slaves to be captured and returned within the territory of the United States and added further provisions regarding the runaways and imposed even harsher chastisements for interfering in their capture (A&E). The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act was a major cause of the development of the Underground Railroad because it caused people to realize just how cruel slavery was, which invoked an increase in the support and aid of the strong, free, black population, who were a crucial component to the Underground Railroad, as well as abolitionist and anti-slavery white, resulting in the expansion of the Underground Railroad.
Harriet Tubman was an African-American, abolitionist, and former slave. Harriet took a major part in the abolitionist movement during the eightieth and nineteenth century. She escaped slavery to become a brave leader to any runaway slaves she could help. She led hundreds of slaves to the north for freedom by guiding them through routes and hideouts, known as "underground railroads". She was known as the "conductor" for leading slaves to the north. She also participated in the Women's Suffarge Movement. Tubman was also a spy, scout and nurse for the civil war.
In Pennsylvania, Harriet Tubman became an abolitionist. She worked to end slavery. She decided to become a conductor on the Underground Railroad (a network of antislavery activists who helped slaves escape from the South). On her first trip in 1850, Harriet Tubman brought her sister and her sister's two children out of slavery in Maryland. In 1851 she rescued her brother, and in 1857 Harriet Tubman returned to Maryland and brought her parents to freedom.
The Underground Railroad was an escape network of small, independent groups of individuals bound together by the common belief that enslaving a human being was immoral. A loosely structured, informal system of people who, without regard for their own personal safety. Conducting fugitives from slavery to free states, and eventually to Canada where they could not be returned to slavery was a dangerous undertaking.
The Underground Railroad was an extremely complex organization whose mission was to free slaves from southern states in the mid-19th century. It was a collaborative organization comprised of white homeowners, freed blacks, captive slaves, or anyone else who would help. This vast network was fragile because it was entirely dependent on the absolute discretion of everyone involved. A slave was the legal property of his owner, so attempting escape or aiding a fugitive slave was illegal and dangerous, for both the slave and the abolitionist. In The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass understands that he can only reveal so many details about his escape from servitude, saying, “I deeply regret the necessity that impels
The Underground Railroad was large group of people who secretly worked together to help slaves escape slavery in the south. Despite the name, the Underground Railroad had nothing to do with actual railroads and was not located underground (www.freedomcenter.org). The Underground Railroad helped move hundreds of slaves to the north each year. It’s estimated that the south lost 100,000 slaves during 1810-1850 (www.pbs.org).
Harriet Tubman, an escaped runaway slave, helped over 300 African Americans get freedom. Many people published books and reports on slavery. They showed Americans, as well as the world, the harshness of slavery. Some abolitionists held posts on the Underground Railroad to help free slaves and even helped them hide at times.
Another point that someone might argue about the Underground Railroad is Harriet Tubman. She was one of the conductors of the Underground Railroad. She would an African American born slave, spent most of her life on the plantation, who risked her life multiple to times to get her fellow slaves to safety. She escaped from Maryland but see continued to put her freedom on the line for fellow slaves who wanted to use the Underground Railroad. Her original intent was to go back to Maryland to get her husband, but to her surprise, he had taken a new wife. She was angered by this but this anger was only used for the good of getting her whole family out of slavery and to their freedom. She continued to travel back south help people about ten years
The Underground Railroad was not a real railroad with a train, but a network of meeting places in which African slaves could follow to Canada where they could free. Those who helped were at risk of the law but got the satisfaction of knowing that they were helping those who did not deserve to be treated like less than everyone else. People who escaped had to take care, they were creative with giving instructions and the way they escaped their owners, but if they were caught the punishment was not very humane. John Fairfield was a white man, born into a family in Virginia who owned slaves; he never liked the idea of owning slaves, so he became friends with them. When he turned twenty, he helped his friend escape by taking him to Canada.
The Fugitive Slave Act was part of the Compromise of 1850. This act required that authorities in the North had to assist southern slave catchers to retrieve and return slaves to their owners. Southerners favored this act because they saw no slavery in the territories to the west, by the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act it would help preserve slavery in the south. This act allowed southern slave owners to get their slaves back when they escaped to the North that is why this act was important and critical to southern survival. The view of this act by the North was the opposite, especially from those who were black, they feared this act. The blacks in the North were terrified that this act would make it so they could be ushered back to the south even if they were innocent. This led to the creation of resistance groups in the North.
The Transcontinental railroad could be defined as the most monumental change in America in the 19th century. The railroad played a significant role in westward expansion and on the growth and development of the American economy (Gillon p.653). However, the construction of the transcontinental railroad may not have occurred if not for the generous support of the federal government. The federal government provided land grants and financial subsidies to railroad companies to ensure the construction. The transcontinental railroad contributed to the formation of industry and the market economy in America and forever altered the American lifestyle.
The underground railroad was a system organized to safely move slaves into free states (Coddon). Harriet Tubman was an outstanding abolitionist and black leader of her time. After freeing her whole family from slavery, Tubman’s main concern was the freedom of all slaves. She became well acquainted with many white abolitionists and often received food and shelter from them, while trying to free someone from slavery (Coddon). Most of the Underground Railroad was organized in Philadelphia, where Tubman became acquainted with William Still (Coddon). This was were the first anti-slavery society was established. Still was a black man who was the executive director of the General Vigilance Committee and later became known as “The Father of the Underground Railroad” (Coddon). Since written records were life-threatening to keep, many were burned or not kept at all. Although William Still did say this about Harriet Tubman, “She was a woman of no pretensions; indeed , a more ordinary specimen of humanity could hardly be found...Yet courage shrewdness, and disinterested exertions to rescue her fellow man, she was without equal. (Coddon)” Still encouraged African resistance to slavery, and even taught himself how to read (Turner). He worked nonstop to end race discrimination and, in 1867, he published A Brief Narrative of the Struggle for the Rights of Colored
The Underground Railroad, a term that have been used dating back as early as the1830s.
As many of the northern states began to change their policies on the enslavement of Africans, the South became aware that those areas might become a haven of refuge for runaway slaves. In an effort to appease southern slave owners, the Fugitive Slave Law was passed in 1793, which allowed slave owners to apprehend fugitives in any state or territory and only required them to apply for custody from a circuit or district judge. Due to the act’s ambiguity and lack of uniform enforcement, slaveholders became increasingly agitated. The growing movement of abolitionists to smuggle and rescue fugitive slaves compounded this frustration; the best know organization being the Underground Railroad.
The original Fugitive Slave Act was made in 1793. One of the things this stated was that slave owners were allowed to search for their escaped slaves in states that didn’t believe in slavery. When a slave (or a person suspected of being a slave) was caught, the people (or person) went to court to get the slave returned to it’s owner. If enough evidence was provided, the slaves were returned to their owners. This act also made it so that anyone who helped slaves in anyway, such as hiding them, were to face a $500 fee. Many people, especially those from northern states, disagreed with this act. The people of the northern states felt as if their land was being used by bounty hunters. They also disliked how, with people taking free African Americans as slaves, it felt as if the act was leading up to the legalization of kidnapping. Certain people who disagreed with this act created groups to help save slaves, and even created housing for them that would be safe for them to escape to areas where slavery was illegal.