The Underground Railroad was not actually underground and it wasn’t a railroad. It was called “underground” because no one knew about it and it was very secretive. It was called a “railroad” because it was a form of transportation for the slaves. The railroad began operating in the 1780s, but it became knowns as the Underground railroad in the 1830s. The Underground Railroad was a very important aspect of the issue of slavery during the civil war. In 1831, there was a slave named Tice Davids who ran away from his master in Kentucky. David ran all the way to the Ohio River, which was the border of Kentucky, the slave state and Ohio, the free state. Then, Davids’ master caught a glimpse of Davids’ jump into the river. That is when his master …show more content…
Sometimes there were guides that helped slaves get from one point to the other. When slaves would be traveling on underground railroad, it was very dangerous and it required a lot of luck. If they wanted to go to a certain place, then they were wishing it would be the place they were planning it to be. To keep the routes secret, they had code names for a lot of the places. The guides who helped people move from place to place were known as the “conductors”(GoodHeart 1).The guides were people who wanted slavery to end. They were men, women, whites, and blacks. But, most of them were Methodists and Catholics. The refugees were known as “cargo” or “passengers.” “Stations” were the only safe spots for the slaves to stop at.The Detroit river was called “Jordan” because it was a bible reference and it led to the promise …show more content…
She was an escaped slave herself and then, reportedly made 17 trips back and forth to the South. In order for her to do this, she had to leave her husband and Family. From all those trips it was about three hundred and fifteen slaves she helped escape through the Underground Railroad. She led them to safety to Canada and other free states. It was very dangerous for her, since she was a runaway slave. Whenever, she would bring a group to freedom, she was putting herself at risk. A lot of people didn 't know it, but she was was breaking the law in slave states by helping other slaves escape. Also, Harriet Tubman was pretty strict when it came to the journey of freedom. If a slave would want to change their mind about following Tubman, then she would hold a gun up to the slave 's head and say, “You’ll be free or die a slave.” The reason she said that is because it would put her and all the other slaves in danger or life threatening situations. She became known as “Moses of Her people” because she lead so many men and women to freedom (Haskins 43). The slaves would sing a spiritual chant say, “Go Down Moses.” They sang that because they were hoping for the savior to deliver them from slavery just like Moses delivered the Israelites from
It is believed that the system of the Underground Railroad began in 1787 when a Quaker named Isaac T. Hopper started to organize a system for hiding and aiding fugitive slaves. 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 o...
As a final note, Gregory Wigmore`s article really touched upon a unique and unexplored topic on local history in the Windsor-Detroit region. I had never seen the Detroit River as a safe haven for anyone, much less slaves. His article focuses on how the borders provided freedom and screwed over the slave owners that got stuck in red tape trying to retrieve their `property.` Although cross border freedoms were created, laws at the time didn`t protect the slaves in the country they were living in; the only way to freedom was to run away. This article is an interestingly unique and an underexplored topic of slavery before the underground railroads.
Harriet Ross Tubman was an African American who escaped slavery and then showed runaway slaves the way to freedom in the North for longer than a decade before the American Civil War. During the war she was as a scout, spy, and nurse for the United States Army. After that she kept working for rights for blacks and women.
“ I had reasoned this out in my mind, there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other.”~Harriet Tubman. Harriet Tubman sacrificed her life and freedom as well. She organized the Underground Railroad, and freed hundreds of slaves. As if the journey wasn’t difficult enough,stated by the book, Who Was Harriet Tubman, “But the trip was even more dangerous after 1850. That was because the Fugitive Slave Law had been passed.”(pg.56) The Fugitive Slave Law meant that runaway slaves who made it to the free states had to be sent back to their masters. People were allowed to beat the slaves and sell them back into the South too. Even though the situation was tough, Harriet Tubman never gave up on what she thought was
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.
During the early to the mid-19th century, politics had become barbarian like, as it can be seen as a war zone. The arguments between the North and the south had grew, which would continue to separate them farther, and even farther apart. The Civil war was beginning to take shape, and every time a compromise was drawn, the war came closer to the present. For the longest time, slaves would run to the north to seek freedom from their masters, but it also came with a cost that, if they were caught they would have to deal with the punishments, and the wrath of their master. Though as the war grew closer, by the 1850, running away through the underground rail road would no longer be a very viable option due to the fugitive slave law that was put out in the 1850’s. Though the government issued the personal liberty laws that stated that they would not have to report any runaway slaves that they have seen. This made tensions between the North and the South even greater than before which would then bring us to the Civil war.
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 received its name from two events involving masters chasing after the slaves. In 1831 a slave escaped to Ohio and has to swim across the Ohio River because that was the only way to escape his master. His master got into a small and continued to trail him. The slave reached the shore and then disappeared. When his master wasn’t able to find him, he told his friends that, “he must have gone off on an underground road”. Eight years after this incident, spoke of the torture of a captured slave. The reporter said he told of a railroad that went underground all the way to Boston. This is how the Underground Railroad became the Underground Railroad, although it doesn’t deal with railroads or underground (The Underground Railroad by: Shaaron Cosner).
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.
The Underground Railroad was not an actual railroad, nor was it an established route. It was, however, a way of getting slaves from the South to the North, or in this case, from the Deep South, to Mexico. In the 1800s, slavery was a major issue. As the United States began to mature, slavery began to divide. Slavery in the considered “Northern States” was emancipated, and slaves, still under bondage in the South, were looking for ways to get to the North. The Underground Railroad was one way to find freedom. A common myth about the Underground Railroad is that it was only in a pathway full of people, all trying to make it to the North for freedom. The truth is there was hardly any help in the South. The major help came along when the slaves reached the North. A former slave by the name of James Boyd was once interviewed in Itasca, Texas on this very subject. He recalls that many slaves running across the established border between Mexico and Texas to reach freedom in Mexico. ...
The first contribution of Harriet Tubman is that she served as a spy for the union army, because she wanted freedom for all the people who were forced into slavery not just the people she could help by herself. One day Tubman took one of the most dangerous and dramatic roles she helped Colonel James Montgomery plan to free slaves from a plantation along the Combahee River in South Carolina. They helped seven hundred and fifty Negroes into the free lines. The river is now known as the “Jordan River” it is the symbol of bondage and freedom. It is also a sign of significance of the military in America...
During the Civil War, Harriet Tubman became very prominent. She became a nurse, a scout, and a spy for the Union forces. As a nurse, Harriet found a root that helped cure the dysentery. Once again the soldiers began to call her Moses because she had saved many of their lives (Petry 220-224). While being involved in the Civil War, Harriet freed another seven hundred slaves. Harriet was said to be a well respected throughout the war. She received official commendations from many Union Army officials. Even though Harriet contributed a lot of time and hard work in the war efforts, she never received veterans’ benefits for any of of her painstaking work (Harriet par 3).
Harriet Tubman was a selfless woman, who devoted her life to save others. Many other slaves from the South escaped to freedom in the North like Tubman. Many of these people stayed where they were free, frightened to go anywhere near the South again. However, that was not Tubman, she was different. She wanted everyone to have the feeling of freedom that she had newly discovered. Harriet was known “to bring people of her race from bondage to liberty,” (S Bradford et al 1869). Harriet Tubman was known as a hero to lots of people during the Civil War.
The Underground Railroad was not an actual railroad, it was just an idea of indirect paths from on station to another. The Underground Railroad began when slaves had first entered America in 1619, and it ended along with the American Civil War in 1865 (Lavine - ). Slaves had the choice of escaping to the free-states in the North, or to Mexico. Depending on where you were coming from and what happened on the way, it could take from 24 hours to a year’s worth of running (How Stuff Works “How it Worked”).