The underground railroad was a series of networks of secret routes and safe houses. It was neither
The underground railroad was a series of networks of secret routes and safe houses. It was neither
Railroads first began to appear in the 1830s and used largely as feed lines to the canals.1 Baltimore city was the site of the first railroad in the united sates and was know Baltimore and Ohio railroad.3 Since the city did not invest in canals they began to look at other ways to be more competitive with cities such as New York and the Erie Canal when it came to transporting people and goods.3 This sparked the idea of a railroad, which was a way of transportation used in Great Britain and soon enough all of America could not see their future without railroad transportation.3 The formation, construction and operation or railroads brought profound social, economic and political change to the United States at the time.3 Although the cost of a railway ticket were much higher then steamboats they were twice as fast and offered more direct route for people to go exactly were they…
The Reverse Underground Railroad was the pre-American Civil War practice of kidnapping free black men in free states and transporting them to slave states to be sold. It was called the Reverse Underground Railroad because it’s purpose was the opposite of what the Underground Railroad tried to achieve, which was a network of abolitionists who smuggled black slaves into free land, generally in Canada. The kidnapping of blacks was considered a dirty business. Kidnappers physically abused and psychologically terrorized their captives into stating that they were slaves. Many were beaten repeatedly for the attempt to try and claim their free status. This was a large part of the reason that kidnapping accounts were not often told. Once kidnappers…
However, what is known is that by 1840 both the individuals assisting the runaway slaves and the slave owners who were outraged by their loss of slave property were referring to all of this as “The Underground Railroad”. While for the most part runaways began their journey’s unaided and without assistance, each decade where slavery was legal there became an increase in the amount of people willing to lend aid to the runaway’s. The free individuals who helped runaway slaves during their quest for freedom were coined “conductors”, and often times these were white abolitionists who were taking on the Afrocentric perspective which examined the phenomena from the experience and perspectives of African people. The fleeing refugees were called “passengers” or “cargo”, and designated safe places to stop and rest were called “stations”. Giving these individuals different names provided slaves with agency by granting them a new identity and a starting point towards a new…
The underground railroad was an truck with fruits in it and the was that helped harriet was. She got under all of the fruits while the truck…
PBS describes the underground railroad, or freedom train as "a complex network of places and people that lead runaway slaves from captivity". Many individuals of varying racial backgrounds provided food and shelter for the runaway slaves. These brave people were known as "conductors". While the underground railroad had many conductors, perhaps the most well-known and influential was African-American woman Harriet Tubman, who used her diverse culture not as a crutch, but as an instrument of leadership. Throughout her life, this inspirational woman challenged stereotypes of race, gender, and social class.…
In the movie Roots of Resistance a Story of the Underground Railroad, the filmmaker makes some very strong points. He made the movie in a way that portrays his specific opinion and views on the Underground Railroad. If a viewer didn't know what the movie was about they may have guessed it would have been a very different kind of movie based on the title. After watching the movie in its entirety you realize that the movie was made to generate a very different view on the Underground Railroad. In this movie the idea behind the Underground Railroad is that it was solely in the control of the slaves. From other sources (elementary and high school text books) we grow up being taught that the Underground Railroad was a route constructed by several freed blacks, several white abolitionists and sympathetic people along the way. This film teaches otherwise, it showed how slaves got the urge to escape, how they planned escapes and how they finally did escape. The movie gives sole credit for the Underground Railroad to the slaves, where it truly belongs, because in the end the slaves were the ones who chose to run, no one forced them.…
We may perceive the underground railroad being underground and being a railroad. Well, the intriguing information behind the underground railroad tells a different story. It was a loose network of assistance for the slaves to help them escape from a life of enslavement. The Underground Railroad ran from around 1810 to the 1860s. It was at its peak right before the Civil War in the 1850s.…
The Underground Railroad was started to being built in 1815 and it finished in 1850 allowing many Africans Americans over to Canada. It was a secret way of reaching freedom and the railroad was made out of safe houses, rivers, conductors, trails and secret routes which all led to freedom. Ten of thousands of african Americans got to Canada using the Underground railroad getting them to Upper and Lower Canada.…
I am sure everyone has heard about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad at least once in their life; most people have learned about it in elementary or middle school. When I first learned about it, I always thought it was an actual railroad that was underground. Eventually, I learned that that was not true; it was just a metaphor. “It was symbolically underground as the network’s clandestine activities were secret and illegal so they had to remain “underground” to help fugitive slaves stay out of sight,” (Harriet Tubman, 2017). There was also a lot of terminology they used that were related to railroads. The homes where the slaves would stay were called “stations,” the people who owned…
The “Underground Railroad” was neither underground nor a railroad, but was in fact a term used to describe a network of secret routes, hiding places, and people who helped slaves escape from the South and gain their freedom in the Northern United States or Canada. The term Underground Railroad was in common use by the 1840’s and was thought to have originated in the 1830’s. The website National Underground Railroad Freedom Center offers three suggestions on the origination of the term:…
The Impact of the Underground Railroad in American History To begin, when the topic of American history is brought up, people do not tend to bring up slavery and how it has impacted our country by once splitting it into two. Instead they bring up how our country gives independence and freedom to its citizens. This was not always the case though in 1619 the first slaves were brought to Virginia by the Dutch to help boost production of tobacco and other important crops. These African American people were kidnapped and made to join the impoverished European people of the colony in working for wealthy colonists. The agreement when slavery first began was that if you worked for seven years you would gain freedom along with your own plot of land.…
A strong and powerful lady said these wise words: “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; for no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when the time came for me to go, the Lord would let them take me”. The brave women who said these words were Harriet Tubman and she was one of the leaders of the Underground Railroad that helped slaves reach freedom. “Although not an actual railroad of steel rails, locomotives and steam engines, the Underground Railroad was real nevertheless” (encyclopedia The Civil War and African Americans 329) The term “Underground Railroad” referred to the network of safe houses, transportation and the many very kind hearted people who risked their own lives to help the slaves escape from the Southern States to freedom. Many different kinds of transportation were actually used. Sometimes the slaves would travel by foot or they could be hidden on boats, or hide in wagons or carts carrying vegetables or other goods The runaway slaves became known as “passengers”, and the route traveled was the “line” while people who helped out along the way were called the “agents”. Leaders like Harriet Tubman who would travel with the slaves that were escaping, were called “conductors”.…
Her brothers had second thoughts and returned to the plantation. Harriet freed herself in 1851 using the system known as the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses used by enslaved Africans to escape to free states.After freeing herself from enslavement, Harriet returned to Maryland to rescue other members of her family. After rescuing her family she decided to go back and help many other enslaved people escape too. In ten years conducting the Underground Railroad she had made 19 trips and guided her parents, siblings, relatives and friends for a total of around 300 slaves. Tubman or the slaves she guided were never captured.…
Did you know the underground railroad was not underground or a railroad?! It got its name by its activities to carry out secret, in darkness or disguise. Because the railway terms used those involved in the system to tell how it worked.…
It did, however, guide fugitive slaves out of the south to the North or Canada in order to gain freedom. Slaves were led along the underground railroad by people called conductors. A conductor was a free American who guided slaves from the South in order to save them from the harsh, cruel conditions of slavery. As a conductor "Harriet Tubman helped slaves elude capture by hiding them at safe houses and other secret places, known as stations on the railroad" ("Underground Railroad"). Some conductors, such as Harriet Tubman, were former slaves that escaped slavery using the underground railroad and continually returned to help others do the same. "Not long after her safe arrival in Philadelphia, Tubman began making trips to the South to help other slaves escape on the Underground Railroad" (McGuire). Although dangerous, Tubman and other conductors risked their lives everyday to help slaves. Many white Americans put a tremendous reward for Tubman's capture. She continued to help people after the war. "The importance of Tubman's work as an abolitionist was acknowledged in 2013, when President Barack Obama designated a portion of Maryland's Eastern Shore as the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument, the first national monument to honor an African American woman"…