Question

The Underground Railroad angered southerners because it rescued more blacks from slavery than succeeded in purchasing their freedom or were freed voluntarily by their masters.

Answer 1

The Underground Railroad was a network of people, African American as well as white, offering shelter and aid to escaped slaves from the South. It developed as a convergence of several different clandestine efforts. The exact dates of its existence are not known, but it operated from the late 18th century to the Civil war, at which point its efforts continued to undermine the Confederacy in a less-secretive fashion.

The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early to mid-19th century, and used by enslaved African-Americans to escape into free states and Canada. The scheme was assisted by abolitionists and other sympathetic to the cause of escapees. Not literally but, metaphorically a railroad, the enslaved who risked escape and those who aided them are also collectively referred to as the "Underground Railroad".

Quaker Abolitionists

The Quakers are considered the first organised group to actively help escaped slaves. George Washington complained in 1786 that Quakers had attempted to "liberate" one of his slaves.

In the early 1800s, Quaker abolitionist Issac T Hopper set up a network in Philadelphia that helped slaves on the run. At the same time, Quakers in North Carolina established abolitionist groups that laid the groundwork for routes and shelters for escapees.

The African Methodist Episcopal Church, established in 1816, was another proactive religious group helping fugitive slaves.

Underground Railroad

The earliest mention of the Underground Railroad came in 1831 when slave Tice Davids escaped from slave Kentucky, into Ohio and his owner blamed an "undergorund railroad" for helping Davids to freedom.

In 1839, a Washington newspaper reported an escaped slave named Jim had revealed, under torture, his plan to go north following an "underground railroad to Boston".

Vigilance Committes-created to protect escaped slaves from bounty hunters in New York in 1835 and Phildelphia in 1835 and Philadelphia in 1838-soon expanded their activities to guide slaves on the run. By the 1840s, the term Underground Railroad was part of the American vernacular.

Most of the slaves helped by the Underground Railroad escaped border states such as Kentucky, Virginia and Maryland.

In the deep South, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 made capturing escaped slaves a lucrative business, and there were hiding places for them. Fugitive slaves were typically on their own until they got to certain points farther north.

People known as "conductors" guided the futigive slaves. Hiding places included private homes, churches and schoolhouses. These were called "stations", "safe houses", and "depots". The people operating them were called "stationmasters".

There were many well-used routes stretching west through Ohio to Indiana and lowa. Others headed north through Pennsylvania and into New England or through Detroit on their way to Canada.

Futigive Slave Acts

The reason many escapees headed for Canada was the Fugitive Slave Acts. The first act, passes in 1793, allowed local governments to apprehend and extradite escaped slaves from within the borders of free states back to their point of origion, and to punish anyone helping the futigives. Some Northern states tried to combat this with Personal Liberty Laws, which were struck down by the Supreme Court in 1842.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was designed to strengthen the previous law, which was felt by southern states to be inadequately enforced. This uodate created harsher penalties and set up a system of commissioners that promoted favouritism towards slave owners and led to some freed slaves being recaptured. For an escaped slave, the northern states were still considered a risk.

Meanwhile, Canada offered blacks the freedom to live where they wanted, sit on juries, run for public office and more, and efforts at extradition had largely failed.Some Underground Railroad operators based themselves in Canada and worked to help the arriving fugitives settle in.

A Dangerous path to freedom

Traveling along the Underground Railroad was a long a perilious journey for fugitive slaves to reach their freedom. Runaway slaves to reach their freedom. Runaway slaves had to travel great distances, many time on foot, in a short amount of time. They did this with little or no food and no protection from the slave catchers chasing them .Slave owners were not the only pursers of futigive slaves. In order to entice others to assist in the capture of these slaves, their owners would post reward posters offering payment for the capture of their property. If they were caught, any number of terrible things could happen to them. Many captured fugitive slaves were flogged, branded, jailed, sold back into slavery, over even killed.

Not only did fugitive slaves have the fear of starvation and capture, but there were also threats presented by their surroundings. While traveling for long periods of time in the wilderness, they would have to fend off animals wanting to kill and eat them, cross treacherrous terrain, and survive severe temperatures. For the slaves tarveling north on the Underground Railraod, they were still in danger once they were seen as stolen property, rather than abused human beings.

Who Ran the Underground Railroad?

Most Underground Railroad operators were ordinary people, farmers and business owners, as well as ministers. Some wealthy people were invoved, such as Gerrit smith, a millionaire who twice ran for President. In 1841, Smith purchased an entire family of slaves from kentucky and set them free.

One of th earliest known people to help fugitive slaves was Levi Coffin, a Quaker from North Carolina. He started around 1813 when he was 15 years old.

Coffin said that he learned their hiding places and sought them out to help them move along. Eventually, they began to find their way to him. Coffin later moved to Indiana and then Ohio and continued to help escaped slaves wherever he lived.

End of the Line

The Undergprund Railroad ceased operations about 1863, during the Civil War. in reality, its work moved aboveground as part of the Union effort against the Confederacy.