The Underground Railroad

Introduction

The Underground Railroad is the name that was given in the decades prior to the Civil War to a clandestine operation in which runaway slaves were aided in their flights to freedom in Canada or the far northern reaches of the United States by abolitionists. The term Underground Railroad can be traced to about 1830, when a slaveholder traveling through Ohio with his slaves saw them all escape their bondage and complained that one of them had "gone off on an underground road". There had been efforts by the Quakers (Society of Friends) and others to help slaves escape as early as the 18th century. However, it was not until the 1830s, when abolitionism began to grow in strength, that the Underground Railroad, so named because it borrowed its operating terms, such as lines, conductors, stations, and freight, from railroads, began to help fleeing slaves escape in growing numbers. Southern slaveholders became convinced that the Underground Railroad, which was also referred to as "the Liberty Line," was an elaborate and well-crafted system that robbed them of their property; they, in fact, may have exaggerated its size and sophistication out of fear and frustration at their slaves running away on their own with little or no aid from abolitionists (Bordewich , Pp. 12-45).

The Underground Railroad consisted of not one path but many, each leading away from slave-holding states to Free states in the North and Canada. The network was sustained by a coalition of people who opposed slavery and the Fugitive Slave Act. These participants included free blacks, former slaves, white abolitionists, and even entire spiritual communities, such as the Quakers, who were like-minded on this issue. A number of folk heroes emerged through the Underground Railroad, including Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Tubman (Nye, Pp. 7-15).

Discussion and Analysis

As long as slavery has existed, there have been slaves who, unwilling to resign themselves to a life of bondage, have tried to escape. During the 18th and 19th centuries in the US, tens of thousands of slaves ran away from their Southern captors annually, and hundreds reached the Northern U.S. and Canada each year with the help of the Underground Railroad, a group of Northerners opposed to slavery. Those Northern efforts to aid fugitive slaves fueled the growing tensions between the free North and the slaveholding South leading up to the Civil War (1861-1865). The Underground Railroad was a loose network of people who aided escaped slaves once they reached the North (Breyfogle, Pp. 34-67). (Some Northerners also traveled to the South to help the slaves escape.) They provided runaway slaves with food, clothing and lodging along their journey, and would help them find their way to the next person who would provide help. In that way, fugitives could go from house to house—usually between 10 and 30 miles of each other—until they reached safety (Coffin, Pp. 65-97).

The number of slaves who did find their freedom by heading north out of slavery is impossible to determine with any real ...