The Underground Railroad And Its Impact On American Culture

Underground Railroad: (Harriet Tubman) Network of abolitionists that secretly helped slaves escape to freedom by setting up hiding places and routes to the North. Paramount to its success was Harriet Tubman.

Known to many who lived in the 1800’s as merely a mystery, the Underground Railroad secretly had a major effect on all people during the time the covert operation existed. Although the Underground Railroad may not have been extremely effective in the number of slaves it led to freedom, it did have a major impact on the Civil War, the morale of people fighting for emancipation, and the thinking of all people during the 19th century. The Underground Railroad was a true agent of social change, despite many people’s beliefs that the Underground Railroad was simply a symbolic effort that had no major effect.

First, the Underground Railroad was a secret network that built upon local knowldege and resources, both black and white, to guide enslaved people to freedom. Conductors, like Harriet Tubman, risked their lives to travel south on organized missions. The fugitives stayed at “safe houses” along the way, but danger was ever present. They were hunted by dogs. They risked arrest by any white person. The amish, quakers, and min nights were the primary people who were the conductors. From their religious perspective they had always opposed slavery, and they were the primary owners of land and farm land along the border states. One of the largerst communities of mininight and quakers is right here in Maryland. Northern Marland was one of major stations

The Underground Railroad was what many slaves used to escape slavery. It was not an actual railroad, although it could easily be compared to one. It was a route, with safe houses and many other hiding spots for the slaves to use. The paths had conductors telling you where to go and people who would drive you to the next safe house. You had to be quick, you had to be strong, and you had to be very courageous. The Underground Railroad led all the way to Canada. There were many people helping the slaves, and even more people that were opposing them. It was no easy task. Many slaves died of sickness or natural causes, gave up and returned back to the plantation, or were caught and either killed or brought back. It was a rough journey but a

The Underground Railroad is a well known system that helped many enslaved African Americans escape from their southern masters, to the north. This system is one of the reasons for the start of the civil war between the Union and Confederates in the nineteenth century. Becoming what many slaves saw as their ticket to freedom, Philadelphia helped spark the ambition of the fugitive slaves to escape from their owners and venture through the unknown landscapes of the Northern regions in order to become free black citizens. The Underground Railroad, separating the contradicting ideas of the North and South, pushed the slave and non-slave states to eventually have a civil war

Underground Railroad The Underground Railroad was not only a passage to freedom but also to equality. As a slowly established organization in the early 1800s, it impacted the lives of many people especially slaves (History.net). Many slaves found freedom through the secret passages of the Underground Railroad with the raging fear of being caught. The Underground Railroad is a secret passage to the North slowing leading slaves to freedom.

     The Underground Railroad, the pathway to freedom which led a numerous amount of African Americans to escape beginning as early as the 1700‘s, it still remains a mystery to many as to exactly when it started and why. (Carrasco). The Underground Railroad is known by many as one of the earliest parts of the antislavery movement. Although the system was neither underground nor a railroad, it was a huge success that will never be forgotten.

The Underground Railroad is viewed as simply a series of trails that led slave to freedom. It was more than that. What were the motivations behind the creation of it? Were there political involvements? Was it developed with financial gain in mind? The Underground Railroad is another one of those subjects that gets swept under the proverbial carpet. Slavery happened everywhere, whether people want to admit it or not. The Underground Railroad was a positive and a negative thing. Most people don’t comprehend what it fully entailed or the impact that it had on all people. It is important to review the past, so we can make an attempt to not make the same mistakes. The above questions will be answered in a well rounded account of all parties involved from the abolitionists to the slaves and those who were supporters.

In 1786, George Washington complained one of his runaway slaves was helped by a “society of Quakers, formed for such purposes.” Before long, by 1831, the system grew into what is now the Underground Railroad. Many people think the Underground Railroad had something to do with paths that were once railroad tracks or something, but that is not the

They had to endure near-starvation, attacks from wild animals, and severe temperatures. Once they arrived in the North, they still weren’t safe, as the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 allowed slaves to be taken back to the South if they were captured. Slaves faced severe punishments if they were caught, like being beaten, flogged, branded, jailed, sold back into slavery, or even killed. They had to travel to out of the country to be free from this law. Fugitive slaves also had to avoid the “Reverse Underground Railroad”, which was a group of slave catchers who kidnapped black men, women, and children in the North and took them to the South to be sold into slavery, even if they bought their freedom or were born free. To avoid these dangers, some fugitives escaped by other means, including Frederick Douglass and Henry “Box” Brown. Frederick Douglass escaped on an actual train, and since he needed free papers, he used a sailor’s protection certificate. The train conductor didn’t look very closely at his papers, and Douglass stayed on the train. Henry Brown mailed himself to the North in a wooden crate, giving him his nickname,

The Underground Railroad was one of the most remarkable protests against slavery in United States history. It was a fight for personal survival, which many slaves lost in trying to attain their freedom. Slaves fought for their own existence in trying to keep with the traditions of their homeland, their homes in which they were so brutally taken away from. In all of this turmoil however they managed to preserve the customs and traditions of their native land. These slaves fought for their existence and for their cultural heritage with the help of many people and places along the path we now call the Underground Railroad.

The history of the Underground Railroad began in the mid 1800’s and was aided by people involved in the Abolition movement. By the year 1862, thousands of people were involved in the dangerous process of freeing slaves. The people who helped the slaves escape were called “conductors” or “engineers” and helped the slaves escape by giving them jobs, shelter and food. They also hid the slaves away from people who were trying to catch them and return them to their slave owners. The places used to stash the slaves were known as stations. For instance, people’s homes and barns were used as a place to hold the slaves during their journey to freedom. In these stations, the slaves were fed, clothed and their wounds were treated, until it was time to move to the next location. The escaping slaves were referred to as passengers, cargo or goods. The conductors, Quakers and other

Underground Railroad recounted the many stories of escaped slaves and their experiences were basically characterized by resourcefulness, courage, pain of parting with their families and friends and desperation for freedom. Most people did not manage to escape with their families through the Underground Railroad and for that reason, this is one of the major challenge faced by slaves who escaped through the Underground Railroad. Most of the conductors of the Underground Railroad ended up in prison for helping slaves escape. Abolitions also helped the Underground Railroad conductors since they were also against slavery. This is the organization that created Anti-slavery declaration and there was no more

The underground railroad was not underground, or a railroad, it was named this because the activities that happened had to take place in the dark or in disguise.  Routes were lines, stopping places were stations, and the ones who aided on the way were conductors.  The underground operations relied heavily on secret codes to tell passengers when it was safe to travel and when it wasn't safe to travel.  The most active members who helped the railroad were people of the freed slave community such as Harriet Tubman.  The different lines of the routes extended in several directions throughout 14 northern states and the “Promised Land” of canada. Typically, enslaved African Americans who left plantations and cities in Delaware, District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Virginia were more likely to take refuge in the northern states, Canada and Western Territories.  Those who lived in the deep south often found freedom by escaping into Mexico and the Caribbean.  The Underground railroad was a system which existed in the Northern states before the civil War that helped slaves escape.  Slaves from the south were helped by sympathetic Northerners.  The ultimate goal of the underground railroad was to get slaves to a place of safety and freedom states in the north and in canada. The closest the railroad ever came to being fully organized was in the 1830’s when abolitionists William Still, Robert Purvis, David Ruggles, and several others

The simple fact is that everybody has heard of the Underground Railroad, but not everyone knows just what it was. First of all, it wasn=t underground, and it wasn=t even a railroad. The term AUnderground Railroad,@ actually refers to a path along which escaping slaves were passed from farmhouse to storage sheds, from cellars to barns, until they reached safety in the North. One of the most widely known abolitionists in history is a slave by the name of Harriet Tubman. She is best known as the conductor of the Underground Railroad and risked her life to help free nearly 300 slaves. The primary importance of the Underground Railroad was the ongoing fight to abolish slavery, the start of the Civil War,