The “Underground Railroad” refers to the
effort—sometimes spontaneous, sometimes highly organized—to assist persons held
in bondage in North America to escape from slavery. Runaways began their journey
unaided. Many completed their self-emancipation without assistance. However,
each decade in which slavery was legal in the United States saw an increase in
the public perception of a secretive network and in the number of persons
willing to give aid to the runaway.
The origin of the term, “Underground Railroad”
cannot be precisely determined. Both those who aided escapes from slavery and
those who were outraged by loss of slave property began to refer to runaways as
part of an “underground railroad” by the 1830s. The “Underground Railroad”
described an activity that was locally organized, but with no real center. In
the North, it sometimes existed rather openly and, in the upper South and
certain southern cities, it was often just beneath the surface of daily life.
The Underground Railroad, where it existed, offered local aid to runaway
slaves, assisting them from one point to another. Farther along, others would
take the passengers into their transportation system until the final
destination had been reached.
The rapidity with which the term became commonly
used did not mean that incidents of resistance to slavery increased
significantly around 1830 or that more attempts were made to escape from
bondage. It did mean that more white northerners were prepared to aid runaways
and to give some assistance to the northern blacks who had always made it their
business to help escapees from slavery. It was on January 1, 1831, that the
first issue of William Lloyd Garrison’s newspaper, The Liberator, was published. That event marks the traditional
beginning of the era of abolitionist attack on the institution of slavery and
of angry and defensive responses from the slaveholding South. Both the high
visibility of the abolitionist attack and the existence of so many printed
records have perhaps encouraged historians to overemphasize that part of the
antislavery movement.
Other aspects of the Underground Railroad, other
than the abolitionist movement, also deserve attention. First, there were
probably at least as many attempts at escape from slavery in the North America
of the late 1600s and the 1700s, both individual and in groups, as in the
1800s. By the 1800s various forces, from the national Constitution to the local
slave patrols, were all aligned to prevent escapes. Second, while primary
attention is given to the drama of slave escapes to the free states of the
North and to Canada, there was also a flow of runaways into Spanish Florida,
Spanish Mexico, and the subsequent Mexican Republic. Although the numbers escaping
southward and northward across the borders never threatened to destabilize
slavery, there were serious consequences for American diplomacy and domestic
politics. Indeed, American foreign policy in the antebellum era was often
driven by the need to secure national borders and prevent slave escapes. A
third factor is that the majority of assistance to runaways came from slaves
and free blacks, and the greatest responsibility for providing shelter,
financial support and direction to successful runaways came from the organized
efforts of northern free blacks.
The importance of the Underground Railroad is best
measured not by the number of attempted or successful escapes from American
slavery, but by the manner in which it consistently exposed the grim realities
of slavery. More importantly, it refuted the claim that African Americans could
not act or organize on their own. Throughout the American colonial era and
until the early 1800s, slavery had most frequently been rationalized as a
“necessary evil.” Some believed that it Christianized and civilized the African. However, with the end of
the slave trade and rise of the “cotton kingdom,” it became clear that another
set of theories would have to be developed to justify the continuation of
lifetime servitude. In order to promote slavery as a “positive good,”
proslavery advocates had to claim, against much evidence, that African
Americans were better off in slavery and generally content with their bondage.
Runaways refuted this claim by their actions.
The debate in Congress in 1819 and 1820 over
whether Missouri should be admitted to the Union as a slave state or a free
state made it clear to northerners and southerners that the issue of slavery
was not going to resolve itself and that slavery was not going to simply
evaporate in the American republic. In the 1820s and increasingly in the 1830s,
slave-state philosophers argued that Africans were not capable of caring for
themselves, taking initiative, or organizing for the good of the community—all
of which were requirements for citizenship in a republic. The Underground
Railroad—from the first decision to run away through the actions of
black-organized vigilance committees and churches to the economics of black
communities—was a constant reminder of African-American initiative and ability.
Its existence proved that some ideologies were purely racist and self-serving.
The Underground Railroad gave ample evidence of
African-American capabilities and gave expression to an African-American
worldview. It provided an opportunity for sympathetic white Americans to play a
role in resisting slavery. It also brought together, however uneasily at times,
men and women of both races to begin to set aside assumptions about the other
race and to work together on issues of mutual concern. At the most dramatic
level, the Underground Railroad provided stories of guided escapes from the
South, rescues of arrested fugitives in the North, complex communication
systems, and individual acts of bravery and suffering.
It has often been noted that the Underground
Railroad was neither “underground” nor a “railroad.” In the period of greatest
activity, from 1830 to 1861, its activities encompassed individual decisions to
flee from American slavery, individual acts of support or betrayal, and loosely-organized
networks of assistance. The farther north one moved, the more apparent and
public the aid to fugitives became. The closer to the slave states, the more
clandestine was the activity. “Helping the fugitive” was a subject that
fascinated Americans. Many people who did not consider themselves abolitionists
aided fugitives from spontaneous impulse, perhaps thinking of the Biblical
pronouncement that aid to the “least of these” was aid to the divine. No maps
with arrows pointing out trails and no favored river or sea routes could
encompass the individual and unpredictable acts of assistance. Nor do such
routes factor in betrayals or exhaustion. Indeed, the fact that there were no
predetermined trails may have been the chief reason for much success. No trail
could have remained secret for very long.
While occasional stories were recounted of people
who had walked from Texas, Mississippi, or Alabama to Iowa, Indiana, or Ohio,
most of the fugitives came from the upper south and were young men in good
health. Most of those east of the Appalachian Mountains tended to go directly
north, by land or water, to Pennsylvania, New York, and the Boston area. Those
on the other side of the mountains had to cross the Ohio River to leave
Virginia or Kentucky or Tennessee. Slaves from Arkansas and Texas might cross
the contested areas of Missouri and Kansas to head east for aid in Indiana or
Illinois.
It is difficult to determine the number of
attempted escapes from slavery each year. Most historians, calculating through
various systems, feel that one thousand successful escapees per year is not an
exaggeration. The figure may be as high as fifteen hundred. This does not count
those who were captured before they reached free land or those who hid out for
a time in southern swamps and mountains. Nor does it take into account those
runaways who were seeking family still enslaved in the South or attempting to
negotiate better conditions from the master. These latter persons seldom escaped to a life of freedom, but satisfied
more immediate needs. Some runaways passed as free in southern cities and could
not be counted as having found “free land.”
Runaways came from all conditions, ages, and sexes.
However, they were more likely to be young males (between the ages of eighteen
and thirty-five) who did not yet have wives and who lived in states with
borders crossing to free land. Frequently, they worked in towns and cities and
were familiar with the passage of ships on the docks, the times of coaches, and
the flat boats that carried goods to and from the interior. The most common
Underground Railroad route was likely to be an established route between one
town and another with the fugitive either in disguise or hiding under the cargo
of a wagon, a flatboat, or a ship.
Many runaways traveled alone and asked aid of no
one until they believed themselves to be near or beyond a border to free land.
If helped in the south, they were likely to be aided by other slaves and by
free blacks. The southern states developed an elaborate network of
surveillance, chase, and capture of runaways. It was important to avoid slave
patrols, local law officers, suspicious farmers, hostile dogs, and even
bloodhounds, by not traveling on a known route or calling attention to oneself.
Southern jails were full of blacks picked up on suspicion of being runaways.
The jailers expected a reward when the “master” (who may or may not have been
one) picked them up.
Those who attempted to reach the North became more
aware, as the decades passed, of some organized assistance from black and white
abolitionists and other sympathizers. Especially after 1830, when black and
white abolitionists began to despair of moral persuasion, there followed a
commitment to abolitionism, the formation of predominantly black vigilance
committees, and support for what came to be called the “Underground Railroad.”
Many scholars and researchers have estimated that
about 100,000 persons successfully escaped slavery between 1790 and 1860.
Advertisements for runaway slaves and descriptions of those picked up by the
police often indicated whether the fugitive was trying to reach freedom or to
stay, hidden, in the area. Examples of those suspected of staying in the region
included Mandeville, a seventeen year old with a limp, who “has lately been
seen in Manchester [Virginia], and I have reason to believe has been secreted
by his grandmother, old Critty, who is well known in that place” and Gerrard, a
twenty-year-old man, who “has always lived near the Alexandria Ferry, on the
Maryland side, and as his Parents are now living there, it is expected he is
lurking about the Town of Alexandria or the City of Washington.”
The years between the end of the American
Revolution (1783) and the end of the Civil War (1865) are the years in which
the United States was a slave-holding independent nation. If the frequent claim
of one hundred thousand successful runaways prior to the Civil War is valid,
then that means that, at a minimum, the eighty years between the Revolution and
the Civil War produced approximately twelve hundred successful runaways per
year. We may be sure that the numbers were not the same each year since
individual opportunity varied at all times. Due to the mystery, which
surrounded the runaways, we cannot know the exact number of the escapes that
went unrecorded in the North or the South.
1. What does the term, “Underground Railroad,”
mean?
a. It refers to the method
that many slaves used to escape to free territories.
b.It was
made up in the 1830s to describe the booming illegal slave trade.
c. It was
one measure abolitionists were willing to take against slavery.
d.It was a
secret route of communication between free and enslaved blacks.
2. Who
participated in the Underground Railroad?
a.
die-hard abolitionists
b.
freedom fighters and free blacks
c.
southerners
d.
all
of the above
3. How did
the Underground Railroad prove to whites that blacks had initiative and
ability?
a.
It was a forum for communication between blacks.
b.
Whites were able to meet slaves along the trail.
c.
Blacks
successfully organized escapes and endured complicated journeys.
d.
Whites and blacks worked together to ensure the
secrecy of the mission.
4. Why did
the Underground Railroad bring many different types of people together?
a.
A
diverse group of people were all willing to help the slaves.
b.
The black organizations called for aid from
southerners.
c.
Many freed blacks were determined to help the
slaves.
d.
Some organizations forced blacks and whites to
participate.
5. What is a
reasonable estimate of how many slaves successfully escaped between the end of
the Revolutionary War and the beginning of the Civil War?
a.
120,000
b.
100,000
c.
1,000
d.
1,500
6. Why were
the escapees mainly young black men in good health?
a.
The trip was too dangerous for women and children.
b.
Most
married men could not have left their families.
c.
The young men were more aware of the Underground
Railroad.
d.
Many single men were stronger than the married men.
7. Why
wasn’t there one specific route to follow along the Underground Railroad?
a.
Many slaves came from different parts of the South.
b.
The slaves wouldn’t be able to remember a precise
route.
c.
A
definite route would have been easily discovered.
d.
Slaves were worried that an exact route could be
lost for many.
8. Why was
it difficult for historians to estimate how many slaves had escaped over the
years?
a.
Many white slave owners burned the exact records.
b.
While a number of slaves escaped, some were brought
back into slave territories.
c.
The blacks destroyed all evidence of the escapees.
d.
Very
few records remain because of the necessary secrecy.
9.
Why did the author describe the Underground
Railroad as “organized, but with no real center”? Why was its organization a
testament to the intelligence and capability of black people?
10. Although it is uncertain how many slaves were
ultimately able to achieve freedom through the Underground Railroad, what were
some of its other benefits? How did the Underground Railroad affect relations
between blacks and whites? Explain.
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