Charles Torrey was sent to prison for six years in Maryland for helping an enslaved family escape through Virginia.
He operated out of Washington, D. Massachusetts sea captain Jonathan Walker was arrested in after he was caught with a boatload of escaped enslaved people that he was trying to help get north. John Fairfield of Virginia rejected his slave-holding family to help rescue the left-behind families of enslaved people who made it north. He broke out of jail twice. He died in in Tennessee during a rebellion.
The Underground Railroad ceased operations about , during the Civil War. In reality, its work moved aboveground as part of the Union effort against the Confederacy. Harriet Tubman once again played a significant part by leading intelligence operations and fulfilling a command role in Union Army operations to rescue the emancipated enslaved people. Fergus Bordewich. Catherine Clinton. Who Really Ran the Underground Railroad? Henry Louis Gates.
Smithsonian Magazine. The Perilous Lure of the Underground Railroad. The New Yorker. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present.
Anti-slavery sentiment was But Harriet Tubman fought the institution of slavery well beyond her role as a conductor for the Underground Railroad. Despite the horrors of slavery, it was no easy decision to flee. Escaping often involved leaving behind family and heading into the complete unknown, where harsh weather and lack of food might await.
Then there was the constant threat of capture. So-called slave catchers and Tubman is The abolitionist movement was an organized effort to end the practice of slavery in the United States. The first leaders of the campaign, which took place from about to , mimicked some of the same tactics British abolitionists had used to end slavery in Great Britain in In , the Pacific Railroad Act chartered the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific Railroad Companies, tasking them with building a transcontinental railroad that would link the United States from east to west.
Over the next seven years, the two companies would race toward Whether enslaved, escaped or born free, many sought to actively affect the outcome. From fighting on bloody battlefields to Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries people were kidnapped from the continent of Africa, forced into slavery in the American colonies and exploited to work as indentured servants and labor in the production of crops such as tobacco and cotton.
After the ship docked, black stevedores heard his cries for help and alerted abolitionist leaders, who managed to get a sympathetic judge to rule that Kirk could not be held against his will. The victorious fugitive left court surrounded by a vigilant phalanx of local African Americans.
Soon, however, the mayor ordered police to arrest Kirk, and after an unsuccessful attempt by abolitionists to smuggle him away inside a crate marked American Bible Society , he was hauled back into court. The same judge now found different legal grounds on which to release Kirk, who this time rolled off triumphantly in a carriage and soon reached the safety of Boston. Sydney Howard Gay, the editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard , descended from Puritan luminaries and had married a rich and radical Quaker heiress.
While Gay published abolitionist manifestos and raised money, Napoleon prowled the New York docks in search of black stowaways and crisscrossed the Mason-Dixon Line guiding escapees to freedom. Apparently none mentioned Drapetomania, Dr. The Underground Railroad did, in a sense, have conductors and stationmasters, but the vast majority of its personnel helped in ways too various for such neat comparisons.
Nearly as diverse were its passengers and their stories. One light-skinned man decamped to Savannah, put himself up in a first-class hotel, strolled about town in a fine new suit of clothes, and insouciantly bought a steamship ticket to New York.
A Virginia woman and her young daughter, meanwhile, spent five months crouching in a tiny hiding place beneath a house near Norfolk before being smuggled to freedom.
Even on the brink of the Civil War, the number of such fugitives remained relatively small. Just days after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in April , escapees were reported to be streaming northward at an unprecedented rate.
This was Drapetomania on a scale more awful than Dr. But, many of those who did manage to escape went on to tell their stories of flight from slavery and to help other slaves not yet free. He shipped himself in a three foot long by two and a half foot deep by two foot wide box, from Richmond, Virginia to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
When he was removed from the box, he came out singing. Underground Railroad conductors were free individuals who helped fugitive slaves traveling along the Underground Railroad.
Conductors helped runaway slaves by providing them with safe passage to and from stations. They did this under the cover of darkness with slave catchers hot on their heels. Many times these stations would be located within their own homes and businesses. The act of harboring fugitive slaves put these conductors in grave danger; yet, they persisted because they believed in a cause greater than themselves, which was the freeing of thousands of enslaved human beings.
These conductors were comprised of a diverse group of people. They included people of different races, occupations and income levels. There were also former slaves who had escaped using the Underground Railroad and voluntarily returned to the lands of slavery, as conductors, to help free those still enslaved. If a conductor was caught helping free slaves they would be fined, imprisoned, branded, or even hanged.
Jonathan Walker was a sea captain caught off the shore of Florida trying to transport fugitive slaves to freedom in the Bahamas. Its branded palm shall prophesy, 'Salvation to the Slave! Harriet Tubman, perhaps the most well-known conductor of the Underground Railroad, helped hundreds of runaway slaves escape to freedom.
She never lost one of them along the way. As a fugitive slave herself, she was helped along the Underground Railroad by another famous conductor…William Still. John parker is yet another former slave who escaped and ventured back into slave states to help free others. He conducted one of the busiest sections of the Underground Railroad, transporting fugitive slaves across the Ohio River. His neighbor and fellow conductor, Reverend John Rankin, worked with him on the Underground Railroad.
Both of their homes served as Underground Railroad stations. Conductors of the Underground Railroad undoubtedly opposed slavery, and they were not alone. Abolitionists took action against slavery as well. The organization created the Declaration of Anti-Slavery in which they gave reasons for the construction of the society and its goals.
The society distributed an annual almanac that included poems, drawings, essays and other abolitionist material. Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave who became a famous abolitionist. He published a newspaper called the North Star in which he voiced his goals for the abolishment of slavery. He also published another abolitionist paper called the Frederick Douglass Paper, as well as giving public speeches on issues of concern to abolitionists.
Susan B. Anthony was another well known abolitionist who spoke and wrote for the efforts to abolish slavery. Much of her book was based on the experiences of fugitive slave Josiah Henson.
Henry Bibb was born into slavery, in Kentucky during the year of He made many failed attempts to escape slavery; yet, he still had the courage and perseverance to continue in his fight for freedom after every capture and punishment.
His perseverance paid off when he made a successful and much anticipated escape to the northern states and then on to Canada with the help of the Underground Railroad.
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