Being caught in a slave state while aiding runaways was much more dangerous than in the North; punishments included prison, whipping, or even hanging—assuming that the accused made it to court alive instead of perishing at the hands of an outraged mob. White men caught helping slaves to escape received harsher punishments than white women, but both could expect jail time at the very least. The harshest punishments—dozens of lashes with a whip, burning or hanging—were reserved for any blacks caught in the act of aiding fugitives.
Events such as the Missouri Compromise and the Dred Scott case drove more anti-slavery advocates to take active roles in helping to free slaves. A damper was thrown, however, when Southern states began seceding in December , following the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency.
Even some outspoken abolitionist newspaper cautioned against giving the remaining Southern states reason to secede. She escaped from her owner near Wheeling in the Virginia panhandle now the northern panhandle of West Virginia and made her way to Cleveland in far northern Ohio, where abolitionists helped her secure lodging and employment as a domestic servant. It required all the moral courage that I was master of to suppress my feelings while taking leave of my little family.
Had Matilda known my intention at the time, it would not have been possible for me to have got away, and I might have this day been a slave. My strong attachments to friends and relatives, with all the love of home and birth-place which is so natural among the human family, twined about my heart and were hard to break away from.
And withal, the fear of being killed, or captured and taken to the extreme South, to linger out my days in hopeless bondage on some cotton or sugar plantation, all combined to deter me. But I had count the cost, and was fully prepared to make the sacrifice. The time for fulfilling my pledge was then at hand. I must forsake friends and neighbors, wife and child, or consent to live and die a slave. This was the commencement of what was called the under ground rail road to Canada.
I walked with bold courage, trusting in the arm of Omnipotence; guided by the unchangeable North Star by night, and inspired by an elevated thought that I was fleeing from a land of slavery and oppression, bidding farewell to handcuffs, whips, thumb-screws and chains. I travelled on until I had arrived at the place where I was directed to call on an Abolitionist, but I made no stop: so great were my fears of being pursued by the pro-slavery hunting dogs of the South.
I prosecuted my journey vigorously for nearly forty-eight hours without food or rest, struggling against external difficulties such as no one can imagine who has never experienced the same: not knowing what moment I might be captured while travelling among strangers, through cold and fear, breasting the north winds, being thinly clad, pelted by the snow storms through the dark hours of the night, and not a house in which I could enter to shelter me from the storm.
Another former slave who was well known for her efforts to end slavery was Sojourner Truth. She too along with Josiah Henson, J.
Green and many others wrote narratives that shared their experiences. Their stories of strength and freedom provide much insight to the time in which they lived.
Perhaps, so many fugitive slaves chose to write down their experiences to help others understand their trials and tribulations; or maybe they did this to help individuals learn from the mistakes of the past, in hopes of creating a better future. Eastern Illinois University is authorized to operate as a postsecondary educational institution by the Illinois Board of Higher Education.
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Loading Search Results Loading Directory Results Recent Pages. While Siebert ignored the most fanciful stories he heard, he placed far too much emphasis on the work of so-called white conductors and depicted the experience as a very systematic and interrelated series of way stations and routes — which he traced in detailed maps — not unlike a railroad line or system of rail lines. The Underground Railroad and the abolition movement itself were perhaps the first instances in American history of a genuinely interracial coalition, and the role of the Quakers in its success cannot be gainsaid.
It was, nevertheless, predominantly run by free Northern African Americans, especially in its earliest years, most notably the great Philadelphian William Still. He operated with the assistance of white abolitionists, many of whom were Quakers. William Still himself, according to James Horton, recorded the rescue of fugitives sheltered in Philadelphia, including 16 who arrived on one day alone, June 1, , according to Blight.
But very few people, relatively speaking, engaged in its activities. After all, it was illegal to assist slaves escaping to their freedom. The Underground Railroad was primarily a Northern phenomenon. It operated mainly in the Free States, which stands to reason. It was then that the Underground Railroad could take effect. Some organized assistance was also available in Washington, D. And some slaves were assisted in escaping from Southern seaports, but relatively few.
Those tunnels or secret rooms in attics, garrets, cellars or basements? Most fugitive slaves spirited themselves out of towns under the cover of darkness, not through tunnels, the construction of which would have been huge undertakings and quite costly. And few homes in the North had secret passageways or hidden rooms in which slaves could be concealed.
Freedom quilts? Simply put, this is one of the oddest myths propagated in all of African-American history. If a slave family had the wherewithal to make a quilt, they used it to protect themselves against the cold, and not to send messages about supposed routes on the Underground Railroad in the North, where they had never been! Despite the illegality of their actions, people of all races, class and genders participated in this widespread form of civil disobedience.
Wherever there were enslaved African Americans, there were people eager to escape. There was slavery in all original thirteen colonies, in Spanish California, Louisiana, and Florida; Central and South America; and on all of the Caribbean islands until the Haitian Revolution and British abolition of slavery The Underground Railroad started at the place of enslavement.
The routes followed natural and man-made modes of transportation - rivers, canals, bays, the Atlantic Coast, ferries and river crossings, road and trails. Locations close to ports, free territories and international boundaries prompted many escapes.
As research continues, new routes are discovered and will be represented on the map.
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