His home was a stop along the Underground Railroad, a network of routes, places, and people that helped enslaved people escape to the North. During the era of slavery , the Underground Railroad was a network of routes, places, and people that helped enslaved people in the American South escape to the North. It was not an actual railroad, but it served the same purpose—it transported people long distances. It also did not run underground, but through homes, barns, churches, and businesses.
The people who worked for the Underground Railroad had a passion for justice and drive to end the practice of slavery—a drive so strong that they risked their lives and jeopardized their own freedom to help enslaved people escape from bondage and keep them safe along the route. According to some estimates, between and , the Underground Railroad helped to guide one hundred thousand enslaved people to freedom. As the network grew, the railroad metaphor stuck. Contemporary scholarship has shown that most of those who participated in the Underground Railroad largely worked alone, rather than as part of an organized group.
There were people from many occupations and income levels, including former enslaved persons. According to historical accounts of the Railroad, conductors often posed as enslaved people and snuck the runaways out of plantations.
Due to the danger associated with capture, they conducted much of their activity at night. The conductors and passengers traveled from safe-house to safe-house, often with kilometers 10—20 miles between each stop. Lanterns in the windows welcomed them and promised safety. Patrols seeking to catch enslaved people were frequently hot on their heels. These images of the Underground Railroad stuck in the minds of the nation, and they captured the hearts of writers, who told suspenseful stories of dark, dangerous passages and dramatic en slaved person escapes.
However, historians who study the Railroad struggle to separate truth from myth. Those that led the runaway slaves north did so in stages. No conductor knew the entire route; he or she was responsible for the short routes from station to station.
This limited knowledge protected both the fugitive slaves and the integrity of the routes which sometimes extended over 1, miles. The success of the Underground Railroad generated much animosity among slaveholders and their allies. Because previous measures had failed to disrupt the this system of slave escape, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of which allowed slave owners, or their agents to call on Federal, state and local law enforcement officials in non-slaveholding states to assist in capturing fugitive slaves.
The law was greatly abused. Slave-catchers started abducting free-born African Americans. 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.
A trip on the Underground Railroad was fraught with danger. The slave or slaves had to make a getaway from their owners, usually by night. Operators of the Underground Railroad faced their own dangers. Myers became the most important leader of the Underground Railroad in the Albany area. 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.
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