The Road to Freedom—the Underground Railroad

The Road to Freedom—the Underground Railroad

Introduction

"Many times I have suffered in the cold, in beating rains pouring in torrents from the watery clouds, in the midst of the impetuosity of the whirlwinds and wild tornadoes leading on my company—not to the field of...war...but to the land of impartial freedom, where the bloody lash was not buried in the quivering flesh of a slave...." (7,p.i).

Such were the conditions of the Underground Railroad. It was a fictitous railroad but served the same purpose: to transport people from one place to another. This railroad, however, was not sanctioned by any government, in fact if it had been discovered many would have died. The Underground Railroad was a huge risk. If you used it, and were caught, you could die. For some that was better than being treated like pack animals or breeding animals by their southern owners. That was a risk they chose to take and conditions they must endure.

The Underground railroad was a means by which slaves in the south could escape to the north and to freedom. The pioneers of the railroad went back to help their brothers and sisters in bondage. Many of them were leaders, or conductors that led others to freedom and risked theirs to do it again and again.

National Standards

This particular subject deals a lot with maps. Understanding the Underground Railroad means understanding maps and spatial organiation. The journeyers, themselves, had to know, distinctly, where north was or which way to follow the Ohio River. A reader will glean an understanding of the people that chose to journey on the railroad. They were fierce believers in freedom, willing to die for it. From this paper, readers will be able to define differe...

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2. History and Geography of the Underground Railroad. 199?. http://www.niica.on.ca/csonan/UNDERGROUND.htm (April 14, 1998).

3. May, Ilana, Mark Beigel, and Lenny Hothchild. The Underground Railroad in Rochester, New York. http://www.history.rochester.edu/class/ugrr/home.html (April 14, 1998)

4. National Park Service Study: Taking the Train to Freedom. 1998. http://www.nps.gov/undergroundrr/contents.htm (April 14, 1998).

5. Quarles, Benjamin. Black Abolitionists. Oxford Universoty Press: New York, 1969.

6. Siebert, Wilbur H. The Underground Railroad. Arno Press and The New York Times: New York, 1968.

7. Smedley, R.C. History of the Underground Railroad. Arno Press and The New York Times: New York, 1969.

8. Weisberger, Bernard A. Abolitionism: Disrupter of the Democratic System or Agent of Progress? Rand McNally & Company: Chicago, 1963.