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Quiz on the underground railroad
Beginning of slavery in America
Historiography of slavery
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Michigan and the UGRR The underground railroad was in fact not a railroad, but a series of paths that slaves would make to try and escape slavery. It is called the underground railroad so when slaves would talk about it the whites wouldn’t know what they were talking about. Michigan played an important role in the Underground railroad by being right next to Canada which is a slave free state. If or when slaves would escape to the north, the fugitive slave law of 1850 made it so that owners could come and take back their slaves. (Encyclopedia Of Detroit) But of course, one mile across the Detroit river, in Canada, is where slavery was prohibited, and slaves that are there are free slaves and cannot go back into slavery, unless they go down back
The Underground Railroad was an escape network of small, independent groups of individuals bound together by the common belief that enslaving a human being was immoral. A loosely structured, informal system of people who, without regard for their own personal safety. Conducting fugitives from slavery to free states, and eventually to Canada where they could not be returned to slavery was a dangerous undertaking.
During the 1980's southern blacks from the United States dedicated to migrate to the north with the belief that the north had more opportunities and advantages blacks. Although, Frederick Douglas and Booker T. Washington opposed a migration to the north, millions of blacks migrated northward. The industries for the blacks migrating t o the north was what Douglas and Washington feared, black northern workers being placed in the same situation prior to their movement. Blacks were going to experience the same obstacles and disadvantages as they had in the south just with different situations. Northern blacks were going to experience prejudice, riots and murdering.
From 1750 until 1800 the colonial United States endured a period of enormous achievement along with a substantial amount of struggle. Before 1750, the new colony’s first struggle was between the colonists and England over who would have leadership within the New World. Once settled, the issues emerged from within the colonies themselves, particularly with the “belongings” they brought and imported. African American slaves were seen as property, and were not given any innate rights such as liberty or freedom when following their master to the New World. The revolution for the colonists from England began, with new freedoms received by the colonists; the slaves began to question their rights as humans. Innate rights such as liberty and freedom
In Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, we see a piece of history being slightly rewritten. Whitehead was able to give the reader a visual of how mentally and physically the slaves were affected. We are given a glimpse of what they call freedom and the reality of freedom in the 1800s through eyes of the protagonist Cora.
The Underground Railroad was an extremely complex organization whose mission was to free slaves from southern states in the mid-19th century. It was a collaborative organization comprised of white homeowners, freed blacks, captive slaves, or anyone else who would help. This vast network was fragile because it was entirely dependent on the absolute discretion of everyone involved. A slave was the legal property of his owner, so attempting escape or aiding a fugitive slave was illegal and dangerous, for both the slave and the abolitionist. In The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass understands that he can only reveal so many details about his escape from servitude, saying, “I deeply regret the necessity that impels
The Underground Railroad was large group of people who secretly worked together to help slaves escape slavery in the south. Despite the name, the Underground Railroad had nothing to do with actual railroads and was not located underground (www.freedomcenter.org). The Underground Railroad helped move hundreds of slaves to the north each year. It’s estimated that the south lost 100,000 slaves during 1810-1850 (www.pbs.org).
Carter G. Woodson: Negro Orators ansd Their Orations (New York, NY, 1925) and The Mind of the Negro (Washington, DC., 1926).
The Underground Railroad ran through many states starting in the south and running through the North. The railroad helped many slaves escape slavery and start a new life with new found freedom. Since the Underground Railroad is an important part of history, and it helped lead to the ending of slavery it has a immense impact on society as it is today. Society was impacted vastly by the use of the Underground Railroad.
The Underground Railroad was the way out of slavery. The railroad was operated by conductors, or people who helped the slaves escape. When traveling on the railroad the conductors would have the slaves stay at stations. Which were homes and/or churches. These were safe places to rest and eat. When traveling on the railroad, white people would act as a master to the fugitives. If there was no one that was a white, lighter skin African Americans would take the job. The railroad would operate at night, because slave catchers and sheriffs were always on watch for escaping slaves. There were 3,200 people known to work on the Underground Railroad. Many of those thousands are still remained anonymous (US History.org).
Another point that someone might argue about the Underground Railroad is Harriet Tubman. She was one of the conductors of the Underground Railroad. She would an African American born slave, spent most of her life on the plantation, who risked her life multiple to times to get her fellow slaves to safety. She escaped from Maryland but see continued to put her freedom on the line for fellow slaves who wanted to use the Underground Railroad. Her original intent was to go back to Maryland to get her husband, but to her surprise, he had taken a new wife. She was angered by this but this anger was only used for the good of getting her whole family out of slavery and to their freedom. She continued to travel back south help people about ten years
The Underground Railroad was not an actual railroad, nor was it an established route. It was, however, a way of getting slaves from the South to the North, or in this case, from the Deep South, to Mexico. In the 1800s, slavery was a major issue. As the United States began to mature, slavery began to divide. Slavery in the considered “Northern States” was emancipated, and slaves, still under bondage in the South, were looking for ways to get to the North. The Underground Railroad was one way to find freedom. A common myth about the Underground Railroad is that it was only in a pathway full of people, all trying to make it to the North for freedom. The truth is there was hardly any help in the South. The major help came along when the slaves reached the North. A former slave by the name of James Boyd was once interviewed in Itasca, Texas on this very subject. He recalls that many slaves running across the established border between Mexico and Texas to reach freedom in Mexico. ...
The Underground Railroad was what many slaves used to escape slavery. It was not an actual railroad, although it could easily be compared to one. It was a route, with safe houses and many other hiding spots for the slaves to use. The paths had conductors telling you where to go and people who would drive you to the next safe house. You had to be quick, you had to be strong, and you had to be very courageous. The Underground Railroad led all the way to Canada. There were many people helping the slaves, and even more people that were opposing them. It was no easy task. Many slaves died of sickness or natural causes, gave up and returned back to the plantation, or were caught and either killed or brought back. It was a rough journey but a good number of slaves prevailed and escaped to liberty, which in this time was not America.
The Underground Railroad was a vast, loosely organized network of people who helped aid fugitive slaves in their escape to the North and Canada. It operated mostly at night and consisted of many whites, but predominately blacks. While the Underground Railroad had unofficially existed before it, a cause for its expansion was the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act allowed for runaway slaves to be captured and returned within the territory of the United States and added further provisions regarding the runaways and imposed even harsher chastisements for interfering in their capture (A&E). The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act was a major cause of the development of the Underground Railroad because it caused people to realize just how cruel slavery was, which invoked an increase in the support and aid of the strong, free, black population, who were a crucial component to the Underground Railroad, as well as abolitionist and anti-slavery white, resulting in the expansion of the Underground Railroad.
The Underground Railroad was not an actual railroad, it was just an idea of indirect paths from on station to another. The Underground Railroad began when slaves had first entered America in 1619, and it ended along with the American Civil War in 1865 (Lavine - ). Slaves had the choice of escaping to the free-states in the North, or to Mexico. Depending on where you were coming from and what happened on the way, it could take from 24 hours to a year’s worth of running (How Stuff Works “How it Worked”).
The Underground Railroad despite occurring centuries ago continues to be an “enduring and popular thread in the fabric of America’s national historical memory” as Bright puts it. Throughout history, thousands of slaves managed to escape the clutches of slavery by using a system meant to liberate. In Colson Whitehead’s novel, The Underground Railroad, he manages to blend slave narrative and history creating a book that goes beyond literary or historical fiction. Whitehead based his book off a question, “what if the Underground Railroad was a real railroad?” The story follows two runaway slaves, Cora and Caesar, who are pursued by the relentless slave catcher Ridgeway. Their journey on the railroad takes them to new and unfamiliar locations,