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. Every year the Underground Railroad was operating more than 1000 enslaved people escaped every year (Rich, Underground Railroad: A path to freedom). The people who traveled the Railroad were considered fugitive slaves. Since they ran and tried to escape the Fugitive Slave Acts were put into place. These basically stated that …show more content…
the master of a fugitive slave could go and retrieve the slave from the North and bring them back to work. Many of the slaves that would have been caught did not get to work again because they were probably beaten to death. Although, if the escapees made it to Canada they were officially free and did not have to worry about their previous owners coming to get them. Many of the fugitive slaves escaped under conductor Harriet Tubman. She never lost one person along the way. Many of the fugitive slaves escaped to the northern states or Canada. Unfortunately, those who did not travel with conductor Tubman might not have been as lucky to make it all the way to freedom. Some were caught by owners, some got lost, and others got sick and died along the way. The ones who were lucky enough to make it to freedom tell stories of what it was like to be enslaved and the tails of the Underground Railroad. Others risked their lives over and over again to help others escape (Rich). When African Americans escaped from slavery they were able to tell about how they were treated and the conditions in which they lived in.
When enslaved they worked from sunrise to sundown with little to no food. They would live in shacks on the plantations and sleep on dirt floors since they had no furniture. But, depending on who they worked for the conditions varied. If they worked for a small farm the were fed well. On large plantations there were domestic slaves that worked inside the house and did house work. This job was the most sought after due to the better circumstances (Slave Life and Slave Codes). There were some times that things got so bad that the colored people could not be controlled. This happened after a death caused by beating would occur. The enslaved people wanted to make sure the whites knew they were not going to get away with it (Quaterman). When slaves acted up they were often whipped, beaten, or punished in some way. Slaves had to do much manual labor, but were not given much to eat so they were weak and sometime struggled to work all day for six days straight. After escaped slaves told about the living conditions they were forced to live in for so long, more people wanted to help the still enslaves escape to freedom. We can also learn about the living conditions in our history classes and be thankful we do not have to endure the treatment they were given. Overall, If we learn and know about something we can try to stop it, or stop it from happening
again.
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.
By the early 19th century, slavery had grown and become interwoven with all social and political institutions, and was considered by many to be a vital part of our nation. As many of the northern states began to change their policies on the enslavement of Africans, the South became aware that those areas might become a haven of refuge for runaway slaves. In an effort to appease southern slave owners, the Fugitive Slave Law was passed in 1793, which allowed slave owners to apprehend fugitives in any state or territory and only required them to apply for custody from a circuit or district judge. Due to the act’s ambiguity and lack of uniform enforcement, slaveholders became increasingly agitated. The growing movement of abolitionists to smuggle and rescue fugitive slaves compounded this frustration; the best known organization being the Underground Railroad.
For the slaves, it definitely was not an easy life working upon the plantations what so ever, after you had finally made your long journey you would then be set into long and labour intense work unless of course you’re a female or a child. The men would work on things such as the large areas needing to be cropped harvested or anything along those lines, while the
The original Fugitive Slave Act was made in 1793. One of the things this stated was that slave owners were allowed to search for their escaped slaves in states that didn’t believe in slavery. When a slave (or a person suspected of being a slave) was caught, the people (or person) went to court to get the slave returned to it’s owner. If enough evidence was provided, the slaves were returned to their owners. This act also made it so that anyone who helped slaves in anyway, such as hiding them, were to face a $500 fee. Many people, especially those from northern states, disagreed with this act. The people of the northern states felt as if their land was being used by bounty hunters. They also disliked how, with people taking free African Americans as slaves, it felt as if the act was leading up to the legalization of kidnapping. Certain people who disagreed with this act created groups to help save slaves, and even created housing for them that would be safe for them to escape to areas where slavery was illegal.
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).
It helped shape our society to what it is today, even if it took over a hundred years. In a hundred years we, as a country went from having slaves, to having segregation, and now everyone gets along and is equal. Sure we still have racism, but we changed a lot. If we never had the Underground Railroad, we might have never got the ball rolling.
The world changed because of slavery and is the way it is because of the history of America. We cannot change the past, but we can change the future. Thank God the world is not the way it was. I cannot imagine what painful lives the slaves had to endure. But we can become knowledgeable about the history of slavery and America and learn from it in many different ways.
These acts of abuse were a large part of slavery during its existence. The types of abuse were present in order to keep the slave population as slaves, and not a group of people who think for themselves.
The Fugitive Slave Act was part of the Compromise of 1850. This act required that authorities in the North had to assist southern slave catchers to retrieve and return slaves to their owners. Southerners favored this act because they saw no slavery in the territories to the west, by the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act it would help preserve slavery in the south. This act allowed southern slave owners to get their slaves back when they escaped to the North that is why this act was important and critical to southern survival. The view of this act by the North was the opposite, especially from those who were black, they feared this act. The blacks in the North were terrified that this act would make it so they could be ushered back to the south even if they were innocent. This led to the creation of resistance groups in the North.
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 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,
By 1860, nearly 3,950,528 slaves resided in the United States (1860 census). Contrary to popular belief, not all slaves worked in hot and humid fields. Some slaves worked as skilled laborers in cities or towns. The slaves belonged to different social or slave classes depending on their location. The treatment of the slaves was also a variable that changed greatly, depending on the following locations: city, town or rural. Although all slaves were products of racial views, their living conditions, education, and exposure to ideas differed greatly depending on their social classes and if they lived in a rural or urban setting.
Slaves would take on the tasks of motherhood, some would even breast feed the babies. The slaves also worked the fields and helped the mother with other household duties, such as making clothes (The Study of Women, online). Education Boys will begin school at age seven. They were also given paid agogos, a slave that accompanied them everywhere. The paid adolescents taught the boy manners, punished him when he did wrong, and even sat through classes with the boy to make sure he did his work.
The living conditions of the plantation workers were horrendous. The workers were The workers lived in crowded, unsanitary work camps and shopped at the plantation stores. They would get a pre-dawned bowl of rice for breakfast and had to wake up at 5:00. Finally, The Chinese were taken to the plantations where they lived in grass houses or unpainted wooden buildings with dirt floors.