The Underground Railroad And The American Civil War

In the essay "The Evolution of Slavery in Colonial America," author Jon Butler examines the growth of the slave practice in the land which would become the United States. As the European nations began exploring North America, they overtook the native populations of the areas and turned them into unpaid laborers. However, these people were not enough to supply landholders with sufficient aid. To make up the necessary numbers, plantation owners utilized indentured servants and then a number of slaves imported from Africa. Indentured servants were people who would be taken from the Old World to the New in order to start a new life. However, since they would not have the necessary funds to pay for their transportation, their journey would be funded by either a manufacturer or a plantation owner and their debt would be paid off by working for their benefactor. Slaves were not given this opportunity. These were people who were taken from their homes and families and forced into labor by threat of violence or death. This practice did not begin in the United States, but America was still allowing slavery well into the 19th century, long after other nations had come to the conclusion that slavery was inhumane and brutal.

“I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person… There was such a glory over everything. The sun came up like gold through the trees, and I felt like I was in Heaven.” Harriet Tubman uttered these words when she arrived in Pennsylvania, a free woman at last (National Geographic). Years later, when talking about the reasons she ran away, Ms. Tubman would state, “[There are] two things I [have] a right to and these are Death and Liberty. One or the other I mean to have. No one will take me back alive” (America’s Civil War, 42). While most research on the Underground Railroad focuses on the northern states, the state of Iowa played an essential role in the

The Underground Railroad was a passage to freedom for the slaves which made the slave-owners exasperate. The slaves had to risk their lives while travelling to the northern states but it was worth it as the result of such hard work was freedom. The underground railroad, a secret network running from the Deep South through the free states and to the Canadian border that helped slaves escape from the slave-holding states before the Civil War, allowed abolitionists and their allies to help runaway slaves, made "conductors" like Harriet Tubman famous, and reached its height after the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act.

The Underground Railroad which many of you have heard the term before in your history classes was actually started around 1780. The Civil War started in 1861 many years later this passage contributed to the war. The Underground Railroad was a word that was used to describe a network of places to meet, unknown routes, passages and safe homes used by slave to escape into Canada from the United States for freedom. The Railroad was estimated to free 1,000 slaves a year in total the freed an estimated 100,000 between 1810 and 1850. The “conductors” of the railroad would act as a slave and go on the plantation and would convince slaves that they were slaves and could be free with their help but they would need to do as

Though slavery was a controversial topic of the 19th century, many people thought that slavery was necessary because they raised crops and maintained houses for their owners for free, but many people thought that this was inhumane so they contributed to something called the Underground Railroad, which a woman named Harriet Tubman contributed to the Underground Railroad by providing safe routes for slaves coming to the North, but this lead to the Civil War which was abolitionist vs. pro-slavery. Slavery started in 1619 in the first English settlement of Jamestown. Between 1502 and 1866, of the 11.2 million Africans, only 450,000 arrived in the United States, while the rest arrived in Latin America and the Caribbean. These slaves were brought as early as the 16th and 17th centuries. A number of slaves in the south in 1860 was about 2.3 million and this was during the end of the Underground Railroad.

The Underground Railroad was an intricate system of households and farmhouses alike that were all connected throughout many towns and villages in the mid 1800s. It was formed by the common goal of people taking a stand against the law and helping thousands of black slaves escape from the south to gain their rightful freedom in the north. This happened because many people began to see slaves as human beings with value, rather than brutes that were valued less than a human. Throughout the mid 1800s, there were many cases of runaway slaves attempting to escape to freedom without anywhere to hide or anyone to help. A lot of people realized that this was a very impactful movement so they began to open up their minds and homes to these fugitive slaves as an attempt to help them make it into the north. Many people helped these runaway slaves because they believed it was morally right, that black oppression was a crime; slaves held value and deserved to keep their family together and lead a life as any other man or woman would, and former slaves shed light on these critical issues.

A journey of hundreds of miles lies before you, through swamp, forest and mountain pass. Your supplies are meager, only what can be comfortably carried so as not to slow your progress to the Promised Land – Canada. The stars and coded messages for guidance, you set out through the night, the path illuminated by the intermittent flash of lightning. Without a map and no real knowledge of the surrounding area, your mind races before you and behind you all at once. Was that the barking of the slavecatchers’ dogs behind you or just the pounding rain and thunder? Does each step bring you closer to freedom or failure?

The labor force provided powerful economic tools for colonial success. The need for field workers exceeded the supply of people in the colonies. The solution was to get laborers from another source, which was slaves from Africa. The request for labor in Virginia surpassed the supply of indentured servants from England after the end of the Civil War there. The Virginia colony reconsidered it’s laws to create a rule that blacks could be kept in slavery permanently for generations.

During the Pre-Civil War era in America, many Africans become enslaved. They were taken from their homes in Africa, packed densely onto ships and transported across the Atlantic to Southern America. White Americans bought these Africans, including children, to work on crop plantations or do housework. ("Africans Arrive in North America") Countless slaves tried to escape the southern slave states to the anti-slavery northern states. A number of slaves even went as far as Canada to be free of the harsh environment they were forced into (Burton 125). These slaves used a network of secret routes and houses called the Underground Railroad. During this time, not all white folks agreed with enslaving other human beings so a group of

The enslavement of African Americans by White Americans existed in the United States of America for 245 years, and was not abolished until 1865, however, the movement to end slavery - the Abolition Movement - existed for many years before slavery’s termination. Slavery in America was constantly changing and African American slaves were constantly treated harsher and working under worse conditions. Black communities, families, and society were degraded by horrific slave owners, and slaves often found themselves entrapped under the atrocious conditions of slavery. The Underground Railroad was created as not a real railroad, but instead a route for slaves to escape their Southern plantations and find freedom in the North. Fugitive slaves spent days, sometimes months, together on the Underground Railroad, bringing them closer together and reviving their previous damaged culture.

The Underground Railroad, established by abolitionists in the early 19th century, was a dynamic and well-organized network for escaping slaves seeking rights and liberty from ruthless slave owners in the southern part of the United States with Canada as their main terminus in 1850-60. In this decade an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 fugitives reached Canada, while another 30,000 to 40,000 freedom seekers came through The Underground Railroad during the last decades of enslavement in the U.S. These African-American newcomers settled mainly in New Brunswick, Quebec, Nova Scotia, as well as various parts of present day Ontario. Amherstburg, Chatham, London, Oro, Woolwich, Windsor and Sandwich, Ontario became the first sanctuaries for those of the

The Underground Railroad was a path of unknown ways and some secret locations used by 19th century slaves of African fall in the New World in attempts to get to free states and Canada with the support of abolitionists and allies who were encouraging to their cause. This period is also appeal to the abolitionists, black and white, free and enslaved, who helped the refugees. The network also supplied a chance for against slave white Americans to take an opinion and play an important role in undercutting the industry called

In 1831, northern free slaves began to try to free slaves from forced captivity of southern slave owners, which began the movement of the Underground Railroad. In 1865, the victory of the civil war, freed four million black slaves, but white southerners were not happy with the idea of slaves having freedom so they designed laws to restrict freed slaves from civility and ensure that they did not lose their labor force. As the years went on and new laws were passed for citizenship, white southerners continued to come up with ways to restrict Blacks from many social activities in which they were already granted through the laws of the Constitution.

The history of African-Americans has been a paradox of incredible triumph in the face of tremendous human tragedy. African-American persons were shown much discrimination and were treated as second class citizens in the colonies during the development of the nation. The first set men, women, and children to work in the colonies were indentured servants, meaning they were only required to work for a set amount of years before they received their freedom. Then, in 1619 the first black Africans came to Virginia. With no slave laws in place, they were initially treated as indentured servants, a source of free labor, and given the same opportunities for freedom dues as whites. However, slave laws were soon passed – in Massachusetts in

The Underground Railroad was not a railroad or underground. The Underground Railroad was a path for slaves to escape. More than 100,000 slaves escaped through the Underground Railroad. (History.com, history.com staff, paragraphs one and two) The slaves can thank people like Harriet Tubman because she was one of the people that helped the slaves leave and be free. There were other people, like William Still, Levi Coffin, and John Fairfield. One of the paths that went through the Underground Railroad was in Cincinnati, Ohio. Different paths extended through fourteen states and including Canada. The Underground Railroad was formed during the 1700-1790s. The Underground Railroad ended in 1861 when the Civil War started. (history.net, in between paragraphs one and two)