The Underground Railroad Was Not Only A Significant Part Of Our Nation 's History

The Underground Railroad was one of the most remarkable protests against slavery in United States history. It was a fight for personal survival, which many slaves lost in trying to attain their freedom. Slaves fought for their own existence in trying to keep with the traditions of their homeland, their homes in which they were so brutally taken away from. In all of this turmoil however they managed to preserve the customs and traditions of their native land. These slaves fought for their existence and for their cultural heritage with the help of many people and places along the path we now call the Underground Railroad.

There has been many historians and theorists who have tackled colonial slavery. One of them is Ira Berlin whose book Many Thousands Gone is his take on slavery diversity in American history and how slavery is at the epicenter of economic production, amongst other things. He separates the book into three generations: charter, plantation and revolutionary, across four geographic areas: Chesapeake, New England, the Lower country and the lower Mississippi valley. In this paper, I will discuss the differences between the charter and plantation generations, the changes in work and living conditions, resistance, free blacks and changes in manumission.

As we already noted – in the 1800s expediency of slavery was disputed. While industrial North almost abandoned bondage, by the early 19th century, slavery was almost exclusively confined to the South, home to more than 90 percent of American blacks (Barney W., p. 61). Agrarian South needed free labor force in order to stimulate economic growth. In particular, whites exploited blacks in textile production. This conditioned the differences in economic and social development of the North and South, and opposing viewpoints on the social structure. “Northerners now saw slavery as a barbaric relic from the past, a barrier to secular and Christian progress that contradicted the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and degraded the free-labor aspirations of Northern society” (Barney W., p. 63).

Imagine waking up in a near pitch black room, overwhelmed by the smell of death and despair, chained to a board squished in with hundreds of others. As strange as it might seem, at one point that was a reality for some and the suffering they would have to endure hadn’t even begun to begin. These people were victims of the Atlantic Slave trade and were on their way to the Americas to be bought and sold and forced to work. Exploited and abused these people would go on to become a huge part of what made the United States and our history.

Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass both wrote narratives that detailed their lives as slaves in the antebellum era. Both of these former slaves managed to escape to the North and wanted to expose slavery for the evil thing it was. The accounts tell equally of depravity and ugliness though they are different views of the same rotten institution. Like most who managed to escape the shackles of slavery, these two authors share a common bond of tenacity and authenticity. Their voices are different—one is timid, quiet, and almost apologetic while the other one is loud, strong, and confident—but they are both authentic. They both also through out the course of their narratives explain their desires to be free from the horrible practice of slavery.

In Exchanging Our Country Marks, Michael Gomez brings together various strands of the historical record in a stunning fusion that points the way to a definitive history of American Slavery. In this fusion of history, anthropology, and sociology, Gomez has made expert use of primary sources, including newspapers ads for runaway slaves in colonial America. Slave runaway accounts from newspapers are combined with personal diaries, church records, and former slave narratives to provide a firsthand account of the African and African-American experiences during the eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. With this mastery of sources, Gomez challenges many of the prevailing assumptions about slavery-- for example, that "the new condition of

There is no doubt that the United States was built upon the hard work of Black-American slaves, referred to at the time as bondpeople, who were the main labor force in producing important American exports, such as cotton or tobacco, which were, in fact, the backbone of the American economy during that time. Due to bondpeople’s overall importance in keeping the United States the powerhouse that it was, the domestic slave trade was a value market that “‘was roughly three times greater than the total amount of all capital, North and South combined, invested in manufacturing, almost three times the amount invested in railroads, and seven times the amount invested in banks’”(23). In “‘In Pressing Need of Cash,’” Daina Ramey Berry, a professor for the Departments of History and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas, looks at a fifteen year period, from 1850-1865, of the economic factors of the domestic slave trade. Berry uses Steven Deyle’s findings in his study, "Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life” which examined both the "long-distance interstate trade" and the extensive local or "intrastate" trade of enslaved males and females, who were priced differently depending on their perceived market value (23). With Deyle’s findings, Berry specifically discusses the relationships among gender, age, skill, or type of sale and how those factors, generally, determined the priced paid of enslaved workers.

A strong and powerful lady said these wise words: “There was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when the time came for me to go, the Lord would let them take me”. The brave women who said these words were Harriet Tubman and she was one of the leaders of the Underground Railroad that helped slaves reach freedom. “Although not an actual railroad of steel rails, locomotives and steam engines, the Underground Railroad was real nevertheless” (encyclopedia The Civil War and African Americans 329) The term “Underground Railroad” referred to the

No matter what difficulties lay ahead, there was only one goal, to be free. It was the road to freedom; it was a challenge that needed to be completed. According to “The Underground Railroad in Jersey City” written by Carmela Karnoutsos “Jersey City was the last "station" on the Underground Railroad route through New Jersey. Tens of thousands of fugitive slaves arrived here from several states, such as Maryland, Virginia, and North and South Carolina. From these states, they traveled to the Delaware River where they crossed over to New Jersey to continue on to Jersey City. The crossing of the slaves was in the same area of Jersey City as the Dutch settlement of New Netherlands at Harsimus, where slavery was introduced in the 1640s.” The effects that Jersey City’s underground railroad had on former slaves who

The Gateway to Freedom is an enticing novel that gives further knowledge of racial discrimination and the social inequality of blacks at the time of slavery and how the Underground Railroad combatted this through the different committees and activists of the time. This essay will focus on how the Underground Railroad affected family, economy and religion- the social institutions, those who operated the Underground Railroad were diverse and have different reason for following the abolitionist movement, and not all the committees are made equally.

During the 1840s, America saw increasingly attractive settlements forming between the North and the South. The government tried to keep the industrial north and the agricultural south happy, but eventually the issue of slavery became too big to handle, no matter how many treaties or compromises were formed. Slavery was a huge issue that unraveled throughout many years of American history and was one of the biggest contributors leading up to the Civil War (notes, Fall 2015). Many books have been written over the years about slavery and the brutality of the life that many people endured. In “A Slave No More”, David Blight tells the story about two men, John M. Washington (1838-1918) and Wallace Turnage (1846-1916), struggling during American slavery. Their escape to freedom happened during America’s bloodiest war among many political conflicts, which had been splitting the country apart for many decades. As Blight (2007) describes, “Throughout the Civil War, in thousands of different circumstances, under changing policies and redefinitions of their status, and in the face of social chaos…four million slaves helped to decide what time it would be in American History” (p. 5). Whether it was freedom from a master or overseer, freedom from living as both property and the object of another person’s will, or even freedom to make their own decisions and control their own life, slaves wanted a sense of independence. According to Blight (2007), “The war and the presence of Union armies

There is no doubt that slavery affected many lives of across the country. However, little is known that the harsh practices of slave trade occurred right in the middle of our nations capital. After reading the articles by Ricks and Goodheart, I have broadened by knowledge on just how extreme slavery was in Washington D.C. Throughout these articles, the authors discuss the seriousness level of slavery and the extremes individuals would go through in order to escape. Washington D.C. was conveniently located in the middle of the border between the north and south, which led escape efforts to be fostered in this area even though it was the capital.

“Abolitionism in Rochester” explains the basic structure of the Underground Railroad. It discusses its different elements, such as conductors, stations, and freight, and why Rochester was an important stop on the Underground Railroad. It also explains that it was dangerous for people to be a part of the Underground Railroad. It does not, however, provide the reader with an idea of what it must have felt like to do something so dangerous.

The Underground Railroad marks a devastating time in our nations History. It is a topic that is generally known but not in depth. Starting in the early 1800’s the Underground Railroad was a way for the slaves to reach their freedom. Initially, I believed that there really was an actual underground tunnel, or railroad that slaves walked through that went from the South to the North. Through my research I have discovered that it was neither of the two, it was a variety of safe places in houses, barns, shops, churches, and schools where slaves could hide out and stay (Ohio History Central).

The main argument for Bound for Canaan was to respond to his earlier hardcover edition of Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America. It also explains that the underground railroad was more than Harriet Tubman, it’s a system of channels and different networks full of people who have helped make the underground railroad successful, The author supports his argument by giving us new information that we would have never found out on our own. In the book the author starts with a brief dedication which states “ This book is dedicated to the countless thousands of men and women who fled the bounds of slavery, but were recaptured or died at the hands of their pursuers before they reached the safe embrace of the underground railroad. They are not forgotten’.