Underground Railroad And West Virginia

Without primary accounts from slaves such as The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass the American people would still be in the dark about the true terrors of slavery. Frederick Douglass was one of the few slaves who learned how to write, and also managed to escape. Thanks to this, it became clear that slavery was a totally different story than what the slaveholders were telling. Throughout the narrative Douglass describes his experiences of slavery in detail without much bias. He leaves the reader to determine how evil the actions depicted are, making this hard to believe story much more credible.

The Underground Railroad was a path to safety and freedom for thousands of slaves before the Civil War. Escaping from the chains, confinement and abuse of slavery was no easy task and it took the cooperation of many people

“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 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.

Runaway slaves needed to be dressed in better clothes, food had to be bought to feed them, even train tickets needed to be bought every once and a while. For the slave, running away was not an easy task. To begin with, a slave had to escape from their owner, sometimes very difficult due to dogs or fences. The runaway slaves had to travel ten to twenty miles each night to reach the next “station”. Each night was a night filled with fear because of slave hunters and spies. Lots of money could be made for turning in a runaway slave. Depending on your own luck and cunning, you either made it to freedom, or you didn’t. Some slaves were caught multiple times but continued to try to run for freedom. Conditions were not great either. The “passengers” often had to travel through rain, mud, washed out roads, bogs, rivers, and streams. Gaining freedom was not easy.

It shows how the book is informative on how people treat slaves and whites as not equal, and also sees the daily/ extreme lengths people will go to seek

devices throughout his narrative to show the reader why slavery was such a horrific time. He was very

The book is significant in the sense that it gives even the current generation the knowledge of slavery, how it

The thought of separation from loved ones was horrible. Many who had the means to escape their bondage probably remained for fear of separation from family and friends. The slaveholders had an effective tool in keeping their captives in chains. Punishment, and the fear it implanted in the minds of the slaves also served the slave holders well.

Back in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the Confederate States’ slave population, the newly freed slaves fled North in hope of better treatment. The experience they received was barely better than being enslaved; also it was frequently worse as it was a struggle to secure the basic needs of life, practically survival, rather than living life.

There were safe houses and the Underground Railroad kept the slaves hidden or prevent them from being captured thats why it was best for them to travel at night. Slaves, activist, and abolitionist would travel through route to escape to free states like Canada with the aid of abolitionist and allies who were sympathetic to the slaves cause.Also the slaves would at least try to move more up North and try and stay away from the South. Because of the underground Railroad Harriet Tubman was able to free over 70 people. Also the Underground Railroad wasn't even a railroad it got its name from the activities it carried out in secret using darkness or disguise and because railway terms were used by those involved with system to describe how it worked.The Network extended through 14 Northern States and ‘the promised land’ of Canada-beyond the reach of fugitive slave

The Underground Railroad was the name used to describe a network of secret routes and safe houses used to help African American slaves escape into free states and Canada. Many slaves risked their lives to be free. Slavery began during the American Revolution and near the end of the Civil War when millions of African Americans were captured from Africa and were forced onto slave ships that sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to North America to be sold into slavery. Before the underground railroad, if slaves did try to escape, they’d soon return tired, hungry, and unable to survive on the run as a fugitive. The underground railroad was their only hope of becoming a free person. It was given the name “underground railroad” because everything

“The underground railroad is a way slaves take to get from slavery to freedom.” Harriet Tubman whispered to me as we were hiding in a cellar. “The slaves have to run from slave catchers.The slave catchers run after the slaves then try and kill them, so they can get a reward for the slaves that they had caught. The reward would sometimes be hundreds of dollars.” Harriet continued. We were running from slave catchers as I tried to escape from slavery. Harriet Tubman escaped slavery in 1849 (1). I had been a slave on a plantation in Florida (3) when I had heard about slaves escaping to northern states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Rhode Island (3).

One hundred and sixty seven years ago, the Underground Railroad led thousands of slaves to their newfound freedom and helped unite millions of people against the annihilation of slavery within their new nation. Even though the new nation was committed to equality and liberty, it denied the freedom of millions of its residents. The ultimate goal of the Underground Railroad was to accomplish the safe arrival of runaway slaves to the North and Canada where the long arm of the law could no longer reach them. The Underground Railroad was neither a road nor underground; it was any house, cave, hidden room, or empty barn that acted as a place a runaway could hide safely (Buckmaster, 42). This whole operation appears to have started at the end of 18th

An approximate of three thousand slaves escaped from their masters in 1781 when the British invaded Virginia (Blumrosen & Blumrosen, 2006). About five thousand and twenty thousand slaves in Georgia and South Carolina, respectively, were freed from bondage as a result of the American Revolution (Clifford, 2005). The Revolution’s natural rights philosophy inspired the freed blacks to request the state legislatures to get rid of slavery and Congress to terminate the slave trade (Waldstreicher, 2004). Many of the freed slaves moved to the North because they believed that living conditions were better in the North than in the South. Unfortunately, they experienced many problems in the North, such as lack of jobs, insufficient food, and lack of housing, which forced many of them to go back to the south to work on the cotton plantations for wages (Clifford, 2005). In the South, the freed slaves were assured of food and housing.