Essay on Underground Railroad: Freedom Fighters or Criminals?

The Underground Railroad was a systematic network of people working together to help slaves in the South escape and come to liberation. People also called “conductors” would help guide fugitive slaves toward designated hiding spots across the North. They included schools, churches, as well as people’s personal homes. Among the many former slaves that contributed to the cause, individuals who made a significant difference in the movement were Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass. Both were born into slavery, and the former of the two repeatedly returned to her old plantation to liberate family and friends. Douglass rescued over 400 slaves, keeping them in his own home and helping them get to

The title of this book is Rebels Against Slavery, and the authors are Patricia C. and Fredrick L. McKissack. It was published by the Scholastic Press in 1996. It also has 182 pages, this includes the epilogue, the important dates, the bibliography, and the index. This is a book of significant dimension and importance.

Instead, the South relied heavenly on Slaves to do the labor of picking cotton and the Northerners’ exportation of manufactured machinery to them. The climate in the south was perfect for their most valuable export; cotton, so growing them was easy. As the southerners bought bigger plantations for the growth of cotton, the worse slavery had grown. Therefore, the southerners had this social construct that the slaves were their biggest possessions because of the 4th highest ranking they had on income, they also had a mindset that the slaves were like family, and believed Africans needed the help of white men. The grossing on their beliefs justified slavery in the South, although much of abolitionists in the North had a different opinion on the matter. Northerners believed slavery was uncivilized and deprived from the equality the constitution had stated; however, the daily lives of the Southerners treating the slaves like property didn’t change at all.

However in the novel, The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead, freedom is just a dream every African American character desires. Whether enslaved or free they must navigate the impossible choice between slavery or racism. The stigma of colored people create this idea that Ridgeway believes "If niggers were supposed to have their freedom, they wouldn't be in chains. If the red man was supposed to keep hold of his land, it'd still be his. If the white man wasn't destined to take this new world, he wouldn't own it now." (Whitehead) Similarly, any white person who feels sympathy for the enslaved is confronted with the fact that if they choose to assist enslaved people, they will likely be killed along with their families.

“The South confronts one grave moral challenge. It must not exploit the fact of Negro backwardness to preserve the Negro as a servile class… Let the South never permit itself to do this. So long as it is merely asserting the right to impose superior mores for whatever period it takes to affect a genuine cultural equality between the races, and so long as it does so by humane and charitable means, the South is in step with civilization, as is the Congress that permits it to function.” (5)

As we’ve learned, most southerners defended slavery, even though they were not part of the “Plantation Aristocracy.” What is imperative to comprehend and process is why they supported slavery. It is also important to discuss the claims made by its supporters and why it was easier to end the slave trade as opposed to ending slavery in general. It is really quite incredible to process the following information because I could personally not relate or even understand how one human can think of another in such a demeaning way. As many can agree, when a society evolves around any establishment, as the South did around slavery, it will convey into a set of arguments to support it and that is exactly what they did.

The Underground Railroad was a secret system of individuals who assisted fugitive slaves in their quest for freedom prior to the Civil War. The term, used between 1830-1860, refers to the swift, “invisible” way in which the slaves escaped. Usually they hid during the day and moved at night. Coffin says: “fugitive slaves relied heavily on fellow slaves and free blacks, who rarely betray them.” (Coffin, 2006). The most famous black leader in the movement was Harriet Tubman, a nonliterate runaway slave who became the “Moses” of her people.

One of the most notable features of the famous The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is the extent to which Douglass shows how even 'good' and reasonable whites in the South supported the institution of slavery. Slavery was dehumanizing to black men and women because it denied an entire class of human beings the right to literacy and the enjoyment of basic civil liberties. But it also coarsened the nature of white men and women. Even his first master's wife, Douglass says: "this kind heart had but a short time to remain such. The fatal poison of irresponsible power was already in her hands, and soon commenced its infernal work. That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave place to that of a demon" (Douglass 35-36). Douglass portrays a society entirely divided between haves and have-nots, between slave and free. If a person is born into slavery, his or her life is spoken for, and there is no hope for any betterment, unless he escapes to freedom. While this situation seems horrific to modern-day eyes, it is worth asking if our present circumstances are really so different, given the class disparities that exist within America today. How will the divide between the rich and the poor in

The Underground Railroad was not only a significant part of our nation’s history, but also a journey towards freedom, possibility, promise, and hope for so many African American slaves who ventured along the many “railways” of it. Being involved in the Underground Railroad was a risky affair, but simultaneously, incredibly rewarding for those exerting such great efforts to grab the dreams and promise set before them. The Underground Railroad occurred in several decades prior to the Civil War (Cecelski, 174). Without these roads of hope before the Civil War ended slavery, there is no telling what the condition our country would be in. Examining the places, lives, perspective, and ideas that went into creating this sometimes successful

Lastly, the Underground Railroad consisted of skill, stillness, slyness, and a great deal of confidentiality. The people involved in the escapes used different terms to disguise their conversations. Instead of saying “homes” or “businesses” for where the escapees would eat and rest, the people would say either “stations” or “depots” (1). The fugitives were hidden in the upper room of people’s homes and were to travel at night (Coffin 1). They called the people in charge of the “stations” and “depots”, “stationmasters”. The ones who donated money and supplies were called “stockholders” and the “conductors” were the people who helped move fugitives from each station on to the next (1). Making up different vocabulary helped the ones that were moving the slaves talk more openly about what they were doing without getting caught and it was a much smaller risk.

Despite being labeled the “Underground Railroad”, this system was neither underground nor a railroad. The expression derived from the recent establishment of railroads in the United States and the system’s surreptitiousness. The railway terms were used as code words by those in the business. The different routes were called “lines”, stopping places were dubbed “stations”, those who assisted along the passage were known as “conductors”, and the fugitives were referred to as “packages” or “freight”. Its title makes the journey seem as though there is one particular path, but it was quite the opposite. The Underground Railroad was a vast organization of networks that utilized countless people as aids, and extended through 14 Northern states as well as Canada.

     The Underground Railroad, the pathway to freedom which led a numerous amount of African Americans to escape beginning as early as the 1700‘s, it still remains a mystery to many as to exactly when it started and why. (Carrasco). The Underground Railroad is known by many as one of the earliest parts of the antislavery movement. Although the system was neither underground nor a railroad, it was a huge success that will never be forgotten.

In Colson Whitehead’s ingenious piece of literary work, The Underground Railroad, the term from which the title is taken from, is no mere metaphor. Instead, the concept that gave hope to many slaves and brought fear into several slave-owners, takes on a physical form, with engineers and conductors operating the secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern states. While the title of the novel implies that the work mainly focuses on the pre-Civil War era-- of African American enslavement and their escape via the ‘underground railroad’-- the narrative also realistically blends historical fiction and fantasy with historically accurate announcements of runaway slaves depicted in the beginning of several chapters within the work. Throughout

During the time of slavery, networks of places to meet to escort slaves to freedom were created to move them up north. These networks being to materialize in the early 1800’s. The meeting places were secret in nature and were later given the term “Underground Railroad.” The railroad would begin in the south and end in the northern states and Canada. The railroad assisted, by estimation, over one hundred thousand slaves to freedom. (Curtis, 1941)

Colsen Whitehead uses the Underground Railroad as a metaphor for the difficulty with which many slaves found in escaping their bondage. The characters in the novel consistently struggle to obtain freedom through the aid of a literal railroad, but are still plagued with constant pursuit and threat of reentering slavery. Therefore, The Underground Railroad presents an allegory demonstrating how few slaves could conceive the idea of resistance, and even fewer successfully escaped. Slave resistance in the United States was often inconceivable to many slaves, meaning it often did not come to fruition. Consequently, most slaves only imagined resistance, which is evident early in the novel when Ajarry believes that “To escape the boundary of the