Facts about the Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad holds an extremely important place in the history of the United States. Following are a summary of facts about the Underground Railroad.
Facts about the Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad refers to the effort to assist blacks held in bondage in North America to escape from slavery. While most runaways began their journey unaided, each decade in which slavery was legal in the United States saw an increase in the public perception of an underground network and in the number of persons willing to give aid to the runaway. Although divided, the abolitionist movement was successful in expanding the informal network known as the Underground Railroad and in publicizing it.
The origin of the term "underground railroad" cannot be precisely determined. What is known is that both those who aided escapees from slavery and those who were outraged by loss of slave property began to refer to runaways as part of an "underground railroad" by 1840.
The Underground Railroad described an activity that was locally organized, but with no real center. It existed rather openly in the North and just beneath the surface of daily life in the upper South and certain Southern cities.
The Underground Railroad, where it existed, offered local service to runaway slaves, assisting them from one point to another. Farther along, others would take the passenger into their transportation system until the final destination had been reached.
The rapidity with which the term became commonly used did not mean that incidents of resistance to slavery increased significantly around 1830 or that more attempts were made to escape from bondage. It did mean that more white northerners were prepared to aid runaways and to give some assistance to the northern blacks who had always made it their business to help escapees from slavery.
The primary importance of the Underground Railroad was that it gave ample evidence of African American capabilities and gave expression to African American philosophy. Perhaps the most important factor or aspect to keep in mind concerning the underground railroad is that its importance is not measured by the number of attempted or successful escapes from American slavery, but by the manner in which it consistently exposed the grim realities of slavery and refuted the claim that African Americans could not act or organize on their own. The secondary importance of the Underground Railroad was that it provided an opportunity for sympathetic white Americans to play a role in resisting slavery. It also brought together, however uneasily at times, men and women of both races to begin to set aside assumptions about the other race and to work together on issues of mutual concern. At the most dramatic level, the Underground Railroad provided stories of guided escapes from the South, rescues of arrested fugitives in the North, complex communication systems, and individual acts of bravery and suffering. While most of the accounts of secret passageways, sliding wall panels, and hidden rooms will not be verified by historic evidence, there were indeed sufficient dramas to be interpreted and verified.
The debate in Congress in 1819 and 1820 over whether Missouri should enter the Union as a slave or free state made it clear to the entire nation that the slavery issue was not going to simply evaporate in the American republic. For free blacks, the formation of the national American Colonization Society persuaded them to organize for the abolition of slavery rather than act individually. The Colonization Society wanted federal government funds to pay the costs of settling free blacks in an African colony they founded and called Liberia.
The era of immediate abolitionism is generally acknowledged to have begun on January 1, 1831, when William Lloyd Garrison first published his abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator. The abolitionists were divided over strategy and tactics, but they were very active and very visible. Many of them were part of the organized Underground Railroad that flourished between 1830 and 1861. Not all abolitionists favored aiding fugitive slaves, and some believed that money and energy should go to political action. Even those who were not abolitionists might be willing to help when they encountered a fugitive, or they might not. It was very difficult for fugitives to know who could be trusted.
Southerners were outraged that escaping slaves received assistance from so many sources and that they lived and worked in the North and Canada. As a part of the Compromise of 1850, a new Fugitive Slave Act was passed that made it both possible and profitable to hire slave catchers to find and arrest runaways. This was a disaster for the free black communities of the North, especially since the slave catchers often kidnapped legally-free blacks as well as fugitives. But these seizures and kidnappings brought the brutality of slavery into the North and persuaded many more people to assist fugitives. Vigilance Committees acted as contact points for runaways and watched out vigilantly for the rights of northern free blacks. They worked together with local abolition societies, African American churches and a variety of individuals to help fugitives move further on or to find them homes and work. Those who went to Canada in the mid-nineteenth century went primarily to what was then called Canada West, now Ontario.
Understanding the facts about the underground railroad is import when understanding both the United States in the 1800s and the Civil War. While it had the immediate impact of helping slaves gain freedom, it has a more fundamental impact in changing the view of many Northerners towards the humanistic and moral side of slavery.
