The Underground Railroad - Pathway to Freedom - Research Paper Example

 The Underground Railroad: Pathway to Freedom Although slavery in this country started well before there even was a country, by the 1800s it had become so brutal that many slaves were murdered by their masters or trainers under the name of punishment. Physical abuse, neglectful conditions, sexual abuse and, of course, mental intimidation from birth were all elements of a slave’s life that were supposed to be merely accepted. The theory in the North was that conditions really weren’t that bad for a majority of the slaves and those who experienced these types of conditions were simply those who refused to follow the rules. Fortunately, not everyone was deluded in this way. Throughout the 1800s until the end of slavery, many people worked to facilitate what is called the Underground Railroad. This loosely organized network of safe houses and secret routes through the countryside was used by the black slaves attempting to escape their conditions into the free states or to emigrate up into Canada where they would be free even of the threat of the Fugitive Slave Law, a law designed to ensure escaped slaves found in the North would be returned to their masters in the South. As more people became aware of just how bad things were on the plantations, more abolitionists joined the cause. While other routes did exist, some leading overseas and others leading into Mexico, this northern route was the most popular. The Underground Railroad managed to set many slaves free, opened up the eyes of the North to the realities of the South and led the way for sweeping political change. There was good reason for the Underground Railroad to be loosely organized and mostly secret. Those caught harboring escaped slaves could be fined, jailed or even sent away as slaves themselves (Bordewich, 2005). The Fugitive Slave Law passed in 1793 requiring Northern states to return captured slaves to their owners was reinforced by the Compromise of 1850 that forced local officials even in free states to help slave catchers discover escaped slaves in the area and allowed catchers to do whatever they pleased in regaining control of the slaves (Potter, 1976). This meant operating a station or serving as a conductor could be very dangerous. People who were suspected to be escaped slaves had no rights to defend – they weren’t permitted defense in court, it was intentionally difficult for a free black person to prove freedom and judges were paid more to decide they were slaves than they were to decide they were free (Douglass, 1852). These laws incited many Northerners to take a stand against slavery because they dictated how the Northerners should behave rather than simply keeping slavery in the South. It also directly threatened the lives of black Northerners who had never been a part of the slave system yet whose liberties were immediately threatened. As more and more escaped slaves made their way north and told their stories, an increasing number of citizens took up the cause, eventually contributing to the development of the Civil War. Southerners claimed Northerners had no right to tell them how to operate but had no qualms about telling Northerners to stand aside while real Northern citizens’ rights were violently and flagrantly abused. The Railroad reached its peak in the decade between 1850 and 1860 and saw approximately 100,000 slaves escape to freedom with as many as 30,000 reportedly reaching Canada (Settling Canada, 2005). By keeping each step along the journey secret, the Railroad was able to quickly adapt when slave catchers were in the area and busted stations were unable to lead authorities to others. Although the name of the organization was the Underground Railroad, the routes traveled by the slaves were not necessarily underground nor was there ever any actual railroad necessarily involved. However, by linking the concept of the underground resistance movement to the language of the railways, those involved in the network were able to speak openly in code. ‘Agents’ were the people who helped the slaves find entry to the railroad while the people who guided them along the various routes of escape were appropriately called ‘conductors.’ Places where they would stop to rest, change conductors or to hide were called ‘stations’ which were operated by ‘stationmasters’ while abolitionists would work to clear the ‘tracks’ or routes of escape. The escaped slaves were often referred to as ‘passengers’ or ‘cargo’ and they would buy their ‘ticket’ or pay the expenses of passage with the help of generous financial benefactors called ‘stockholders’ (Blight, 2004). The passengers would be transferred from one station to the next, rarely knowing many, if any, of the details of what was to come next, slowly making their way to freedom. The conductors and stationmasters included free-born blacks living in the North, white abolitionists, former slaves, churches such as the Quakers, Methodists and Presbyterians and Native Americans. William Still became one of the most well-known of these underground workers, often serving as a conductor or a stationmaster and recording many of the stories of the people who passed through his Pennsylvania homeland (Blight, 2004). He published many of these stories as a collection which helped illuminate the plight of the slaves. It was through his published stories that the importance of the code became clear. On page 218 of his book, Still copied an original message sent to him from Joseph Bustill, one of the conductors on the railroad. The message read, “I have sent via at two o’clock four large hams and two small hams” (Still, 1886). The narrative explains that this message indicated to Still that four adult escapees and two children would be passing through Reading, Pennsylvania by train at 2 pm where he was to meet them and guide them to their next stop on the way to Canada. However, because of the way the message was worded, the authorities were led to believe that the escapees would be traveling through Harrisburg to Philadelphia, clearing the tracks for Still to meet the travelers. In many cases, the conductors would actually insinuate themselves on the plantations in the disguise of a working slave. They would pretend to work the fields at night, or pretend to be a slave looking for paid work, and then meet with others at night to both arrange travel plans – what they termed laws – and to help organize the escape. Some of the details of these types of escapes are found in Still’s book, such as the letters of Seth Conklin, a conductor who ended up sacrificing himself in order to free slaves. Conklin wrote to Still, “No house to go to safely, traveled around till morning, eating hoe cake which William had given me for supper; next day going around to get employment … during the four days waiting for the important Sunday morning, I thoroughly surveyed the rocks and shoals of the river from Florence seven miles up, where will be my place of departure. General notice was taken of me being a stranger, lurking around” (Still, 1886). The escape attempt described in this letter had Conklin on the plantation for approximately a week as he prepared everything they would need to free a woman and her children. Escapes would involve whatever means of conveyance could be reasonably achieved. As Conklin describes in his letter, an original plan to use the steamships on the river had to be scrapped because the steamships were not operated on a strict schedule, sometimes sitting at the dock for up to four days after they were scheduled to leave. For an escaped slave, this meant almost certain recapture. Instead, he resorted to finding oarsmen to help him with a small skiff to take them upriver to a busier, and more schedule-dependent, port. Despite the evidence found in the first-hand accounts of the railroad, most of the time fugitives were forced to travel by foot or slow-moving wagon. Rather than traveling the shortest distance, which would have been obvious for the slave-catchers, they were frequently required to travel through circuitous routes, perhaps even heading further south before turning north. Many women and children did escape the plantations, but they were not encouraged to attempt the route simply because the physical demands of the trail were so dangerous. Many who attempted did not survive to see the freedom at the end of the road. As is depicted in the film “Settling Canada” (2005), some slaves even found themselves traveling in the guise of a dead man, riding an uncomfortable and cramped wagon ride while laid out inside a narrow coffin and forced to trust their fate to strangers. There are numerous suggestions that news of the Underground Railroad was passed along through coded messages within songs or sewn into the bodies of quilts hung out to dry in the sun, but none of these reports have found any support in the existing evidence. Nevertheless, it seems probable that some form of unspoken communication might have been in use. What is known is that word of mouth functioned as the primary means by which slaves reached the railroad. Coded yet public written messages would have had little meaning to a mostly illiterate clientele while unnecessarily alerting the authorities of activity in their area. Even in the North, public information of the railroad was risky because slave catchers, aided by Federal marshals and obligatory help from local officials, would pursue escaped slaves all the way up to the Canadian border (Potter, 1976). In many cases, the slave catchers were just as happy to seize well-built, middle adult black males regardless of their status and take them back to the plantations as workers. It was very easy for slave-catchers to destroy any evidence the black man might have to prove that he was actually a free man and very difficult for the black man to be heard in the legal system deciding his fate. Even William Still’s family was a victim of this practice as a brother, kidnapped as a child and sent to the slave states, became accidentally reunited with Still years later through Still’s efforts with the railroad. “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” (Operating the Underground Railroad, 2007). While many people were against the concepts of slavery and the practices being undertaken to assist its continuation, few wanted to actually accept them. Many states in the north had anti-slavery laws on their books, but also included exorbitant requirements for black people to live within their territory. “Both [Indiana and Illinois] followed the Ohio policy of trying to prevent black immigration by passing laws requiring blacks who moved into the state to produce legal documents verifying that they were free and posting bond to guarantee their good behavior. The bond requirements ranged as high as $1,000, which was prohibitive for a black American in those days” (Douglas, 2005). Although not always enforced, having the laws on the books meant that white people in these states had inordinate control over blacks at all times. Most slaves sought to escape all the way to Canada where slavery had been abolished since 1830. Most of them opted to settle in what was called Canada West, the region around southern Ontario (Bordewich, 2005). This is also depicted in the video “Settling Canada” (2005). As many as 1,000 fugitives are believed to have settled in Toronto alone while other black settlements were created in Kent County, Essex County, Nova Scotia and Halifax. They were also not unknown in the region of Quebec and Vancouver Island. Slave songs would sometimes even refer to Canada as the promised land, a place of paradise where black people could live and work together as openly free people. However, the reality fell a bit short of this dream. Several places in Canada had similar restrictive practices that were found in the Northern United States. In Saint John, New Brunswick, the city charter was amended in 1785 in order to keep black people from selling goods, fishing in the harbor, practicing a trade or even becoming freemen (Heritage Resources, 2008). Nothing was done to repeal these restrictions until 1870. Thus it is no surprise that when the Union Army made it possible for black people to fight in the Civil War against slavery, many signed up hoping for more progressive change. While the Underground Railroad was successful in freeing many black people from the bonds of slavery in the South, it appears as though the freedoms won were meager by comparison. Still restricted to low-paying work, at the mercy of those willing to hire them and prevented from participating in a number of social, political and community groups, black people would not see the kind of freedom they were hoping for until after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s thanks to the types of restrictive practices that had been engaged in throughout the United States and Canada. While the Civil War made it finally illegal to kill a black person because they would not bow deeply enough to a white man and forced employers to pay their workers something for their labor, it was years before the concept of a living wage would begin to emerge and black people felt free to settle wherever they wished. The Underground Railroad was also instrumental in revealing the extreme brutality of slavery to the people of the North. Even though they did not want to have black people around them either, the realization of the inhumanity occurring down South and the South’s repeated insistence that the North help enforce these practices forced Northerners to take more direct action in resisting slavery. Works Cited Blight, David W. Passages to Freedom: The Underground Railroad in History and Memory. Smithsonian Books, 2001. Bordewich, Fergus M. Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America. Harper Collins, 2005. Douglass, Frederick. “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro.” (speech given July 5, 1852). History is a Weapon. Drew, Benjamin & George E. Clarke. Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada. Dundurn Press, 2008. Harper, Douglas. Slavery in the North. 2005. Heritage Resources. “Arrival of the Black Loyalists.” 2008. “Operating the Underground Railroad.” Aboard the Underground Railroad. 2007. Potter, David M. The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861. Harper Perennial, 1976. “Settling Canada.” (video). History by the Minute. 2005. Still, William. Still’s Underground Rail Road Records. University of Virginia, 2010 (1886). Read More