Underground Railroad
April 7, 2016
Harriat Tubman
- Harriet Tubman, who made 19 trips into the South and escorted over 300 slaves to freedom.
- in 1849 Tubman fled Maryland, leaving behind her free husband of five years, John Tubman, and her parents, sisters, and brothers. “Mah people mus’ go free,” her constant refrain, suggests a determination uncommon among even the most militant slaves.
- In 1844 she married John Tubman, a free African American. After Harriet escaped, she came back for him but he had married another woman.
Who were involeded in the Underground Railroad?
- Harriet Tubman, who was born a slave near Cambridge, Maryland, was one of the most famous Underground Railroad conductors.
- Thomas Garrett, a Quaker from Wilmington, Delaware, worked closely with Harriet Tubman and other conductors who led slaves out of Maryland.
- William Still, a free black man who lived in Philadelphia, was at the focal point of Underground Railroad activities in the East. He received many fugitives from Maryland, where his mother was born. He helped fugitives who stayed in Philadelphia find homes and jobs.
- Samuel Burris was a conductor on the Underground Railroad leading down into Maryland. He was a free black man. Born in Delaware, Burris moved to Philadelphia where his family could live in a free state.
When did the underground railroad start and ended ?
the Underground Railroad rested on the cooperation of former runaway slaves, free-born blacks, Native Americans, and white and black abolitionists who helped guide runaway slaves along the routes and provided their homes as safe havens. Although estimates of the number of people who escaped through the Underground Railroad between 1820 and 1861 vary widely, the figure most often cited is approximately 100,000
what was the underground railroad what was it all about ?
The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century enslaved people of African descent in the United States in efforts to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause.[
Frederick Douglass
The man we know today as Frederick Douglass was born in Tuckahoe, Maryland. His given name was Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. Most likely, he was born in 1818, but we do not have any records to prove this. Douglass himself did not know the year of his birth. Douglass suspected that his father was his white master, Captain Aaron Anthony.
underground railroad slavery
Estimates of the number of slaves assisted vary widely, but only a minuscule fraction of those held in bondage ever escaped. Few, particularly from the Lower South, even attempted the arduous journey north. But the idea of organized “outsiders” undermining the institution of slavery angered white southerners, leading to their demands in the 1840s that the Fugitive Slave Laws be strengthened.