The Underground Railroad and Slavery

The Underground Railroad and Slavery

Introduction

The term Underground Railroad first began to appear in the 1840s, but efforts by free blacks and sympathetic whites to help slaves escape bondage had occurred earlier. Historians have noted that groups of Quakers in the North, most notably around Philadelphia, had a tradition of helping escaped slaves. And Quakers who had moved from Massachusetts to North Carolina began helping slaves travel to freedom in the North as early as the 1820s and 1830s. A North Carolina Quaker, Levi Coffin, was offended by slavery and moved to Indiana in the mid-1820s. He eventually organized a network in Ohio and Indiana that helped slaves who had managed to cross the Ohio River, thus leaving slave territory. Coffin's organization generally helped the escaped slaves move onward to Canada, where they could not be captured and returned to slavery in the American South. A prominent figure associated with the Underground Railroad was Harriet Tubman, who escaped from slavery in Maryland in the late 1840s. She returned two years later to help some of her relatives escape. Throughout the 1850s she made at least a dozen journeys back to the South, and helped at least 150 slaves escape. Tubman demonstrated great bravery in her work, as she faced death if captured in the South.

The Underground Rail Road

In spite of its name, the Underground Railroad was not underground nor was it a railroad with physical tracks laid throughout the countryside. The last northern terminal on this railroad was Owen Sound. It was the largest North American freedom movement and, a highly secret one that transported the majority of escaped slaves from the Southern States to the Northern US and Canada. The story of the Underground Railroad had its beginnings in Africa, when the Portuguese captured the first slaves in the 1400s. It has been estimated that twelve million Africans were uprooted from their homeland and sold into a life of slavery between 1450 and 1850. Of this total, five percent were delivered to British North America and to what later became the United States of America.

Slavery in Canada

In Canada, slavery was minimal as the short growing season made slave labour uneconomical. In 1793, the Upper Canada Abolition Act introduced by Lieutenant Governor Colonel John Graves Simcoe, freed any slave entering what is now the province of Ontario, and stated that any child born to a slave mother would be freed at 25 years of age. This act was later followed by the British Imperial Act of 1833 (and became effective on August 1, 1834). It abolished slavery throughout the British Empire, including the developing country of Canada.

Slavery in the US

In the United States, the Fugitive Act of 1850 increased slave owners' rights regarding the capture and return of slaves, and even threatened free Blacks living in the Northern states. South of the Mason-Dixon Line, professional slave catchers could legally detain and hold anyone of African descent as a runaway slave; dogs were often used ...