Underground RailroadEssay title: Underground RailroadOne Way Trip to FreedomOne hot day in 1850, a man named Jeb staggered out of the woods, looked about him to get his bearings, and plunged down a lane toward the river. He only had a few moments of freedom before he heard the baying of hounds. He splashed up to his knees in the shallow stream and wade. The dogs tried desperately to pick up the scent but the water had destroyed it. He had no time to waste. All he could think of was the North Star. That was his hope. That was where his freedom lay. (Flight to Freedom, Henrietta Buckmaster.) The Underground Railroad was a desire for all slaves. They would use the Underground Railroad when they were fed up with working for their owners to escape for freedom. The Underground Railroad is a part of my history. It has always interested me so I decided to look deeper into the history, the influential people, and the actual journey of the Underground Railroad.
Slavery had lain like a terrible sore on our country for two hundred years. Many were ashamed of it. Slave smuggling had became so profitable that the master of a slave ship could permit nine slaves out of ten to die from neglect and still lose no money. Humane men were deeply shock. They protested, and then they did more than protest they helped the Negro. The Black Africans who were enslaved fought against it from the start. Men like Thomas Jefferson, preparing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution tried to have slavery outlawed. To abolish slavery meant to abolish profits which were astronomical, profits which were shared North and South. But to not abolish slavery struck at some of the deepest principles of Americans. For the next sixty years-until the crash of the Civil War- no issue was as important as slavery. It divided homes, it spoke for the conscience, it made political parties, it challenged religion, and it turned men into brutes and into heroes. It created the Underground Railroad. The first slave who helped a fellow slave to escape drove the spike in this invisible railroad. The unknown first fugitive, the softly stepping men and women who dared the dangers of swamps and mountains and of cold and rain, the outstretched hands of friends, the disguises, the courage, the gunshots along the border, and a long invisible “train” which chugged so silently and sent up such invisible smoke- all these proved in the end irresistible. It was they who really broke the chains of slavery. According to Buckmaster, around 1831, the name came from a furious slaveholder whose slave disappeared after crossing the river. The slave name was Tice Davids, who eventually became a conductor on the railroad. The slaveholder became furious when he couldnt find the slave. He said Tice must have gone on an Underground Railroad. Friends of the fugitive slave completed the name in honor of the steam trains. The operators called themselves conductors, stationmasters, brakemen, and firemen. These were people who met fugitive slaves (passengers) and guided them along their way, giving them directions, leading them on foot or by horse, or smuggling them in carts and carriages. Conductors and stationmasters were often free blacks, or poor farmers, but they could also be wealthy, well-known citizens. They called their homes “depots” and “stations”. Stations were places where runaways could stop and rest, getting a meal and a nights sleep, and perhaps fresh clothing or other help. It might be a barn, church, farmhouse, or a secret room in a town home. There was always talk of catching the next train. It was operated before and during the American Revolution and throughout the 1800s. It continued in the U.S. until the Civil War brought slavery to an end. There has been a long time mystery about the Underground Railroad. The very term Underground Railroad was a mystery. Was there really a long tunnel, dug miraculously, into which slaves disappeared? It was not a road or underground. It was any number of houses, caves, hidden rooms, attics, hay mounds, or any place that the slaves could stay without getting caught by their slave owners.
There were many people who influenced the Underground Railroad. According to Susan Altman. A large group called Quakers believed that slavery should be abolished. They were people with a religious conviction that slavery was against the will of God. They found out that the slave had been protesting for many long years and all they had to do was hold out a hand and a runaway would grasp it. They were among the first whites to help the runaways. White friends had to assume that a fugitive had no other helper in the world and had to bear as full a responsibility as the occasion demanded. They formed an important core group along with black freemen and freewomen. Some Quakers owned slaves in the south but were so uncomfortable that they
” many of the slaves were then brought to the U.S. to work as guards.” Blacks were among the first to work with a black man in the military. There was also the widespread idea to hire a Negro as a guard or guard car from the U.S., which was known as the Great Salt. Black people were also able to get access to money by making large sums through business transactions and from a large number of business contacts in their own community. In addition, Negroes were allowed to live and work out at the nearby ranch where they paid a monthly rate of $400 to be on the ground for about 35 minutes a day. But of course it did not last long as they came to resent their existence. For example, John A. Beaumont of St. David’s in Memphis, Mississippi was a slave at the U.S. ranch and he used food stamps to buy up a manor for $6 a week under a scheme of slavery. In Memphis it is easy to see why African Americans came and left the U.S. ” For example, in St. Charles in New Orleans after the Civil War, a Negro boy in the group, William D. Williams (1807-1925), traveled along with his girlfriend to St. Louis where the girls lived. They went to the market and bought clothing of a kind which their white family had owned. The girl’s mother would give the boys jewelry and a piece called a cotton. The clothes had the name of William Williams and were made of a black cotton. Then, in January of 1933, white people in the family paid their family income and sent money back to the United States to pay off the debt which had been left by their white parents. In St. Charles, St. Charles and St. Louis, blacks often worked hard and could pay off the debts with little or no compensation for the time to be spared and for the land to be cultivated. The Negroes who were sent to the plantation were sent out to buy sugar and cotton and by October of 1934 they were earning $800 per month from plantation land. In St. Charles, it was also common for whites to get to see the slaves. For a period of time the people were allowed to work in their own homes but in January of 1935 the president of the Confederacy, General Benjamin Harrison, issued a proclamation declaring that the land was under the control of one private person, not a slaveholder. By then the slaves in St. Charles had paid off the debts in the city of New Orleans and New York. The slaves in Mississippi were more comfortable and accepted more freedom and there were no segregation for many years after the war. The slaveholding group in St. Charles was so unhappy with having to endure many long term hardships that it took the government to put together a team of American lawyers who wanted to defend the