Kansas was associated with Iowa and Illinois as a channel for the escape of runaways from the southwestern slave section. Lines were formed through Iowa and Illinois, and passengers were carried from station to station until they reached the Canada line. The field extended westward, and the territory embraced by the middle states and all the western states east of the Mississippi River was dotted with “stations” and covered with a network of imaginary routes not found in the railway guides or on the railway maps. The underground system extended from Kentucky and Virginia across Ohio and from Maryland through Pennsylvania, New York, and New England to Canada. “Conductors” would guide the freedom seekers to a safe “station” on the route North. In its most developed form, the Underground Railroad offered local aid to runaways, assisting them from one point to another. The term described locally organized activities, but with no real center or “headquarters,” per se. It sometimes existed openly in the North or just below the surface of everyday life in the upper South. Though the institution of slavery was much larger in the South, especially during the 19th century, the Underground Railroad stretched the breadth and width of North America and to shores beyond. The slaveholders lost thousands of their servants for everyone that the law restored to their hands. Legislatures were moved to enact obstructive ‘personal liberty laws, and “quiet” citizens were moved to riotous acts.Īctive undertakings to encourage and assist the escape of slaves from the Southern states began, and a remarkable organization of helping hands was formed, taking the name of the “Underground Railroad” to hide and pass the freed slaves to the safe shelter of Canadian law. To obstruct, resist, frustrate, the execution of the statute came to be looked upon by many people as a duty dictated by the “higher law” of moral right. Senator William Seward, in a Senate debate on the compromise measures, had made a casual allusion to “a higher law than the constitution,” and the phrase was caught up. Every case that occurred under it - every surrender of a claimed fugitive - did more than the abolitionists had ever done to convert Northern people, to some part at least, to abolitionist beliefs. One measure of the Missouri Compromise of 1850 - the fugitive slave law - was thought by many to violate the principles of justice, as it provided no safeguard for the claimed fugitive against perjury and fraud. While most freedom seekers began their journey unaided and many completed their self-emancipation without assistance, each decade in which slavery was legal in the United States saw an increase in active efforts to assist escape. Their acts of self-emancipation made them “fugitives” according to the laws of the times. Wherever slavery existed, there were efforts to escape to isolated communities in remote or rugged terrain on the edge of settled areas. However, enslaved Africans propelled the economy in the agricultural South, and owning large numbers of African Americans was seen as a symbol of high wealth and class. African Americans held in the northern area were more likely to be household servants, and slave owners were likely to possess only one or two slaves. In the 18th century, slavery existed in all parts of the American colonies, though to distinct degrees in different locations. It provided an opportunity for Americans of all kinds to play a role in resisting slavery. The Underground Railroad - from the first decision to run away, through the actions of African American-organized Vigilance committees, to the liberating actions of John Brown - were all reminders of African American initiative and the notion of slavery as the single great immorality of that era. The very existence of slavery, the “peculiar institution,” as referred to by Thomas Jefferson, undermined that great call for equality sounded in Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. By the 1820s, both those who aided freedom seekers and those who were outraged by the loss of their human property began to refer to escaped slaves as part of an “Underground Railroad.” Though the origin of the term “Underground Railroad” has not been determined, it refers to the effort of enslaved African Americans to gain their freedom by escaping bondage. The term “Underground Railroad” had no meaning to the generations that preceded the coming of the railroads and engines in the 1820s.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |