Underground Railroad Research Paper

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The Underground Railroad was the name given to the system by which escaped slaves from the South were helped in their flight to the North by Abolitionists. The original formation is usually credited to a Quaker named Isaac T. Hopper, who in 1787 began to organize a system for hiding and aiding fugitive slaves. Opponents of slavery allowed their homeswhich would later be called 'stations' to be used as places where escaped slaves were provided temporary food, shelter and a small sum of money. Some of the known routes passed through 14 Northern states and Canada. It is estimated that by 1850 around 3,000 people worked on the underground railroad. The underground railroad also had people known as conductors who went to the south and helped guide slaves to safety. The…show more content…
The ultimate goal of the Underground Railroad was to accomplish the safe arrival of runaway slaves to Canada where the long arm of the law could not reach them. Laws such as the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850 allowed slave owners to recapture escaped slaves and bring them back to bondage in the South. Abolitionists such: as Harriet Tubman who was an Escaped slave known as 'Moses' to those that longed for her to bring them to freedom,James Fairfield a white abolitionist rescued enslaved African Americans by pretending to be a slave trader,Thomas Garrett the stationmaster of Deleware who is credited with helping more than 2,700 slaves find freedom, and Frederick Douglass an African-American abolitionist and publisher of the North Star Newspaper. These people were essential to the successful operation of the Underground Railroad. In most cases, fleeing slaves traveled by any means necessary and often on their own in an effort to reach freedom in the North yet due do various circumstances failed to find escape, without notable abolitionists such as these even more would be
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