Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. You cannot download interactives. Slavery was a deeply rooted institution in North America that remained legal in the United States until It took the abolition movement, a civil war, and the ratification of the 13th amendment to end slavery. Though it did not end racism and descendants of these people are still struggling with discrimination today.
Use these resources to teach more about significant figures in the abolition movement, the causes of the Civil War, and how slavery sustained the agricultural economy in the United States for centuries. This collection of resources includes features of prominent figures such as President Barack Obama and war heroine Mary Seacole.
Read about part of Indiana's leg of the underground railroad, which many enslaved people used to run to freedom. Explore hands-on activities, maps, and more that will give students of all backgrounds new perspectives on this important part of American culture. Indiana: Crossroads of Freedom! Find out how Hoosiers played a role in the Underground Railroad in this article. The Underground Railroad was the network used by enslaved black Americans to obtain their freedom in the 30 years before the Civil War Students will identify slave states and free states during the time of the Underground Railroad, explore the challenges of escaping, and choose the route they would have taken.
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He published a newspaper called the North Star in which he voiced his goals for the abolishment of slavery. He also published another abolitionist paper called the Frederick Douglass Paper, as well as giving public speeches on issues of concern to abolitionists. Susan B. Anthony was another well known abolitionist who spoke and wrote for the efforts to abolish slavery. Much of her book was based on the experiences of fugitive slave Josiah Henson.
Henry Bibb was born into slavery, in Kentucky during the year of He made many failed attempts to escape slavery; yet, he still had the courage and perseverance to continue in his fight for freedom after every capture and punishment. His perseverance paid off when he made a successful and much anticipated escape to the northern states and then on to Canada with the help of the Underground Railroad.
The following is an excerpt from his narrative in which he discussed one of his many escapes and the challenges he had to overcome.
I commenced from that hour making preparations for the dangerous experiment of breading the chains that bound me as a slave. My preparation for this voyage consisted in the accumulation of a little money, perhaps not exceeding two dollars and fifty cents, and a suit which I had never been seen or known to wear before; this last was to avoid detection. On the twenty-fifth of December, , my long anticipated time had arrived when I was to put into operation my former resolution, which was to bolt for Liberty or consent to die a Slave.
I acted upon the former, although I confess it to be one of the most self-defying acts of my whole life, to take leave of an affectionate wife, who stood before me on my departure, with dear little Frances in her arms, and with tears of sorrow in her eyes as she bid me a long farewell.
It required all the moral courage that I was master of to suppress my feelings while taking leave of my little family. Had Matilda known my intention at the time, it would not have been possible for me to have got away, and I might have this day been a slave.
My strong attachments to friends and relatives, with all the love of home and birth-place which is so natural among the human family, twined about my heart and were hard to break away from. And withal, the fear of being killed, or captured and taken to the extreme South, to linger out my days in hopeless bondage on some cotton or sugar plantation, all combined to deter me.
But I had count the cost, and was fully prepared to make the sacrifice. The time for fulfilling my pledge was then at hand. I must forsake friends and neighbors, wife and child, or consent to live and die a slave. This was the commencement of what was called the under ground rail road to Canada.
I walked with bold courage, trusting in the arm of Omnipotence; guided by the unchangeable North Star by night, and inspired by an elevated thought that I was fleeing from a land of slavery and oppression, bidding farewell to handcuffs, whips, thumb-screws and chains. I travelled on until I had arrived at the place where I was directed to call on an Abolitionist, but I made no stop: so great were my fears of being pursued by the pro-slavery hunting dogs of the South.
I prosecuted my journey vigorously for nearly forty-eight hours without food or rest, struggling against external difficulties such as no one can imagine who has never experienced the same: not knowing what moment I might be captured while travelling among strangers, through cold and fear, breasting the north winds, being thinly clad, pelted by the snow storms through the dark hours of the night, and not a house in which I could enter to shelter me from the storm.
Another former slave who was well known for her efforts to end slavery was Sojourner Truth. She too along with Josiah Henson, J. Because previous measures had failed to disrupt the this system of slave escape, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of which allowed slave owners, or their agents to call on Federal, state and local law enforcement officials in non-slaveholding states to assist in capturing fugitive slaves.
The law was greatly abused. Slave-catchers started abducting free-born African Americans. Since African Americans could not testify or have a jury present at trial they usually could not defend themselves. The Underground Railroad gave freedom to thousands of enslaved women and men and hope to tens of thousands more. Those who escaped became human witnesses to the slave system with many of them going on the lecture circuit to explain to Northerners the horrors of the servile institution.
Others became members and supporters of the Underground Railroad. Anti-slavery sentiment was But Harriet Tubman fought the institution of slavery well beyond her role as a conductor for the Underground Railroad. Despite the horrors of slavery, it was no easy decision to flee. Escaping often involved leaving behind family and heading into the complete unknown, where harsh weather and lack of food might await. Then there was the constant threat of capture. So-called slave catchers and Tubman is The abolitionist movement was an organized effort to end the practice of slavery in the United States.
The first leaders of the campaign, which took place from about to , mimicked some of the same tactics British abolitionists had used to end slavery in Great Britain in In , the Pacific Railroad Act chartered the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific Railroad Companies, tasking them with building a transcontinental railroad that would link the United States from east to west. Over the next seven years, the two companies would race toward Whether enslaved, escaped or born free, many sought to actively affect the outcome.
From fighting on bloody battlefields to Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries people were kidnapped from the continent of Africa, forced into slavery in the American colonies and exploited to work as indentured servants and labor in the production of crops such as tobacco and cotton. By the midth century, Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault.
Quaker Abolitionists The Quakers are considered the first organized group to actively help escaped enslaved people. What Was the Underground Railroad?
Recommended for you. Underground Railroad. Gateway to Freedom: The Underground Railroad. Seattle's Grungy Underground.
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