Slavery: The Underground Railroad

When you hear the term underground railroad, what comes to your mind? Do you think of people sneaking away in the middle of the night after the North Star? Well that wasn’t always the case. Sometimes they would sneak away in daylight. Some researchers think that some of these slaves had people on the outside leading them to their freedom.
The Underground Railroads had gotten its name when it first appeared in print in an abolitionist newspaper in 1839, at the end of the decade when railways had come to symbolize progress. The Underground Railroad was a secret system developed to aid fugitive slaves to escape to freedom. It also called the Underground Railroad because, it consisted of many different routes. The freed slaves that helped runaway …show more content…
In order to help protect themselves and their mission the slave invented a secret code. Theses runaway slaves had to travel long distances, sometimes on foot, but only for a short amount of time. They would travel with little or no food at a time. Under no protection at all for the slave catchers who could find them at any given time. People who owned slaves were not the only people searching for their slaves. Slave owner would put up reward posters offering payment for capturing their property for them. If the slaves had gotten caught, they would be you never knew what was going to happen to them. Many captured slaves would be flogged, branded, jailed, sold back into slavery, or even …show more content…
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 allowed and encouraged the capture of fugitive slaves. One of many fugitive slaves impacted by the Fugitive Slave Law was Anthony Burns. He was taken from his home and arrested, and tried under the in Boston, Massachusetts. After his trail he had been took back to his home state in the south where he thought he had escape. While he was taking back into slavery white and black abolitionists were working to raise funds to buy his freedom. Within a year of his trial they had enough money to buy his freedom. The owners only thought of the slaves as stolen property instead of harshly abused human beings. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 also outlawed people to help slaves to freedom. Their safety and freedom would not happen until they entered into Canada. All slaves did not travel north. Some underground railroads also lead to the south such as Mexico and the

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