When is a Railroad not a Railroad ?

On my travels around the States I have encountered many interesting things, from a palace dedicated to corn and museums singing the praises of the humble potato, to Giant statues of Bison and reconstructions of Forts from long forgotten eras. One of the most fascinating things I have come across is the Railroad that wasn’t a Railroad. It was a system or a method of rescuing African American Slaves from a life of servitude and helping them to Escape to Northern USA or even to Canada and Mexico. The following is not my own work but a compilation of passages that I have put together in a way that I hope best describes this phenomenon.

Resistance to lifetime servitude began with the first Africans forcibly brought to the Western Hemisphere in the 1500s, and resistance continued until the last emancipations in the Americas. For the former British colonies which became the United States, colonial-era resistance and early antislavery activities are the base on which the Underground Railroad was built. Without resistance, there would have been no need for the extensive legal codes which upheld property rights in human beings or for the brutal intimidation which always existed just beneath the surface of this coercive social system.

The circumstances which gave rise to the Underground Railroad were based on the transportation of Africans to North America as part of the Atlantic slave trade. About twelve million Africans were transported across the Atlantic to the Western Hemisphere in the 400 years from 1450 to 1850. Of this number, only about five per cent were brought to British North America and, later, to the United States from Africa, most of them arriving between 1680 and 1808. Varied forms of bonded labor had existed in Europe and Africa, but as the need for labor grew in the New World's plantations and mines, the importation of unwilling Africans also grew. In early North America, the system of lifetime servitude, or slavery, was supported by an elaborate and severe legal code based on race. A few Africans slipped through that legal net and were free, but not many.

The Underground Railroad was neither "underground" nor a "railroad," but was a loose network of aid and assistance to fugitives from bondage. Perhaps as many as one hundred thousand enslaved persons may have escaped in the years between the American Revolution and the Civil War.

In 1990, Congress authorized the National Park Service to conduct a study of the Underground Railroad, its routes and operations in order to preserve and interpret this aspect of United States history. This study includes a general overview of the Underground Railroad, with a brief discussion of slavery and abolitionism, escape routes used by slaves, and alternatives for commemoration and interpretation of the significance of the phenomenon.

The Underground Railroad refers to the effort --sometimes spontaneous, sometimes highly organized -- to assist persons held in bondage in North America to escape from slavery. While most runaways 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 the public perception of an underground network and in the number of persons willing to give aid to the runaway. Although divided, the abolitionist movement was successful in expanding the informal network known as the underground railroad and in publicizing it.

The term "underground railroad" had no meaning to the generations before the first rails and engines of the 1820s, but the retrospective use of the term in is made so as to include incidents which have all the characteristics of underground railroad activity, but which occurred earlier. These activities foreshadowed and helped to shape the underground railroad. The origin of the term "underground railroad" cannot be precisely determined. What is known is that both those who aided escapees from slavery and those who were outraged by loss of slave property began to refer to runaways as part of an "underground railroad" by 1840. The "underground railroad" described an activity that was locally organized, but with no real center. It existed rather openly in the North and just beneath the surface of daily life in the upper South and certain Southern cities. The underground railroad, where it existed, offered local service to runaway slaves, assisting them from one point to another. Farther along, others would take the passenger into their transportation system until the final destination had been reached. The rapidity with which the term became commonly used did not mean that incidents of resistance to slavery increased significantly around 1830 or that more attempts were made to escape from bondage. It did mean that more white northerners were prepared to aid runaways and to give some assistance to the northern blacks who had always made it their business to help escapees from slavery.

The primary importance of the underground railroad was that it gave ample evidence of African American capabilities and gave expression to African American philosophy. Perhaps the most important factor or aspect to keep in mind concerning the underground railroad is that its importance is not measured by the number of attempted or successful escapes from American slavery, but by the manner in which it consistently exposed the grim realities of slavery and --more important-- refuted the claim that African Americans could not act or organize on their own. The secondary importance of the underground railroad was that it provided an opportunity for sympathetic white Americans to play a role in resisting slavery. It also brought together, however uneasily at times, men and women of both races to begin to set aside assumptions about the other race and to work together on issues of mutual concern. At the most dramatic level, the underground railroad provided stories of guided escapes from the South, rescues of arrested fugitives in the North, complex communication systems, and individual acts of bravery and suffering. While most of the accounts of secret passageways, sliding wall panels, and hidden rooms will not be verified by historic evidence, there were indeed sufficient dramas to be interpreted and verified.

Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, c. 1820 – 10 March 1913) was an African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy during the U.S. Civil War. After escaping from captivity, she made thirteen missions to rescue over seventy slaves using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. She later helped John Brown recruit men for his raid on Harpers Ferry, and in the post-war era struggled for women's suffrage.

Born into slavery in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten and whipped by her various owners as a child. Early in her life, she suffered a traumatic head wound when an irate slave owner threw a heavy metal weight at her, intending to hit another slave. The injury caused disabling seizures, headaches, and powerful visionary and dream activity, and spells of hypersomnia which occurred throughout her entire life. A devout Christian, she ascribed her visions and vivid dreams to premonitions from God.

In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, then immediately returned to Maryland to rescue her family. Slowly, one group at a time, she brought relatives with her out of the state, and eventually guided dozens of other slaves to freedom. Traveling by night and in extreme secrecy, Tubman (or "Moses", as she was called) "never lost a passenger". Heavy rewards were offered for many of the people she helped bring away, but no one ever knew it was Harriet Tubman who was helping them. When a far-reaching United States Fugitive Slave Law was passed in 1850, she helped guide fugitives further north into Canada, and helped newly-freed slaves find work.

When the American Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the raid on the Combahee River, which liberated more than seven hundred slaves. After the war, she retired to the family home in Auburn, New York, where she cared for her aging parents. She was active in the women's suffrage movement until illness overtook her and she had to be admitted to a home for elderly African-Americans she had helped open years earlier. After she died in 1913, she became an icon of American courage and freedom.