The Underground Railroad

1. The Underground Railroad By: rahaf alwattar and Olivia carpenter

2. What is the Underground Railroad? • The Underground Railroad was a secretive network of abolitionists • They guided run-away slaves across the Canadian border to safety during the years before the Civil War • Conductors would hide slaves at their houses or other secret places, known as stations on the railroad. • Fun Fact: The system was coded in railroad terminology for secrecy.

3. Video • http://www.nationalgeographic.com/railroad/

4. The Fugitive Slave Act (1850) • The Underground Railroad was started after the Fugitive Slave Act (1850) was passed • Fugitive Slave Act made it illegal for an citizen to assist an escaped slave • It demanded that if an escaped slave was seen, they would be turned in to authorities and were sent back to their owners in the South • Even if a slave successfully escaped their plantation, they still could be caught and returned to any United States citizen

5. The Fugitive Slave Act Cont. • It was thought that this Act would deter slaves from escaping and from free citizens helping the escaped. • Even though The Fugitive Slave Act was being enforced, many abolitionists still helped slaves escape; thus The Underground Railroad was formed.

6. Location of Underground Railroad Stations • Kentucky • Virginia • Indiana • Ohio • Maryland • Pennsylvania • New York

7. View of the North • African Americans in the North lived in a strange state of semi-freedom • The North may had emancipated its slaves, but it was not ready to treat the blacks as citizens. . . or sometimes even as human beings • African Americans and their white allies did not simply sit back and accept Northern racism; they responded to it in a whole range of ways • Some northerners did not agree with the underground railroad because they viewed slaves as property and believed the south should be compensated for their loss

8. View of the south • The south was against the Underground Railroad because they were the ones in need of slaves • The Fugitive Slave Act was passed before the Underground Railroad took place • This angered the south because the north was breaking federal law

9. wILLIAMsTILL • William Still was an African American abolitionist who is known as the father of the Underground Railroad • Wrote a book called The Underground Railroad • Joined the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery in 1847 • Served as the head of the Underground Railroad in Philadelphia from 1852 to 1861

10. Harriet Tubman • Harriet Tubman is perhaps the most well-known of all the Underground Railroad's "conductors.” • In 1849, in fear that she, along with the other slaves on the plantation, was to be sold, Tubman resolved to run away • With some assistance from a friendly white woman, Tubman was on her way. She followed the North Star by night, making her way to Pennsylvania and soon after to Philadelphia • Undeterred, she found other slaves seeking freedom and escorted them to the North.

11. Frederick Douglass: • "I have never approved of the very public manner in which some of our western friends have conducted what they call the underground railroad, but which I think, by their open declarations, has been made most emphatically the upperground railroad.” • He went on to say that, although he honors the movement, he feels that the efforts serve more to enlighten the slave-owners than the slaves, making them more watchful and making it more difficult for future slaves to escape.[21]

12. Around 1893, American artist Charles T. Webber painted The Underground Railroad, as a tribute to the work of abolitionists earlier in the century. The painting shows fugitive slaves arriving at the farm of Levi Coffin, a station master of the Underground Railroad who helped more than 3,000 slaves escape to freedom. It also shows Levi Coffin, who is standing on the wagon, Coffin's wife, Catherine, and the noted abolitionist, Hannah Haydock.