Underground to Canada Essay Example

strengthen their resistance even more. It made travelling in secrecy so much more important since a black person was no longer save in any part of the United States.

Sectionalism slowly increased between the North and the South after the War of 1812. After the war with Britain, cheap goods from Europe flooded the markets in America. These especially attracted the farmers and planters who could buy tools and materials for their farms. This threatened the new American manufacturing industry and they demanded protection from the competition. They put a tariff on the incoming goods from Europe called the Tariff of Abominations, which would protect their market and benefit them instead of competing against them. It kept the industries in the North from being driven out of business by putting taxes on the imported goods.

The South remained predominantly agricultural while the North experienced an industrial expansion. The Southerners did not like the tariff since it only benefited those in the manufacturing industry. This caused the North to slowly separate from the South. Tensions rose up to boiling point when Missouri’s application for statehood brought up the question of whether they should be a free state or not. This was first solved with the Missouri Compromise, which had a constant reappearance throughout the multiple debates between the North and South.

Both sides would at first, be insidious by destroying the opposing side’s property, and boycotting their projects, especially those related to transportation. “Border ruffians”, from Missouri wanted to elect a proslavery legislature. They disliked the fact that more Northerners arrived in Kansas to outvote them, so they attacked the town of Lawrence, where

the majority of antislavery settlers lived. They wrecked newspaper presses, burned down the home of the elected free-state governor and a hotel, and raided houses and shops. This only led to greater detestation towards each other.

Fears of slave revolts and abolitionist propaganda made the South hostile to abolitionism. Of course, the North played their part in contributing to the South’s cause for hostility, by partaking in events such as John Brown’s raid, but the decision of the permittance of slavery, whether legally or morally, has been known to be one of the most controversial topics in the history of America, and is still an impassioned subject to a lot of people that cared about it. A large amount of people are still impacted by previous slavery to this day.

History is known to be repeated. Therefore, the general public’s thoughts on slavery, is that it is wrong on so many levels. Blacks are still offended by the fact that they were the main target of slavery, and that racism was the instigator of this horrific event. Racism is still a part of society today. People must learn from the past and never forget how strong feelings against different people can be and what they will lead to. “Bleeding Kansas” was another large contribution to the beginning of the Civil War.

200 people were injured in this devastating demolition, and over $2 million of property were damaged. Kansas became the first battleground between those favoring the extension of slavery and those opposing it. Kansas had the same climate and rich soil as the slave state of Missouri and settlers moving there from

Missouri would most likely bring enslaved persons with them and claim Kansas for the South. Northerners responded by hurrying into the territory themselves, with intent on creating an antislavery majority.

“Border ruffians” illegally voted in Kansas, to try and elect a proslavery legislature. Kansas had two governments by March 1856. On May 21, 1856, border ruffians attacked the town of Lawrence after the arrival of more antislavery settlers from the North. The attackers destroyed newspaper presses, demolished shops and homes, and burned a hotel and the home of the elected free-state governor. Bleeding Kansas was what the newspapers named the scene of a territorial civil war between proslavery and antislavery settlers. Slavery was a highly debatable issue that led to the disruption of the Union.

The South wanted more slaves so that they could have more say in the House of Representatives, and they wanted more states to become slave states, to have more power in the Senate. The North disagreed with having more slave states, not only because it would disrupt the balance in both houses, but they did not have much use of slaves in their territory since they did not have fertile soil like the South did. This controversy led to secession which then brought a war where the Western and Northern states and territories fought to preserve the Union.

The South fought to establish Southern independence as a new confederation of states under its own constitution. The North was against slavery for multiple reasons. Some believed that it was immoral and an economic and political evil, but most people were against it because they feared that the South

would become richer than the North. The South had fertile lands, that were much better for farming and the North mostly relied on their industrial factories, so the managers did not have much use for slaves.

The people that helped the runaway slaves just to gain the economic advantages, were most likely the ones that also contributed to the Civil War, because they were not doing it for the morality, but for the money and power. Abolitionists, most of them northerners, would routinely help runaway slaves escape through a network of over 3000 homes and other “stations” that would help the fugitives travel from the southern slave holding states, through the northern states, and into Canada where they could become free.

The Northerners’ rebellion only further spurred the continued growth of these series of houses, more commonly known as the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad was not actually a railroad for trains that were underground. It was mostly called that to keep it secret. Tice Davids was a runaway slave that a plantation owner had been searching for. The owner reported that he almost caught the slave, and practically had him in his hands when he seemed to have vanished out of thin air. The owner searched and searched, but never set eyes on Davids again.

The baffled plantation owner said, “It was almost as though he’d disappeared onto an underground road. ” The name was later changed to “Underground Railroad” because the fugitives seemed to move as fast as the new steam trains that traveled through the United States. They had to find ways of communicating without the slave owners knowing,

so they used a lot of code words. When the Fugitive Slave Act emerged, those helping the fugitives would also need to communicate using these code words, to avoid being jailed or fined. Runaways were called parcels or freight.

People that helped the slaves by showing them the way to go, were called conductors. Safe houses were termed “stations”, and the people running the safe houses, were called station agents. Since slaves sang a lot to keep their sanity while they worked, they would also pass on information to each other by singing about it. For example, someone singing about “crossing the river” was passing on information about how to escape by crossing a certain river. People singing about “Canaan”, or “the Promised Land”, were talking about Canada, which was the only place slaves could go to after the Fugitive Slave Act was passed, to escape slavery.

Figure 1, “Go Down, Moses”, shows an example of a song that slaves or abolitionists would sing, to inform the next person that there would be someone coming to help them escape sometime soon. Figure 1: “Go Down, Moses” Harriet Tubman might be the most well known of all the Underground Railroad’s “conductors”. She made 19 trips into the South and escorted over 300 slaves to freedom in a ten year span, without ever losing a single “passenger”. Tubman was a slave who escaped into freedom, but went back several times to save her family.

After she saved them, she realized that she could help so many more people into freedom and she will stop at nothing to do so. She carried special drugs that

would help a baby sleep in order to keep them silent, and she would point a gun at those that lost the nerve or courage to move on at a time of distress. She would say “You’ll be free, or die. ”. She was known as “Moses” because of the biblical story of Moses. The Bible depicted that Moses led the Jews to the Promised land, away from the Egyptians’ slavery.

Harriet Tubman was one of the many slaves that had a large price for her capture. In some instances, slaveholders would travel to northern states to search for their runaway slave, and they would post posters everywhere, with the description of the slave(s) they are looking for, and a reward was usually posted since slaves were usually very costly. Figure 2 is a poster that shows the slaveholders’ dedication for the recollection of their slaves and how much money they are willing to spend for their reward.

There were instances in which men, or even lawmen, would be sent to search and retrieve runaway slaves and they would be attacked and beaten by abolitionist mobs. The fact that Northerners would hide the runaway slaves, not to mention attack men that were sent to search and retrieve runaway slaves, only further contributed to the Southerners’ anger and the growing sectionalism. Figure 2 Runaways would follow the North Star until they reached Canada. Law enforcers would sometimes become suspicious of certain houses, so they would watch the houses very carefully.

Because of this, some “stations”, had hidden rooms and tunnels leading to secret forest paths to help the slaves escape. This shows how

dedicated some abolitionists were to their cause, if they are willing to create secret rooms and passages in order to help slaves escape. Slave holding states, saw the Underground Railroad as the Northerners’ rebelling and choosing to enforce only parts of the Constitution while expecting the South to honor the entire document. Runaways who escaped from the South travelled into Western territories such as Mexico and the Caribbean.

Some took refuge in cities such as Baltimore, and New Orleans and blended into the free black population. Once the Fugitive Slave Act was passed, African Americans were no longer safe anywhere, since they could be deemed a slave, just by a simple testimony by a white person, saying that they escaped from their slaveholder. This factor only helped the cause of the Underground Railroad and increased their argument against the opposition. The Underground Railroad’s resistance against the South ended in 1865 when the Civil War ended.

The thirteenth amendment was also ratified by the required three fourths of the states on December 6th, 1865. This amendment abolished slavery and gave closure to the ending of the Underground Railroad to Canada. Therefore, the Underground Railroad was directly related to the Civil War. It helped the abolitionists smuggle slave to the North. Once they passed the Emancipation Proclamation, which was a decree freeing all enslaved persons in the Confederate states, they could eventually become part of Lincoln’s army and fight for the cause that they truly believed in.