The Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad PDF Author: Ann Malaspina
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 1438131291
Category : Abolitionists
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
When the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was passed by Congress, the flight to freedom for runaway slaves became even more dangerous. Even the free cities of Boston and Philadelphia were no longer safe, and abolitionists who despised slavery had to turn in fugitives. But the Underground Railroad, a secret and loosely organized network of people and safe houses that led slaves to freedom, only grew stronger. Since the late 1700s, blacks and whites had banded together to aid runaways like Maryland slave Frederick Douglass, who disguised himself as a sailor to board a train to New York. Virginia slave Henry Brown packed himself in a box to get to Philadelphia. The minister John Rankin, who hung a lantern to guide runaways to his house by the Ohio River, endured beatings for speaking against slavery. Quaker storeowner Thomas Garrett was put on trial for helping fugitives in Delaware. Meanwhile, the nation marched on toward Civil War. At its height, between 1810 and 1850, these secret routes and safe houses were used by an estimated 30,000 people escaping enslavement. In The Underground Railroad: The Journey to Freedom, read how this secret system worked in the days leading up to the Civil War and the pivotal role it played in the abolitionist movement.

The Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad PDF Author: Colson Whitehead
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0345804325
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • "An American masterpiece" (NPR) that chronicles a young slave's adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South. • The basis for the acclaimed original Amazon Prime Video series directed by Barry Jenkins. Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. An outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is on the cusp of womanhood—where greater pain awaits. And so when Caesar, a slave who has recently arrived from Virginia, urges her to join him on the Underground Railroad, she seizes the opportunity and escapes with him. In Colson Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor: engineers and conductors operate a secret network of actual tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora embarks on a harrowing flight from one state to the next, encountering, like Gulliver, strange yet familiar iterations of her own world at each stop. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the terrors of the antebellum era, he weaves in the saga of our nation, from the brutal abduction of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is both the gripping tale of one woman's will to escape the horrors of bondage—and a powerful meditation on the history we all share. Look for Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Crook Manifesto, coming soon!

What Was the Underground Railroad?

What Was the Underground Railroad? PDF Author: Yona Zeldis McDonough
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0448467127
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
No one knows where the term Underground Railroad came from--there were no trains or tracks, only "conductors" who helped escaping slaves to freedom. Including real stories about "passengers" on the "Railroad," this book chronicles slaves' close calls with bounty hunters, exhausting struggles on the road, and what they sacrificed for freedom. With 80 black-and-white illustrations throughout and a sixteen-page black-and-white photo insert, the Underground Railroad comes alive!

The Underground Railroad in Illinois

The Underground Railroad in Illinois PDF Author: Glennette Tilley Turner
Publisher: Newman Educational Publishing Company
ISBN: 9780938990055
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The activities of the Underground Railroad, and the Abolitionist Movement in Illinois are documented by the author in this meticulously researched book.

Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad

Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad PDF Author: Eber M. Pettit
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Antislavery movements
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description


Making Freedom

Making Freedom PDF Author: R. J. M. Blackett
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469608782
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Book Description
The 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, which mandated action to aid in the recovery of runaway slaves and denied fugitives legal rights if they were apprehended, quickly became a focal point in the debate over the future of slavery and the nature of the union. In Making Freedom, R. J. M. Blackett uses the experiences of escaped slaves and those who aided them to explore the inner workings of the Underground Railroad and the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, while shedding light on the political effects of slave escape in southern states, border states, and the North. Blackett highlights the lives of those who escaped, the impact of the fugitive slave cases, and the extent to which slaves planning to escape were aided by free blacks, fellow slaves, and outsiders who went south to entice them to escape. Using these stories of particular individuals, moments, and communities, Blackett shows how slave flight shaped national politics as the South witnessed slavery beginning to collapse and the North experienced a threat to its freedom.

Unspoken

Unspoken PDF Author: Henry Cole
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
ISBN: 0545550696
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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Book Description
A Civil War–era girl’s courage is tested in this haunting, wordless story. When a farm girl discovers a runaway slave hiding in the barn, she is at once startled and frightened. But the stranger’s fearful eyes weigh upon her conscience, and she must make a difficult choice. Will she have the courage to help him? Unspoken gifts of humanity unite the girl and the runaway as they each face a journey: one following the North Star, the other following her heart. Henry Cole’s unusual and original rendering of the Underground Railroad speaks directly to our deepest sense of compassion. Praise for Unspoken A New York Times Best Illustrated Book “Designed to present youngsters with a moral choice . . . the author, a former teacher, clearly intended Unspoken to be a challenging book, its somber sepia tone drawings establish a mood of foreboding.” —The New York Times Book Review “Moving and emotionally charged.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review “Gorgeously rendered in soft dark pencils, this wordless book is reminiscent of the naturalistic pencil artistry of Maurice Sendak and Brian Selznick.” —School Library Journal, starred review “Cole’s . . . beautifully detailed pencil drawings on cream-colored paper deftly visualize a family’s ruggedly simple lifestyle on a Civil War–era homestead, while facing stark, ethical choices . . . Cole conjures significant tension and emotional heft . . . in this powerful tale of quiet camaraderie and courage.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

Passage on the Underground Railroad

Passage on the Underground Railroad PDF Author:
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 160473129X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
A photographer's evocative interpretation of the history and places along the slave's path to freedom

Gateway To Freedom

Gateway To Freedom PDF Author: Eric Foner
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0393244075
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The dramatic story of fugitive slaves and the antislavery activists who defied the law to help them reach freedom. More than any other scholar, Eric Foner has influenced our understanding of America's history. Now, making brilliant use of extraordinary evidence, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian once again reconfigures the national saga of American slavery and freedom. A deeply entrenched institution, slavery lived on legally and commercially even in the northern states that had abolished it after the American Revolution. Slaves could be found in the streets of New York well after abolition, traveling with owners doing business with the city's major banks, merchants, and manufacturers. New York was also home to the North’s largest free black community, making it a magnet for fugitive slaves seeking refuge. Slave catchers and gangs of kidnappers roamed the city, seizing free blacks, often children, and sending them south to slavery. To protect fugitives and fight kidnappings, the city's free blacks worked with white abolitionists to organize the New York Vigilance Committee in 1835. In the 1840s vigilance committees proliferated throughout the North and began collaborating to dispatch fugitive slaves from the upper South, Washington, and Baltimore, through Philadelphia and New York, to Albany, Syracuse, and Canada. These networks of antislavery resistance, centered on New York City, became known as the underground railroad. Forced to operate in secrecy by hostile laws, courts, and politicians, the city’s underground-railroad agents helped more than 3,000 fugitive slaves reach freedom between 1830 and 1860. Until now, their stories have remained largely unknown, their significance little understood. Building on fresh evidence—including a detailed record of slave escapes secretly kept by Sydney Howard Gay, one of the key organizers in New York—Foner elevates the underground railroad from folklore to sweeping history. The story is inspiring—full of memorable characters making their first appearance on the historical stage—and significant—the controversy over fugitive slaves inflamed the sectional crisis of the 1850s. It eventually took a civil war to destroy American slavery, but here at last is the story of the courageous effort to fight slavery by "practical abolition," person by person, family by family.

The Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad PDF Author: Mary Ellen Snodgrass
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317454154
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 1918

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Book Description
The culmination of years of research in dozens of archives and libraries, this fascinating encyclopedia provides an unprecedented look at the network known as the Underground Railroad - that mysterious "system" of individuals and organizations that helped slaves escape the American South to freedom during the years before the Civil War. In operation as early as the 1500s and reaching its peak with the abolitionist movement of the antebellum period, the Underground Railroad saved countless lives and helped alter the course of American history. This is the most complete reference on the Underground Railroad ever published. It includes full coverage of the Railroad in both the United States and Canada, which was the ultimate destination of many of the escaping slaves. "The Underground Railroad: An Encyclopedia of People, Places, and Operations" explores the people, places, writings, laws, and organizations that made this network possible. More than 1,500 entries detail the families and personalities involved in the operation, and sidebars extract primary source materials for longer entries. This encyclopedia features extensive supporting materials, including maps with actual Underground Railroad escape routes, photos, a chronology, genealogies of those involved in the operation, a listing of Underground Railroad operatives by state or Canadian province, a "passenger" list of escaping slaves, and primary and secondary source bibliographies.

Frederick Douglass in Context

Frederick Douglass in Context PDF Author: Michaël Roy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108803040
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 757

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Book Description
Frederick Douglass in Context provides an in-depth introduction to the multifaceted life and times of Frederick Douglass, the nineteenth-century's leading black activist and one of the most celebrated American writers. An international team of scholars sheds new light on the environments and communities that shaped Douglass's career. The book challenges the myth of Douglass as a heroic individualist who towered over family, friends, and colleagues, and reveals instead a man who relied on others and drew strength from a variety of personal and professional relations and networks. This volume offers both a comprehensive representation of Douglass and a series of concentrated studies of specific aspects of his work. It will be a key resource for students, scholars, teachers, and general readers interested in Douglass and his tireless fight for freedom, justice, and equality for all.