Underground railroad how many

Use these resources to teach more about significant figures in the abolition movement, the causes of the Civil War, and how slavery sustained the agricultural economy in the United States for centuries.

This collection of resources includes features of prominent figures such as President Barack Obama and war heroine Mary Seacole. Read about part of Indiana's leg of the underground railroad, which many enslaved people used to run to freedom. Explore hands-on activities, maps, and more that will give students of all backgrounds new perspectives on this important part of American culture.

Indiana: Crossroads of Freedom! Find out how Hoosiers played a role in the Underground Railroad in this article. The Underground Railroad was the network used by enslaved black Americans to obtain their freedom in the 30 years before the Civil War Students will identify slave states and free states during the time of the Underground Railroad, explore the challenges of escaping, and choose the route they would have taken.

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Encyclopedic Entry Vocabulary. Civil War. Underground Railroad. Media Credits The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit.

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Interactives Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. Related Resources. View Collection. Black History Month. It operated mainly in the Free States, which stands to reason.

It was then that the Underground Railroad could take effect. Some organized assistance was also available in Washington, D. And some slaves were assisted in escaping from Southern seaports, but relatively few. Those tunnels or secret rooms in attics, garrets, cellars or basements?

Most fugitive slaves spirited themselves out of towns under the cover of darkness, not through tunnels, the construction of which would have been huge undertakings and quite costly. And few homes in the North had secret passageways or hidden rooms in which slaves could be concealed. Freedom quilts? Simply put, this is one of the oddest myths propagated in all of African-American history. If a slave family had the wherewithal to make a quilt, they used it to protect themselves against the cold, and not to send messages about supposed routes on the Underground Railroad in the North, where they had never been!

However, sometimes, on occasion, messages of all sorts were given out at black church gatherings and prayer meetings, but not about the day and time that Harriet Tubman would be coming to town. The risk of betrayal about individual escapes and collective rebellions, as we shall see in a future column, was far too great for escape plans to be widely shared.

How many slaves actually escaped to a new life in the North, in Canada, Florida or Mexico? No one knows for sure. Some scholars say that the soundest estimate is a range between 25, and 40,, while others top that figure at 50, The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati says that number could be as high as ,, according to Elizabeth Pierce, an official there, though that seems quite optimistic to me. We can put these estimates in perspective by remembering that in there were 3.

Since these figures would include those fugitives who had made it to the North on the Underground Railroad, plus natural increase, we can see how small the numbers of fugitive slaves who actually made it to the North in this decade, for example, unfortunately were. But few of them made it to freedom. Who escaped? Whole families? Indeed, [between and ] 95 percent fled alone. Young slave women were much less likely to run away because of their family and child-rearing responsibilities. Entire families with children did attempt flights to freedom, but such instances were rare.

Individuals in Kansas also played important roles, including Enoch and Luther Platt, who operated stations in the s out of their own home in Wabaunsee County of the Kansas Territory. Other Kansans supported fugitive aid societies with their money or volunteer efforts.

Members of aid societies not only created new routes, but they also tested the routes to be sure that men, women, and children could travel safely. During an escape, engineers led passengers and signaled the rest of the train to reroute if danger threatened. Conductors from Kansas could easily cross from Kansas into Missouri to make contact with potential runaways. During the war, slaves living in Missouri, so close to the free state of Kansas, felt especially tempted to use the Underground Railroad to cross the border.

Conductors often gave fugitives clothes and food for their journeys and sometimes at their own expense. One conductor reported that his horse died from serious fatigue after a mile trip into Kansas that took less than 10 hours. Some conductors preferred not to know explicit details about the fugitives they aided for fear of questions from pursuers. Abolitionists sometimes learned of former slaves marrying after their escape or joining the Union Army. A few passengers returned to Kansas after making their escape to other free states, including William Dominick Matthews, a first lieutenant in the Independent Battery of the U.

Colored Light Artillery in Fort Leavenworth. With the help of Daniel R. Anthony, brother of woman suffragist Susan B.