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The Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad was any organized movement activity, designed to assist runaway slaves. “A secret method of conducting Negro slaves” (Gara 3). The railroad reached its peak in the period 1830-1865. It was known by every route the enslaved took, or attempted to take to freedom. Neither “underground” nor a “railroad, it consisted of paths and roads, through swamps and over mountains, along and across rivers and even sea. These networks of escape could not be documented even with precision. The work of the Underground Railroad was so effective that its action intimated slaveowners. Most regarded the underground as “organized theft” and a threat to their livelihood (“History and Geography Of The Underground Railroad”, paragraph 2).
The term Underground Railroad originated when an enslaved runaway, Tice Davids, fled from Kentucky and may have taken refuge with John Rankin, a white abolitionist, in Ripley, Ohio. Determined to retrieve his property, th...

Posted by: Sheryl Hogges

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