Thursday, March 02, 2006
Shhh it's a secret--the Underground Railroad
Now for some information and thoughts on the Underground Railroad and Slavery.
Kentucky was a slave state. In 1798, Kentucky adopted a slave code that defined slaves as “chattel,” thereby denying them basic rights—including citizenship, education, legal marriages, control over property, and even control of their own bodies. Even though various groups of Kentuckians made attempts, based primarily on religious doctrine, to end slavery, the tremendous wealth and status offered by slavery lured many poor whites to seek their fortunes through the trafficking of slaves.
Kentucky was the last slave state before freedom in the North and had large slave-holding centers located in the northern counties, which included Maysville. One of the things we experienced in the Freedom Center was a slave-holding pen. It was a split log building, with mortar between the logs. No windows or place for light to come in, except small openings high up in the rafters. The building was pretty tall--15 - 20 feet. There was nothing it in, except a few benches. They used to put slaves in there for days or even weeks at a time--with no place to go to the bathroom and not much place to lay down. It just made me shudder.
Kentucky has more than 700 miles of border with free states. I was surprised at how many states share a border with Kentucky—Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. Cincinnati and several Indiana and Illinois communities contained large Quaker and anti-slavery Presbyterian and Methodist communities, as well as many free black residents. Those factors combined to make Kentucky a great pass-through state for Africans escaping to freedom.
Up until 1847, most of the fugitives from Kentucky vanished into stations in the “colored” quarters of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. But the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act allowed slave owners or bounty hunters to go into the free states and claim their missing ‘property’. After that, most escaping slaves continued on to Canada.
The Underground Railroad is defined by the National Park Service as “a secret system—sometimes spontaneous, sometimes highly organized—to assist persons held in bondage in North America to escape from slavery.” It is generally believed that the term “underground railroad” came into use as a result of the growth in the railroad industry during the 1820s. The operating period for the Underground Railroad is normally considered by historians to be the years between 1830 and 1865.
During the Colonial era, more enslaved Africans escaped than during the 19th Century. Many of these Colonial slaves escaped to form “maroon” colonies in the sea islands, the Appalachian Mountains, the Caribbean, and South America. Escapes to Spanish Florida and Mexico also offered slaves the chance to gain their freedom.
According to the 1998 Underground Railroad Theme Study published by the National Park Service, scholars and researchers estimate that about 100,000 persons successfully escaped slavery between 1790 and 1860. The Underground Railroad gradually became a more elaborate system as slavery was abolished above the Mason-Dixon Line. The lines were more clearly drawn between slave-holding and non-slave-holding territory, and the direction for fugitives was clearer.
An interesting bit of history that I had never realized (or even thought about) was how the bill that Thomas Jefferson signed in 1807 abolishing slave trade, actually created a commercial system that tore families apart even more. This bill would not let any more slaves be brought from Africa, but since there was still a huge demand for slave labor as large cotton plantations grew, the buying and selling of slaves grew. This was where the term “sold down the river” came from. During this time, bounty slave hunters and people who abducted freed black people from the north grew into a profitable business. According to one display in the Freedom Center, a young male slave would be worth around $1000.
As I looked at the exhibits in the Freedom Center, I was saddened by the fact that our country (which was formed ‘Under God’ and ‘freedom and liberty for all’) could have allowed this immoral practice for so long. I guess it emphasizes that moral and humanitarian issues will often times be overruled by political, commercial, and economic concerns.
When people look back at today’s society in 2000 years, I wonder what they will see…
