The Underground Railroad

In the 1850s thousands of Black refugees fled from slavery in the United States to freedom in Canada.

  The route to freedom, known as the Underground Railroad, had no engines and no trains. It had stations but no tracks. Its passengers travelled without tickets, and its conductors blew no whistles. So why was it called a railroad? When asked to describe the network, which carried runaway slaves to freedom, people compared it with a train, a mysterious secret railroad. It wasn’t truly a railroad, but a series of secret escape routes leading enslaved people from bondage to freedom. To thousands, it became known as the Underground Railroad.   

    Born out of desperation and the resolve of slaves to be free the Underground Railroad never really operated in the American South; there were not enough sympathizers. If slaves, running for their lives, could make their way to the free Northern States they had a good chance of finding help. Guides, known as conductors, moved fugitive slaves to freedom, across rivers and swamps, and through dense forests. Travelling at night anti-slave sympathizers and activists would meet the runaway slaves and take them from station to station. Here fugitives could rest in safe houses and get meals as they made their way to Canada.

   Perhaps the most famous of the runaway slaves was Harriet Tubman, who had been born a slave on a Maryland tobacco plantation. Learning that she was going to be sold and might never see her family again she enlisted the help of the Underground Railroad and escaped to safety in Philadelphia. When the second Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850, giving slave hunters the right to snatch back runaways, Harriet realized she was no longer safe in Philadelphia. She moved to Canada, made her home in St. Catharines but remained dedicated to her mission, raising money and making rescue trips. Known as the ‘Moses of Her People’ she made trip after trip into the Deep South, leading more than 300 slaves to freedom. Harriet continued to put her own safety aside even when a reward of $40,000 was offered for her capture. Until slavery was finally abolished Harriet Tubman continued her personal campaign by working as a conductor and making speeches.

   There have been slaves throughout human history. A slave was someone who was ‘owned’ by somebody else. Many were bought and sold like cattle. Working without pay, they could be forced to do any kind of work. If they refused, they were beaten or starved. They could be taken away from their loved ones and sold to other owners. Many never saw their families again. Some slaves, who openly rebelled against their owners, were flogged or killed as punishment.

  Why did they put up with poverty and injustice?  Discouraged by their unjust treatment many tried to escape, but where could they go? In the United States, early opposition to slavery began in Pennsylvania. In a colony dominated by Quakers, meetings were held to condemn slavery. During the American fight for independence, Britain needed soldiers to quell the rebellion. Their solution was to promise freedom to any American slave who ran away from their master and fought on the British side. 

  In the years after the American Revolution the move to abolish slavery grew stronger, particularly in the Northern United States. In the Southern States, the abolitionists were less successful. While laws were passed to give slaves better conditions, the South had no intention of giving up slavery. With their economy based on crops such as cotton, rice, sugar cane and coffee, their whole way of life depended on slaves. American slave owners were determined to keep ‘their property’ from slipping away to freedom.

     In 1793 Upper Canada’s first Lieutenant Governor, John Graves Simcoe, passed an Act to eliminate slavery gradually. To get the Act passed, and with six of the sixteen legislators in Upper Canada’s first parliament, themselves slave owners, compromises had to be made. The Act stated that slaves already in Upper Canada would remain slaves for the rest of their lives. Any children born to slaves would become free at age twenty-five; any grandchildren of those currently enslaved would be free from birth. This was demonstrated in an advertisement that appeared in the February 22, 1806 issue of the Upper Canada Gazette. Peter Russell, who was appointed Provincial Administrator when Simcoe returned to England, offered a Black woman and her son for sale in an ad that clearly states both are ‘servants for life’. The price of one hundred and fifty dollars for the woman and two hundred dollars for her son was payable within three years.

  Ironically, the decline of slavery in Canada had its greatest effect in the United States. The desperate question for a runaway slave had always been ‘where to run to’. The American Constitution of 1787 said that slaves who had escaped a free state had to be returned to their masters. In 1793, the same year Simcoe declared slaves reaching Upper Canada would become free, the U.S. Congress passed the first Fugitive Slave Act, making it a crime for anyone in the United States to help runaway slaves or to prevent their arrest. When the Act came into force it allowed slave owners, or their agents, to bring any Black person before a magistrate. Bounty hunters crossed into Canada regularly to capture and return runaway slaves to their ‘masters’.

 

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