Surviving the underground railroad

During the early days of the United States, it was common practice for the ruling powers to import slaves and force them to work on their land. The vast majority of these slaves came from Africa and because they were forced to work for free under the threat of death, they performed their duties just as well as someone who was being paid. Due to the greed and lack of compassion of the wealthy people who bought slaves, the industry boomed in the country, and by the time the tragedy was over, close to 4 million slaves had been brought into the country.

The free labor they provided was well-liked by their owners, but not everyone was so heartless, and over time, resistance began to grow to the slave trade which eventually led to the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861. The war was eventually won by Union forces in 1865 who declared slavery illegal from that point onwards, but the attempt at reaching freedom began long before the end of the war, and nothing gave you more of a chance at freedom than finding the underground railroad.

What exactly was the underground railroad?

The given name is somewhat misleading as it was neither a railroad nor underground, but instead a series of secret routes that led from the south of the county all the way north to the Canadian border. Since the southern half of the country used slaves in greater numbers and also refused to outlaw the practice, the general goal for a slave was to get as far north as possible. To do this, someone would have to walk for several hundred miles while avoiding the various groups that might re-capture them and take them back to the south, but this long walk was especially difficult for someone who didn’t have any money to pay for the journey. Food was also required along with new clothes and sometimes even fake documents, things the people running towards freedom couldn’t provide for themselves, so the underground railroad was formed to help them.

It consisted of a number of safe houses that were always run by white Americans, so they could remain hidden. Various religious and civilian groups were formed to provide stopping points along the journey and provide food and a place to rest for the fleeing slaves. All of this was done at very high risk to the people involved and also at a personal financial cost to those helping, since they knew the people they were helping had no money and knew they’d never see them again.

Even though slavery wasn’t officially outlawed in Canada until 1834, it was still a much better place to be than in the wilds of the South where slaves would, on average be treated much worse.

How many people did the underground railroad save?

The routes were kept as secret as possible and the people running the safe houses generally didn’t keep written documents claiming they had broken the law, so an exact number will never be known. The Union North would often accept fleeing slaves as citizens of their country and would document them upon arrival, with such records claiming that around 6,000 slaves made it into the northern US territories or into Canada by the mid-1800s. This figure is greatly disputed and the real number would be considerably higher, with one claim suggesting the real number is closer to 100,000 people, but again the real number will never be known. Many records survive from the time the railroad was active, but most of these are personal journals of the slaves themselves who repeatedly make the claim that many slaves purposely avoided the US authorities for the fear they may run into the “wrong people” or their former owners finding out where they were through paper records.

The risks of the railroad

There were two main parties that an escaping slave would have to be especially careful of, and they were the various slave-catching groups and the reverse underground railroad. Certain people only saw the practice as a business and their product was people, the more people they could sell the more money they would make. This led to independent groups not only hunting down escaped slaves but sometimes slipping into Union territory and kidnapping freed slaves to take back to the South.

The biggest threat to the underground railroad was the reverse underground railroad. This was a faction that was set up and funded by various wealthy slave owners with the sole purpose of hunting down the safe houses and people who helped the escaping slaves, not to mention capturing any slaves they came across in the process. The railroad was the best chance someone had to make it north to freedom and this meant it was the biggest threat to a slave owner’s wealth.

One important fact about the underground railroad is how vital it was to the cause since many of the people fleeing captivity had no bushcraft or survival skills at all. Towards the late 1700s, many of the slaves in the country were born there and lived on a plantation or farm their whole lives, and didn’t even have the opportunity to travel the country and learn about wild foods and staying alive in the wilderness, making the railroad necessary for their survival.