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Essay about harriet tubman and the underground railroad
Essay about harriet tubman and the underground railroad
Essay about harriet tubman and the underground railroad
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Although the Underground Railroad was not a real railroad, it had many brave conductors and stationmasters that helped free many slaves. Three of these honorable individuals were Thomas Garrett, William Still, and Harriet Tubman. Although slavery would have ended without their contributions to the Abolitionist community, they helped jump start the freeing of slaves before
When the Underground Railroad was operational there was an important conductor who was also very well known: her name was, Harriet Tubman. She would proceed each mission with an extreme level of caution every time, making sure no one was caught. Which allowed her to be very successful in these missions. Her cautiousness was shown within the story “Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad” which was written by Ann Petry. She would show multiple examples of different writing techniques to fully describe Tubman’s character and some examples of the techniques are, the use of imagery, the use of parallelism, along with the use of allusions to indirectly reference something or someone.
The Underground Railroad is a secret system of tunnels used by slaves to escape to freedom in the early 19th century. Because of the Fugitive Slave Act, people who were caught helping a slave runaway or escape would have encountered large fines and put in jail. The Underground Railroad was not all about the black slaves. Whites helped with the Underground Railroad too.
In this essay I will examine the Underground Railroad over a period of turbulence that spanned ten years and focus on some of the key figures involved and the significance of their roles. Harriet Tubman and Harriet Breecher Stowe were both central to the movement during this time and although they focused their attention on vastly different areas of the Railroad both women had a profound and positive impact. Harriet Beecher Stowe was a white woman from Cincinnati Ohio. When the Fugitive Slave Act 1850 came into effect it ironically galvanised a new era in the Underground Railroad where Stowe, like many other whites was spurred into action. Not only did Stowe personally aid escaping slaves by welcoming them into her home temporarily
The Underground Railroad was a network of safe houses owned by people who hated the slavery and despited the Fugitive Slave Act. This gave a route to help slaves escape from the South and travel to Northern states and Canada. On Document A it illustrates the route she took to help people escape from slavery. According to Document B it discusses, “Imagine being led by a five-foot tall, 38-year old woman, on a dark December night, wading across a river waist deep. Light snow falling, there seven fugitives including babies in arms.
Harriet Tubman worked for the Union Army during the Civil War as a nurse, cook, and spy so she knew the land of the south very well. The fact that she knew the land of the south very well was extremely helpful for the runaway slaves when escaping through the Underground Railroad (Maschi). According to the Library of Congress, if any slave decided they wanted to stop their journey and turn back to return to their masters, Harriet would hold a gun at them and say, “You’ll be free, or die a slave”. Harriet feared that if slaves returned then hers as well as the other escaping slaves lives would be in great danger by getting discovered, being captured, and lastly being killed.
I. Identification of Work The book, “Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom” was written by Catherine Clinton. Catherine Clinton is the Professor of American History at University of Texas San Antonio. She is extremely qualified due to her intensive work dealing with this time period of American History. She studied sociology and American History at Harvard and then received her Ph.D. at Princeton University.
The Underground Railroad wasn’t an actual railroad and it wasn’t underground. It was a network of people, homes, and businesses that helped slaves escape from the American South to the free states in the north and Canada. Harriet Tubman was never caught on her 19 trips freeing
HARRIET TUBMAN Early Life Harriet Tubman was a slave in the west. She didn’t know when she was born. At the age of six she started slavery. The line between freedom and slavery was hazy for Tubman and her family. Harriet Tubman’s father, Ben was freed from slavery at the age of 45, stipulated in the will of a previous owner.
Slavery is know to be one of the darkest periods in human history; yet, the fight for freedom in the United States was beyond imaginable. The most well-known fight for the abolition of slavery was the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad was a passageway created by free African-Americans and white folks to help slaves escape their lives and find refuge in free states. The Underground Railroad was neither underground nor a railroad. Instead, it was called “underground” due to it being top secret and it was a called “railroad” because it was a path for slaves to take in order to escape.
Ross Rosenfeld in The Underground Railroad: A Path to Freedom claims that mainly conductors and station masters would help the slaves. The station masters would often supply slaves with food, water, and clothes/shoes. One of the station masters was Thomas Garrett, who helped almost 2,700 slaves in about forty years of his life. Harriet Tubman was another very popular person. She would take other slaves through many woods, swamps, and long rivers.
On one occasion, Harriet was unable to make it to Garrett’s station. Thomas was able to hatch a plan in order for Tubman and her fugitives to reach his store safely. “Garrett hired bricklayers and had them leave the city crossing a bridge in two wagons, seemingly off for a day’s work on the farm… Once Garrett’s henchmen were safely outside the city, they rendezvoused with Tubman and carefully hid all the fugitives in the bottom of the wagons, under blankets and tools.” Garrett was willing to do anything possible in order to help Tubman and the fugitives.
She was a conductor in the Underground Railroad. She helped slaves escape from slavery. The last time she stepped out to do her job was three days ago and she never came back” the boy sobbed. I looked around and it seemed like he stayed alone at home. “The Underground Railroad’’?
She has helped the United States in many ways. After that she also purchased land to build a home in 1896 for needy and sick blacks. Harriet tubman was the conductor of the underground railroad The Underground Railroad was a bunch secret routes and safe houses that slaves used to escape to free states or Canada. Harriet was one of the people who helped establish the Underground Railroad. She was also known as “Moses.”
These conductors guided these fugitive slaves to escape from their enslavement in order to be free as part of the “underground railroad”. Among these conductors is the notable Harriet Tubman, a former slave who led three hundred slaves to safety in the North (McGill, 2005). Besides assisting these fugitives in escapement, other efforts included housing these slaves, recapturing them from authorities, and providing resources for the fugitives to settle in once freed. To further illustrate the metaphor of the underground railroad umbrella, “the homes and businesses where fugitives would rest and eat were called "stations" and "depots" and were run by "stationmasters," those who contributed money or goods were "stockholders," and the "conductor" was responsible for moving fugitives from one station to the next” (“The Underground Railroad”, n.d.). This network of systems continued on and as it became more widespread and more known about, the underground railroad found success in bringing the issue of slavery “to the forefront of public consciousness and convinced a substantial and growing segment of the northern population that the South’s peculiar institution was morally wrong and potentially dangerous to the American way of life” (Devine, 2011).
