What If…
The Underground Railroad was an important act of rebellion against slavery within the United States
The ‘Underground Railroad’ (UGRR) was the name given to routes of escape for enslaved people labouring in the southern United States. Operating during the 19th century, ‘conductors’ guided the escapees and hid them in buildings owned by sympathetic abolitionists. But if the Underground Railroad never formed, would it have had a wider impact on the abolitionist movement? Perhaps even on the civil rights movement of the 20th century?
What was the Underground Railroad?
The Underground Railroad was an unofficial, unorganised (largely) movement of abolitionists and of people generally who were opposed to slavery and who came to the assistance of those who were escaping from slavery. They did this by providing food, safe havens and doing their best to ensure that the enslaved people got to whichever of the various ‘Free Soil’ destinations they were f leeing to. It is an organisation that emerged roughly in the middle of the 1830s and continued as an integral part of the abolitionist movement until well after the Civil War.
Who were some of the key figures?
Some of the leading figures are Isaac T Hopper, active in the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society in the early 1840s; Levi Coffin of eastern Indiana and Cincinnati, known as the President of the UGRR; William Still, who ran operations in Philadelphia beginning in 1852 and is considered the ‘father’ of the UGRR; Thomas Garrett, who ran operations almost single-handedly in Wilmington, Delaware; and Sydney Howard Gay, who wore an additional hat as editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard, in New York City.
Where does the name ‘Underground Railroad’ come from?
The origins of the term are not entirely clear. Purportedly it got its name from a slaveholder who lost track of a runaway just as he was about to retake him, and who, in desperation, turned to an onlooker and said the fugitive must have disappeared underground. The term also coincides with the national spread of the railway system.
How does it fit in with the wider abolitionist movement of the time?
The ‘modern’ abolitionist movement had its beginnings in the early 1830s with the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society headquartered in New York City and with the publication of its newspaper, The Liberator, edited by William Lloyd Garrison in Boston. Over the years, the Society concentrated its efforts on establ
