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How many slaves escaped using the Underground Railroad?

According to some estimates, between 1810 and 1850, the Underground Railroad helped to guide one hundred thousand enslaved people to freedom. As the network grew, the railroad metaphor stuck. “Conductors” guided runaway enslaved people from place to place along the routes.



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In the 1700 and 1800s, major rivers were known as Freedom Roads, and if you explore the Roanoke River in Halifax County, you'll find pieces of the Underground Railroad's history still standing today.

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While most of the buildings in the Village of Mt. Pleasant Historic District are private, the Mt. Pleasant Historical Society offers Underground Railroad walking tours which include tours of several houses within the district.

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The end of the Civil War brought emancipation and the end of the Underground Railroad. As the Underground Railroad was composed of a loose network of individuals – enslaved and free – there is little documentation on how it operated.

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Most of the enslaved people helped by the Underground Railroad escaped border states such as Kentucky, Virginia and Maryland. In the deep South, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 made capturing escaped enslaved people a lucrative business, and there were fewer hiding places for them.

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Peterson of Brigham Young University, Korea has the longest unbroken chain of slavery of any society in history (spanning about 1,500 years), which he attributes to a long history of peaceful transitions and stable societies in Korea.

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That honor instead goes to Haiti, the first nation to permanently ban slavery and the slave trade from the first day of its existence.

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