Who ran the Underground Railroad for 8 years?

She was proud of her accomplishments and in 1896 spoke at a women's suffrage convention, “I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say — I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.” Freedom was bittersweet for Harriet Tubman.



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Our Headlines and Heroes blog takes a look at Harriet Tubman as the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad. Tubman and those she helped escape from slavery headed north to freedom, sometimes across the border to Canada.

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The Underground Railroad was secret. Nothing was written down about where to go or who would help. So once enslaved people decided to make the journey to freedom, they had to listen for tips from other enslaved people, who might have heard tips from other enslaved people.

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Some enslaved people were educated in Bray schools. These schools educated enslaved people in Christian teachings. This allowed enslaved Africans to learn to read and sometimes write. Christian leaders thought that being literate was important to being a Christian.

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Born into slavery on Maryland's Eastern Shore in 1822, Tubman was named Araminta by her enslaved parents, Ben and Rit Ross. Nearly killed at the age of 13 by a blow to her head, Minty recovered and grew strong and determined to be free.

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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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Other fugitives settled in southern towns and cities, often with forged free papers. The majority of slaves attempting to escape from the South went to the North and many continued to Canada. Some runaways returned to their masters and others were caught by bloodhounds and slave patrols, accidents and informants.

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If runaways were caught, they would be physically punished, usually by whipping, and might be made to wear chains or handcuffs to prevent them from running again.

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In these accounts, travelers on the Underground Railroad eat whatever they can carry, beg, forage, or filch. Some common dishes enslaved people ate on plantations became staples of the journey.

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First off, let's talk percentages - if the numbers in the question are correct, we're talking 1000004000000=2.5% of all slaves escaped - which is an incredible percentage. This wasn't just a few people - this is a significant percentage of people held as slaves that managed to escape.

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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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