Short History Of... - The Underground Railroad

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

The Underground Railroad helped up to 100,000 enslaved people to freedom. It was America’s first civil rights movement, operated by Black and white people united in their abhorrence of slavery. But how was it established? Who were its passengers, and the people risking everything to assist them? And what part did it play in America’s descent into civil war? This is a Short History of the Underground Railroad. Written by Kate Simants. Special thanks to historian Fergus Bordewich, author of Bound for Canaan; and to public historian and lecturer Christopher Miller of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Centre in Cincinnati, Ohio. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

March 29th, 1849. In a tobacco factory in Richmond, Virginia, 33-year-old Henry Brown is finishing his shift at his bench. Glancing around him, he unstoppers a bottle of sulfuric acid, an agent in tobacco production. He takes a deep breath and applies the odorless liquid directly onto his hand. The burning is immediate and exquisitely painful. He rushes to the foreman and shows him the injury. Seeing bone, the foreman sends him away and tells him not to come in the next day. Brown might be a slave, but even a slave can't work in that condition. Teeth gritted in agony, Brown exits the large wooden building.

He rushes home to bandage his wound, but there's little comfort for him there. Weeks previously, his pregnant wife and three children were sold to another slaveholder, despite his desperate attempts to buy their freedom. He's grieving bitterly, but at least now he has a plan. He waits for nightfall, then goes out into the darkness. In another part of town, his friend, a carpenter, is waiting for him. He ushers Henry anxiously inside, where the box he's made for him stands in the middle

of the floor. As agreed with another friend, a white man with links to Philadelphia, it's three feet long, two wide, and two and a half deep. All around it's marked with the words, this side up. With trepidation, Henry steps inside, folding his 200-pound frame into a tight ball. His friend passes him a cow's bladder full of water, a handful of biscuits. Then, wishing Henry luck, he covers the box with the lid and hammers it into place. Henry waits.

In absolute darkness, except for the chinks of light from the air holes, he feels himself being lifted. The quiet of his friend's workshop gives way to the sound of the street outside, and the box is deposited with a thump. Squinting out, he sees he's on a wagon which immediately starts bumping along the track. When he stops again he's surrounded by the hubbub of crowds and the sound of steam engines. He's loaded onto a cargo train and then later lifted carelessly onto a steamship. Worst luck for Henry.

The stevedores ignore the label on the side, and he's placed upside down. As the ship sets off up the Potomac River, the dreadful pain of his hand is soon surpassed by the extreme discomfort of his position. Praying hard, he's certain his eyeballs will burst from their sockets with the pressure. Hours pass. When the ship docks at Washington, the box is dropped. Henry lands on his neck and loses consciousness. When he comes to, the sun is just rising, and soon the train stops. As arranged by his contact, the box is collected by an Irish cartman and delivered to a room inside a building. There are excited voices and the sound of crowbars splintering wood.

Finally, the lid is wrenched off. Finally, the lid is wrenched off. Henry straightens up, his muscles burning after 27 cramped hours and 350 miles. He's now in the offices of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. And for the first time in his life, thanks to the actions of the civil rights movement known as the Underground Railroad, he is a free man. He offers his hand to the men around him and says, How do you do, gentlemen? And then, before they can answer, the man who will now forever be known as Henry Box Brown collapses.

collapses. From the late 18th century to the American Civil War in the 1860s, the Underground Railroad helped up to 100,000 enslaved men, women and children to freedom. It wasn't a physical railroad, and used the name only metaphorically, but its network of routes, safe houses and guides appropriated the terminology of the railroad to help keep its operation secret. It was operated by free blacks and formerly enslaved people. Abolitionists of African, European and Native American descent, Quakers, Presbyterians and Methodists, united in their

abhorrence of slavery. Some formerly enslaved passengers even returned to the slave states to help others, refusing to abandon them to a life in chains. But how was it established? Who were its passengers? And who were the people who risked everything to become its conductors and station masters? And in a country so bitterly divided by slavery, what effect did the Underground Railroad have on the development of the United States and its descent into civil war? I'm Paul McGann, and this is a short history of the Underground Railroad.

Although what historians refer to as the Underground Railroad really begins in the 1690s, to understand it we need to start at the beginning of the 17th century. To understand it, we need to start at the beginning of the 17th century. Fergus Bordewick is a historian and author of Bound for Canaan. The first black slaves arrived in what's now the United States, were brought to the Jamestown colony in Virginia in the United States certainly is vast plantations, cotton plantations with thousands and thousands of enslaved people bent over long rows of crops and so on. That's a later phenomenon. The earliest slaves either worked on small farms or gradually, as the tobacco economy developed, larger and larger teams of enslaved people were used. The number of enslaved people tended to grow well into the

18th century. In fact, between 1680 and 1700, England alone transports 300,000 enslaved people to the Americas. The conditions on the ships are abject. Men, women, and children are fettered together back to back and cross-legged, or forced to lie flat with as little space as a coffin. One in four will not survive the Atlantic crossing. Once they disembark, another quarter die during cross-country transit, and on arrival at their destination, life gets no easier. Public historian and lecturer Christopher Miller is a senior director at the National

Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. The lack of humanity is glaring when you examine the conditions of enslaved people during that time period. And so it's twofold. You have physically what you are going through, and physically would include being flogged or whipped for not working hard enough in the field, or just because the overseer or slaveholder had a bad day. You are used as a source of entertainment, performing, dancing, playing a fiddle, and even more egregious to fulfill the sexual needs of slaveholders. And then you're also talking about not having the right nutrition,

the strenuous hours of working from sunup to sundown, day after day. And then you have the threat of your family being separated due to a slave trader coming in that emotionally and mentally wears on you and tries to tear you down. mentally wears on you and tries to tear you down. As the European exodus to North America continues through the 16 and 17 hundreds, the population of enslaved people mirrors its expansion. But it's not without its opposition. In the Americas, abolitionism begins among the free white population as far back as 1688.

In Germantown, Pennsylvania, a group of Quakers sign a petition against slavery. Quakers owned slaves. However, beginning in the very late 1600s, Quakers began to confront the contradiction in their own values of holding human beings as chattels at the same time as they believed that every single individual had a sort of inner light that was a kind of quality of godliness. And more and more Quakers found it morally unacceptable to claim to enslave people who shared in this godliness, this inner life. It took even for Quakers several generations to reach the point where, one, they began disencumbering themselves of their own slaves, freeing their own slaves, and then going a step further and arguing with non-Quakers that it was immoral to hold slaves.

For a while at least, it seems that the issue of slavery might solve itself. After the initial boom of tobacco farming, soil becomes depleted. With a decline in the profitability of the crop, the demand for enslaved workers drops. But in the 1790s, everything changes. Until now, the production of cotton is a slow and arduous process. Picking the seeds away from the saleable fibre must be done by hand. Removing a single pound of them takes a man a whole day. The invention of the hand-driven cotton gin speeds up the process by up to 5,000%. The cotton industry explodes. In six years, exports increase from almost zero

to six million pounds a year. And all that cotton needs planting, picking and processing. The rules across the states differ, but slavery is once again big business. But while profits skyrocket, there's certainly no improvement in the well-being of enslaved people. So what was happening was that in states like Kentucky, the average slaveholder would own approximately 15 enslaved people. Kentucky, the average slaveholder would own approximately 15 enslaved people. Whereas in the deeper South, you would have plantations and slaveholders that would have ownership to 200 to 300 enslaved persons. And so in the Southern states, you had warmer climate that would breed mosquitoes that would pass malaria from one person to the next. In many cases, many people who were enslaved actually did not have clothing. Having shoes and

having pants and dresses and clothing, in some cases, was a luxury. And so their bodies were exposed to the elements, and therefore life expectancy could be as short as three to five years on those plantations. The American Revolution secures the young nation's independence from Britain, and the original 13 states of America put together a constitution. Though slavery is hotly debated in the drafting,

in the end, it's not explicitly mentioned. In 1801, Thomas Jefferson is sworn in. Despite owning one of Virginia's largest plantations, and holding scores of enslaved people, Jefferson has for many years voiced support for gradual emancipation. But for the people currently enslaved,

freedom isn't something they can wait for. Brandings are commonplace, whippings and beatings part of everyday life. Punishments for disobedience include amputations, castration, immolation, even execution. It's more than enough to force many enslaved people to make a terrible choice, stay with their family and endure a lifetime of humiliation and suffering, or risk escape. The 1793 Fugitive Slave Act reinforces the right of a slaveholder to seize and return any enslaved person who has escaped to freedom.

Fugitive slaves, who we now call freedom seekers, can be immediately returned to captivity. Anyone convicted of assisting them can be fined $500. But on a state level, it's not always so eagerly imposed. Philadelphia becomes known as a safer destination. In North Carolina, though, the Quakers have a problem. It's a slave state, but to them, the holding of enslaved people is now a disownable offense. Anxious to comply, Quakers turn the people they've previously enslaved over to the organizational structure of their faith, known as the yearly meeting. But voluntary emancipation or release from slavery can mean leaving people to starve. For the formerly enslaved, employment, property ownership, the right to testify or even

defend oneself in court are all restricted by law. Even the slightest breach of law, if alleged by a white person, could see those people re-enslaved. And slaveholders are required to post a significant bond for their former slaves' good behavior, a cost that many can't afford. The yearly meeting finds itself, ironically, one of the biggest slaveholders in the area. in the area. So the number of slaves owned by Quakers metastasized, which was a tremendous agony, moral agony for the Quakers, who being the most adamantly anti-slavery people in the state, in the country, actually, collectively owned the largest number of slaves, probably in the state of North Carolina. It created an imperative amongst the Quakers to get these enslaved people out of the state of North Carolina. This was one of the reasons for the ignition for the Underground Railroad in North Carolina.

Though few records survive, it is now that something resembling an organized structure emerges. And with it, the names of key families. organized structure emerges, and with it, the names of key families. In the town of Newmarket, North Carolina, live one such family, the Coffins. It's a cool afternoon in 1805, in this leafy corner of the world. Outside their small farmhouse, the father of the family, Vestal Coffin, a devout Quaker, is chopping wood. His seven-year-old son, Levi, pulls his woolen jacket tightly around him as he runs outside to help his father. But an unfamiliar sight on the track running alongside the farm makes him stop.

He tugs on his father's sleeve and points. Heading south is a long line of black men manacled into pairs. Between them, a heavy chain drags on the rocky ground as they make their shuffling way past him. Some distance behind is a wagon where a white man sits comfortably, a whip across his knees. Levi's father puts down his axe, takes his son by the hand and goes over. He hails the men. He asks them why they've been chained. Careful not to slow the procession, one of the group calls back. They've been taken away from their wives and children, he explains. They've been chained to prevent them from breaking away to be with their families.

Levi is captivated, horrified. He watches the unhappy column until it's out of sight. His mind swells with questions. Who were those men? Why weren't they allowed to live with their families? And most of all, how would he feel if his own father was taken away from him? A decade later, the coffins are known locally as Friends to the Enslaved, and well established in a multiracial community of abolitionists.

and well established in a multiracial community of abolitionists. One night in 1819, the coffins are awoken by a hammering on their door. Festl rushes to answer it. On his stoop, panting for breath, is a young girl he recognizes. She is the daughter of a new neighbor of the family, a free black man named John Dimery. Desperate, the girl explains that relatives of her father's former slaveholder are at her house. They're trying to kidnap her father, claiming him to be their property.

Vestal doesn't waste a second. Without stopping for a coat, he runs off at full pelt, bumping into a friend on the way who accompanies him. By the time they catch up with the kidnappers, near the house of another neighbour, Dimery has been bound by the wrists and ankles and strapped to his assailant's horse. While the Quakers demand his release and the kidnappers argue, the woman of the house quietly gets to work on the ropes. Dimery disappears into the woods.

But Vestal knows he's not safe. It's later recorded that night, Dimery started out on the Underground Railroad. His next appearance is 500 miles away, in the Free State of Indiana. Though similar events are starting to happen elsewhere, it's one of the first recorded instances of an escape on the Underground Railroad. Quakers collaborating, cooperating with free African Americans, innovated a couple of basic techniques

that became the hallmarks of the Underground Railroad. That is to say, facilitating the escape of enslaved people, sometimes through disguise, disguising men as women, women as men, hiding people in safe houses, moving them from place to place, sometimes hidden, for example, in the bottom of a wagon, that sort of thing, sometimes in a closed carriage, moving them either from place to place in Philadelphia or out of Philadelphia to outlying towns that were safer, and moving them gradually further north. So imagine this happening on a very small scale, a few people here, a few people there.

From here, the Coffins and their neighbors become increasingly involved in the first kindling of the Underground. What becomes of the column of enslaved men who so captivated the young Levi Coffin will never be known, but what is clear is the profound effect on the man who would later be affectionately known as the President of the Underground Railroad. As with any activism, right from its early beginnings, the Underground Railroad had connection at its heart. Opponents of slavery begin to share their willingness to make personal sacrifices. The message starts to filter through to enslaved people that help is at hand. But when the network of assistance is, by necessity, secret, how do its would-be passengers know it exists?

So, most fugitives knew where the next free state was. It might be a couple of days, one day, or even just a few hours away, walking. How did they know about the Underground Railroad? Or did they know about the Underground Railroad? Very commonly, they would look for a Black person. It's very rare that they will walk up to the first white person they find in the state of Ohio or Pennsylvania and say, hey, where's the Underground Railroad? Because they couldn't assume that that person was not going to recapture them or call the police or slave catchers to collect a reward. Many, many Northerners couldn't care less about slavery. Sometimes word of the railroad will find its way to the ears of an enslaved person,

for example, if they're granted time in a local town to buy goods on behalf of their slaveholder or run errands. Other freedom seekers will only realize there is help at hand once they've fled. However the first step is taken, the moment a freedom seeker sets foot outside their place of enslavement, time is of the essence. The stories of the Underground Railroad are many, and they are as diverse as their creative. If they have anything in common, it's the

bravery, resourcefulness and determination of the people seeking freedom and those who seek to help them. People escaped in many different ways and people obtained knowledge on how to escape in many different ways. People used the intel and knowledge that they

had, understanding how to read the stars, using the constellations to help guide them. Also with the understanding that if the stars are not visible, look on the tree to see the moss that grows on the north side of the tree. With the understanding that if slave catchers are after you and hounds are tracking you down, that they're tracking your scent. So you have to use things to throw your scent off to the dogs. Whether that is to wade in the water or that is to rub wild onions on you, you discover and get that information that's going to help you escape. Advice passes by word of mouth. going to help you escape. Advice passes by word of mouth. Written instructions would not only risk exposure, but would be useless to most, as teaching an enslaved person to read is against the law.

Codes and secret signs become intrinsic to communication. A quilt hanging on a washing line might signal a safe house. The particular insertion of nails in a tree or signpost at a crossroads will show a freedom seeker which path to take. The Underground Railroad has no maps, nor guidebooks, nor even a single centre of activity. But as time goes on, what it does have is a language. In the early days of the Underground, the network is referred to as a line of posts, or a chain of friends. But by the late 1830s, when the Iron Railroad becomes established,

the Underground Railroad develops a lexicon of train-based terminology. Those people helping the enslaved to find the railroad in the first place are agents, and the guides are conductors. Freedom-seekers are referred to as passengers or cargo. Safe houses are stations, overseen by station masters, while temporary hideouts, where several people can await their onward journey, are known as depots. It's not unheard of, though, for local branches of the underground to maintain secrecy by using a completely separate code of their own.

They not infrequently spoke in code. One of my favorite examples of this was in the state of Indiana, where a local network of underground activists were all immigrants from Wales. And they just spoke Welsh amongst each other, and nobody else had a clue what they were talking about. So the underground did what worked. People figured it out, and the strategies had grown naturally over this period of time. For the passengers themselves, the strategies are what make the difference between success and recapture.

One tactic commonly employed is to travel by night, but hide and rest during the day. So it follows that despite the harsher conditions, escape is more often attempted during the winter months. As a result, freedom seekers often suffer frostbite, hypothermia, or worse. But forward planning is not always possible. Many freedom seekers set out at short notice, maybe after realizing they're about to be sold. Facing separation from their children, parents might risk everything in the hope of a better life together on the other side of a state line. Traveling with children makes the journey

even more treacherous. In order to pass silently through areas where slave hunters were known to operate, some parents sedate their children with paragoric, an extract of opium. When journeys are undertaken without shoes, warm clothes, food or shelter, a swift connection with the underground becomes a matter of life and death. matter of life and death. It's the winter of 1838. The Ohio River is a ribbon of ice, 150 feet wide. From the Kentucky side, a woman climbs carefully down the cliff, checking anxiously behind her with every few steps. It's late at night, and she's alone except for the infant she carries, wrapped in a shawl against the bitter cold. She's already walked for many miles.

Only days previously, a slave trader appeared on the plantation, and she was brought before him. It meant only one thing. She was about to be separated from her baby. Making it to the edge of the frozen river, she touches her toe to assess its strength. She's heard that when conditions are at their coldest, it's possible to ride horses across the surface. But when she takes her first step, the ice immediately gives under her feet. Instinctively, she lifts her precious cargo above her head, but the sudden cold whisks the air from her lungs. For a moment she's paralyzed.

Behind her is a life of misery, rape, degradation, and after an escape attempt, punishment, even death. Ahead could be freedom. Shivering, hardly able to breathe, she hauls herself out of the water. Step by faltering step, she makes it to the middle of the river, before there's another sickening crack. The ice collapses again. She throws the child ahead of her as she sinks, but claws her way back out. By the time she reaches the shore, she's numb with cold and spasming uncontrollably.

Watching her from the Ohio side is a slave catcher. But when he approaches, he sees what's in her bundle and feels a stab of humanity. He helps her to her feet and shows her to the base of a flight of steps in the hillside. At the top there is a house, and in the window is a light. Within minutes, she's drying by a fire, with a hot meal on the way. Because this house is a crucial weigh station on the Underground Railroad. The house of Reverend John Rankin and his family. They mobilize immediately, readying the horses. By the time the sun is up, the woman and her baby have been forwarded to another safehouse, where they will remain only as long as it takes to prepare the next leg of the journey

north. And though her real name and fate are lost to history, her story inspires one of the most famous tales of the Underground Railroad ever written. More than a decade later, her ordeal reaches the ears of novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe, who transforms the woman into Eliza of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The Rankin family, whose home was subject to an armed attack by pro-slavery thugs only a few years previously, are just one family among thousands willing to help. In their small town of Ripley, Ohio, around 10% of the population is involved in assisting the enslaved to freedom.

There's the pork merchant, who provides much of the local underground's funding. Down the road, there's the undertaker, who's recorded hiding people in coffins when searched by slave catchers. Women in upstairs rooms make clothes from fabric donated by merchants. The families were involved. The wives played a very significant role of being a resource for freedom seekers. The children also played a role. So when I mention an individual, there's a family unit that's also involved in that process. Reverend Rankin in Ripley, Ohio, his sons will go out to these

hiding areas to where freedom seekers might be hiding at, and then help them to get to these compartments for assistance, whether that might be a cellar or it might be an actual compartment on the floor of a barn where there's a holding space where they can sleep and hide during the day. Night after night, station masters open their door to cold and disoriented freedom seekers. Night after night, they feed them with the donations from their church and political community. They clothe them with the shoes and garments made locally by craftspeople intent on helping. And night after night, conductors swiftly funneled the new arrivals to the next safe house, 5, 10, 20 miles north, where they met by another cell.

There was no high command. There was no general counsel at all. Most commonly, people in a community, let's say in a town in Ohio or Pennsylvania, only knew the people in their own cell, often a group of families or people within a certain church congregation who completely trusted each other. They would know their group, they would know the other groups in that town, if there were any, and they would know groups in the next one or two towns away. And that was about it. So the quality of secrecy within the underground was actually very efficient. For many freedom seekers, it's the Ohio River that

forms the border between captivity and freedom. And in the towns and small holdings dotted along the hundreds of miles of waterfront, the Underground Railroad blossoms. Woodsheds, attics and cellars of stationmasters from all walks of life become temporary hideouts while arrangements are made for the onward trip. Some passengers stay for days, others mere hours, before they're piloted on to their next stop. Most safe houses use existing rooms, like the upstairs bedrooms of the Rankin family. Some are more inventive.

Levi Coffin, now a prominent figure in the Indiana Underground Railroad, conceals hundreds of people, a few at a time, behind a false wall in the eaves of a bedroom. A miller in Maryland creates an undetectable hiding place behind his water wheel. False fireplaces, hidden spaces beneath wagon beds, hay barns, and even specially excavated caves beneath houses provide emergency concealment. Excavated caves beneath houses provide emergency concealment. The routes taken might change from day to day to keep spies and patrolling slave hunters guessing. But once in the Free States, many passengers to the very place where they'd been enslaved. Now, this doesn't seem to make sense, but people wanted to stay close to their families.

They had families on the other side. Possibly, they even dreamed of going back personally and bringing them out. They even dreamed of going back personally and bringing them out. All fugitives made moral decisions that nobody has to make today, which is to say they were always leaving people behind. Everybody was also leaving family behind. They were leaving behind parents, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, and often, tragically, children who couldn't be brought out. And every single fugitive had to wrestle with a decision like that.

For many, the final destination is Canada, referred to as the Promised Land. As part of the British Empire, Canada doesn't officially outlaw slavery until 1834, but a series of legal precedents saw the de facto abolition much sooner. Beyond the border, a free black man can vote, hold property, even be elected to office. Wages might be lower than in the United States, and the climate less appealing. But beyond the Great Lakes, the threat of re-enslavement reduces to almost nil. To reach the Canadian border, most travel on foot. The lucky might secure a ride in a wagon or, as railroad building gathers pace, on a train.

However it's made, it's a 200-mile trip from the northern border of slave country. The evasion of slave hunters operating even in the Free States, though, can make it much longer. Passengers can be forced to divert, switch routes, or loop back. But on arrival on the international border, routes open up across the lakes to the promised land. Detroit, with its population tripling in a decade from 1830, routes open up across the lakes to the promised land. Detroit, with its population tripling in a decade from 1830, has a well-funded and active underground. The simplest route here from the United States to Canada is across the Detroit River. The Detroit Baptist Church shelters thousands as they wait their turn to catch the ferry

that marks the end of their journey on the Underground Railroad. For them, it's a mere ten-minute trip across a single mile of water. Trusted steamboat captains surreptitiously convey hundreds of other passengers annually across the lakes, though this longer journey to freedom is far from safe. Fires, collisions, and exploding boilers are common, and before the middle of the century, almost a third of steamboats are lost. Flight from captivity isn't confined to the north. Throughout the period, a small number of enslaved people seek freedom from the southern plantations, heading to Mexico and the Caribbean.

Historians disagree on whether these routes constitute a true part of the Underground Railroad, and antislavery activists in the Deep South are certainly few and far between. Safe houses are scarce, and freedom seekers must traverse huge distances characterized by swamps, desert, and hostile climate. So it is the promoted belief that freedom for those who were enslaved, you're going north. But there is record of people going to the South for freedom, going into Mexico for safe refuge, going into parts of Florida where Seminole Indians were there to support and provide refuge for enslaved people that were seeking freedom. And then they would also go to disperse into Caribbean islands and so forth. And so I would say the idea is that people

would seek out freedom where they thought they could obtain freedom. As the 1840s draw on, those who do make it across the border to the free states are at ever-heightening risk of re-enslavement. Little documentation around slave ownership exists, and if a person is recaptured, much of the burden of proof rests on the accused and not the accuser. Though a free black person might acquire an official certificate of freedom, these could easily be stolen or destroyed. With black people barred from defending themselves in court, the odds, as ever, are grossly stacked

in the slaveholders' favor. Even in the North, African Americans simply could not count on the law to protect them. One reason the Underground Railroad was able to work efficiently, because it was a biracial organization, was that when there was a court challenge, for example, a Black farmer, state of Ohio, let's say, was hauled into court for allegedly sheltering fugitive slaves, could really not count on the law to treat him fairly.

However, he could count on white lawyers connected with the Underground Railroad, anti-slavery lawyers, defending him in court. And those cases were often won. So there was a synergy, a crucial synergy, between middle class white people and lawyers to helping protect the Underground Railroad and the activists. Support for abolition may continue to grow, but slave hunting is becoming big business. Slaveholders employ individuals and even small companies to go north and track down what

they call their property or stock. Fees vary depending on the perceived value of the fugitive and how far they've gone. It might cost $25 to hunt for a fugitive in Philadelphia, up to $100 in Boston, further north. Beyond the city courthouses, activists organize their own responses to the increasing number of slave hunters. Organizations called vigilance committees are formed by anti-slavery activists to protect their Black populations. The vigilance committee would try to monitor known slave hunters who came into a city, sometimes try to entrap them and take them to court. That happened in some places. There are instances of slave hunters being convicted in northern courts

where states had passed laws barring the recapture of fugitives. Those laws were in direct contradiction to federal law. It's now that the tensions between the free and slave states start to reach their climax. More territories are annexed by the United States, and while southern landowners intend to extend slave labour into the newly acquired land, northerners demand assurances to the contrary. Things get so heated that fights break out and guns are drawn on the floor of Congress.

A compromise is reached in 1850, but with it comes a new iteration of the previous Fugitive Slave Act. And so one of the things that that compromise dealt with was increasing the stakes of the activity of conductors and abolitionists, of the activity of conductors and abolitionists, meaning that increased fines and jail time for people who decides to be conductors on the Underground Railroad. Even if you had awareness of an escape

and you didn't report it or say anything, by federal law, you could be arrested and fined. And so what that did was that did create a new industry of marshals, trackers, and slave hunters from this. And so, and that's how they made their money. And so the risk became extremely more higher. The journey became even more strenuous after 1850. 1850. To abolitionists, the 1850 Act is known as the Bloodhound Bill.

After the dogs used by the slave hunters, it legitimizes. And now, the federal law must specifically override state legislation. Officials are now legally required to arrest anyone they believe to be a fugitive.

Noncompliance brings fines of $1,000, the equivalent of 30 times that amount today. Federal marshals are deployed to bring cases before local commissioners, but, as usual, the playing field is far from level. The suspected fugitive is allowed neither jury nor the opportunity to testify. The new act even offers de facto bribes to law enforcement to return a freedom seeker to slavery in the form of their fee. A decision to set a suspected fugitive free earns a commission of five dollars,

but ruling to return them to slavery brings twice that. Slave hunters need little more than a sworn affidavit, meaning even free blacks who'd never been slaves are no longer safe. Leading abolitionist, orator, and stationmaster of the Underground Railroad, Frederick Douglass, summarizes the hypocrisy. summarizes the hypocrisy. The oath of any two villains is sufficient, he says, under this hell-black enactment, to send the most pious and exemplary black man into the remorseless jaws of slavery. Bad feeling between the lawmakers remains, but the 1850 Act buys the fragile Union some time. Little does the pro-slavery lobby know, however, that it will be a final nail in the coffin.

The Fugitive Slave Law radicalized a lot of Northerners by bringing the reach of government into their own towns and villages and hamlets and cities on behalf of slavery. Many Northerners might not care that there were people enslaved in Mississippi, but when a federal commissioner and constables and a slave hunter were plucking people off the streets of Oberlo and Ohio, they were outraged. Many more people by the 1850s, after the future of the slave law, were prepared to assist in the Underground Railroad to break laws which they found repugnant. So the Underground Railroad really snowballed in its effectiveness and size in the 1850s.

In the North, with more and more people galvanized against the horrors of slavery, the Underground Railroad proliferates. Formerly enslaved conductors make it their life's work to return again and again to the slave states to bring out as many people as possible. Harriet Tubman, herself enslaved until her escape in her twenties, makes 13 repeated journeys into Maryland and Delaware, and is credited with assisting scores of people to freedom. William Still, now known as the father of the Underground Railroad, pilots up to 800 passengers.

Levi Coffin, John Rankin, and countless other conductors doubled down. The list goes on. But while the risks to the white people on the Underground Railroad were largely economic, to the black conductors and agents of the system, the penalties are much more significant. Though now a resident of Philadelphia, Samuel Boris was born free in the slave state of Delaware. At 34, he's a married man, a father of six, a teacher. He's described as eloquent and educated. He's also been a conductor on the local Underground Railroad for years. Some accounts say he helped hundreds by making clandestine excursions into Maryland

and his home state of Delaware to bring freedom seekers into Pennsylvania and beyond. Samuel Burris had the privilege and flexibility of living as a free Black man, but he decided to use his privilege and his access to be a conductor on the Underground Railroad. And so he did that up until 1848, when he was caught in the act of assisting an enslaved woman to Philadelphia. He was arrested, he was tried, and he was sentenced to enslavement himself. sentenced to enslavement himself. This once again starts to unpack the nuances of Samuel Burris was a white man. First of all, would he be arrested? More than likely, yes. Would he receive the same sentence? Absolutely not. And so in Philadelphia, there was the Vigilance Committee. And they had a white gentleman by the name of Isaac A. Flint. Isaac A. Flint took all the money that was accumulated by the Vigilance Committee and he used his access of privilege.

He used his whiteness to go down to the auction where Samuel Burris was being auctioned off at. So now he's about to be enslaved. And so now he's placed on the auction block. At the auction block, you're often stripped naked. You are examined from the tops of your head to the bottom of your feet. You can understand how humiliating that would be. And so after Samuel Burrs is examined, Isaac Flint was one of the individuals who examined him as well to follow suit, along with all the other men who were interested in purchasing Samuel Burrs. The bidding starts and Isaac A. Flint won the bid. Samuel Byrds just thinking he is going to be sold into slavery, leaving behind his wife and his children. Isaac A. Flint signs the papers. Samuel Byrds is shackled. He has manacles around his wrist, he is led to the edge of the city, and then Isaac Flint releases him from his irons and says, I am part of the

vigilance committee and you are free. We have your wife and children. Burris never returns to his home state, but moves his family to the relative safety of California. He dies as free as he was born. But it's not until 2015 that Boris is finally pardoned by the governor of Delaware. To the increasing consternation of slaveholders, ever greater numbers of enslaved people access the Underground Railroad to reach freedom. A paper is published by a doctor by the name of Cartwright. He details what he claims is

a mental disorder that he terms drapetomania, the inexplicable compulsion of slaves to run away. It's ridiculed in the North, but illustrates just how polarising the issue has become. Year on year, the political temperature builds. Then, in 1859, Underground Railroad conductor and abolitionist John Brown takes radical action. He leads 22 men in a raid on a US armory in Harper's Ferry in the slave state of West Virginia. His plan is to incite a slave revolt in the South and end slavery for good. It ends with all but five of the insurrectionists either dead at the scene or hanged for their attempt, but it sends shockwaves across the nation. A year later, Abraham Lincoln takes the presidency on an abolitionist ticket.

Seven southern states immediately announce their cessation from the Union. Within months, the country plunges into a civil war that will, by its close four years later, see over a million dead. Now, in 1861, hundreds of thousands of northern troops head south. And by doing so, they bring the end of the Underground Railroad. bring the end of the Underground Railroad. Once war began in 1861, the Underground Railroad largely became less and less necessary because as Northern armies marched south, fugitives poured off farms, plantations, wherever they were enslaved to the safety of the Union Army. Hundreds of thousands, wherever the Northern armies marched, slavery began to disappear. The Emancipation Proclamation of 1862 promises the abolition of slavery.

Three years later, the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution is passed. The practice of slavery in the United States of America is now outlawed. Not long afterwards, suffrage is finally extended to African Americans. A sign appears in the window of a Detroit store, owned by George de Baptiste, steamboat captain and a prominent conductor. It reads, Notice to stockholders of the Underground Railroad. This office is closed.

Hereafter, all stockholders will receive dividends according to their merits. We talk about social justice, and we talk about it sometimes in a vacuum, without the understanding that current-day activists are acting upon the legacy of those that came before us. Joshua East said that abolitionists may attack slave holdings, but there is a danger still that the spirit of slavery will survive in the form of prejudice after the system is overturned. Our warfare ought not to be against slavery alone, but against the spirit, which makes color a mark of degradation. We are still battling the spirit of slavery today. That spirit is revealed when we talk

about limiting voting rights and accessing opportunities for certain communities. It's revealed when we talk about limiting education. That spirit's revealed when we talk about limiting education. That spirit is revealed when we talk about not giving fair and equal access and justice when it comes to policing. If it's not operating out of a spirit of fairness and equity and inclusion, it's operating out of the spirit of slavery.

is operating out of the spirit of slavery. The Underground Railroad was the first biracial, political, public movement in American history. It's remarkable for that. Right from the beginning, the Underground Railroad was based on white and Black Americans working together, collaborating together. So often, we in this country see the races as tragically at

odds with each other and without a sense of shared community. But in the Underground Railroad, ordinary people were putting themselves on the line to assist each other and taking risks for each other. And I think if there's nothing else that we can learn today from the history of the Underground Railroad, it's that that kind of collaboration and cooperation is possible. Next time on Short History of, we'll bring you a short history of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans from Mehmed forward would consider themselves not only to be Khans as pertaining to their Mongol and Turkic heritage, not only Sultans based on their Islamic background, but also Caesars. background, but also Caesars. They wanted to conquer Rome and rule and unite East and West under Islam as universal rulers. So he leaves this behind as a legacy,

this ideology that the Ottomans are European and Asian rulers. That's next time on Short History Of. That's next time on Short History Of. Continue to listen and follow for free wherever you get your shows. Or subscribe to the Noiser Network on Apple Podcasts and listen ad-free to Noiser Originals, including Real Dictators, Short History Of, and History Daily.