Underground Railroad :: essays research papers

One Way Trip to FreedomOne hot day in 1850, a man named Jeb staggered out(p) of the woods, looked about him to get his bearings, and plunged down a lane toward the river. He only had a few moments of freedom before he heard the baying of hounds. He splosh up to his knees in the shallow stream and wade. The dogs tried desperately to pick up the scent but the water had destroyed it. He had no fourth dimension to waste. All he could think of was the North Star. That was his hope. That was where his freedom lay. (Flight to Freedom, Henrietta Buckmaster.) The thermionic valve Railroad was a desire for all slaves. They would use the Underground Railroad when they were fed up with working for their owners to escape for freedom. The Underground Railroad is a part of my history. It has always interested me so I decided to look deeper into the history, the influential people, and the actual pilgrimage of the Underground Railroad. Slavery had lain like a terrible sore on our country for t wo hundred years. Many were ashamed of it. Slave smuggling had became so profitable that the master of a slave ship could permit nine slaves out of ten to die from neglect and still lose no money. kind men were deeply shock. They protested, and then they did more than protest they helped the Negro. The Black Africans who were enslaved fought against it from the start. Men like Thomas Jefferson, preparing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution tried to have slavery outlawed. To abolish slavery meant to abolish profits which were astronomical, profits which were shared North and South. But to not abolish slavery struck at some of the deepest principles of Americans. For the abutting sixty years-until the crash of the Civil War- no issue was as important as slavery. It divided homes, it spoke for the conscience, it made political parties, it challenged religion, and it turned men into brutes and into heroes. It created the Underground Railroad. The first slave who help ed a fellow slave to escape drove the spike in this invisible railroad. The unknown first fugitive, the softly stepping men and women who dared the dangers of swamps and mountains and of tatty and rain, the outstretched hands of friends, the disguises, the courage, the gunshots along the border, and a long invisible train which chugged so silently and sent up such invisible smoke- all these turn up in the end irresistible.