The Underground Railroad was the name of the network that was used by enslaved African Americans. It consisted of very intricate routes that were used so that those moving along its path could lose pursuers traveling under the guise of darkness and staying in safe houses during the day. The goal of the railroad was to get the slaves from the South to the Free states and to Canada where slavery was prohibited. A slave knew that once they crossed the border into any one of the Free states that they were safe from the cruelty of being a slave as long as they were not captured by slave catchers. A reason why the railroad was so successful was because they had allies who were both black and white. One such example is the Quakers, as well as the …show more content…
There are records of eighty-two Quakers involved in various Underground Railroad strong holds. But not all Quakers found it appropriate to violate the law because in 1850 a law was passed that made it illegal to help runaway slaves in any way. If you were caught doing so you could face six months of prison time and a fine of what would be thousand dollars then would be between twenty-two thousand six hundred to six million seven hundred twenty thousand dollars today. But the threat of imprisonment and a hefty fine did deter some Quakers into helping the slave’s escape it did not stop them from wanting to help them so some Quakers changed tactics. So instead they fought to put an end to slavery that way all slaves would benefit from it and not just a small number of them. And there are some Quakers who were punished because they were caught helping the slaves and did not care as soon as they were free they did it again. There was a Quaker named Thomas Garrett from Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Who’s alleged to have helped more than two-thousand seven hundred slaves to escape throughout forty years he was caught numerous time and ended up being fined more than five thousand four hundred dollars in Wilmington Delaware. There was another Quaker by the name of Levi Coffin from Guilford County, North Carolina. He helped more than two thousand slaves escape …show more content…
She was born in Ulster, County New York her birth name being Isabella Baumfree. She had numerous masters when she was twelve or thirteen she was sold to John and Sally Dumont her time with these owners was abusive. The abuse she endured is a key to where her strength came from but not from the physical and emotional scars she carried but in the way which she healed herself and in the way which she remade herself over the years into her adulthood. In the late 1826 and early 1827 she was freed and by that time she had five children. She left New York in 1843 and changed her name to Sojourner Truth she went to a community in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was there where she began in what would be a notable career in antislavery of women’s rights. There were two incidents in which some say she is best known one incident she basically told that women should have what is due to them and that she is not trying to take anything away from the men she just want what the women are owed that was in Ohio Woman’s Convention. The other one occurred in an antislavery meeting in Indiana in which she challenged a sexual imposter by baring her breast and asking the imposter whether they would like to suck at her breast. Unlike the other people I have mentioned she did not help slaves escape to freedom she helped slaves by speaking for them for the women in particular for