T
o paraphrase the humorist Will Rogers
on a very serious subject from the 1840s
and 1850s, “And if you think this country
ain’t pro-slavery, just watch ‘em vote; and if
you think this country ain’t anti-slavery, just
watch ‘em read Uncle Tom and support the
Underground.”
When Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published,
it became a bestseller in the North, even
while soon banned in the South. The author
Stowe’s moral condemnation of slavery and its
horrors had a deep impact on the consciences
of many previously indifferent northern
citizens.
“Uncle Tom”, of course, refers to Harriet
Beecher Stowe’s novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”,
while the “Underground” refers to the nonrailroad, “The Underground Railroad”, the
autonomous network throughout the South and
North for guiding runaway slaves to freedom in
the North and Canada.
The Underground Railroad started slower and,
of legal necessity, never advertised its work or
its participants. But it gradually became known
as a powerful counterforce to pro-slavery
sentiment and practice.
Before and during the above 19th century
decades, there was considerable pro-slavery
sentiment in the North. In the South, it was
virtually unanimous among white voters.
Since 60% of slaves were included in census
populations for voting allocations, Southern
states had an important edge in determining
numbers in the House of Representatives.
In the Senate, each state, regardless
of population, enjoyed two votes.
In some quarters, the Underground Railroad has
been referred to as the first Civil Rights
Movement in the U.S. Starting as a very small
movement in the early 19th century, the
Underground Railroad became formidable
by the 1840s and 1850s. Although exact
statistics are lacking, this network may
have guided about 100,000 slaves to freedom,
not a small number, but seemingly small
compared to the four+ million slaves in
bondage by 1860.
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Throughout the South, slave-owners
hysterically denounced the movement as the
work of the Devil Incarnate himself. They came
to assert that their slaves were better off than
northern factory workers, since the former
were fed and cared for all their lives, while the
latter were subject to layoffs, job injuries, old
age retirement and generally poor working
conditions. But there was no such thing as a
network to help factory workers sneak
southward to trade their factory jobs for toil
in cotton fields.
There was never a national or even state
organization labeled “The Underground
Railroad.” There was no CEO or Board of
Directors. A series of networks existed,
made up of houses, caves, barns or forests.
Individuals known as “conductors” would guide
runaway slaves, always at night, from one
designated location several miles, maybe 10 or
so, to the next location and the next conductor.
Each conductor might know the next one, but
not many more. Some were white, some black,
some were slaves themselves. Transportation
from one transfer point to the next might be
on foot, on horseback or by wagon provided by
these conductors.