Underground Railroad

Background

At the time the 13 colonies declared their independence from Great Britain, slavery was a controversial and divisive issue. Although slavery had existed on the North American continent from the earliest colonial settlements, by the end of the Revolutionary War, the northern states had abolished it. The U.S. Congress passed legislation prohibiting slavery's expansion into the Northwest Territory, the area now comprising Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and the northeastern portion of Minnesota. For a while, it appeared that slavery would fade away quietly, as it was morally repugnant and of dubious financial benefit.

After 1800, however, slavery enjoyed resurgence in popularity as the invention of the cotton gin greatly increased the need for low-cost manual labor. Slavery expanded into the southwest, and a bitter rivalry developed between slave and nonslave states. Although the international import and export of slaves was banned in the United States after 1807, a lucrative trade in African Americans existed within the southern United States. Any slave who escaped from the tyranny of bondage caused a significant financial loss for his or her owners. Article IV of the U.S. Constitution provided for a slaveholder's right to recover slaves who escaped. A variety of statutes enumerated how slaveholders could recover runaway slaves.

Pursuant to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, although runaways were subject to capture and return to their masters, the responsibility for catching escapees rested with officials from the slave's home state. As part of the Compromise of 1850, [Page 2114]however, southern states were successful in getting a revised Fugitive Slave Act passed. Under the terms of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, the rights of slaveholders were strengthened considerably. Across the nation, law enforcement officers now had a duty to capture and return escaped slaves to their southern masters. The statute angered many northerners, as it made them responsible for enforcing slavery.

This anger helped strengthen the Underground Railroad, which in reality was neither underground nor a railroad. Instead, the Underground Railroad was an escape network via which African Americans feeing the south were assisted in their efforts to find new homes where they could live in freedom. A collaboration of escaping slaves, free African Americans, and abolitionists, the Underground Railroad represented a coming together of those interested in abolishing involuntary servitude.

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