6 Strategies Harriet Tubman and Others Used to Escape Along the Underground Railroad Flashcards
Escaping often involved…..
leaving behind family and heading into the complete unknown, where harsh weather and lack of food might await.
So-called slave catchers and their dogs roamed both sides of the ________ - _________ ______, nabbing runaways—and sometimes free Black people like _________ _________—and transporting them back to the plantation, where they would be whipped, beaten, branded or killed.
Mason-Dixon line, Solomon Northup
Yet those willing to brave the risks did have one main ally: the ___________ ____________ , a vast, loosely organized network of constantly-changing routes that guided Black people to freedom.
Underground Railroad
All told, in the decades preceding the ______ _______, up to 100,000 Black people escaped slavery.
Civil War
Some went to Mexico or Spanish-controlled ______ or ______ ____ ___ _____ _____________.Most, though, traveled to the Northern free states or Canada.
Florida , hid out in the wilderness.
The luckiest, however, followed so-called “conductors,” such as _____ ______, who, after escaping slavery in 1849, devoted herself fully to the Underground Railroad.
Harriet Tubman,
Like her fellow conductors, Tubman cultivated a _________ ________ ___________ including so-called “stationmasters,” who stashed her charges in barns and other safe houses along the way.
network of collaborators
She would, for example, _____ ______ _____, or mimic an owl, to signify when it was time to escape or when it was too dangerous to come out of hiding. She also mailed coded letters and sent along messengers.
sing certain songs
In Georgia, a light-skinned _______ ______ _______ ___ ___ _______ ________ ________, with bandages on her face and her right arm in a sling, while her darker-skinned husband pretended to be under her possession.
enslaved woman posed as an injured white gentleman
______ _______ likewise escaped slavery hiding in plain sight.
Frederick Douglass
Desperate to avoid her master’s unwanted sexual advances, one enslaved woman ___ ____ ______ _________ in an attic crawlspace.
hid for seven years
Another lodged _____ ______ ___ _______ ________and shipped himself from Richmond, Virginia, to abolitionists in Philadelphia.
himself inside a wooden crate
For much of its length, though, the Underground Railroad operated openly and brazenly, despite the passage of the 1850 ______ ____ ____, which mandated harsh punishments for those found to have aided runaways.
Fugitive Slave Act
Meanwhile, so-called “stockholders” raised money for the Underground Railroad, funding _____ ______ ________that provided ex-slaves with food, clothing, money, lodging and job-placement services.
anti-slavery societies
At times, abolitionists would simply buy an enslaved person’s freedom, as they did with ………
Sojourner Truth.
