even whipped like animals, and hardly ever fed anything. If this

were to be you in this situation wouldn’t you like a way out of this

cruel treatment into a land where you can be free and live like

normal people. Lets go back in history and see how this whole

thing acuatlly led up to to the Underground Railroad.

There have been slaves through most of human history. Their lives have varied from place to place and time to time, but in general a slave was someone who was “owned” by somebody else. They were treated as though they were a car, being bought and sold.

Slavery was very different in early history, often people became slaves when their nation lost a war. An example of what sort of jobs they had to do were, building temples and pyramids, or digging silver and gold mines. Since there was not much machinery back then, these tasks were very brutal and hard on these poor people. The usual types of people to do this were Men, Women

Sometimes the escapers even dressed in disguises, or given farm tools to carry. They were even sometimes hidden in wagonloads of goods, or even inside secret compartments built into carriages or wagons. They even had code messages just in case someone was caught and searched. Runaways were refereed to as packages or merchandise; a conductor or stationmaster who had a message that “by Tuesday you should receive a shipment of four large kegs of dark ale and one small one” would prepare for the arrival of four adults and a child.

In the 1830’s, steam-powered trains first appeared in North America- trains that could travel farther in an hour than a horse could go in one day. The fastest way to get around back then was by train. So when people wanted a name for a network that would pick up runaways and bring them into freedom, they naturally compared it to a train- a mysterious secret railroad. Sine the word “underground” mean hidden and out of sight, they called it the Underground Railroad.

The ones who made it to the coast were penned up on shore until a ship came, and if there was any kind of delay in the ships arrival, they could all die before it even go there.

Then later on the second Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 was passed and it made things even worse, for now respected black citizens- craftsman, publishers, business owners- could be taken from their homes and sent in chains back to the cotton fields, and their friends could nothing but help them.

Some topics in this essay:
Underground Railroad, African American, Slave Act, Greece Rome, Abraham Lincoln, Human Rights, American Blacks, North America-, Gold Slaves, Free Produce, underground railroad, called underground railroad, women children, bought sold, saved money, slave traders, helping runaways, fugitive slave, slave act, fugitive slave act, people freedom, poor people,