UNDERGROUND RAILROAD FACTS AND TRIVIA

• More than four million slaves were set free when the Civil War ended in 1865.
• It is estimated that from forty thousand to one hundred thousand slaves escaped bondage, with a large portion going through the state of Ohio on their way to Canada.
• William Still, a free black man in Pennsylvania, was known as the “Father of the Underground Railroad.”
• Most Underground Railroad station houses did not have secret rooms and spaces but used existing hiding spaces such as attics, barns, cellars, or closets.
• Spirituals such as “When I’m Gone” and “Wade in the Water, Children” were used as codes to inform others about slaves escaping.
• Levi Coffin, a white Quaker in Indiana, was known as the “President of the Underground Railroad.”
• It was common practice for slave families to be part slave, part free, as they purchased their freedom one member at a time.
• A slave caught by a patroller without a pass could be whipped.
• Plantation owners provided food and shelter for slaves with passes on errands from other plantations.
• Gangs of kidnappers, especially in the mid-Atlantic states, made money by kidnapping free blacks and selling them into slavery.
• Twelve American presidents owned slaves, and eight of them owned slaves while serving as president.
• The transatlantic slave trade was abolished in 1808 when the United States made importing slaves from Africa a federal crime, but smuggling continued until the Civil War.
• Slave families were divided when the master of a plantation died and his estate (including his slave property) was divided up among his heirs. Slaves were used to obtain credit and pay off debts.
• The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 allowed runaway slaves to be pursued out of state and returned to slavery if ownership could be established. The law made aiding fugitives a criminal offense, but states varied in their punishment. A conviction could carry a penalty of six months in jail, a $1,000 fine, and a civil liability of $1,000 for each fugitive. Such convictions damaged a person’s reputation and social standing in the community.
• Slaves who could not tolerate their living conditions sometimes went on strike or were “lying out.” They temporarily ran away, and word was sent to their masters that unless a certain condition was met, they would run away permanently.
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, boasted the nation’s first formally organized antislavery society.
• According to Wilbur H. Siebert, a foremost authority, there were more than 3,200 documented people who worked on the Underground Railroad. Countless others remain unnamed.
• Canada became a refuge for escaping slaves after the passage of antislavery legislation on July 9, 1793. During the War of 1812, thousands of blacks who volunteered to fight with the British were promised their freedom and land in Canada, creating an even greater incentive for blacks to move there.
• The American Anti-slavery Society, with both black and white members, was formed in 1833 to heighten awareness of the injustices of slavery and to support its abolition. Within five years it had a quarter million members.
• By law the children followed the status of their mother. If she was free, they were born free; if she was a slave, they were born slaves.
• In 1777 Vermont became the first state to abolish slavery.
• Calvin Fairbank was arrested twice for taking fugitive slaves over the Ohio River to freedom. He was given a fifteen-year sentence, the longest given to an Underground Railroad activist.
• In 1859, 16 percent of the total United States population was black.
• The most heavily traveled route along the Underground Railroad went through Ohio, Indiana, and western Pennsylvania.
• Slavery was abolished in the British Empire, including Canada, in 1833.
• The American Colonization Society, founded in 1816, established the colony of Liberia, where freed slaves were removed to settle their own community on the west coast of Africa.
• Warring African tribes sold their captives to European ship owners. In 1619 the Dutch sold slaves to settlers in Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America.
• Slavery existed in America from the earliest period of colonial settlement at the beginning of the seventeenth century until it was abolished in 1865 by passage of the Thirteenth Amendment.
• Ohio was a center of high activity on the Underground Railroad because it bordered the slave states of Kentucky and Virginia, and it was linked to Canada by Lake Erie.
• After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, many blacks fled to Canada. Not all of them returned to the United States after slavery was abolished in 1865.
• Serious scholars refute the claim that patterned quilts had encoded messages that showed slaves the way to freedom. Some of the quilt patterns originated much later in the 1930s.
• President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, altered how black people in the South celebrated New Year’s Day. Previously the day was known as “Heartbreak Day,” a day when families were torn apart through sales at auctions or individuals left to be hired out on other plantations.
• The National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom in Omaha, Nebraska, in association with the National Park Service (NPS), lists sites that have approved documentation in connection with the Underground Railroad. There are currently 552 listings—380 sites, 107 programs, and 65 facilities—in 36 states and the District of Columbia.