The Undergro­und Railroad & Slave Rebellio­ns: A Historic­al Overview

Resistance against slavery

Resistance from Slaves

• Slave resistance was very common
• At least 250 confirmed slave-riots until 1865
• Only two successful riots, one in Haiti and one on the ship Amistad
• Riot plans are often discovered before they even started
• Riots were usually stopped with brutal violence
• Other common types of resistance: Violence against slave Owners, Sabotage and escaping

Aboard the Amistad

• The Amistad was a ship from a North American trading company
• A trading ship, a slave ship
• 53 slaves loaded
• Succesfull riot at the 28.06.1839
• The riot leader was Sangbe Pieh, a rice farmer from Africa
• Africans did not know how to navigate

• Commanded the crew to navigate the ship back to Africa
• The crew fooled them and moved the ship to america
• Ship was discovered by an American military ship
• Long court process, called "Amistad Process"
• Africans were spoken free and were brought back to Africa
• Now has the name "Freedom Schooner"

Nat Turner

• Nathaniel „Nat“ Turner: American slave
• Led a slave rebellion of slaves and free blacks in Southampton Country, Virginia on August 21, 1831
• Resulted in 60 white deaths
• As a small child: was thought to have some special talent  could describe things that happened before he was even born
• Some even remarked that he „surely would be a prophet“

Turner was deeply religious  spent much of his time reading the Bible, praying and fasting

• Turner was deeply religious  spent much of his time reading the Bible, praying and fasting
• had a vision in 1825 of a bloody conflict between black and white spirits  hearing divine voices
• received another sign  told him that he …

1.should prepared himself

2. slayed his enemies with their own weapons

• About 55 white men, women and children died during Turner‘s rebellion

Faced off against a group of armed white men  near Jerusalem

• Faced off against a group of armed white men  near Jerusalem
• 100 to 200 African Americans were killed after rebellion
• Turner  was captured on October 30, 1831

 said that this was not his fault

 „Rebellion was the work of God“

 was sentenced to death by hanging

• Image: - evolved over the years

- signed as a hero and as a religious fanatic

White people Against slavery

• Not many people knew the evils of the slave trade
• Those who did: faced abuse & violence
• not all white people thought having and selling African slaves was good  are also called abolitionist
• These people had a big and important impact on outlawing slavery in the US

Thomas Jefferson

• Was also a slave owner
• Later: tried to outlaw slavery
• 1784: proposed federal legislation banning slavery, failed to pass by one vote
• As President: made slavery a crime in 1807

Benjamin Franklin

• Also owned slaves
• Became opposed to institution, tried to outlaw slavery
• 1785: became president of an abolitionist group in Pennsylvania, originally formed by the Quakers

John Brown

• was an abolitionist
• believed in armed insurrection against the institution of slavery
• 1859: led an armed uprising in Harpers Ferry, to free slaves
• executed for his attempted uprising

Abraham Lincoln

• President of US during the American civil war
• 1863: made the famous Emancipation Proclamation:
• He declared “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are, and henceforward shall be free.”
• 1865: This proclamation was followed by the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution outlawing slavery.

Sojourner Truth

• After going to court to recover her son, in 1828 she became the first black woman to win such a case against a white man
• In 1843 she gave herself the name Sojourner Truth
• Her best-known speech was delivered extemporaneously, in 1851, at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio
• The speech became widely known during the Civil War by the title "Ain't I a Woman?

• was an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist
• Born in 1797 as Isabella Baumfree into slavery in Swartekill (New York)
• Escaped with her daughter into freedom in 1826

It was a project she pursued for seven years, but without success

The Underground Railroad

• Network of secret routes and houses
• Used by enslaved people to escape from slavery
• Abolitionists aided to escape
• The routes led to Canada and free Sates
• Founded in 1780 and retained till 1862
• 1850: 100.000 people escaped via the “Railroad”
• British-North-America (Canada) was a popular destination
• Most slaves settled in Ontario

• Conductors (local leaders) led the fugitives from one station to the other
• Sometimes conductors pretended to be a slave to enter a plantation
• Slaves traveled at night and 15-30 km to each station
• The stations were located in barns, under church floors, in caves, etc.
• The slaves mostly traveled on foot in groups of 1-3 slaves

Charles Turner Torrey

Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman

• was an African-American abolitionist, humanitarian
• She was born as Armanita Ross In 1822 in Dorchester County
• Born a slave she was beaten and whipped by her various masters as a child
• She suffered a traumatic head wound when an irate slave owner threw a heavy metal weight intending to hit another slave and hit her instead
• In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, then immediately returned to Maryland to rescue her family
• she brought relatives with her out
• When a far-reaching United States Fugitive Slave Law was passed in 1850, she helped guide fugitives further north into Canada, and helped newly freed slaves find work. of the state

• When the US Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy
• The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the raid at Combahee Ferry, which liberated more than seven hundred slaves
•  After the war, she retired to the family home on property she had purchased in 1859 in Auburn, New York, where she cared for her aging parents.
• She was active in the women's suffrage movement until illness overtook her and she had to be admitted to a home for elderly African-Americans that she had helped to establish years earlier.

The End

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