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Autumn, 1849. In Maryland, a woman named Harriet Tubman slips
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out of the cabin where she has lived as an
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enslaved person all her life. She is about twenty-seven years old.
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She has no map, no money, and no one to
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guide her. She walks by night, following the North Star,
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hiding by day in woods and swamps. Slave catchers are
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already looking for her. If she is caught, She will
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be beaten or sold further south or worse. She walks
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for nearly 90 miles to Pennsylvania to freedom. And then
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she does something nobody expects. She turns around and goes back.
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The network she joined is called the Underground Railroad. It
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was not underground. It was not a railroad. It was
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a secret web of people, free black Americans, white abolitionists, Quakers,
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church congregations, who hid people escaping slavery in their homes,
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fed them, and guided them north, one safe house at
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a time. The houses were called stations, the guides were conductors,
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and the whole thing ran on whispers and coded messages,
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because a single betrayal could mean prison or death. The
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journeys were terrifying. After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850,
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even the Free North was no longer safe. Helping a
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runaway meant a fine of a thousand dollars and six
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months in jail, so the destination became Canada, where slavery
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had been abolished. Stations were usually ten to fifteen miles apart,
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a night's walk. Travelers moved after dark, in silence, through
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forests and fields, guided by conductors who knew the routes
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by heart. They used the language of the railroad as code.
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A station was a safehouse, cargo was the people, and
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a conductor was a guide. Songs carried coded messages. A
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quilt hung on a fence or a lantern in a
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window could mean safety or danger. And always behind them
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were the slave catchers, paid by the head, hunting with
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dogs and guns.
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Harriet Tubman became the railroad's most famous conductor. After her
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own
Load full transcript
escape in 1849, she returned to the South 13 times,
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guiding about 70 people to freedom, family and friends first.
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then strangers. She never lost a single passenger. She carried
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a pistol and she used it to threaten anyone who
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wanted to turn back, because one person turning back could
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betray them all. She traveled in winter, when the nights
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were long. Later, during the Civil War, she served the
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Union Army as a scout and a spy, and led
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a raid that freed more than 700 enslaved people in
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a single day.
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She was not alone. William Still, a free black man
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in Philadelphia, kept careful records of the people who passed
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through his station, their names, their stories, where they came from,
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hiding the records so slave catchers could not use them.
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Frederick Douglass hid runaways in his home in Rochester, New York,
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and helped 400 people reach Canada. In Ohio, the Quaker
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Levi Coffin, called the president of the Underground Railroad, sheltered thousands.
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Historians estimate that as many as 100,000 enslaved people sought
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freedom on the railroad between the late 18th century and
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the Civil War.
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The Underground Railroad ended when the Civil War did. After 1863,
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its work moved above ground, into the Union war effort.
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But what it proved could not be undone. It proved
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that enslaved people were not passive victims waiting to be freed.
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They freed themselves and helped each other do it. It
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proved that ordinary people, at enormous personal risk, would defy
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an unjust law, and it proved that freedom was worth
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a ninety-mile walk in the dark, guided only by the
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North Star.
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Harriet Tubman once said that she was the conductor of
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the Underground Railroad for eight years, and she could say
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what most conductors cannot say. She never ran her train
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off the track, and she never lost a passenger. She
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turned around and went back thirteen times— into the place
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she had escaped, because freedom, she believed, was not freedom
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if her family was still in chains. The railroad was secret,
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its stations were hidden, but its lesson was not, that courage,
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passed from one safe house to the next, can carry
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people to freedom, one night at a time.