American History UnderGround RailRoad Provided a Scape...

During the first half of the nineteenth century, slavery was one of the most controversial topics in the United States of America, where the questions of whether or not slavery should be abolished or permitted sparked much debate and tension between the North and South – that ultimately lead to the Civil War. The Underground Railroad was established in the mid-1800s as an informational system of clandestine that aided slaves in escaping towards the Northern States and Canada through secret pathways, routes and safe-houses. The system was referred to as the Underground Railroad because of the rapid and secretive way in which slaves were able to escape - where they mostly traveled during the night using the North Star as a map and hid away†¦show more content†¦The development and use of a surreptitious coded language and system became one of the most essential part of the Underground Railroad that determined its successfulness because not only was having any involvemen t in the system illegal but highly lethal. So, in order to protect themselves the conductor’s utilized terms like lines, to refer which routes they would take. One of the symbols that were utilized by the conductors to identify which homes were acting as safe-houses along the lines of the Underground Railroad were lanterns, which were lit and placed outside of the each station. Through the art of song, coded messages were passed along that detailed the escape paths of the Underground Railroad, where two of the most common hymns were, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, or Follow the Drinking Gourd. The first chorus of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, states the following: Swing low, sweet chariot/Coming for to carry me home.../I looked over Jordan and what did I see/ A band of angels coming after me†¦ once deciphered the lyrics would read: Come into the slave states, towards the Underground Railroad/ Take me to my freedom in the North away from my chains/ When I looked across the river, what do I see?/ The conductors of the Underground Railroad waiting there to save me. Once traveling the Underground Railroad, the Passengers were faced with the challenge of surviving the long hazardous and perilous journey from the Southern states up North.