$4.46
Details
The Underground Railroad to Mexico: The History and Legacy of the Southern Routes to Freedom for American Slaves
Author: Charles River Editors
Narrator: KC Wayman
Unabridged: 1 hr 47 min
Format: Digital Audiobook
Publisher: Findaway Voices
Published: 09/03/2022
Synopsis
The Underground Railroad is one of the most taught topics to young schoolchildren, and every American is familiar with the idea of fugitive slaves escaping to Canada and the North with the help of determined abolitionists and even former escaped slaves like Harriet Tubman. The secrecy involved in the Underground Railroad made it one of the most mysterious aspects of the mid-19th century in America, to the extent that claims spread that 100,000 slaves had escaped via the Underground Railroad. Of course, from a practical standpoint, the Underground Railroad had to remain covert not only for the sake of thousands of slaves, but for a small army of men and women of every race, religion and economic class who put themselves in peril on an ongoing basis throughout the first half of the 19th century, and in the years leading up to the war.
Over 150 years later, that same secrecy has helped the Underground Railroad become so romanticized and mythologized that people often visualize it in ways that were far different from reality. Before the American Civil War eliminated slavery, it was a fixture in North America for over 200 years, and by 1850 a trained slave was worth approximately $2,500, around 10 times the sum of a typical annual salary in that day. As a result, the economic dependence on slavery in the South was an extreme one, and in the wake of the Fugitive Slave Act, black people in the North were under constant pressure to defend their “credentials” to bounty hunters and owners. Between the value of slaves in America, rising abolitionist sentiment at home and overseas, and political debates promoting or hindering the movement toward equality, the era in which the Underground Railroad operated cannot be easily fit into a concise body of principles, actions or geography.
by Charles River Editors
Many of the first artists in the West were assigned to exploration and geological parties, working as archivists and obedient to demands of cold accuracy. However, a few were driven by an imaginative mix of real events and fantastical visions to wh...
Published: 03/16/2020
by Charles River Editors
Many of the first artists in the West were assigned to exploration and geological parties, working as archivists and obedient to demands of cold accuracy. However, a few were driven by an imaginative mix of real events and fantastical visions to whe...
Published: 03/16/2020
by Charles River Editors
In the 1600s, cotton and silk fabrics that bore colorful and exotic printed patterns, known as “calico,” were flying off the shelves of the East India Company’s stores. The rapidly escalating demand for calico had taken a visible ...
Published: 10/16/2019
by Captivating History
Explore the captivating life of Martin Van Buren History chiefly remembers Martin Van Buren as the eighth president of the United States (1837- 1841). He was also, however, notable for achieving many firsts in American politics. He was th...
Published: 06/04/2018
by Captivating History
Explore the captivating life of Andrew Jackson!When Jackson left the White House after two presidential terms, he had achieved a rare feat: He left office with even more popularity than when he first entered it. His reputation as a strong president ...
Published: 07/25/2018
by Charles River Editors
During the Civil War, over 180,000 black men fought in volunteer units as part of the United States Colored Troop (USCT), but it was only after the end of it that they were allowed to enlist in the Regular Army. They did so in four segregated regime...
Published: 12/27/2019
by Charles River Editors
By the golden age of the mountain man in the mid-19th-century, there were perhaps only 3,000 living in the West. Their origins were disparate, although they included many Anglo-Americans. A good number hailed from wilderness regions of Kentucky and...
Published: 04/18/2019
by Nicholas Biddle
In 1804, President Jefferson asked two Virginians-Meriwether Lewis and William Clark-to lead an expedition into the unexplored wilderness of North America. The journals of these explorers are both a priceless piece of national history and a great ad...
Published: 03/04/2008
by Charles River Editors
By the second half of the 19th century, still less than a century old, the United States had become a regional power. It had soundly defeated its southern neighbor, Mexico, and greatly enlarged itself in the process. America’s navy and mercha...
Published: 02/09/2020