Understanding Free Soil

“I have never approved of the very public manner in which some of our western friends have conducted what they call the underground railroad, but which I think, by their open declarations, has been made most emphatically the upper-ground railroad.”

–Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)

Public letter: Frederick Douglass to Thomas Auld, September 3, 1848 (Yale)
Erin Blakemore, “Frederick Douglass’ Emotional Meeting with the Man Who Enslaved Him,”

Discussion Questions

Can you identify and explain these terms below?

For more on the Slave Stampedes initiative

Statistical Gateway

Enslaved population in 1840: roughly 2 million
Enslaved population in 1860: roughly 4 million
Estimated number of antebellum slave sale transactions: 2 million
Ratio of antebellum slave marriages broken apart by sale: ¼
Estimated annual temporary escapes from slavery (“laying out”): 100,000
Estimated annual attempts at permanent escapes from slavery: 1,000
Documented recaption (kidnapping) efforts across North during 1850s: 150
Documented individual fugitive rendition cases between 1850-1861: 200
Total number of formal federal rendition hearings between 1850-1861: 125
Number of rendition hearings in New England states after 1854: 0
Percentage of nation’s rendition hearings held in Ohio between 1855-1861: 75
Vigilance committee records for successful escapes during 1850s: 3,000+
Documented vigilance-led resistance efforts during 1850s: 80
Estimated total casualties from antebellum resistance efforts: 100s
Total number of UGRR operatives killed in free states: 0
Total number of freedom seekers killed in free states: 1
Total number of slaveholders or slave catchers killed in free states: 3
Total number of UGRR operatives fined or imprisoned in free states: about 10-12
Estimated number of figures imprisoned for slave-stealing in slave states, 1840s-50s: 200+
Longest sentence for UGRR operative convicted in northern state under federal law: 3 months
Longest period of imprisonment for a UGRR operative convicted in a slave state: 17 years

Sources: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (1988); Franklin & Schweninger, Runaway Slaves (1999); Stanley Campbell, The Slave-Catchers (1968); Lois Horton in David Blight, Passages to Freedom (2004); Walter Johnson, Soul By Soul (1999).