Here are some ways to visualize the statistics of slave escapes and the impact of the Underground Railroad:
- 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
- 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 UGRR operatives fined or imprisoned in free states: 10s
- 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
- Estimated annual number of newspaper articles about fugitive escapes: 10,000s
- Ratio of slave to free states in 1840: 13 / 13
- Ratio of slave states to free states in 1860: 15 / 18
- Ratio of initial secession declarations that focused on the fugitive issue: 4/4
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).
RT