Underground Railroad for Kids: From Slavery to Freedom with 21 Activities
Time Line Jamestown Virginia settled by English colonists 1607 Twenty captured Africans become indentured ser 1619 vants in Jamestown 1640 1710 Slavery becomes a legal institution in British North American colonies Africans and their children become lifelong slaves Declaration of Independence proclaims All men are created equal 1776 1777 1804 Vermont Pennsylvania Massachusetts New Hamp shire Connecticut Rhode Island New York and New Jersey ban or phase out slavery United States of America wins its independence but 1783 slavery remains legal Northwest Ordinance bans slavery in territories that will become Ohio Indiana 1787 Illinois Michigan and Wisconsin
New U S Constitution does not end slavery as some 1788 had hoped 1790 U S population of 3 9 million includes 700 000 enslaved persons First fugitive slave law established Slavery phased out in Canada 1793 Importation of slaves to the United States becomes 1808 illegal Benjamin Lundy begins publishing the Genius of 1821 Universal Emancipation First National Negro Convention 1830 William Lloyd Garrison begins publishing The Libera 1831 tor Nat Turner Rebellion in Virginia Slavery banned in the British Empire 1834 Frederick Douglass begins publishing the North Star 1847 Compromise of 1850 admits California as a free 1850 state and establishes a harsher fugitive slave law Kansas Nebraska Act leads to Bleeding Kansas 1854 John Brown leads a failed raid on Harpers Ferry 1859 Civil War begins after southern states secede from the 1861 Union Emancipation Proclamation frees slaves in rebel states 1863 Black soldiers allowed into the Union arm Union wins the Civil War 1865 Abraham Lincoln assassinated Thirteenth Amendment abolishes slavery
Missouri Compromise admits Missouri 1820 as a slave state and Maine as a free state 1829 The Appeal by David Walker urges slaves to revolt 1830s First uses of the term Underground Railroad 1833 American Anti slavery Society founded 1842 Dawn settlement founded 1849 Harriet Tubman escapes slavery Elgin settlement founded 1852 Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe published U S Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision declares that 1857 blacks are not citizens U S population of 31 4 million includes 4 million 1860 enslaved persons Abraham Lincoln elected the sixteenth U S president Congress rules that black soldiers must receive the same 1864 pay as white soldiers Fourteenth Amendment grants African Americans U S 1868 citizenship Fifteenth Amendment grants African American men vot 1870 ing rights
Preface A Narrow Escape and a Secret Network hen Alfred Thornton first saw two men walking toward him one day in 1858 he wondered what they wanted As they got nearer Thornton recognized them as a local consta ble or lawman and a slave trader Now he was nervous Alfred Thornton was a slave who'd lived on the Shinn plantation in Vir ginia all his 21 years He knew that a slave trader coming for him meant only one thing and it was about the worst thing that could happen to a slave Thornton's master had sold him That slave trader was coming to take young Thornton away and the constable was there to make sure Thornton went without a fight Dread began to fill Thornton Being sold meant he'd never see his mother father and friends ever again He'd be moved to a new plantation far away Thornton knew that the slave trader would take him into the Deep South Everyone had heard how slaves were quickly worked to death on huge cotton plantations down there The two men were coming
