About 12 million Africans were forced to cross the Atlantic Ocean from 1450
to 1880. Men and women from all walks of life enslaved between 450,000 and 600,000
Africans in the United States.
Many people called abolitionists—both African-Americans and Whites—spoke
out against slavery and worked to end it. Others worked to keep it from
spreading to more states. Some created the "Underground Railroad" in
the south and north. Neither a railroad nor underground, it was a secret system
that freed thousands of African-Americans.
"Conductors" led fugitives north to freedom at night by foot
through forests, along riverbanks, or hidden under hay or grain in horse-drawn
wagons. On the way, they hid, slept and ate in safe attics, cellars and church
steeples owned by "operators."
Escaping was dangerous. When slave catchers or "raiders" caught
runaways, they often whipped or beat them or forced them to wear chains. They
then returned the fugitives to their masters in the south. Sometimes, the
operators resisted the slave catchers, and the runaways escaped to Canada.
