Advantages
- Provided hiding places.
- Provided food.
- Often transportation for the fugitives who were trying to escape slavery.
- Along the way, people also provided directions for the safest way to get further north on the dangerous journey to freedom.
- Most whites from the north had helped slaves escape the dangers of slavery with the Underground Railroad which portrayed unity. between blacks and whites.
- The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 made it harder for enslaved people to escape.
- If slaves were caught escaping they would be severely punished.
- Many captured fugitive slaves were flogged, branded, jailed, sold back into slavery, or even killed.
- Fugitive slaves have the fear of starvation and capture.
- This was very risky for the abolitionists due to the fact that one could be punished by the court system.
- They would travel nearly ten to twenty miles in one night which was very taxing on them not only mentally, but physically.
- Many often returned to their owners after suffering hunger and other hardships on their own.