Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Civil War Get on Board

I just read a great book called Get on Board by Jim Haskins. It was very interesting and I was endlessly surprised by Harriet Tubman and the other "conductors'" bravery. What was really amazing is was that Harriet Tubman went into the "Deep South" disguised as a tradesman and spirited off a few slaves in the night, transporting many of them all the way to Canada, and with a debilitating illness too! This really impressed me and showed me Harriet Tubman really wanted freedom for all people. She owned a gun, not to use, but to frighten her passengers into staying with her and not running back to their plantations, which was obviously a big issue.
However, Harriet Tubman was not the only "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Another notable one was Frederick Douglass, (both Douglass and Tubman were former slaves, whose names were generally given by their masters) who, when he found freedom, learned how to write and wrote a book about his life. He then began multiple trips back to the South to escort other slaves to the North or even Canada. Quite possibly, these notable abolitionists were inspired by their own experience of the hardships and just plain wrongness of slavery, and of how to escape it.

4 comments:

  1. I really liked how you took a a really big and good part of this book(which I have read)to talk about. Plus, you chose two escaped slaves that had the bravery to go back to get more slaves that had the most interesting life styles to talk about which is amazing.

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  2. Great blog! I really enjoyed it. I'm also extremely astonished Harriet Tubman had gotten all of those slaves to Canada with her illness. I liked the way you wrote your blog because it was easy and fluent for me to read, as well as very informative. What exactly did you mean by saying "She owned a gun, not to use, but to frighten her passengers into staying with her and not running back to their plantations, which was obviously a big issue." Because if the passenger wanted to run back to their plantation, it was really just their choice. That would be more like a threat to the passenger than just trying to make them go to Canada. I'm also very surprised she never got caught delivering slaves from one side to the other.
    This was a very, very well written blog overall and I'm very keen to read this book.

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  3. I think this blog was very descriptive and I could have a nice picture of the things that Tubman and Douglass did. You got right to the point instead of putting in pointless stuff. This blog was very direct and you said what was needed to say. You made it interesting and it makes me want to read the book. NIce Job.

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  4. I think that you really exceeded the expecatations, descriptive, interesting, and short, so people don't got to sleep, it's way better than put 2 pages of mumbo jumbo, you made this post very convincing, now that you say, I'll try to read this book.

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