Allison Lassieur - The Underground Railroad: An Interactive History Adventure

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YOU are living in the 1850s, wrestling with the question of slavery. Will you break the law to help slaves gain their freedom?

In this book, youll explore how the choices people made meant the difference between freedom and enslavement, between success and failure. The events youll experience happened to real people.

Chapter One sets the scene. Then you choose which path to read. Follow the links at the bottom of each page as you read the stories. The decisions you make will change your outcome. After you finish one path, go back and read the others for new perspectives and more adventures. Use your device's back buttons or page navigation to jump back to your last choice.

YOU CHOOSE the path you take through history.

Its the 1850s and the United States is less than 100 years old. Immigrants have come from all over the world to settle in America. The streets of New York and Philadelphia are filled with the rumble and clatter of carriages, wagons, and horses. Factories and businesses in the North provide jobs for newcomers.

In the South life is quiet and slow. Farmland stretches as far as anyone can see. Cotton and sugarcane make owners rich.

Theres something else different about the South. In the South there are slaves.

Many slaves worked in cotton fields from dawn until dusk. They received no pay for their work.

Slaves live every day knowing they are someone elses property. The food they eat, the clothing they wear, and even their own families are owned by someone else. For most slaves it is the only life they will ever know. But some slaves run away. They risk everything, even their lives, for freedom.

Youve heard of in the North who think blacks and whites are equal. Some of them lead runaways through unfamiliar areas or hide them from slave catchers. Their routes are secret. But their network is growing. Its become known as the Underground Railroad. And theres more need for it now than ever.

An abolitionist in Pennsylvania built these sliding shelves to hide runaway slaves in a crawl space.

Runaways used to be safe if they made it to the North. But since the Slave Act of 1850 was passed, slave owners can recapture slaves in any state. The only place slaves can truly be free now is Canada. And the act makes it illegal to help slaves escape.

As an American living in the 1850s, youre not sure how you feel about that. You understand how important it is for slave owners to reclaim their property. How else would Southern plantation owners make a living?

Another part of you is uneasy at the idea of owning another human being. What if the abolitionists are right and all people are equal? Then slavery, and everything the South stands for, would be wrong. There are so many sides to this question, and there are no easy answers.

Its a beautiful spring morning in Kentucky. Youre in one of the grand flower gardens that fill the yard around a large, beautiful home. The house is called Auvergne.

From the big house, you hear someone calling you. A knot of fear tightens in your stomach. You know that voice. Its the voice of your master, Brutus Clay. You are his slave.

You were born here. Your mother and father are also slaves. Your father works in the masters fields every day, from sunrise to sunset. Your mother works in the kitchen.

Plantation owners had grand homes and large estates. Slaves worked in the gardens, the fields, and the big house.

I want every flower bed weeded by sundown, Master Clay says to you. You have no choice, so you quickly get to work.

Hours later, your back aches and your hands are bleeding from pulling all the weeds. You glance back at the house as it grows dark. Through the window, you see Master Clay and his family sitting down to an elegant dinner.

You run toward the slave cabins. Black-eyed pea soup is bubbling in a pot over the fireplace. Your mother and father are talking frantically.

Slaves lived in small cabins on their masters plantations.

Are you sure? How many of us will be sold? your mother cries.

Sold? Your heart pounds, and you cant breathe. Being sold away from your family is the worst thing imaginable.

I dont know how many, Father says. But we can run before the slave trader comes.

Run away? Thats crazy talk! Theyll hang us, your mother says.

I have the money Master Clay let me keep when I worked on his neighbors farm last fall, Father says. He stands up straight. Better to die in freedom than live a slave. Come with me.

Your mother refuses. Your baby brother is too little to travel, she says.

They come up with a plan. Master Clay is going to hire out Father to his neighbor again next week. Father will get a pass to travel to the other farm. Thats when hell escape. When he is free, he will earn enough money to buy the rest of the family.

Brutus Clay was the largest slaveholder in Kentucky.

Then they both look at you. Youre old enough to decide, Father says. You can come with me. Or you can stay here with your mother.

What a terrible choice! If you go with your father, you risk being recaptured and sold. Or you could die in the wilderness. But you might make it to freedom. If you stay, you could help your mother. But you might be sold away from your family forever. What will you do?

You cant leave your mother, no matter how sweet freedom sounds. Later that week your father leaves. Three days pass before Master Clay realizes that your father isnt coming back. He sends for you and your mother.

Where is he? Master Clay demands.

I dont know, your mother cries, shaking her head.

The next week, a slave trader comes to Auvergne. He speaks to Master Clay and hands him money. The slave trader chains your wrists.

Come with me, he says roughly. You can hear your mother begging Master Clay not to sell you as youre thrown into the back of a wagon. The last thing you see is your poor mother collapsed in the dirt road, screaming and crying for you.