A collection of worksheets that look at the Underground Railroad and the secret movement that helped slaves escape a life of slavery.

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The Underground Railroad was not underground or part of the railroad system at all. The name symbolized a movement in the nineteenth century U.S. that helped slaves find their way out of slavery. This secret cause was spearheaded by a wide variety of people, both black and white, which saw an injustice and worked to do something about it. This system helped slaves find safe passage to Canada or Free States.

These worksheets explore the people and events of Underground Railroad including: Harriet Tubman, Levi Coffin, John Fairfield, the Abolitionist Movement, and the Fugitive Slave Acts.



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The Underground Railroad Reading Passage

Members of the Underground Railroad used the same vocabulary as railroads of the time. The conductors were the people who led the slaves along the route.

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The Underground Railroad - Multiple Choice Questions

Most travel was done at night on foot. Escaping slaves had to sneak from station to station, between 10 and 20 miles at a time, without getting caught.

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Harriet Tubman

One of nine children, Harriet was born a slave in Dorchester County, Maryland, in the 1820s.

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Harriet Tubman - Short Answer Questions

In 1844, Araminta married a free black man named John Tubman, and changed her name to Harriet.

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Levi Coffin

Levi Coffin helped about three thousand slaves get their freedom during the 1800s.

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QUESTIONS: Levi Coffin

After twenty years in Indiana in the pork processing business, Coffin moved to Cincinnati. There, assisted by Indiana abolitionists, he opened a business that only sold goods that were produced by free laborers.

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The Abolitionist Movement

People published abolitionist newspapers and pamphlets. This literature rejected slavery on both social and moral grounds.

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QUESTIONS: The Abolitionist Movement

How did abolitionists argue that African Americans were as human as whites?

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The Fugitive Slave Acts

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was similar, except it went into more detail about how the law would actually be enacted.

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QUESTIONS: The Fugitive Slave Acts

The Northern states resented the law, and many refused to enforce it, not wanting to participate in the institution of slavery.

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History of Slavery in the United States Reading Passage

Slavery began in the Americas with the arrival of the first slaves on a Dutch ship to Jamestown, Virginia in 1619.

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QUESTIONS: History of Slavery in the United States

When Abraham Lincoln was elected president, the Southern states seceded from the union, fearing that Lincoln would outlaw slavery, and the Civil War began.

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How the Underground Railroad Worked

In the mid nineteenth century, a typical journey on the Underground Railroad was something like this.

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QUESTIONS: How the Underground Railroad Worked

Depending on where the slave was coming from, the journey to freedom could take as little as a day or as long as years (for those fleeing on foot from the Deep South).

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Underground Railroad Workers Reading Worksheet

Estimates put the number of people who worked on the Underground Railroad at well over three thousand, with almost half of them being in Ohio.

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Underground Railroad Workers - Short Answer Questions

John Fairfield was a conductor on the Underground Railroad in what is now West Virginia before the Civil War.

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John Fairfield

Fairfield often pretended to be a slaveholder, a slave trader, or a peddler as a way to gain the trust of whites, thus making it easier for him to successfully conduct his runaways.

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John Fairfield- Multiple Choice Questions

Over a twelve-year period, Fairfield helped slaves from nearly every slave state make their way to Canada.

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Father of the Underground Railroad

William Still was a well-known abolitionist and the person who coined (invented) the term Underground Railroad.

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Father of the Underground Railroad - Short Answer

Still kept a record of every African American seeking freedom through the society.

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