The Underground Railroad The Secret System Of - amazonia.fiocruz.br

Every American knows Harriet Tubman. One of the most daring of these conductors was William Lambert, a free African-American man from Detroit, whose story historian Bill Loomis tells in his book Secret Societies Ov Detroit. Born in New Jersey inas a young man Lambert traveled with his Quaker schoolmaster around the northeast, learning about abolitionism and establishing himself both in business and in the church.

Finally settling in Detroit, he became a member of the historic Second Baptist Church, and later, St. As a result, numerous secret societies arose there in the s, as the abolitionist movement gained steam. With the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act inLambert founded the African American Mysteries, Sedret known as the Order of the Men of Oppression, to strengthen his segment of the route.

Product Information

The Order, modeled partly on other groups such as the Masons of which Lambert was onedevoted itself to assisting escaped slaves. Using wagons with false bottoms, the Order traveled into the South through backroads and safehouses to find fugitives and bring them back to free land. As Lambert recalled years later:.

His eyes blindfolded and an iron chain put about his neck. When his examination was over his eyes were unbound and he was admitted to the fellowship of the degree of captive.

When he passed to that of the redeemed the chain and fetters were stricken off, although before that, when his eyes were unbound and he was a captive, he found about him all the members of the lodge present, each of them with a whip in his hand. In this way the organization maintained its typical character. Though precise figures will never be known, some historians estimate that the Order aided as many as 50, fugitives seeking safety and freedom in the North—a truly extraordinary legacy, especially given the very real threat of danger and death that followed every man and woman along the route.

Navigation menu

Many started for fun and companionship. Others had more serious ends in mind. During the Civil War, so-called black lantern societies like the Knights of the Golden Circle and the Union League waged a covert war in Detroit and across the northern Midwest.]