The Underground Railroad was a system of escape routes, safehouses, and committed anti-slavery activists who helped enslaved people escape to freedom in Canada. Thousands fled to freedom thanks to this multiracial movement led by free African Americans.

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Harriet Tubman's story is truly inspiring. Born a slave, she escaped to freedom, but later led dozens others to their freedom through the human network known as the Underground Railroad. When the Civil War began, she served as a spy, a nurse, and a guide. But that wasn't all. After the war, she advocated for the right of women to vote.

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The struggle to abolish slavery began during the colonial period, but gathered steam in the early 1800s, becoming more militant in the years before the Civil War. This multiracial movement sought the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. Women played a major role, which sowed the seeds of the women's suffrage movement.

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The fugitive slave clause was another compromise the Framers of the Constitution made to ensure that the Southern states would ratif the Constitution. This clause required that enslaved people who escaped be returned to the person who claimed them. This applied even to states where slavery would be outlawed, which would later stoke the outrage of abolitionists and raise tension between the North and the South.

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The Three-Fifths Compromise counted enslaved people for purposes of representation, not to protect the interests of the enslaved people, but to advance the interests of the slaveholders. Here's how it happened: the Framers of the Constitution agreed that there should be proportional representation in the House of Representatives, but disagreed on whether to count enslaved people for purposes of representation. Southern states held many enslaved people in bondage, but Northern states held few. The two sides came to a compromise: they would count three out of every five enslaved people, hence the term "Three-Fifths Compromise." Sadly, this would remain in the Constitution until the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868.

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Many of the Framers of the Constitution were ashamed of slavery, and carefully avoided using the words "slave" or "slavery" in the document. Nevertheless, the Framers protected slavery in the Constitution in order to accommodate the Southern states, which threatened to refuse to join the Union.

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Enslaved African Americans faced difficult choices at the start of the Revolutionary War. The British royal governor of Virginia promised them freedom, and many joined the Loyalist cause. Up to 100,000 others fled across British lines. And yet about 5,000 served as soldiers in the Continental Army, serving valiantly. We'll learn some of their stories on today's podcast.

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Phillis Wheatley Peters was the first African American to publish a volume of poetry. She was born around 1753 and taken to the American colonies as a slave, but learned how to read and write, publishing her first poem at the age of thirteen. Her fame became international when her poems were published in London. She is remembered not only for her poetry, but also for inspiring abolitionists in America and Europe.

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The Declaration of Independence asserted that "all Men are created equal" and yet enslaved African Americans had been systematically deprived of their rights since at least 1619. Today we learn about the passages condemning slavery that were deleted from the Declaration of Independence.

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The South became increasingly dependent on the labor of enslaved African Americans, especially after the invention of the cotton gin in 1793. Cotton was a main cash crop. This dependence on forced labor led to the refusal of the South to abolish slavery.

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