The Fight for Freedom

STORY 1: THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD (USA) Harriet Tubman escaped at the age of 29 from slavery in Maryland where she was born, when her owner died. She became a conductor for the Underground Railroad and was later a nurse and a spy for the Northern side in the American Civil War. She made 19 different trips from the South, going north to the safety of Canada. She saved 300 slaves. Slaves were hidden in covered carts with false bottoms and driven between the Underground Railroad stations where they were fed and hidden during daylight hours before moving on. They often had to hide in forests, cross rivers and climb mountains. Slave owners offered a reward of $40,000 for Harriets capture, but she was never caught. After the war, Harriet ran a home fro elderly African Americans until she died in 1913. As many as 3000, black people and white people worked as conductors and as many as 50,000 slaves escaped this way.

STORY 2: THE REBELLION OF TOUSSAINT LOVERTURE IN HAITI

Toussaint L Overture was born a slave in 1743, the grandson of an African King. His grandfather had been captured as a Slave and taken to the island of Saint Domingue (an island owned by the French, today called Haiti).
Unusually, Toussaint was taught to read and write and he studied Latin, geometry and French. He was then put in charge of other slaves on the plantation. However, Toussaint turned against his slave master and began a rebellion against the French and he gathered together 3000 slaves. In 1792, the rebels beat the British who had invaded to try to take control. In 1798, Toussaint became Governor of Saint Domingue.

STORY 3: REBELLION ON BOARD THE AMISTAD Although the slave trade had been banned by north America, Spain and Britain By 1820, thousands of Africans were smuggled into the Southern States illegally. In 1839, the slaves on one illegal ship, the Amistad revolted. They killed the captain and the cook and set the rest of the crew adrift in a small boat and tried to force the Spanish slave traders to sail to Africa. They were led by Cinque, the son of an African chief. The Spaniards followed his orders, however by night they sailed the ship towards the North American Coast. The navy rescued the Spanish and the Africans were arrested. When the case went to court, the Queen of Spain demanded that the ship and all its slaves and cargo should be returned to Spain. The jury agreed with the Africans and they returned to Africa in 1841. The case had achieved a great deal of publicity in newspapers all around America as the slaves won their case.

STORY 4: MORGAN JOHN RHYS, A WELSH ABOLITIONIST He was born in 1760 on the borders of Glamorgan and Monmouth, and became a minister with the Baptists at Pontypool. It is believed that he was the author of a pamphlet published anonymously in 1792, attacking slavery in the Caribbean. It was entitled: The sufferings of many thousands of black men in wretched slavery in Jamaica and other places; being submitted for the serious consideration of the amiable Welsh people, in the hope of persuading them to give up sugar, treacle and rum. And this was the first publication of its kind in Welsh. About the same time, and anti-slavery ballad was published as well, and it is believed that Morgan John Rhys was the author of that too. Here are a few lines:

Whenever you see Sugar, Remember how it came, Through the unnatural labour Of the poor and wretched slave.
In 1794 Morgan John Rhys moved to the new United States to look for somewhere to establish a Welsh colony. He travelled through the South and spent some months in Savannah, Georgia, where he established a church for the black people and planned the establishment of a school for their children.