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Black History and Blacks in U.S. History
A Nation Divided
(1840-1861)

The Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   high interest, readability grades 4 to 5
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   4.69

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    fines, historic, kidnap, slavery, running, runaway, fined, unfair, criminal, middle, public, escape, jail, freedom, lead, owner
     content words:    Underground Railroad, Fugitive Slave Law, Thomas Garrett, Calvin Fairbank, Civil War

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The Underground Railroad
By Cathy Pearl 		  
1     It is the middle of the night and clouds cover the moon. This is good because it will make you harder to find. As quietly as you can, you keep walking north. There are people in the woods hunting for you and you don't want to be caught. You aren't a criminal. You are a slave who is trying to run north to freedom.
 
2     The Underground Railroad was made up of a lot of different people. Some of them were white, and some were black. These people helped slaves escape to the Northern states and to Canada.
 
3     The Underground Railroad was not underground. And railroads were not used. But it was a good name for the system that helped slaves make their way north.
 
4     The system worked well. Hundreds of slaves were helped north every year. Between 1810 and 1850, about 100,000 slaves used the Underground Railroad to run away.

Paragraphs 5 to 15:
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