Name ______Class Period______

Anticipation Guide for The Underground Railroad

Circle true if you think the statement is true or false if you think the statement is not true.

After you answer the anticipation guide questions, your teacher may provide you with information about the Underground Railroad or direct you to go online to read about it. As you read about the Underground Railroad, rewrite any false statements to make them true. If time and your teacher permit, check out “The History Channel” at

  1. Only slaves attempting to escape were considered part of the Underground Railroad.
/

True

/ False
  1. Not many written records of the Underground Railroad are available not only because many slaves were illiterate but also because people were afraid they would be caught if they were found with written information.
/

True

/ False
  1. The Underground Railroad was operating as early as the 1500’s.
/

True

/ False
  1. The greatest motivator to inspire slaves to flee was the inhumane treatment they received.
/

True

/ False
  1. Escaping slaves used the sun as a compass.
/

True

/ False
  1. Fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad were known as “packages” or “freight.”
/

True

/ False
  1. The term Underground Railroad may have originated when the slave Tice Davids escaped and disappeared without a trace. His owner wondered it the slave was traveling on an underground road.
/

True

/ False
  1. Some slaves took refuge with Creek and Muscogee Indians.
/

True

/ False
  1. Some escaped slaves remained in free settlements in North Carolina, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky.
/

True

/ False
  1. Slaves often planned their escapes on weekends and holidays so they would have a couple of days’ head start before authorities began searching for them.
/

True

/ False
  1. One trick used by slaves when they tried to escape was to use disguises.
/

True

/ False
  1. The Fugitive Slave Law enacted in 1850 made it illegal to use dogs to hunt for escaped slaves.
/

True

/ False
  1. Harriet Tubman was a runaway slave who helped rescue more than 300 slaves.
/

True

/ False
  1. The Emancipation Proclamation freed every slave in the United States.
/

True

/ False
  1. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution ensured that slavery could never exist in the United States.
/

True

/ False

Write the name of the person involved in the fight to end slavery in the United States identified in each statement below.

  1. Author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a novel that was highly instrumental in spreading abolitionist sentiment.
  1. Abolitionist and insurrectionist who dreamed of establishing a free state for liberated slaves and led a raid on a Federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.
  1. Publisher of the Liberator and founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society
  1. Former slave who became one of the most successful “conductors” on the Underground Railroad.
  1. Abolitionist, orator, writer; the most important black leader of the nineteenth century.
  1. Abolitionist and feminist who, as a Quaker, advocated antislavery and boycotted all slavery products.

For Use with Harriet Tubman & the Underground Railroad Lesson 1: Active Literacy