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The Ethical Dilemma Faced By People During The Underground Railroad

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The Ethical Dilemma Faced By People During The Underground Railroad
Many of the facts surrounding the Underground Railroad changed between researchers because they must make their own conclusions based on the evidence that they do have. The most common inconsistency I saw was about the exact time and who was involved. I found author Henrietta Buckmaster to have the most convincing explanation of it. She explained the base facts about what it was and how it worked, but then went into more depth about who was involved and why they were involved. I found her explanation of the religious groups being key factors in the success of the Underground Railroad to be very interesting. It makes sense that those groups of people who feel called to help because they were guiding their lives based on what they saw in Scripture. …show more content…
People were faced with the difficult decision to risk their lives to help those in need. These people had to consider the impact of being enslaved. They had to decide whether it was worth it to challenge people who may have more power than them in order to stand up for what was right. While not all slave owners were outright cruel to their slaves, they had to decide if having a slave was ethically right. While it seems clear that the ethical decision would be to help the slaves, it was not always that simple. There are many different factors which could have greatly impacted people’s decision to help or not. For example, people had their own family’s safety to consider. If they became involved in helping the slaves, they could risk their safety as well as their family’s safety. The laws about helping slaves escape made it more difficult for people to make the decision to help. Overall, it is an astonishing part of history that there had to be a secret network in order to save the lives of so many oppressed people. There was a widespread growth of hatred and evil during this time. Slavery was negatively affecting both free people and slaves. Slavery took away the humanity of the people involved. Those who were enslaved were not able to live the lives that they wanted. Slave owners were corrupted by the power they felt by owning another person. They lost any compassion they have for other

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