Seed of War

Among the factors that contributed to the coming of the Civil War was the increasing animosity between Southerners and Northerners over the issue of slavery. The operation of the Underground Railroad to help slaves escape to the free North and Canada, which was supported by Northern anti-slavery societies, was a sharp thorn in the sides of slaveholders.

Two major "stations" on the Underground Railroad were located near Preston. Local Quakers, long opposed to slavery, operated one and Harriet Tubman and her parents, Benjamin and Harriet Ross, ran the other. The success of these and other stations in Maryland led to the calling of local and statewide slaveholder conventions, which denounced the North for harboring fugitive slaves. Maryland slave owners were further enraged when these two stations were exposed in 1857-58, but most of their operators, including Tubman, escaped to Northern states and Canada.

On the other hand, Northern abolitionists were angered when a captured "conductor," Sam Green, received a ten-year prison sentence. The respective animosities of slaveholders and abolitionists, increased by the Underground Railroad, finally found expression in armed conflict in 1861.

(caption of picture, lower right): Harriet Tubman may have crossed Hunting Creek at or near Linchester Mill enroute to and from her parents Underground Railroad station.

(caption of picture, center top): Linchester Mill had changed very little from the period of Harriet Tubman when this photo was taken, circa 1897.

(caption of map on right): Possible Underground Railroad route between the Choptank River and Willow Grove, Delaware used by Harriet Tubman.

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Show me all markers in:  Preston, MD  |  Caroline County  |  21655  |  Maryland  |  United States of America

Linchester Mill-Living Dangerously
Linchester
Linchester Mill
Leverton House-Finding Safe Haven
Freedom
Preston
Site of Frazier's Chapel
Mt. Pleasant Cemetery-Dangerous Rendezvous
Mt. Pleasant M. E. Church Historical
Choptank

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