Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here. When we hear the term underground railroad, we usually think of the network of secret overland routes traversed by enslaved people escaping north into Ohio and across the border into Canada. In America, in the early eighteen hundreds, the underground Railroad launched a freedom movement that brought people of varying religions and races together in a unified fight
against the horror and injustice of chattel slavery. But did you know that there was a southern version of the underground railroad as well. In the early eighteen hundreds, enslaved black people in Florida and other regions of the South were hundreds of miles from border states like Maryland and Kentucky and thousands of miles away from British Canada, making their options and odds for a successful escape that way close to zero. We spoke via email with Dr Paul George,
Resident History and at History Miami Museum. He said the Saltwater Underground Railroad headed south into Spanish Florida, a region which was really off the grid and close to other areas outside of the US which might behavens for fugitives. Believed to have operated from between eight and eighteen sixty one. The Saltwater Underground Railroad refers to the coastal escape route
followed by enslaved people into the British controlled Bahamas. People who are running away from southern slave states escaped through an underground to South Florida. From there, some paid for their passage on Bahamian vessels, while others made their way across the perilous Atlantic in dugout canoes and small boats. Once out to sea under cover of night, they faced unimaginable unknowns, unpredictable weather and storms, recaptured by slave hunters,
assault by pirates, and unfathomably deep dark waters. Situated about a hundred and fifty miles or two hundred forty kilometers off the coast of Key Biscape in Miami, Florida, Bahamas were a viable destination for several reasons. For one, in eighteen twenty five, the British government decreed that anyone who relocated to British territory was free, regardless of their prior status, and in eighteen thirty four slavery was abolished in all
British territories, including the Bahamas. Free black people in the British Bahamas could get married, own land, and pursue an education. Secondly, most of the Bahamas inhabitants were black, it was relatively easy for escape ees to assimilate into the diverse communities of Bahamians made up largely of descendants of enslaved Africans, some of whom were themselves escape ees called Maroons, including some who had taken refuge with the Seminole people. George said.
They settled into neighborhoods alongside families of earlier fugitives. Many of their descendants still reside there, maritime people as well as farmers. Between eight and eighteen thirty seven, in the early years after the US acquired Florida from Spain in eighteen nineteen, hundreds of Maroons fled to Andrews Island in
the Bahamas. The US paid off Spain's debt to landowners who had lost their human property, and thus began a forty year campaign to locate and capture formerly enslaved Africans who had escaped to Spanish Florida, as well as to force the seven old people onto reservations west of the Mississippi on the Trail of Tears. In fifty six, the Spanish had brought the first enslaved Africans to what would become America, though that colony collapsed and British colonies began
springing up a century later. In an effort to destabilize those colonies, Spain, which had by then established a foothold further south, began offering asylum to refugees from slavery in sixteen ninety three, though only if they converted to Catholicism and did four years of military service. That enticing policy made Spanish Florida into a haven for enslaved people seeking their freedom, and led to the birth of the First League lea sanctioned free black settlement in what would become
the United States. Fort Mose near St. Augustine. This community was probably a way point for black refugees heading south, but with the ratification of the Honest Adams Treaty in eighteen Florida effectively became a US territory that allowed slavery, spurring Black Floridians to make their way through palmetto fields, dense marshy flats mangrove forests and swamps to get to the beaches of southern Florida, where they could hopefully secure
safe passage to freedom in the Bahamas. George said Miami was likely the main escape point of the Saltwater Underground Railroad, more specifically keep Askayne on the Bay and Ocean, seven miles southeast of Miami, with the Cape Florida Lighthouse up by, it was all over for that main escape route of the Saltwater Underground Railroad. That lighthouse still stands in Bill Bag's Cape Florida State Park on Key Biscayne and is one of two designated National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom
sites in Florida. Historians estimate that before the eighteen thirties, as many as six thousand enslaved people had escaped to the Bahamas. Today's episode was written by Carrie Tetro and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on those and lots of other topics, visit how Stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.