His Promised Land Analysis

“The right to hold human beings in perpetual and hopeless slavery is only found in the codes of barbarians and despots” (Levine 137). If this was the view of one Massachusetts’ congressman how did others feel about slavery and what did they do to stop the spread of slavery? Of course slaves fought against their bondage in subtle ways from within the perimeter of their plantation owners and their plantations that the slaves were forced to work on. Within Levine’s textbook he states that slaves resisted their masters or overseers by being clumsy, breaking tools, making the authority figure on the plantation explain the task multiple times, and slowing their working pace therefore the expectations of the slave owner were decreased from that specific …show more content…
To understand what these possibilities and limitations are one must first understand what and where the Borderland was that slaves used to help aid themselves in their attempted escapes. This area of land plays a big role in the possibilities and limitations that were handed to slaves as they took to their journeys on the Underground Railroad. In the book His Promised Land, the autobiography of John P. Parker whom was a former slave and a conductor of the Underground Railroad, he makes notice of the Borderland and its service to the Underground Railroad. The Borderland in John P. Parker’s words was a strip of land that laid between the free states of the North and the slave states of the South that had the Ohio River flowing through this area. The Ohio River was not right in the middle of this land area that was considered the Borderland as Parker explains that the Northern side of the Borderland extended to the top of the Ohio riverbank while on the Southern side of the Borderland, this area could reach as far as to Tennessee (His Promised Land …show more content…
Many of these possibilities and limitations came to slaves while they were in the middle land area between the free states and the slave states which became to be known as the Borderland. There seemed to be more possibilities for slaves in the southern part of the Borderland because in the earlier years of the Underground Railroad there were many forests that offered hiding for slaves during the day, but there was also the grave limitation of groups of patrol men looking for runaway slaves that way they could be rightfully returned to their masters. Even when slaves were through the southern portion of the Borderland they still carried with them this grave fear of being caught by a patrol group because the entire Borderland was under watch for runaway slaves. Throughout the entire journey of the Underground Railroad slaves were faced with limitations, but also given possibilities. Brave people like John P. Parker helped escaping slaves on the Underground Railroad and gave them the greatest possibility a slave could gain and that was