National Park Service Historian Barbara Tagger discussed the "Underground Railroad" in a workshop here on Saturday.

She said there were two things she wanted audience members to understand about the secret 19th Century movement that helped escaped slaves reach freedom.

First, she said, the Underground Railroad wasn't literally underground and, secondly, it did not involve trains.

However, she said, the secret organization did use railroad terminology, including terms like "conductor" and "station master" for those helping escaped slaves make their way to areas where slavery did not exist.

Freedom-seeking slaves, she said, were referred to as "packages" and "parcels" in Underground Railroad communications.

Tagger, who is employed by the National Park Service in Atlanta, was one of several workshop presenters who took part here Saturday in the second biennial "Oh Freedom Emancipation Day" Celebration at the First Baptist Church of Greeneville.

Similar events are being sponsored every two years by the African-American Task Force Coalition of East Tennessee.

Tagger told the audience during her workshop that research is continuing locally in an effort to determine if the Underground Railroad operated in Greene County.

But, on Saturday, she said she offered no information specific in that regard.

Tagger told the audience that although the Underground Railroad is often said to have operated between 1830 and 1865, it likely operated, in one form or another, well before 1830.

Resistance to enslavement, Tagger said, began as early as when the first slaves were brought to North America.

Many slaves, she said, threw themselves and their children from slave ships into the ocean while en route to America rather than face a life of slavery.

Once enslaved on plantations, she said, other slaves routinely sabotaged plantation operations by feigning illness, pretending not to understand how to carry out certain tasks and purposely breaking equipment.

Tagger said another misconception about the Underground Railroad was that it was largely operated by white citizens opposed to slavery.

In fact, she said, "free blacks" were more heavily involved in operating the Underground Railroad than were white citizens who also assisted.

Slaves who fled a southern plantation, she said, would travel from "plantation to plantation" across the South, where they would "blend in" with the slave population during the day and then travel by night to the next plantation.

Other slaves, she said, would assist freedom-seeking slaves as they fled.

She explained that Southern coastal cities, such as Charleston and Baltimore had large populations of "free black" citizens before the Civil War. Many freedom-seeking slaves, she said, made their way to such cities, where they "blended in" with the free black population and eventually made their way to the northern United States where slave-holding had been abolished, or to other countries.

Tagger said another misconception about the Underground Railroad was that freedom-seeking slaves always tried to flee to the north.

Actually, she said, escaping slaves in Florida and South Georgia, often fled south to Caribbean nations where slave-holding had been abolished.

Freedom-seeking slaves in western portions of the American South often fled into the western territories that had not yet become parts of the United States and to Mexico, where slavery had been abolished earlier.

One group of escaped slaves, known as "Black Seminoles," were "removed," by the U.S. government, along with Native American Seminoles, from Florida after the "Second Seminole War" in the 1840s.

First sent to Oklahoma, as were Cherokees from Tennessee and North Carolina, many of the so-called Black Seminoles made their way first to Texas, and eventually, to Mexico.

However, Tagger said, many slaves in the Upper South did flee to the north, often making their way eventually to New England or Canada.

One of the most celebrated escaped slaves who became involved in the Underground Railroad was Harriett Tubman, Tagger said.

Tubman, she noted, escaped slavery in Maryland to freedom, and then over a period of years repeatedly returned to slave-holding territory to help about 70 others family members and friends escape as well.

Unlike Tubman, Tagger said, most slaves who ran away in search of freedom tended to be young men who could better withstand the rigors of fleeing across country.

But sometimes, she said, even slave couples found creative ways to escape.

William and Ellen Craft, of Georgia, devised an escape plan in which Ellen Craft, who was very light skinned, posed as the son of a southern planter who was traveling to Boston and had her husband, William, pose as the young man's servant.

Ellen Craft could neither read, nor write, and to fool anyone who might ask her to either read or write anything during their journey to freedom, feigned vision problems and wore her right arm in a sling.

The Crafts, Tagger said, made their way to Boston, then to Canada, and, finally to England.

They returned to the United States after the Civil War, she said.

Another slave found an ingenious way to escape slavery in Richmond, Va., she said. With the help of friends, he had himself sealed in a wooden box and shipped to freedom in Philadelphia.

Attempting to flee to freedom was not a decision that was taken lightly by slaves, Tagger said.

She noted that "Fugitive Slave Laws" enacted as early as 1793, imposed stiff penalties on anyone found to have helped slaves escape.

In addition, she said, slave owners often severely punished the families of slaves who fled.

Although beatings and maimings were commonly inflicted on escaped slaves who were captured, Tagger said, the ultimate punishment was to be "sold away" from family members.