Introduction: rethinking the underground railroad -- Slavery and freedom in New York -- The New York Vigilance Committee -- A patchwork system: the underground railroad in the 1840s -- The Fugitive Slave Law and the crisis of the Black community -- The metropolitan corridor -- The record of fugitives -- The end of the underground railroad.
Summary
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Eric Foner relates the dramatic story of fugitive slaves and the antislavery activists who defied the law to help them reach freedom.