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Summary
Summary
More than any other scholar, Eric Foner has influenced our understanding of America's history. Now, making brilliant use of extraordinary evidence, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian once again reconfigures the national saga of American slavery and freedom.
A deeply entrenched institution, slavery lived on legally and commercially even in the northern states that had abolished it after the American Revolution. Slaves could be found in the streets of New York well after abolition, traveling with owners doing business with the city's major banks, merchants, and manufacturers. New York was also home to the North's largest free black community, making it a magnet for fugitive slaves seeking refuge. Slave catchers and gangs of kidnappers roamed the city, seizing free blacks, often children, and sending them south to slavery.
To protect fugitives and fight kidnappings, the city's free blacks worked with white abolitionists to organize the New York Vigilance Committee in 1835. In the 1840s vigilance committees proliferated throughout the North and began collaborating to dispatch fugitive slaves from the upper South, Washington, and Baltimore, through Philadelphia and New York, to Albany, Syracuse, and Canada. These networks of antislavery resistance, centered on New York City, became known as the underground railroad. Forced to operate in secrecy by hostile laws, courts, and politicians, the city's underground-railroad agents helped more than 3,000 fugitive slaves reach freedom between 1830 and 1860. Until now, their stories have remained largely unknown, their significance little understood.
Building on fresh evidence--including a detailed record of slave escapes secretly kept by Sydney Howard Gay, one of the key organizers in New York--Foner elevates the underground railroad from folklore to sweeping history. The story is inspiring--full of memorable characters making their first appearance on the historical stage--and significant--the controversy over fugitive slaves inflamed the sectional crisis of the 1850s. It eventually took a civil war to destroy American slavery, but here at last is the story of the courageous effort to fight slavery by "practical abolition," person by person, family by family.
Author Notes
Eric Foner is the preeminent historian of his generation. His books have won the top awards in the profession, and he has been president of both major history organizations, the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians. He is the author of Give Me Liberty!, which displays all of his trademark strengths as a scholar, teacher, and writer. A specialist on the Civil War/Reconstruction period, he regularly teaches the nineteenth-century survey at Columbia University, where he is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History. In 2011, Foner's The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery won the Pulitzer Prize in History, the Bancroft Prize, and the Lincoln Prize. His Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad is a 2015 New York Times bestseller.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Acclaimed narrator Jackson delivers a competent, though not always inspired, performance of Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Foner's sweeping narrative on the inner workings of the Underground Railroad. Jackson is most passionate for the individual accounts of those involved in the secret network, which was created to help slaves find their freedom. Yet for the most part, the material centers on the political, social, and racial divides within the abolition movement itself, as radicals and moderates struggled with one another to stake a claim for leadership in the struggle to free black Americans from bondage. Jackson's tone subtly illuminates the dynamic of the various players, particularly when conveying the stance of white leaders in the mainstream political process, contrasted with the voices of the more revolutionary participants. Listeners with an academic bent and already steeped in the history of the era will feel engaged, but a more general audience seeking to make initial connections with American abolitionism may need to look elsewhere. A Norton hardcover. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* In the 1850s, when so much of the commerce of New York was tied to slavery, political sentiments were not necessarily aligned with abolitionists. Still, a powerful contingent of New Yorkers, from freed slaves as much concerned about their own welfare in the face of the threat of kidnappings to more prominent citizens secretly involved in clandestine activities that mostly went undocumented for obvious reasons, worked to resist slavery. Drawing on previously untapped sources in an archive at Columbia University, Foner offers meticulous accounts of how abolitionists helped escaped slaves travel between the South to safety in upstate New York and Canada. A key figure Foner reveals is Sydney Howard Gay, an abolitionist newspaperman who recorded details of escapees, their movements in what later became known as the Underground Railroad, and efforts by abolitionists to raise funds to continue financing their campaign. Foner offers harrowing details of escape and powerful stories of those who risked their lives for freedom. He also details the growing frictions in a city that became embroiled in the secessionist debate as the Fugitive Slave Law and economic interests clashed with ideals about democracy and freedom. A sweeping, detailed look at an important enterprise in the history of U.S. resistance to slavery.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2015 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
"I DREADED THE approach of summer, when snakes and slaveholders made their appearance," wrote Harriet Jacobs, author, educator, servant, mother of two - and escaped slave. Jacobs had fled from Edenton, N.C., to get away from the attentions of the father of a little girl who "owned" her. These had persisted even after she had two children by another white man (and a member of Congress), so she "hid in a small crawl space above her free grandmother's kitchen in the town" for seven years, as Eric Foner informs us in his illuminating new history, "Gateway to Freedom." Eventually, passage north was secured on a ship with a "friendly captain," and Jacobs settled in New York City. But as an escaped slave, she was never really secure anywhere in the United States, especially after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, part of the Compromise of 1850. When, after 10 years of freedom, she learned that her owner "was making preparations to have me caught," she fled again, to Boston, where abolitionist feeling was higher than in New York, which had long been debased by bigotry and the dollar into more pro-Southern sympathies. It may seem difficult to believe that slave owners and hired slave catchers prowled the streets of Manhattan before the Civil War, openly carrying whips, pistols and manacles in order to reclaim their "property," but such was the case. They "entered black churches during Sabbath services looking for runaways, and broke into blacks' homes and carried them off without legal proceeding," Foner tells us. Fugitive slaves in the city, wrote the Southern-born abolitionist Sarah Grimké, were "hunted like a partridge on the mountain." Unsurprisingly, the men who would make their living in this way were not terribly scrupulous about just which black face they decided to seize upon. Once the slave trade from Africa was banned in 1808, and as slavery in the North was slowly wound down, "an epidemic of kidnapping of free blacks, especially children," occurred all over the Northeast. After the new federal statute of 1850 was passed, Foner writes, "the abolitionist William P. Powell departed for England with his wife and seven children, although no member of the family had ever been a slave." The 1850 law - supported by some of the most illustrious figures in congressional history, and hailed as vital for preserving the Union - was particularly odious. It rendered null and void the longstanding state "personal liberty" laws that had been used to declare runaway slaves free in the past, and provided "severe civil and criminal penalties for anyone who harbored fugitive slaves or interfered with their capture." Special commissioners were given the final say on all fugitives, along with a financial incentive - $10 a head! - to decide in favor of the slave catchers. Federal marshals could deputize anyone they wished or "call on the assistance of local officials and even bystanders" to help in apprehending suspected runaways. In other words, the new law would corrupt all citizens into aiding and abetting America's great moral crime. But as Foner explains, fugitive slave laws were part of the warp and woof of the country from the very beginning, dating back to the 17th century in colonial New York. The Northwest Ordinance of July 1787 held that slaves "may be lawfully reclaimed" from free states and territories, and soon after, a fugitive slave clause - Article IV, Section 2 - was woven into the Constitution at the insistence of the Southern delegates, leading South Carolina's Charles G Pinckney to boast, "We have obtained a right to recover our slaves in whatever part of America they may take refuge, which is a right we had not before." Resistance to this sprang up in societies for manumission, and sometimes for the "colonization" of freed slaves back to Africa. But as it became clear that slavery was not going to die the natural death that had been devoutly wished for, "vigilance" and antislavery committees were set up. They came to form the Underground Railroad, a loose network of black and white individuals intent on actively helping slaves gain freedom (only in Canada was it truly secure) and evade recapture. FONER, WHO as one of our leading historians has written or edited 24 books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery," does a superb job of focusing the story of the Underground Railroad on a human level. He makes vivid the incredible risks and hardships so many slaves were willing to endure for their freedom, and how much it meant to them. They came by ship and by train, by horse and foot; by ways however arduous and ingenious. One William Jordan, it was reported, lived for 10 months in the woods, "surrounded by bears, wildcats, snakes, etc." - although he "feared nothing but man." Henry (Box) Brown had himself packed into a box three feet long, and shipped from Richmond to Philadelphia. The journey took almost 24 hours and nearly killed him, but according to eyewitness accounts, he stepped out of the box "with a face radiant with joy," and began to sing a "hymn of praise." Foner also performs an invaluable service in restoring the record of liberated blacks who helped their fellow AfricanAmericans to freedom. Here are, among many others, not only the legendary Harriet Tubman - who more than lives up to the legend - but also Louis Napoleon, an illiterate porter and window washer who "was credited with having helped over 3,000 fugitives escape from bondage" ; the indefatigable David Ruggles, a freeborn black man who specialized in plucking slaves off ships in New York Harbor; and the anonymous crowds of free blacks, men and women, who rushed again and again to rescue fugitive slaves in violent street battles. On one occasion in Pennsylvania, they even killed a slave owner. The penalties for whites helping the Underground Railroad could be severe, including mob assaults, tar-and-featherings, the destruction of their careers, lengthy prison sentences and even the fatwa that the parish of East Feliciana, La., put on the head of the white abolitionist Arthur Tappan, offering the immense sum of $50,000 for his "delivery." But none of it equaled what blacks stood to lose if caught down South trying to free their brothers and sisters. They were not deterred. "I shall have the consolation to know that I had done some good to my people," Tubman replied when asked by a white abolitionist how she would feel if she were to be caught and put back into slavery. Pitted against white mobs, hostile magistrates, policemen eager to claim rewards and the nearly demonic persistence of slaveholders looking to reclaim their property, the little band of men and women who ran the Underground Railroad were able to rescue "somewhere between 1,000 and 5,000 per year between 1830 and 1860." Although this was a small number set against a total slave population approaching four million, such resistance, as Foner shows, was able to leverage the greater prize. The Underground Railroad infuriated the South, providing "the immediate catalyst" for the Fugitive Slave Act, which became in turn "a source of deep resentment in much of the North," when armed ruffians started showing up in Northern towns and cities to drag away people's friends and neighbors. The South, The New York Times noted in 1859, had made "the doctrine of state rights, so long slavery's friend, ... its foe," poisoning relations between the sections until, as Foner concludes in this invaluable addition to our history, "the fugitive slave issue played a crucial role in bringing about the Civil War." Fugitive slaves, one abolitionist wrote, were 'hunted like a partridge on the mountain.' KEVIN BAKER is the author, most recently, of the historical novel "The Big Crowd."
Choice Review
A new book from Eric Foner (Columbia) is always news, and this one has all of the features that readers have come to associate with its author: wide-ranging research, readable prose, and convincing arguments. Foner's subject, the Underground Railroad, is one of the most popular in US history today, probably because it is a happy example of black and white people working together to advance justice. While acknowledging that much of the legend that grew up around the Underground Railroad after the Civil War (e.g., heroic white conductors aiding passive, terrified runaway blacks) needs revision, Foner also argues that some revisionists have gone too far in denying the existence of any organized network of abolitionists who aided fugitive slaves. The focus is New York City. Using a "Record of Fugitives" kept by abolitionist editor Sydney H. Gay in the 1850s, Foner finds a small group of black and white abolitionists who worked together to move slaves through New York to Canada. The author does not attempt national coverage, so this is not the definitive work on the Underground Railroad. But it is among the best. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. --Thomas D. Hamm, Earlham College
Kirkus Review
New sources reveal the perilous journeys of fugitive slaves.Prolific historian Foner (History/Columbia Univ.; The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, 2010, etc.), winner of the Pulitzer, Bancroft and Lincoln prizes, traces the convoluted trail known as the Underground Railroad in the roiling decades before the Civil War. Drawing on rich archival sources, including the papers of Sydney Howard Gay, a prominent New York abolitionist who scrupulously documented his cases, Foner uncovers the tireless, dangerous work of a handful of determined abolitionists and the quests of thousands of black men, women and children to achieve freedom. Slaves risked their lives to escape primarily due to physical violence, fear of being sold or broken promises of manumission. Many headed to Philadelphia, where Quakers and freed blacks hid them, gave them money and sent them on their way North. In Canada, Foner writes, they found "greater safety and more civil and political rightsincluding serving on juries, testifying in court, and votingthan what existed in most of the United States." Although a "pervasive antislavery atmosphere" prevailed in Syracuse, the atmosphere in New York City was far different. In the 18th century, slave auctions regularly had taken place at a Wall Street market, and ownership of slaves by New Yorkers was common. Even by the mid-19th century, New York was called " a poor neglected city' when it came to abolitionism"; pro-Southern businessmen eagerly upheld fugitive slave laws, cooperating with slave owners intent on retrieving their human property. "You don't know, you can't," wrote Gay to a Boston abolitionist, "just what my position is.You are surrounded by a people growing in anti-slavery; I by a people who hate it." Foner brings to life fraught decades of contention, brutality and amazing acts of moral courage. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Starred Review. Preeminent scholar Foner (DeWitt Clinton Professor of History, Columbia Univ.; The Fiery Trial; Reconstruction) adds to his impressive oeuvre with this fascinating study of the Underground Railroad. The author eschews the common approach of documenting the phenomenon from the South, instead centering his monograph on New York City. Through individuals such as abolitionist Sydney Howard Gay and minister Charles Ray, he demonstrates that ferrying escaped slaves from the city's waterfront to other locales throughout the North was fraught with extreme danger. This was especially true after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, when political and social elites in the city worked with their Southern counterparts to seize escaped slaves, and even free African Americans, in order to preserve their close economic ties. VERDICT This seminal work is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the United States from the beginning of the sectional conflict between the North and the South to the conclusion of the Civil War. Readers should also strongly consider Passages to Freedom, edited by David W. Blight. [See Prepub Alert, 7/21/14.] John R. Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| List of Maps and Illustrations | p. xi |
| 1 Introduction: Rethinking the Underground Railroad | p. 1 |
| 2 Slavery and Freedom in New York | p. 28 |
| 3 Origins of the Underground Railroad: The New York Vigilance Committee | p. 63 |
| 4 A patchwork system: The Underground Railroad in the 1840s | p. 91 |
| 5 The Fugitive Slave Law and the Crisis of the Black Community | p. 119 |
| 6 The metropolitan corridor: The Underground Railroad in the 1850s | p. 151 |
| 7 The record of fugitives: An Account of Runaway Slaves in the 1850s | p. 190 |
| 8 The End of the Underground Railroad | p. 216 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 231 |
| Notes | p. 235 |
| Index | p. 277 |