Editorial Content for Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
The New York Vigilance Committee, which “did not scruple to help fugitive slaves to places of safety,” was a linchpin in the maintenance of the Underground Railway. Central to the facts presented in GATEWAY TO FREEDOM by Pulitzer Prize winner Eric Foner (THE FIERY TRIAL: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery) is a new disclosure of papers by Sydney Howard Gay, a New York abolitionist who painstakingly recorded hundreds of escape accounts.
The idea of an “underground railroad” came from the imagination of a slave who hoped to escape along it, in 1839. The term quickly caught on, so much so that when the real railroads were in financial crisis, newspapers enjoyed noting that the underground variety was the only one not suffering the losses.
"Foner’s detailed histories --- of the slaves who left the South seeking freedom, and those on the Northern side who determinedly assisted them --- bring the courage, charity and vision of both groups to light and life."
The Vigilance Committee was formed in 1835. In 1850, the (second) Fugitive Slave Act made it incumbent on all US citizens to aid in the return of escaped “property.” This in turn made Gay’s journals treasonable, so by one of those flukes that make scholarly research both daunting and rewarding, it was only recently that Foner gained access to them, after earlier investigators had concluded that these remarkable accounts, like similar materials, had been burned. Some of Gay’s better-known subjects were Harriet Jacobs (who later wrote her own memoir, INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL), and Henry “Box” Brown, who himself had been crated and sent from Richmond to Philadelphia in a container only three feet long, nearly suffocating twice when his head was set downwards.
But equally moving are the tales collected by Gay and others of the throngs of anonymous men, women and children who walked hundreds of miles by night, in dark and dangerous forests, with no idea of geography, hunted by patrols; or traveled as stowaways in a ship’s hold, reliant on the good will of the captain from whom they bought their passage --- always facing the possibility of capture and a return to far worse conditions than those they fled. One woman with a young daughter, hoping to join her escaped husband, hid in an excavated dugout under a house “with no means of light or ventilation,” Gay recorded, for five months.
Though many abolitionists were Quakers (underground lore taught the escapees to recognize them by their square collars and “thees” and “thous”) who eschewed violence, others boldly urged newly freed slaves to use firearms in defense of their liberty. In all cases, these idealistic citizens were acting in defiance of federal law but in concord with many state laws, and in accordance with their personal morality. Meanwhile, President Lincoln could not suggest that the slave owners did not have a legal right to reclaim their property as stated in the Act, but deeply felt the plight of captives longing for release; he once wrote, “I bite my lip and keep quiet.”
Foner’s detailed histories --- of the slaves who left the South seeking freedom, and those on the Northern side who determinedly assisted them --- brings the courage, charity and vision of both groups to light and life.
Teaser
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 --- Eric Foner elevates the underground railroad from folklore to sweeping history. 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.
Promo
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 --- Eric Foner elevates the underground railroad from folklore to sweeping history. 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.
About the Book
The dramatic story of fugitive slaves and the antislavery activists who defied the law to help them reach freedom.
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.
