We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,751,737.65 | Books Available: 730,344 | Members Online: 26

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad

Gateway to Freedom The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad
Author: Eric Foner

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 Ame... more »rican 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. 16 pages of illustrations

ISBN-13: 9780393352191
ISBN-10: 0393352196
Publication Date: 1/18/2016
Pages: 320
Edition: 1
Rating:

Currently 2.8/5 Stars.

2.8 stars, based on 2 ratings

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover, Audio CD
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Genres:

History >> Americas >> United States
Nonfiction >> Social Sciences >> Discrimination & Racism

Back to the Top ↑

Search - Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad

Loading...