Gateway to Freedom

November 3, 2014
The Underground Railroad is at once one of the best known and least understood aspects in the history of American slavery, but Pulitzer Prize–winner Foner (The Fiery Trial) makes expert use of an unusual primary source to illuminate the workings of this secret system. He focuses on the antebellum accounts of Sydney Howard Gay, a Manhattan newspaper editor, abolitionist sympathizer, and Underground Railroad participant, whose “record of fugitives” sheds light on the experiences of more than 200 enslaved men and women who passed through New York City. The accounts also offer fascinating glimpses of the lives of individual fugitive slaves, including Simon Hill, who walked from southern Virginia to Philadelphia, and Winnie Patsy, who with her young daughter spent five months hiding in a dark, unventilated crawl space outside Norfolk, Va. Foner shows how Gay’s network functioned on a practical level, helping fugitives to move from one safe space to another along the East Coast—often to Canada—and he emphasizes the crucial role played by African-Americans themselves, from dockworkers to clergymen, in helping fugitives to freedom. The Underground Railroad is much mythologized but not widely understood; Foner’s gripping account of slaves’ struggles to free themselves reveals the immense risks they, and their sympathizers, took to escape bondage. Agent: Sandra Dijkstra, Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.

March 23, 2015
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.

Starred review from November 15, 2014

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

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2014
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 rights-including serving on juries, testifying in court, and voting-than 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.

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August 1, 2014

As towering Civil War specialist Foner shows, Sydney Howard Gay, Louis Napoleon, and Charles B. Ray--an abolitionist newspaper editor, furniture polisher, and black minister, respectively--ran the Underground Railroad in New York and were instrumental in helping 3,000 fugitive slaves reach freedom between 1830 and 1860.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2015
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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)