"...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."--
Record details
ISBN:9780393244076
ISBN:0393244075
Physical Description:print xiii, 301 pages, 24 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 25 cm
Edition:First edition.
Publisher:New York, New York :W.W. Norton & Company,[2015]
Content descriptions
Bibliography, etc. Note:
Includes bibliographical references (pages [235]-275) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:
Rethinking the underground railroad -- Slavery and freedom in New York -- Origins of the underground railroad : 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 underground railroad in the 1850s -- The record of fugitives : an account of runaway slaves in the 1850s -- The end of the underground railroad.
Book
