Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad
Eric Foner W.W. Norton, $26.95
Everyone has heard of the Underground Railroad, but Eric Foner’s Gateway to Freedom shows us how little we really know about it. Foner makes it clear that a comprehensive look at the Underground Railroad is impossible, despite a lifetime of study. Even in New York, which had a huge black population, the story of the Railroad “is like a jigsaw puzzle, many of whose pieces have been irretrievably lost, or a gripping detective story where the evidence is murky and incomplete.” If not for the editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard, abolitionist and UGRR operative Sydney Howard Gay, we might not even know about Harriet Tubman.
Both Northern and Southern journalists credited the UGRR with more organization and resources than it had; as Foner writes, “both abolitionists and slave owners had a vested interest in exaggerating the numbers—the former to emphasize the black desire for freedom…the latter as evidence of a northern conspiracy to undermine the peculiar institution.” The number of slaves who escaped will never be known, but one estimate is as many as 5,000 per year between 1830 and 1860. One reason facts about the UGRR are so imprecise was that it was, simply put, illegal. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 had established that even if a state abolished slavery, it must respect the laws of other states. The Act remained the only federal law on the subject of slavery until it was reinforced by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. The new law essentially commanded citizens to arrest escaped slaves. Any who aided escapees faced stiff punishment from their own government.
Foner’s history stands as the definitive work to date on the Railroad, and pays fitting tribute to activists like Louis Napoleon, a free black who may have rescued as many as 3,000 slaves—and whose occupation was listed on his death certificate as “Underground RR Agent.”
Originally published in the June 2015 issue of Civil War Times. To subscribe, click here.
