Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad
by Foner, Eric
- Used
- Fine
- Paperback
- first
- Condition
- Fine
- ISBN 10
- 0393352196
- ISBN 13
- 9780393352191
- Seller
-
Georgetown, Texas, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Fine. 2015. First Edition. Trade Paperback. Full number line 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 . 305 pages. More than any other scholar, Eric Foner has influenced our understanding of America's history. Now, making brilliant use of extraordinary evidence, the Pulitzer Prizewinning 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 Norths 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 citys 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 .
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Details
- Bookseller
- Storbeck's (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 608818
- Title
- Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad
- Author
- Foner, Eric
- Format/Binding
- Trade Paperback
- Book Condition
- Used - Fine
- Edition
- First Edition
- Binding
- Paperback
- ISBN 10
- 0393352196
- ISBN 13
- 9780393352191
- Publisher
- W. W. Norton & Company
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 2015
- Keywords
- HISTORY, UNITED STATES, 19TH CENTURY
- Bookseller catalogs
- History / United States / 19th Century;
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Storbeck's
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About the Seller
Storbeck's
Biblio member since 2003
Georgetown, Texas
About Storbeck's
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Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Fine
- A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- Number Line
- A series of numbers appearing on the copyright page of a book, where the lowest number generally indicates the printing of that...
- Trade Paperback
- Used to indicate any paperback book that is larger than a mass-market paperback and is often more similar in size to a hardcover...