American History Book Club

The American History Book Club will discuss Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad by Eric Foner (Norton, $16.95). A deeply entrenched institution, slavery lived on legally and commercially even in the northern states that had abolished it after the American Revolution. New York was 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 to Canada. These networks of antislavery resistance became known as the underground railroad.

Event date: 

Saturday, May 28, 2016 - 10:00am
Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad By Eric Foner Cover Image
$16.95
ISBN: 9780393352191
Availability: Not on our shelves. Usually arrives at The Bookworm in 4-7 days from distributor/publisher.
Published: W. W. Norton & Company - January 18th, 2016

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