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Book Review Of Gateway To Freedom The Hidden History Of The Underground Railroad

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Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad focuses on New York, throughout the book Foner indicates that New York city was a crucial way station in the railroad's Northeast corridor, which brought slaves from the upper South through Philadelphia and on to upstate New York, New England and Canada. He begins to tell us about the formation of the New York Anti-slavery Society in 1833, followed two years later by the biracial committee of vigilance for the protection of people of color. Brothers Lewis and Arthur Tappan were the leading figures. Even after abolition, slavery still exists because of an 1817 state law that permitted Southern slaveowners, who in Manhattan on business and as tourists, to bring slaves along for …show more content…

Whites routinely seized free blacks, claimed that they were slaves and, with the permission of local officials, sold them or hauled them off to the South, ““Even after slavery ended in New York, the South’s peculiar institution remained central to the city’s economic prosperity. New York’s dominant Democratic party maintained close ties to the South, and some local officials were more than happy to cooperate in apprehending and returning fugitive slaves. Abraham Lincoln carried New York State in the election of 1860 thanks to a resounding majority in rural areas, but he received only a little over one-third of the vote in New York City. More than once, proslavery mobs ran amok, targeting abolitionist homes and gatherings and the residences and organizations of free blacks,” …show more content…

While this book focuses on the escape of runaway slaves and especially the support and obstacles they encountered in New York City, he places his study within the wider context of American politics at the time. Foner really opened many Americans eyes and made them more informed on the Underground Railroad, he did a great job on informing us about this topic and letting us explore the idea of what he was trying to get through to us. Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad made people appreciate the people that really didn’t get any much credit for it, this book truly makes you want to understand and learn more. ““The “underground railroad” should be understood not as a single entity but as an umbrella term for local groups that employed numerous methods to assist fugitives, some public and entirely legal, some flagrant violations of the law,” (

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