Gateway to Freedom

November 3, 2014
The Underground Railroad is at once one of the best known and least understood aspects in the history of American slavery, but Pulitzer Prize–winner Foner (The Fiery Trial) makes expert use of an unusual primary source to illuminate the workings of this secret system. He focuses on the antebellum accounts of Sydney Howard Gay, a Manhattan newspaper editor, abolitionist sympathizer, and Underground Railroad participant, whose “record of fugitives” sheds light on the experiences of more than 200 enslaved men and women who passed through New York City. The accounts also offer fascinating glimpses of the lives of individual fugitive slaves, including Simon Hill, who walked from southern Virginia to Philadelphia, and Winnie Patsy, who with her young daughter spent five months hiding in a dark, unventilated crawl space outside Norfolk, Va. Foner shows how Gay’s network functioned on a practical level, helping fugitives to move from one safe space to another along the East Coast—often to Canada—and he emphasizes the crucial role played by African-Americans themselves, from dockworkers to clergymen, in helping fugitives to freedom. The Underground Railroad is much mythologized but not widely understood; Foner’s gripping account of slaves’ struggles to free themselves reveals the immense risks they, and their sympathizers, took to escape bondage. Agent: Sandra Dijkstra, Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.

March 23, 2015
Acclaimed narrator Jackson delivers a competent, though not always inspired, performance of Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Foner’s sweeping narrative on the inner workings of the Underground Railroad. Jackson is most passionate for the individual accounts of those involved in the secret network, which was created to help slaves find their freedom. Yet for the most part, the material centers on the political, social, and racial divides within the abolition movement itself, as radicals and moderates struggled with one another to stake a claim for leadership
in the struggle to free black Americans from bondage. Jackson’s tone subtly
illuminates the dynamic of the various players, particularly when conveying
the stance of white leaders in the mainstream political process, contrasted with the voices of the more revolutionary
participants. Listeners with an academic bent and already steeped in the history
of the era will feel engaged, but a more general audience seeking to make initial connections with American abolitionism may need to look elsewhere. A Norton hardcover.