Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad

“Gateway to Freedom liberates the history of the underground railroad from the twin plagues of mythology and cynicism. For anyone who still wonders what was at stake in the Civil War, there is no better place to begin than Gateway to Freedom.”—James Oakes, author of Freedom National, winner of the Lincoln Prize

A deeply entrenched institution, slavery lived on legally and commercially even in the northern states that had abolished it after the American Revolution. 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 city’s 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—Eric Foner elevates the underground railroad from folklore to sweeping history.

Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, specializes in the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery, and 19th-century U.S. history. In 2011, his work The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery won the Pulitzer Prize in History, the Bancroft Prize, and the Lincoln Prize. The author or editor of 24 books, he has also been the curator of several museum exhibitions, including the prize-winning, “A House Divided: America in the Age of Lincoln,” at the Chicago Historical Society.

Copies of his new book Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad will be available following the lecture for purchase and signing.

Presented by UCSB Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life and Department of History. This event is cosponsored by UCSB Center for Black Studies Research, Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy, Department of Black Studies, Global & International Studies Program, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, and UC Center for New Racial Studies.

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