Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America's First Civil Rights Movement

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Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America's First Civil Rights Movement

by Fergus M. Bordewich (Goodreads Author)

4.1 of 5 stars 4.10 · rating details · 216 ratings · 60 reviews

An important book of epic scope on America's first racially integrated, religiously inspired movement for change

The civil war brought to a climax the country's bitter division. But the beginnings of slavery's denouement can be traced to a courageous band of ordinary Americans, black and white, slave and free, who joined forces to create what would come to be known as the U...more

Paperback, 576 pages

Published January 10th 2006 by Amistad (first published January 1st 2005)

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Dec 12, 2007 K.C. rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Everyone

A truly, truly amazing read. A page-turner yet full of fascinating information. Best of all it debunks the idea that Blacks were passive victims during slavery who made no attempts to free themselves. If you are interested in this country and the people who created it, White and Black, read this book.

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Aug 14, 2012 Jaime Payne rated it 5 of 5 stars

I thought this book was fabulous. It was meticulously researched and the stories of both known and unknown participants were told in a very compelling way. Some of the reviews I saw saw here complained about the stories starting off and then being picked up later. I loved that about this book, because instead of profiling each of the participants separately,like a series of unrelated short stories within the book, they were weaved together in a chronological order. We got to see the whole pictur...more

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Apr 23, 2013 Mary rated it 4 of 5 stars

It started as a loosely connected group of mostly white Quakers and a few black freedmen seeking to get newly run- away slaves to the relative freedom of some of the larger cities in the North like New York, Philadelphia, and eventually Chicago. By the time it was over, it reached into the deeper parts of the South and, of necessity, went all the way to Canada. But it was never really organized, except here and there locally, and it was never without great opposition, not only in the South, but...more It started as a loosely connected group of mostly white Quakers and a few black freedmen seeking to get newly run- away slaves to the relative freedom of some of the larger cities in the North like New York, Philadelphia, and eventually Chicago. By the time it was over, it reached into the deeper parts of the South and, of necessity, went all the way to Canada. But it was never really organized, except here and there locally, and it was never without great opposition, not only in the South, but perhaps even more vehemently in the North. This book is a very careful telling of the who, what, where, when, and particularly why of the long history of one of America's best known "practical" social protests. It names names -- many of them, hard to come by - of those involved - runaway slaves, "conductors", station-masters, spies, betrayers, fools, scoundrels, and more than one US President. Bordewich's contention is that the Founding Fathers, in the words of W.E.B. DuBois, made a "Faustian bargain" with the institution of slavery in the hopes that the "problem" would go away and that the new nation would never have to pay the price for their choice to ignore the "firebell in the night" as Thomas Jefferson himself called it . But the necessity for and growing presence of the Underground Railroad put that lie to the canard. And in the end, it brought the fight to the whole nation, making what became the Civil War, inevitable. In this book, you can almost taste the growing and hardening of positions on both sides and sense the increasingly desperate circumstances for both slaves and freedmen, particularly after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 which made it a criminal act to assist runaways in ANY way, ANY place in the US and forced local officials, no matter what their personal views, to return those who were targeted as runaways (even if they had been free for generations) to whatever fate their future held.

This is an important book to read, not only for the history it reveals about antebellum America, but perhaps more critically, for the cautionary tales it tells which are applicable to today's latest news. First, antislavery did not, in any way, mean pro-equality or anything approaching facing up to racism. Indeed, many of those heavily involved in the Underground Railroad were most interested in insuring that run-aways ended up some place other than THIS neighborhood or even THIS country. There were all kinds of "plans" (Abraham Lincoln favored resettlement in Africa), but, bottom line, they each illustrate mightily why it was that Jim Crow so easily took over in the wake of emancipation and why racism continues to rear its ugly head so quickly even now. Secondly, this history reveals that it is probably pointless to try to declare illegal, those thoughts and actions which stem from deep religious and moral conviction. BOTH sides fervently believed that God was on their side, that, indeed, faithfulness to God dictated their defense or opposition to the institution of slavery. Every attempt to legislate action (or inaction) simply hardened hearts to the point of no return. When we wonder at continuing struggles over racial, gender, and class distinctions decades after such things were declared illegal; when we marvel over the continuing fight over various aspects of reproductive rights, we may be ignoring our own "firebells in the night." This book offers no easy solutions at all, but it does suggest that true proximity often "converts." When slavery came to have a real face, whose longings and dreams, joys and sorrows, were just like my own, it was hard to ignore. (10/16/12)

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Apr 18, 2012 Pauline rated it 5 of 5 stars

Clear, enlightening, yet as engrossing as a novel, Bound for Canaan tells the amazing stories of the Underground Railroad, from its beginnings among an informal network of anti-slavery Quakers (dating before there was even such a thing as a railroad!) to the dawn of the Civil War.

Seldom if ever have I read such an exciting nonfiction book. Without wanting to slight its historical importance, what I remember best about this book was that it had all the qualities of a page-turning, edge-of-your-se...more

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Nov 03, 2011 Sher rated it 5 of 5 stars

I learned so much from this book. I am amazed once again that men can be so inhumane to other men even to the extreme of thinking they can own other human beings, and have the right to treat them worse than cattle. I just don't get it. But I was also reminded of how passionate men can be about freedom and the fair treatment of other men. By "men" I mean humankind, male and female.

I read of the brave, gritty Harriet Tubman who took her own life in her hands every time she set about to help free...more

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May 28, 2012 Willis rated it 4 of 5 stars

I found this to be fascinating and once I started I couldn't really put it down. It describes the evolution of the Underground Railroad from the early 1800's until its end with the Civil War. There are a lot of courageous people (both black and white) who were part of the effort to bring slaves from the South to the North and then onto Canada. It also talks about the effect that the Underground Railroad had on the Civil War, the eventual abolishment of slavery and even its impact on the women's...more

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Oct 25, 2008 Kim M-M rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, historical, north-american

I give this an excellent for ease of reading. Fergus unfolds history like an epic story, which is all the better because it was true. Harriet emerges a heroine, and many others who found the courage to fight the system.
This is what history books should read like. Moving and expertly told, you get an immediate sense of what challenges the underground railroad was up against, and find yourself rooting fervently for the slaves bound for freedom.

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Nov 06, 2008 Maggie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, most-highly-recommended

The Underground Railroad has always been one of my favorite moments in American history, and this book so fully explores it; the facts, the legends, the characters...I left it feeling full of a pride in my countrymen that I hope others will gain from reading it, as well.

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Jun 28, 2012 Terri rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012-books-read

This book has an vast amount of information about the history of the Underground Railroad. My biggest problem with it was that there were so many stories and people that appeared throughout the book (and reappeared) that I couldn't remember who was who other than a couple of well-known characters such as Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman. I read the entire book because the stories were compelling and I feel I learned a lot from reading it...however, it was not easy to read. The writing in a l...more

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Nov 25, 2010 Sarah Finch rated it 4 of 5 stars

A well-written, extraordinarily thoughtful account of the Underground Railroad. It covers the famous luminaries such as Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass and introduces readers to previously obscure figures such as James Rankin, Josiah Henson, Levi Coffin, and many others. Bordewich excels at putting the Railroad in context and demonstrating how it worked within other antebellum movements such as the nascent women's suffrage movement, Quaker philosophy, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, t...more

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Nov 26, 2012 Bill rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book only got better for me. I have always been interested in the Civil War but have read little on the lead up to it and about the "Underground Railroad". This book filled in a lot of those gaps and has sparked my interest to know more.

The book does have a cast of hundreds, it seems, and it is hard at time to recall someone from earlier in the book. (reminds me of reading War and Peace) I started to write down notes to myself to help me recall some of the people when they were mentioned ag...more

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May 02, 2013 Eddy Allen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: arts-and-historical

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Dec 08, 2012 Bob Schmitz rated it 4 of 5 stars

Great book. Meticulously researched from original sources. Quoting from newspapers, letters and other documents you really get the feel for what people were thinking and experiencing during the time. Besides the sweep of the story of the system to conduct runaway slaves from the south to the northern states or Canada you learn detailed snippets of history:

-In NC I believe a white man bought a slave and set him free and then bought the slaves son and gave the son to the father so that the father...more Great book. Meticulously researched from original sources. Quoting from newspapers, letters and other documents you really get the feel for what people were thinking and experiencing during the time. Besides the sweep of the story of the system to conduct runaway slaves from the south to the northern states or Canada you learn detailed snippets of history:

-In NC I believe a white man bought a slave and set him free and then bought the slaves son and gave the son to the father so that the father would have the required $250 (the son being valued at $400) to keep his freedom. A law required free blacks to have $250 in property or they could be re-enslaved.

-A prominent Methodist minister, a member of the underground, was brought before a grand jury in Ohio by a southern slave holder for helping escaped slaves. When asked if he helped slaves he responded to the jury (many of whom were quiet abolitionist) "I have helped some people who said they were slaves but since a black person's testimony in inadmissible in a trial of a white man I couldn't really say." The jury found in his favor.

- In a letter to a former slave who had escaped to the north 20 years previously his previous owners widow tells the slaves that his escaping and the stealing of one of her horses cost tremendous financial hardship for her resulting in her having to sell the fugitive's brother and sister and sell some land. She requests that he pay her $1000 so that she can buyback the land. Otherwise she said she would sell him and assured him that times would change and he would be enslaved again.

I did not realize the central roll that the abolitionist movement and the UG Railroad had in turning the live and let live attitude of many in the north to fervent, vehement anti-slavery.

Uncle Tom's cabin, based on real-life stories, was widely read in the north, banned in the south, and was responsible for wakening many northerners about the horrors of slavery. Lincoln thanked HBS for turning the North against slavery.

The fugitive slave act around 1850 required that federal troops help in the capture and returning of slaves to their southern masters masters and required citizens to help in those recaptures with penalties fines and even jail if they did not assist. This brought home to many the horribleness of returning fugitive slaves to slavery

Jefferson Davis was the United States Secretary of War!

I know it may seem silly to many but the depictions of the vast, almost empty wilderness that the slaves in the early 1800's on the UG railroad had to travel through in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, NC etc made me realize that the slaves not only worked on plantations, they cleared virgin forests and swamps etc to make all that cropland. I know Duh! They then built the the lovely plantations that we can now go visit on home tours in the south. 60% of US exports in the 1850's was cotton. Slaves built much of this country. When you pass a field in the south today growing something you like to eat realize the debt we all have to African men and women.

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Oct 25, 2012 Matt rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Underground Railroad holds a certain mystique in American culture and I remember when I was a kid reading stories and thinking “Harriet Tubman must have been pretty cool.” Of course, I was a kid and barely understood the gravity of what slavery meant or the implications for people, their families, or our country.

This book truly shines as a cohesive work. Sometimes, in non-fiction you get this mixed bag where there are great biographies or great stories that give context to a particular time...more The Underground Railroad holds a certain mystique in American culture and I remember when I was a kid reading stories and thinking “Harriet Tubman must have been pretty cool.” Of course, I was a kid and barely understood the gravity of what slavery meant or the implications for people, their families, or our country.

This book truly shines as a cohesive work. Sometimes, in non-fiction you get this mixed bag where there are great biographies or great stories that give context to a particular time. I have rarely experienced books that tie these two together well, but this book knocks it out of the park.

There are amazing vignettes of folks like Frederick Douglass, Josiah Henson, and of course, “General” Tubman that tie together some of the seminal events in their lives and the context of the times.

Bound for Canaan does an excellent job of weaving getting to some of the motivations of some of these heroes and keeping it’s finger on the pulse of the times. Events in history collapse of themselves over time and stories get written and rewritten through the prism of the times. Before reading this book, I knew intuitively that there was a wide range of attitudes and reactions to different events, but things always get oversimplified into “North vs. South”, etc., etc. (Similar to listening to a lot of the news today, huh?!) Chapter after chapter in this book wipes away those simplifications and gives you a glimpse into the complication of the times, and how events shifted public opinion over time.

It was fascinating to see the action of folks of all stripes - black and white, rich and poor, men and women, practicing civil disobedience on such a grand scale and setting the stage for a lot of civic activism that is easier to wrap our minds around today. You can see how some of the folks blazed a trail for women’s rights (starting with voting rights!), civil rights, the labor movement and more. I just can’t say enough about how well Bordewich sets that stage. I really enjoyed a quote from Frederick Douglass at a rally where he said, ….(with a trace of astonishment) we were all on a level, everyone took a seat just where they chose, there [was] neither a men’s side nor a women’s side, white pew nor black pew, but all seats were free, and all sides free.” That must have been phenomenal to witness a cultural sea change like that.

I highly, highly recommend this book…and now I respect Harriet Tubman more than ever.
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Jul 23, 2008 Sam Diener rated it 5 of 5 stars

"The dictates of humanity came in opposition to the law of the land, and we ignored the law."
- Levi Coffin, Quaker abolitionist, from Bound for Canaan

In Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America's First Civil Rights Movement, Fergus Bordewich vividly brings to life Levi Coffin, scores of black and white abolitionists, and astonishing tales of the ingenuity and courage exhibited by fugitives and their helpers. What came to be called the Underground Railroad, a movemen...more "The dictates of humanity came in opposition to the law of the land, and we ignored the law."
- Levi Coffin, Quaker abolitionist, from Bound for Canaan

In Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America's First Civil Rights Movement, Fergus Bordewich vividly brings to life Levi Coffin, scores of black and white abolitionists, and astonishing tales of the ingenuity and courage exhibited by fugitives and their helpers. What came to be called the Underground Railroad, a movement largely led by activists in African-American free communities and supported by white abolitionists, helped approximately 100,000 fugitives reach freedom. The strength of the book lies in the tales Bordewich relates.

Levi Coffin, born in North Carolina, became inalterably opposed to enslavement after witnessing a slave coffle being led further south in 1805, when he was seven years old. His father inquired, and was told by one of the chained African-American men that they had been torn from their families and were chained to keep them from running back home. After Levi's father explained slavery, Levi wondered, "How terribly we should feel if father were taken away from us." Building on the foundations of this flash of empathy, Levi Coffin helped establish one of the first organized long-distance routes of escape, from North Carolina to Quaker communities in southern Indiana. After moving to Indiana, he was dubbed the "President of the Underground Railroad" by a slaveowner. He and Catherine Coffin helped 3000 people escape from slavery.

One of Coffin's counterparts in the East was William Still, whose mother Charity had escaped enslavement, though she had been unable to rescue two of her sons. As the clerk of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, and chair of the local African-American vigilance committee, in the 1850s, Still was assisting 60 fugitives a month. His detailed records and oral histories are, according to Bordewich, "the best record of daily underground operations anywhere in the country."

In the spring of 1850, Peter Friedman, a freed man formerly enslaved in Alabama, entered Still's office seeking information about his parents. Still asked about his life story, discovering Friedman's parents had left Maryland forty years earlier. Still responded, "Suppose I should tell you that I am your brother?" Charity, then aged 80, was still alive, and was reunited with the son stolen from her by slavery.

But Friedman's family, Vina, Levin, Peter, and Catherine, were still enslaved in Alabama. Peter Friedman traveled back to Alabama in an attempt to negotiate their release, but to no avail. He then met a white abolitionist adventurer named Seth Concklin, who offered to help them escape. Concklin stopped at the Coffins' house to make contacts, bought a rowboat, transported it to Alabama, and helped the Friedman family to row it more than 400 miles down the Tennessee and up the Ohio rivers to Indiana. There, between stations of the "railroad," they were caught. While the Friedmans and Concklin were being shipped back to Alabama in chains, Concklin was murdered, one of the Underground's martyrs. The publicity that the Concklin case generated enabled Peter Friedman to raise $5000 from sympathetic abolitionists to ransom his family away from the slaveholder, and the family was finally reunited.

Through Bordewich's accumulation of stories, the cruelty of enslavement is manifest, but also the power of anti-racist solidarity, and the rallying cry of abolition. That cry for freedom rings acrosss the world and throughout this issue, as authors imagine more cooperative futures, and call for the abolition of modern slavery, bigotry, empire, nuclear weapons, and war. They urge us to action, to solidarity, to resistance, ignoring the law when necessary. The dictates of humanity require no less.

- Sam Diener, Co-Editor
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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it · review of another edition

The Underground Railroad was, by its very nature, a silent, loose-limbed organization. This fog of anonymity may explain why, despite its critical role in American history, historians have attempted so few chronicles of it. Bordewich, author of My Mother's Ghost (2000) and Killing the White Man's Indian (1997), was undeterred by the challenge. If he can't rescue all names from anonymity, he succeeds in laying bare the heroic spirit of the escapees' struggle. He also breaks "the hard sheen of myt

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Dec 21, 2012 Davedc rated it 4 of 5 stars

The "Underground Railroad" was neither underground, nor a railroad. That is all most folks know about the Underground Railroad. As this book shows, it was much more than that.

This book is a stellar history of the Underground Railroad. It highlights the major players and changes within the movement. It also focuses some much needed light on the great contributions of large numbers of free and fugitive blacks in "Underground." I loved this book, and really recommend it for anyone -- but especiall...more

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Nov 11, 2012 Dawn rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012-books, non-fiction, civil-war

This book has been an insightful and compelling journey into history. It has been a great book, but if you have had a rough week and are looking for a respite, this is not the book for you. It is a very real, well researched, and sometimes agonizing view into the causes and far reaching power of slavery in America. I was intrigued by all I have not learned before, and appreciated the honesty and detail into personal stories of some of the characters involved in the advent of the Underground Rail...more

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Jul 31, 2011 Dan Walker rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is the history you will not learn in a textbook. You hear all about how Christianity added and abetted slavery. You will never hear that the famed Underground Railroad was pioneered and maintained by people driven by their Christian faith. The Underground Railroad helped many slaves reach freedom, and it was a major reason why the slavery question finally came to a head and finally to war.

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Aug 11, 2008 Ryan rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was a good book. Here is some of what I learned:

1. The North as a whole was less friendly to runaway slaves than I'd thought.

2. Canada was a sure place of refuge. Masters had no hope of recapturing a fugitive slave once he or she reached Canada.

3. There was more racism among the ranks of the Abolitionists than I'd thought. They opposed the institution of slavery, but still thought blacks were inferior.

Some of the negatives: it was hard to keep track of who was who in this book - Bordewich...more

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May 23, 2009 Kirshaq rated it 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book. I read this three years ago, but I still have a vivid memory of the stories of the slaves that escaped and those that helped them gain access to the North and to Canada. Great stories of bravery and sticking to what you know is right and wrong.

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May 11, 2010 Heather rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Heather by: Apple Dippers Book Club

Shelves: history

This is a very readable and very thorough history of the Underground Railroad. The author uses the stories of individuals to narrate the overall tale and he does a credible job of weaving them all together. At times he takes some liberties with their stories but it works overall.

I did not finish the whole book before I had to take it back to the library but I liked what I read and would recommend this as an accessible work on the subject.

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Jan 14, 2013 Peter Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars

This, Historian Fergus Bordewich's masterpiece and a tremendous read, is the definitive history of the Underground Railroad, "the war for the soul of America" as the author has so aptly described it.

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Feb 24, 2011 RUSA CODES rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: notable-books-2006

This was one of the 2006 RUSA Notable Books winners. For the complete list, go to http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/rus...

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Jul 07, 2009 Jeremy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Great book. I wish I had learned this stuff in seventh grade. So exciting, really one of the best moments of collective resistance to the status quo in America.

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Mar 20, 2009 Beth rated it 5 of 5 stars

I'm reading this for the third time, and I'm still impressed with how well written it is; it's solid research, but framed in a revealing narrative.

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May 12, 2010 Sherrill rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

Great read! Includes some history about slavery in general, but focuses on the people who worked so hard to help slaves escape bondage. Also shows the slow separation of the north and south, which led to the Civil War.

Very well written. I'll be on the lookout for other books by this author.

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Apr 16, 2012 Karen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: law-justice

Re-learned some things. Historical and stories. Cool yet short piece on Tubman but mostly focused on others in movement.

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Oct 09, 2011 Marianne V rated it 5 of 5 stars

Outstanding story of the struggle; great discussion of the history of the age, and many comparisons to modern day struggles.

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Jun 05, 2010 Nikomo is currently reading it · review of another edition

Lots of history and inspiration. A reminder that we cannot let our ancestors' fight for freedom be forgotten or in vain.

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About Fergus M. Bordewich

FERGUS M. BORDEWICH is the author of five non-fiction books: Washington: The Making of the American Capital (Amistad/HarperCollins, 2008); Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America (Amistad/HarperCollins, 2005); My Mother’s Ghost, a memoir (Doubleday, 2001); Killing the White Man’s Indian: Reinventing Native Americans at the End of the Twentieth Century (Double...more FERGUS M. BORDEWICH is the author of five non-fiction books: Washington: The Making of the American Capital (Amistad/HarperCollins, 2008); Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America (Amistad/HarperCollins, 2005); My Mother’s Ghost, a memoir (Doubleday, 2001); Killing the White Man’s Indian: Reinventing Native Americans at the End of the Twentieth Century (Doubleday, 1996); and Cathay: A Journey in Search of Old China (Prentice Hall Press, 1991). He has also published an illustrated children’s book, Peach Blossom Spring (Simon & Schuster, 1994), and wrote the script for a PBS documentary about Thomas Jefferson, Mr. Jefferson’s University. He also edited an illustrated book of eyewitness accounts of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, Children of the Dragon (Macmillan, 1990). He is a regular contributor to Smithsonian magazine, mainly on subjects in nineteenth century American history. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife and daughter.

Bound for Canaan was selected as one of the American Booksellers Association’s "ten best nonfiction books" in 2005; as the Great Lakes Booksellers’ Association’s "best non-fiction book" of 2005; as one of the Austin Public Library's Best Non-Fiction books of 2005; and as one of the New York Public Library’s "ten books to remember" in 2005.

Washington was named by Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post as one of his "Best Books of 2008."

BORDEWICH WAS BORN in New York City in 1947, and grew up in Yonkers, New York. While growing up, he often traveled to Indian reservations around the United States with his mother, LaVerne Madigan Bordewich, the executive director of the Association on American Indian Affairs, then the only independent advocacy organization for Native Americans. This early experience helped to shape his lifelong preoccupation with American history, the settlement of the continent, and issues of race, poverty, and political power. He holds degrees from the City College of New York and Columbia University, and also attended the New School for Social Research. In the late 1960s, he did voter registration for the NAACP in the still-segregated South; he also worked as a roustabout in Alaska’s Arctic oil fields, a taxi driver in New York City, a deckhand on a Norwegian freighter.

He has been an independent writer and historian since the early 1970s. His articles have appeared in many magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian, American Heritage, Atlantic, Harper's, New York Magazine, GEO, Reader’s Digest, and others. As a journalist, he traveled extensively in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, writing on politics, economic issues, culture, and history, on subjects ranging from the civil war in Burma, religious repression in China, Islamic fundamentalism, German reunification, the Irish economy, Kenya’s population crisis, among many others. He also served for brief periods as an editor and writer for the Tehran Journal in Iran, in 1972-1973, a press officer for the United Nations, in 1980-1982, and an advisor to the New China News Agency in Beijing, in 1982-1983, when that agency was embarking on its effort to switch from a propaganda model to a western-style journalistic one.

Bordewich’s newest book, titled America’s Great Debate, focuses on the nation’s westward expansion, slavery and the Compromise of 1850. It centers on the dramatic congressional debate of 1849-1850 – the longest in American history – when a gallery of extraordinary men including Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Stephen A. Douglas, Jefferson Davis, William H. Seward, and others, fought to shape, and in the case of some to undermine, the future course of the Union. In the aftermath of the Mexican War, new conquests carried the United States from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean. How would the newly acquired empire be governed? Could it even be governed? Would that emp(less)

More about Fergus M. Bordewich...

Books by Fergus M. Bordewich

America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union

Washington: The Making of the American Capital

Killing the White Man's Indian: Reinventing Native Americans at the End of the Twentieth Century

My Mother's Ghost: A Courageous Woman, a Son's Love, and the Power of Memory

Cathay: A Journey in Search of Old China

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