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Passages to Freedom: The Underground Railroad in History and Memory
Looks at the history of the Underground Railroad, including the hiding places, the routes, way stations, the role of American Indians, and border crossings into Mexico and the Caribbean.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published October 4, 2001
About the author
David W. Blight
130 books354 followersDavid William Blight is the Sterling Professor of History, of African American Studies, and of American Studies and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. Previously, Blight was a professor of History at Amherst College, where he taught for 13 years. He has won several awards, including the Bancroft Prize and Frederick Douglass Prize for Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, and the Pulitzer Prize and Lincoln Prize for Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. In 2021, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 2, 2016
When I failed to be excited about Colson Whitehead’s fictional treatment of slavery in The Underground Railroad, I realized it was time to brush up on my understanding of the period. Whitehead moved real facts about American black history around until I was unsure what the actual timeline looked like. Kathryn Schultz’s review of Whitehead’s novel in The New Yorker suggested a few sourcebooks including this one, and makes the point that there is much myth that both races tell themselves about this period, despite (or perhaps because of) the thin historical record.
The essays in this curated collection edited by David W. Blight under the aegis of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio (est 2004) and published by Smithsonian Books in Washington, D.C. (pub 2004) look at escape memoirs, journalistic accounts, and histories written after slavery to create probably the most complete picture we have of the Underground Railroad. The essays each focus on a different aspect of escape, viewing a piece of the historical record from a different angle. As a result, the essays often overlap, and together create both cameos and a picture of the larger society.
Probably the most interesting part of this collection for me was the piece which explained that Florida was also a destination for escaped slaves, not just the northern states. In an essay entitled “Southern Passage,” Jane Landers tells us that “as early as 1526…slaves joined an Indian revolt that destroyed the Spanish settlement of San Miguel del Gualdape on the modern-day Georgia coast…For the next three centuries, the vast Indian nations of the Southeast would be one destination for escaping slaves.”
The Spanish settlements in Florida had a different version of slavery than the type practiced in the Carolinas. Slaves in Florida were entitled to legal protections, church memberships, and self-purchase, among other means to manumission, while in the Carolinas slaves were considered chattel or “moveable property” with few protections. Spanish governors mounted raids, using free black militiamen, against the northern plantations, including Edisto Island. Anyone who managed to escape to Florida’s Saint Augustine as many did in larger and larger numbers, were welcomed, given Catholic instruction, baptism, marriage, and wages. Slaveholders from the north coming to claim their property might be met with black militia defending Fort Mose, a polyglot community led by Mose Fernandez, an African-born Mandinga. There is much more in this chapter worth examining, including blacks settling and fighting with the Seminole Indians in the northern part of Florida.
Other essays focus on the northern route. Harriet Tubman features in many of the essays, known as Moses for her role ferrying escapees north. Mention is made of the large groups of armed protestors, black and white, who gathered quickly to forestall recapture of escaped slaves in the northern states and of the legal battles waged in the courts between the federal government and state governments who had outlawed slavery. The essays continue through the Civil War and then look at what we know of the path to Canada by looking at two individual states, Vermont and New York.
This is a book written with educators in mind, filled as it is with reproduced paintings, photographs, newspaper clippings and other memorabilia. The bibliography, notes, and index runs for nearly fifty pages at the end also, giving an educator plenty of material from which to craft a worthwhile lesson on any particular aspect of the railroad. It is worth noting that only a few people managed to collect actual accounts of slave escapes via the underground railroad, one of those being Wilbur H. Siebert, a historian at Ohio State University in the last decade of the nineteenth century.
Siebert solicited recollections about the routes and trials of fugitive slaves, both from the slaves themselves, their descendants, or those who helped the slaves to safety. His book, The Underground Railroad was published in 1898.
The essays in this curated collection edited by David W. Blight under the aegis of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio (est 2004) and published by Smithsonian Books in Washington, D.C. (pub 2004) look at escape memoirs, journalistic accounts, and histories written after slavery to create probably the most complete picture we have of the Underground Railroad. The essays each focus on a different aspect of escape, viewing a piece of the historical record from a different angle. As a result, the essays often overlap, and together create both cameos and a picture of the larger society.
Probably the most interesting part of this collection for me was the piece which explained that Florida was also a destination for escaped slaves, not just the northern states. In an essay entitled “Southern Passage,” Jane Landers tells us that “as early as 1526…slaves joined an Indian revolt that destroyed the Spanish settlement of San Miguel del Gualdape on the modern-day Georgia coast…For the next three centuries, the vast Indian nations of the Southeast would be one destination for escaping slaves.”
The Spanish settlements in Florida had a different version of slavery than the type practiced in the Carolinas. Slaves in Florida were entitled to legal protections, church memberships, and self-purchase, among other means to manumission, while in the Carolinas slaves were considered chattel or “moveable property” with few protections. Spanish governors mounted raids, using free black militiamen, against the northern plantations, including Edisto Island. Anyone who managed to escape to Florida’s Saint Augustine as many did in larger and larger numbers, were welcomed, given Catholic instruction, baptism, marriage, and wages. Slaveholders from the north coming to claim their property might be met with black militia defending Fort Mose, a polyglot community led by Mose Fernandez, an African-born Mandinga. There is much more in this chapter worth examining, including blacks settling and fighting with the Seminole Indians in the northern part of Florida.
Other essays focus on the northern route. Harriet Tubman features in many of the essays, known as Moses for her role ferrying escapees north. Mention is made of the large groups of armed protestors, black and white, who gathered quickly to forestall recapture of escaped slaves in the northern states and of the legal battles waged in the courts between the federal government and state governments who had outlawed slavery. The essays continue through the Civil War and then look at what we know of the path to Canada by looking at two individual states, Vermont and New York.
This is a book written with educators in mind, filled as it is with reproduced paintings, photographs, newspaper clippings and other memorabilia. The bibliography, notes, and index runs for nearly fifty pages at the end also, giving an educator plenty of material from which to craft a worthwhile lesson on any particular aspect of the railroad. It is worth noting that only a few people managed to collect actual accounts of slave escapes via the underground railroad, one of those being Wilbur H. Siebert, a historian at Ohio State University in the last decade of the nineteenth century.
Siebert solicited recollections about the routes and trials of fugitive slaves, both from the slaves themselves, their descendants, or those who helped the slaves to safety. His book, The Underground Railroad was published in 1898.
Siebert’s work leaves no doubt that hundreds of Northerners were engaged in helping fugitive slaves on their way to safety and that thousands of blacks made their way to Canada and into Northern communities from 1830 to 1860.
August 4, 2021
Well written account of slavery in the United States, with a lot of information I did not know, despite having read quite a bit on the topic. What is particularly interesting is everything included about the Underground Railroad, especially what is myth versus fact. Highly recommend.
December 1, 2023
I actually started this like a month ago... I just forgot to add it to goodreads
December 19, 2008
useful and readable essays by a variety of authors that include place, person, event, and much discussion of mythology and reality. Impressive range of illustrations. I especially appreciate the nation wide coverage, so for example you can learn about the terminus of the internal slave trade, Natchez, Mississippi - and those who took "leg bail" from there.
December 31, 2013
Very useful and interesting. The history of the abolition movement and its effect on antebellum society in the North and the South isn't told often enough. I'm glad I had the chance to broaden my knowledge base.
March 9, 2013
I read this book as research for a book I was writing on the Civil War. I learned quite a bit about the Underground Railroad that I didn't know. It had fascinating information in it.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews