Gateway to Freedom

The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad

By: Eric Foner

Narrated by: J. D. Jackson

The dramatic story of fugitive slaves and the antislavery activists who defied the law to help them reach freedom. They are little known to history: Sydney Howard Gay, an abolitionist newspaper editor; Louis Napoleon, a furniture polisher; Charles B. Ray, a black minister. At great risk they operated the Underground Railroad in New York, a city whose businesses, banks, and politics were deeply enmeshed in the slave economy.

In secret coordination with black dockworkers who alerted them to the arrival of fugitives and with counterparts in Norfolk, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Albany, and Syracuse, underground-railroad operatives in New York helped more than 3,000 fugitive slaves reach freedom between 1830 and 1860. Their defiance of the notorious Fugitive Slave Law inflamed the South. White and black, educated and illiterate, they were heroic figures in the ongoing struggle between slavery and freedom. Making brilliant use of fresh evidence - including the meticulous record of slave rescues secretly kept by Gay - Eric Foner elevates the underground railroad from folklore to sweeping history.

©2015 Original material published by arrangement with W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. (P)2015 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Critic reviews

"A masterwork [by] the preeminent historian of the Civil War era." ( Boston Globe)

"JD Jackson offers a solid, easy-on-the-ears narration of this reexamination of the Underground Railroad." (AudioFile)

Required Reading at its Best!

Would you consider the audio edition of Gateway to Freedom to be better than the print version?

An excellent compendium

What did you like best about this story?

It is required reading; This is one of the most well-done historical accounts I've been assignmed.

fascinating book

This book by Eric Foner is full of surprises & revelations, it took the scales off my eyes regarding the underground railroad, on the one hand how small & balkanized it was, on the other how many dedicated, brave, money-starved idealists were involved in the work. It shows how few, when compared to the millions of slaves, were the successful escapes from the south, and how concentrated the escapes were in border states (and the rescues in the adjacent border states of the north. His focus on primary materials centered in New York City gives the whole thing an evidence that is not common in the usual, HS level treatments of the underground railroad. The book does get bogged down in a few spots by too much detail, but it is well-narrated & a good read for most of the way. Highly recommended (as are all of the Foner books available on Audible).

its good if youre into that.

I fell asleep a lot to it and had to re-listen to it twice. The guys voice isnt boring, the writing is though.

Good but narrow focus

The book is about the Underground Rail Road in NYC specifically, not the rail road as a whole. extremely informational and the reading was very nice. just not what I had originally expected.

Lincoln Rocky

Very informative and interesting. I would recommend this book to anyone I know who might be interested in the history of the United States.