Eric Foner on revisiting histories of the Underground Railroad:
“That view largely held among scholars until 1961, when the historian Larry Gara published “The Liberty Line,” a slashing revisionist study that dismissed the Underground Railroad as a myth and argued that most fugitive slaves escaped at their own initiative, with little help from organized abolitionists. Scholarship on the topic all but dried up, as historians more generally emphasized the agency of African-Americans in claiming their own freedom.
But over the past 15 years, aided by newly digitized records of obscure abolitionist newspapers and local archives, scholars have constructed a new picture of the Underground Railroad as a collection of loosely interlocking local networks of activists, both black and white, that waxed and waned over time but nevertheless helped a significant number reach freedom.
There have been studies of the Underground Railroad in Washington, southern Pennsylvania and New Bedford, Mass., among other locations, as well as biographies of black abolitionists like David Ruggles, a member of New York City’s biracial Committee of Vigilance for the Protection of People of Color, founded in 1835.
In “Gateway to Freedom,” Mr. Foner ties much of that work together, while uncovering the history of the eastern corridor’s key gateway, New York City….”