Bound for Canaan audiobook

I wanted a book about the Underground Railroad; here's the book my research led me to, and I'm glad it did. I had a pretty murky understanding of what the whole thing was about - like, Harriet Tubman and a bunch of underground tunnels? Now I know better.Here are all the stories you know: Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Solomon Northup (the Twelve Years a Slave guy), John Brown. The slave escape that inspired Uncle Tom's Cabin and the story that inspired Beloved.Here also are important figures I didn't know about:- Isaac Hopper, who with other Quakers in the early 1800s "became what can fairly be described as the first operating cell of the abolitionist underground."- Levi Coffin, another Quaker (there were lots of Quakers! Go Quakers!) known as "The President of the Underground Railroad';- Josiah Henson, an escaped slave who founded a Canadian settlement for other escapees;- Anthony Benezet, who started a black school in 1750 and 'helped convert Benjamin Franklin and others to abolitionism, by demonstrating that his students were capable of the same level of achievement as whites."- Jermain Loguen,an escaped slave who became a popular preacher - William Lloyd Garrison, whose fierce Boston-based paper the Liberator was an important abolitionist resourceThere are a ton of exciting stories about the Railroad - of course there are - and an awful lot of them are in this book. I totally dug reading it - even with its fairly frequent lapses into breathless, purpleish prose - and I learned everything I wanted to.Random other quotes"The British colonies of North America and the United States imported only about 6 percent of the between 10 and 11 million slaves that were brought from Africa.""From the earliest days of settlement, at least some colonists had equivocal feelings about slavery. In 1641 Massachusetts forbade slavery."Philadelphia was the early center of the underground railroad, and Quakers were early pioneers: around 1800, "in the cobbled lanes of Philadelphia, fugitive slaves, free blacks, and white Quakers were discovering one another, and recognizing one another as allies in the struggle that was to come." Other books this one led me toI've read slave narratives by Northup, Josiah Henson, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs. This book also pointed me in the direction of Olaudah Equiano, Henry Bibb and Moses Roper.William Wells Brown was the country's first African-American novelist.

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.

Fergus Bordewich's Bound for Canaan offers a lively narrative account of the Underground Railroad. Bordewich's book envisions the Underground as America's "first Civil Rights Movement," emphasizing the biracial coalition between freed blacks and white abolitionists that enabled the escape of thousands of slaves from bondage in the years leading up to the Civil War. The book contains numerous harrowing accounts of escape and pursuit, along with dozens of pen portraits of figures both well-known (Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, John Brown) and lesser-known: William Parker, the protagonist of the Christiana Resistance; Levi Coffin, the Indiana Quaker whose efforts in the Midwest earned him the nickname "President of the Underground Railroad"; John and Mary Meachum, a free black couple in St. Louis who risked life and limb helping others escape; and dozens of other men and women, high-placed and humble, who fought for freedom. Bordewich's book is occasionally light on sketching the broader sweep of the Railroad's operations, preferring individual stories over thorough analysis; similarly, it's light on capturing the sociopolitical context in which it operated. Still, as a highly readable, engaging account of the Underground Railroad, Bound for Canaan is undeniably success. A stirring tribute to the men and women whose efforts struck a blow against slavery.

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.

An excellent history of not just The Underground Railroad and abolitionism, but also of most of the US at the time period. I really liked all the explanations of the politics. Super interesting and worth the extra time it takes, being nearly 600 pages long. Lots of great personal stories from the Grand Old Quakers, abolitionists, slaves and John Brown. "The underground was the greatest movement of civil disobedience since the American Revolution, engaging thousands of citizens in the active subversion of federal law and the prevailing mores of their communities.""The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, in 1850, had awakened whites to the price in personal liberty that they were expected to pay in order to protect slavery in the South.""At the turn of the century, the few white men and women (nearly all of them Quakers) who were willing to lend help to the fugitive slave were as gentle and religious as Hopper himself, and as reluctant as he was to break the letter of the law. Radical abolitionism had now become a mighty movement. Public opinion in the North was steadily shifting in favor of the abolitionists, who were seen as the defenders of free speech, free assembly, and personal liberty. The once-ridiculed fringe was now an army of resisters capable of heroism on a mass scale, and the civil disobedience that Thoreau preached in genteel Concord was being dramatically acted out in the streets. Old orthodoxies were boiling away. Public opinion in both North and South was galvanized in ways that made it harder to resolve differences over slavery without violence."

Definitely an Epic Story! Well researched and well written history all about underground railroad from the early beginnings and until it dismantled with the start of the Civil War. This wasn't a fast read by any means, took me almost an entire month, but it was fascinating and gripping at moments. Interesting fact: the underground railroad predates railroads in the country. Once the railroad (steel and metal kind) became something used as transportation the language became tied to the movement of helping people escape and find their way to freedom, often in Canada. I'm so glad I read this book as my understanding was vague before, knowing the general gist of this transformative movement along with a few of the key people. The book covers many of the people who were significant in helping develop networks to help people find freedom and yet are lesser known. This was an excellent book to learn about this awful time in American history.

A primary source for Colson Whitehead's visionary novel, The Underground Railroad, Bound for Canaan tells the even more gripping story of the US' original civil disobedience movement. Bordewich's carefully-sourced history breathes new life into the men and women who risked their own lives, freedoms, and more to defy US chattel slavery. He revives the names of forgotten abolitionists who dismantled the institution where they could, aided runaways, opened secret routes out of slave states and refuges across the Northeast. The author vividly and movingly recreates the escalating violence produced by federal Fugitive Slave Laws passed to appease slaves owners, and the valiant self-defense efforts of runaway communities from Pennsylvania to the Canadian border. Harriet Tubman emerges from this account as a unique inspiration: daring, determined, defiant, ingenious, and armed, she returns again and again behind enemy lines to free family and friends. And all them, let's be clear, were outlaws: rebels against a White Republic whose wealth--North and South-- derived fundamentally from slave labor. We should all know this history.

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 picture. While this was happening over here, that was going on over there. We got to see it all. I borrowed it from the library, but I plan to buy a copy because it was the most complete book on the UGRR that I have read.

I promised myself I would be intentional about educating myself more on slavery, the underground railroad, and America's foundation this year. This book really helped give me a solid foundation to understand the underground railroad. There are so many people history has forgotten or written out of exitsence. This book gave life to many people I wish schools would talk more about. Overall this was at times a very dry read, but very educational nonetheless.

** spoiler alert ** This was an excellent, detailed read that seeks to document carefully the Underground Railroad from its humble beginnings to its final days as the Civil War begins. I was not up enough on African American history to recognize many of the characters (of course I had John Brown, Harriet Tubman, Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass -- the ones everyone knew), so at times I did get a bit lost in the many names. (My fault). It was a compelling read that discussed not only how the railroad worked, the successes and the failures of the railroad and also the different leaning views within the abolition movement, and differing views amongst the people in the slaveholding South. (It never occurred to me till I read this book that there really was no railroad per se -- of the physical kind with tracks and steam engines -- when the underground railroad started). I appreciated this story, not only because its documentary style detail was fantastic and added much historical detail to my understanding of the years leading up to the civil war, but also because the compelling stories, one by one, helped me sympathize with the desperate plight of so many, helped me see the impossible choices many of them made (between family and freedom). The book also documented the legal issues surrounding the Fugitive Slave Act and its effect on the northern states. When it came to Uncle Tom's Cabin, I knew it was invective and I knew it was carefully crafted to stir the hearts of whites in the north, but I did not notice (in my reading of it years ago) that it is mostly white men who are the heroes and blacks more so the passive recipients of their charity. Nor did I know that the book was disliked by Harriet Tubman and other blacks then, already. A worthy read -- an education in more detailed history of the fugitive slaves in the early to mid 1800s. An indictment of America's Original Sin: Slavery, of how it is woven into the Constitution with the 3/5 population rule and an indictment of the necessary power given to the Southern states so they would join the Union.One last thing I had always wondered had to do with the motivation of the abolitionists. I don't discount that some people were in the movement for ideological reasons. Many blacks were in the movement because they got out and they wanted to help their own loved ones, dear friends, and frankly just fellow sufferers get out. But I did not understand till I read this that a large part of the Northern motivation (or at least some of the motivation) had to do with labor and labor costs. With the influx of so many Europeans to the United States, Europeans who needed jobs and who needed to be paid a decent wage, with slavery spreading to the west through Kansas, white men could not compete, could not get jobs, if slavery were allowed, since slavery was a lot cheaper to run, once the slaves were owned. That last one helped me understand how some, or rather larger numbers of people got on board, since it seems to me that men do not as a majority tend to fight any system that they exist in on purely ideological or religions grounds. There is usually some monetary reasons for their behavior if they decide to do so.

A book that needed writing. The Underground Railroad is a huge concept that should have more written about it than anyone can read. Certainly there should be more books written about it than one can comfortably read in a lifetime.Not the same as a collection of the (nebulous) years it existed, nor the same as the (nebulous) people involved in transporting the (nebulous) people it transported, the underground railroad is nevertheless a pretty well defined concept. Well, so is pi.Bordewich defines it well.Also, Josiah Henson High would make a great name for a high school in Montgomery County, Maryland.

Highly recommend for those seeking a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the Underground Railroad and the characters involved with it.

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 slaveryJefferson 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.

I have never read any significant history of the Underground Railroad, in fact it seems that they are in short supply. However, this book has received such positive reviews I thought I must read it. When both the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post consider this a must read history, I thought that it must be worth an investment of my time. This very detailed history was told through the personal stories of both fugitive slaves and conductors on the Railroad. I found it a compelling story about an amazing part of American History as some risked life, property, and reputations to overcome the horrors and injustices of slavery in America.

It's a moving history of the resistance towards institutionalized slavery in America. To consider the amount of illegal activity against slavery, activity that today we see as the moral answer to that evil (a generally accepted evil both north and south), might give us pause. But it was the willingness of so many to work fervently against that evil, at great personal risk, some of whom doing so for decades without remedy in sight, that opened up our language of freedom, not just based on race, but on gender and, to some extent, economics.The story of the underground railroad was clouded by the storm of racism following the civil war generation. It applies today for everyone who wants to make positive cultural change in America.

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, the Fugitive Slave Law and the writing of "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

A Gripping TaleEvery good thing I'd heard about this book that came so highly recommended was amply justified. Historical figures I'd always admired, it turns out, had their flaws. The descriptions and explanations I found in this book helped me grasp the confluence of civil disobedience into which the abolitionist movement—and by association, the underground itself—morphed. I never would have thought I'd be so anxious to know what happened next to people I knew going in were long dead. No wading thru called for here!