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

by Fergus Bordewich Narrated by Peter Jay Fernandez

Overview

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 Underground Railroad, a movement that occupies as romantic a place in the nation's imagination as the Lewis and Clark expedition. The true story of the Underground Railroad is much more morally complex and politically divisive than even the myths suggest. Against a backdrop of the country's westward expansion arose a fierce clash of values that was nothing less than a war for the country's soul. Not since the American Revolution had the country engaged in an act of such vast and profound civil disobedience that not only challenged prevailing mores but also subverted federal law.

Bound for Canaan tells the stories of men and women like David Ruggles, who invented the black underground in New York City; bold Quakers like Isaac Hopper and Levi Coffin, who risked their lives to build the Underground Railroad; and the inimitable Harriet Tubman. Interweaving thrilling personal stories with the politics of slavery and abolition, Bound for Canaan shows how the Underground Railroad gave birth to this country's first racially integrated, religiously inspired movement for social change.

Editorial Reviews

Kirkus Reviews

A vivid reconstruction of abolitionism's most daring act of rebellion, "an epic of high drama, moral courage, religious inspiration, and unexpected personal transformations played out by a cast of extraordinary personalities."The abolitionist movement, Bordewich (My Mother's Ghost, 2000, etc.) notes, began not long after the Revolutionary War ended, and it began in the revolutionary hotbed of Philadelphia. Its earliest members were religious activists, though as the 19th century progressed, the Underground Railroad-the term refers to an interlocking system of routes and way stations by which slaves were afforded escape-became hydra-headed, with very little central direction, a great deal of individual initiative, and no set ideology save for one overarching goal: "to provide aid to any fugitive slave who asked for it." In those early days, Bordewich writes, utmost secrecy was of the essence, for slavery was allowed and practiced everywhere in the US but Vermont; gradually, however, the North shed the "peculiar institution," while Thomas Jefferson hazarded that the South would soon follow. Thus turn-of-the-century law required that fugitive slaves be returned to their owners, one reason that the Underground Railroad's favored terminus was enlightened Canada, where fugitives found work as skilled construction workers, "as shoemakers, tailors, barbers, cooks, and agricultural laborers," and even as some of the first tourist guides at Niagara Falls. Things became more complicated when slave states and free states butted heads: for instance, when free blacks in Cincinnati surrounded slaves on the way to Kentucky and urged them not to go any farther, and when a Philadelphia court ruled that theslave of a South Carolina senator resident in the city was a free man, having lived in Pennsylvania long enough to establish legal residency. It might have shocked some of the pacifist founders of the Underground Railroad, Bordewich ventures, to learn that their actions would in time help spark the Civil War-and perhaps even to know that abolitionism would directly beget feminism. Rich in detail and solid storytelling: sure to awaken interest in the peculiar anti-institution.

From the Publisher

Well written, moving, and stimulating...Could provide the occasion for a constructive national conversation.” — New York Times on Killing the White Man's Indian

“Well written, moving, and stimulating...Could provide the occasion for a constructive national conversation.” — St. Petersburg Times on Killing the White Man's Indian

“A vivid reconstruction of abolitionism’s most daring act of rebellion...” — Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“Rich in detail and solid storytelling: sure to awaken interest in the peculiar anti-institution.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“A rich, spellbinding, and readable narrative.” — School Library Journal (starred review)

“Rich in detail, [and] its ability to evoke the emotions, sights and sounds of these clandestine ventures.” — Black Issues Book Review

“Utterly compelling.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Dramatizes a shining moment in American history— a book filled with unsung heroes and revolutionary acts of trust.” — O magazine

“Bound for Canaan recaptures this grand history with the insightfulness, comprehensiveness, and narrative vigor the subject demands.” — David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the two-volume life of W. E. B. Du Bois

“Bound For Canaan reveals in stunning detail and beautiful prose the inner workings of this clandestine system.” — —Kate Clifford, Ph.D. author of Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero

“This fast-paced narrative is the best account we have of the network known as the Underground Railroad.” — —James McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

“A masterful story—a deeply American story.” — —Cornel West, University Professor of Religion, Princeton University, and author of Race Matters and Democracy Matters

“An excellent book . . .as close to a definitive history as we’re likely to see.” — Wall Street Journal

“A profoundly American tale.” — USA Today

“An important addition to our history, brilliantly told.” — Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Well written, moving, and stimulating...Could provide the occasion for a constructive national conversation.” — New York Times

“Engrossing account of the Underground Railroad.” — The New Yorker

“The . . stories. . . inspire, horrify and humble.” — Washington Post

“Bordewich brings to his account [of the Underghround Railroad] the moral seriousness it deserves.” — New York Review of Books

“Excellent...The first truly comprehensive treatment of the underground railroad.” — Civil War History Magazine

Kate Clifford

Bound For Canaan reveals in stunning detail and beautiful prose the inner workings of this clandestine system.

O magazine

Dramatizes a shining moment in American history— a book filled with unsung heroes and revolutionary acts of trust.

Black Issues Book Review

Rich in detail, [and] its ability to evoke the emotions, sights and sounds of these clandestine ventures.

New York Times on Killing the White Man's Indian

Well written, moving, and stimulating...Could provide the occasion for a constructive national conversation.

St. Petersburg Times on Killing the White Man's Indian

Well written, moving, and stimulating...Could provide the occasion for a constructive national conversation.

David Levering Lewis

Bound for Canaan recaptures this grand history with the insightfulness, comprehensiveness, and narrative vigor the subject demands.

USA Today

A profoundly American tale.

Cornel West

A masterful story—a deeply American story.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

An important addition to our history, brilliantly told.

New York Review of Books

Bordewich brings to his account [of the Underghround Railroad] the moral seriousness it deserves.

James McPherson

This fast-paced narrative is the best account we have of the network known as the Underground Railroad.

Washington Post

The . . stories. . . inspire, horrify and humble.

Civil War History Magazine

Excellent...The first truly comprehensive treatment of the underground railroad.

The New Yorker

Engrossing account of the Underground Railroad.

New York Times

Well written, moving, and stimulating...Could provide the occasion for a constructive national conversation.

Wall Street Journal

An excellent book . . .as close to a definitive history as we’re likely to see.

The New Yorker

Engrossing account of the Underground Railroad.

USA Today

A profoundly American tale.

Washington Post

The . . stories. . . inspire, horrify and humble.

Wall Street Journal

An excellent book . . .as close to a definitive history as we’re likely to see.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

An important addition to our history, brilliantly told.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173802118
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	06/07/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Bound for Canaan

The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America

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By Fergus Bordewich

Amistad

ISBN: 0-06-052430-8

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Chapter One

The Negro Business is a great object with us. It is to the Trade of the Country as the Soul to the Body. - Joseph Clay, slave owner

Josiah Henson's earliest memory was of the day that his father came home with his ear cut off. He, like his parents, had been born into slavery, and knew no other world beyond the small tract of tidewater Maryland where he was raised. He was five or six years old when the horrifying thing happened, probably sometime in 1795. "Father appeared one day covered in blood and in a state of great excitement," Henson would recall many years later. His head was bloody and his back lacerated, and "he was beside himself with mingled rage and suffering."

Henson was born on June 15, 1789, on the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay, on a farm belonging to Francis Newman, about a mile from Port Tobacco. His mother was the property of a neighbor, Dr. Josiah McPherson, an amiable alcoholic who treated the infant Henson as something of a pet, bestowing upon him his own Christian name. In accordance with common practice, McPherson had hired out Henson's mother to Newman, to whom Henson's father belonged. Newman's overseer, a "rough, coarse man," had brutally assaulted Henson's mother. Whether this was an actual or attempted rape, or the more mundane brutality of daily life, Henson does not make clear. Perhaps he didn't know. Whatever the cause, Henson's father, normally a good-humored man, attacked the overseer with ferocity and would have killed him, had not Henson's mother intervened. For a slave to lift his hand "against the sacred temple of a white man's body," even in self-defense, was an act of rebellion. Slaves were sometimes executed, and occasionally even castrated, for such an act. Knowing that retribution would be swift, Henson's father fled. Like most runaways, however, he didn't go far, but hid in the surrounding woods, venturing at night to beg food at nearby cabins. Eventually, hunger compelled him to surrender. Slaves from surrounding plantations were ordered to witness his punishment for their "moral improvement." One hundred lashes were laid on by a local blacksmith, fifty lashes at a time. Bleeding and faint, the victim was then held up against the whipping post and his right ear fastened to it with a "tack." The blacksmith then sliced the ear off with a knife, to the sound of cheers from the crowd.

What the real sentiments of the slaves watching this punishment might have been no one can say. Perhaps they cheered in a desperate effort to reassure their masters that they, unlike Henson's father, were docile and trustworthy, and harbored no thoughts of rebellion. Or perhaps with relief, seeing a "troublemaker," whose deed had caused their masters to become more vigilant and harsh in an effort to forestall further rebellion, now getting his just deserts. Or perhaps, to people so brutalized by their own degradation, the cruelty may even have seemed a form of gruesome entertainment. Afterward, Henson's father became a different man, brooding and morose - "intractable," as slave owners typically described human property that no longer responded compliantly to command. Nothing could be done with him. "So off he was sent to Alabama. What was his after fate neither my mother nor I ever learned."

Following his father's disappearance, Henson and his mother returned to the McPherson estate. Even after years of freedom, Henson would remember the doctor as a "liberal, jovial" man of kind impulses, and he might well have lived out his life in passive oblivion as a slave had not it been for another stroke of fate that abruptly changed his life yet again. One morning, when Henson was still a small child, McPherson was found drowned in a stream, having apparently fallen from his horse the night before in a drunken stupor. McPherson's property was to be sold off, and the proceeds divided among his heirs. The slaves were frantic at the prospect of being sold away from Maryland to the Deep South, where it was well known that overwork, the grueling climate, and disease shortened lives. Even sparing that, an estate sale commonly meant that parents would be divided from children, and husbands from wives, lifelong friends separated from one another, a relatively benign master suddenly exchanged for a cruel one. For female slaves, the future might mean rape and permanent sexual exploitation. The only thing that those about to be sold did know was that the future was completely uncertain, and that they had not the slightest power to affect their fate.

In due course, all the remaining Hensons - Josiah's three sisters, two brothers, his mother, and himself - were put up at auction. The memory of this event remained engraved in Josiah's memory until the end of his life: the huddled group of anxious slaves, the crowd of bidders, the clinical examining of muscles and teeth, his mother's raw fear. His brothers and sisters were bid off one by one, while his mother, holding his hand, looked on in "an agony of grief," whose meaning only slowly dawned on the little boy as the sale proceeded. When his mother's turn came, she was bought by a farmer named Isaac Riley, of Montgomery County, just outside the site of the new national capital at Washington. Then young Henson himself was finally offered up for sale. In the midst of the bidding, as Josiah remembered it, his mother pushed through the crowd, flung herself at Riley's feet, and begged him to buy the boy as well. Instead, he shoved her away in disgust ...

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Bound for Canaan by Fergus Bordewich Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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