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>> David Ferriero: Good evening. I'm David Ferriero, Archivist of the National Archives and Records Administration. A special welcome to those of you who are joining us on our YouTube Channel. Tonight we'll be hearing from historian Eric Foner and his distinguished colleagues as they discuss the promise and perils of the Underground Railroad for those fleeing slavery in the mid-19th Century. Professor Foner will remain after the program to sign copies of his book "Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad." Before we begin tonight's program I'd like to tell you about two programs we'll be presenting in the next couple of weeks. On Thursday, 7:00 p.m., we'll host "Forum on the Rosenberg Case," a panel discussion on the espionage case. And next Thursday, February 12, 7:00 p.m., come enjoy a concert by the Airmen of Note, the premiere jazz ensemble of the United States Air Force. To learn more about these and all of our public programs and exhibits, consult our monthly Calendar of Events in print or online. There are copies in the lobby as well as signup sheets where you can receive it by regular mail or e-mail. You'll also find brochures about other National Archives programs and activities. And another way to get more involved with the National Archives is to become a member of the Foundation for The National Archives. The foundation supports all of our education and outreach activities. There are applications for membership in the lobby. Our subject tonight, Eric Foner's latest work "Gateway to Freedom" earned much praise from its reviewers. "The Washington Post" review said in his carefully argued new book, Eric Foner aims to set the record straight drawing on his deep expertise. In the history of abolitionists, Foner demonstrates one cannot understand the origins of the American Civil War without taking into account the resistance activism of fugitive slaves and their anti-slavery allies. And from the "L.A. Times," probing and resonant, "Gateway to Freedom" reminds us that history can be as stirring as the most gripping fiction. As many of us have already discovered on our own, history is, indeed, as stirring as the most gripping fiction. Every day here at the National Archives researchers make discoveries and piece together previously unknown stories, records such as the petitions and claims help us cross the divide of a century and more and allows us to hear the voices of those held in bondage. Tonight we'll hear the stories of the self-emancipated slaves as told in Professor Foner's book. Let's welcome tonight's moderator, Ed Ayers, President of the University of Richmond and our panelists, Eric Foner, Professor of History of Columbia University and author of "Gateway to Freedom," Edna Greene Medford, Professor of History, Howard University, and Adam Rothman, Associate Professor of History, Georgetown University. Please welcome our panelists. [Applause] >> Ed Ayers: Good evening, everybody. I'm Ed Ayers, moderator. I'm looking forward to it. I want to begin with this question that I wrote. Was there really an Underground Railroad? >> [Laughter] >> Ed Ayers: So you should know what the rules are, Professor Foner may not answer a question until the rest of the panelists have had a chance; then he can offer a weak retort of some sort. >> Edna Greene Medford: It depends on how you define Underground Railroad. If you think it was a single system of safe houses from the South to the North, then, no, it didn't exist. But as Professor Foner has indicated, it was a network of organizations, vigilance committees, anti-slavery societies, individuals, community groups. And they're talking to each other but there's no one single organization that's coordinating all of this. >> Ed Ayers: Adam, do you agree with that? Is that coherent enough to be called an Underground Railroad? >> Adam Rothman: I think it is. I like the idea of an Underground Railroad. It's a fantastic, impossible image of a railroad running underground. Underground Railroad, neither underground nor railroad but if you just think about the variety of ways that enslaved people escaped from slavery, made their way to places like Philadelphia and New York, Albany and ultimately to Canada, they found a way. Some of them walked. Some of them rode in wagons. Some of them failed. Some hid away in steamships. Some literally mailed themselves to freedom. There's such an astonishing variety of modes of escape captured by that Underground Railroad idea. >> Ed Ayers: The question is not over so you may not speak yet. Here's what I want to know. Why did we doubt that there was for quite a stretch? The most influential book by historians for decades said, oh, come on, it's a myth. Why would we doubt this? You offer compelling portrayals of it. >> Eric Foner: Let the record show -- the book you're referring to, "The Liberty Line" was reacting against an exaggerated image which Edna was talking about, you know, those fixed routes, stations, agents, passwords, secret codes. This goes all the way back to books from the late 19th Century. Actually had maps purporting to show these fixed routes. It wasn't like that at all. Garrison said, no, this is all tremendously exaggerated. But also, he said, the image a lot of people had of the Underground Railroad was basically of humanitarian whites helping downtrodden slaves. And the initiative of the fugitives themselves kind of got lost in the shuffle. As Adam said, people escaped from slavery using all sorts of ingenious methods and varieties of ways of getting out. But somehow in the old picture it was the white station masters who were the heroes. So Garrison, forget about that. But I think as most revisionists maybe tend to do, we went overboard and threw out the whole idea whereas he did point out some of the exaggerations. So for a long time, you're right, historians kind of doubted that any kind of network like that existed at all. >> Ed Ayers: Was there something about 1961 that would lead him to think that whereas now we're more inclined to see a pattern? >> Eric Foner: I'm the only here who was around in 1961. >> [Laughter] >> Ed Ayers: It was black and white back then. >> Eric Foner: Obviously the civil rights movement was reaching its height in the early 60s. Black militancy was very much in the news and in the streets. So his emphasis on the initiative of African-Americans themselves fit very well with the tenor of the times. >> Ed Ayers: Are we inclined now to see a pattern or a consistency where people might not have been before? >> Edna Greene Medford: I think so. It was easy then to believe that African-Americans couldn't do very much on their own and that there had to be good white men from the North and in the South who are sort of ushering them to freedom. And the reality is that African-Americans are starting out in many instances on their own. They do get help along the way and tremendous help once they get to the North. But a lot of people helping them even then are other African-Americans, individuals, whole neighborhoods of people actually. I was struck in Professor Foner's book when I read the extent to which local communities get involved and making sure the people are not returned to slavery. Large numbers of people turn out and actually try to stop these people from being shipped back to the South. So it's not just good abolitionists who are there standing between slavery and freedom. There are many African-Americans as well helping to freedom. >> Ed Ayers: It's often pointed out -- I don't know if you would agree with this number -- that only 2% of white northerners would have identified as abolitionists. And in the same way that is -- you're pointing out there's this huge network of African-Americans free And enslaved. Does Eric's portrayal, do you think, of the allies that these African-Americans had -- to think maybe the 2% number of abolitionists understates the effect of the abolitionists and that the bicker -- Adam, you made the mistake of nodding. >> Adam Rothman: It may or may not be true that 2% of white northerners were abolitionists. They certainly were a small and beleaguered minority. But the effects of the abolitionist movement were tremendous; especially the debates and scenes around the rescue and recapture of fugitive slaves. These are really spectacular events. They're polarizing events in many northern towns and cities. They force white northerners who are not themselves abolitionists and who may not have themselves confronted the reality of slavery in their daily lives, they forced those people to come face-to-face with the bloodhounds and slave catchers that stood behind slavery. It may not have convinced a majority of northerners before the Civil War to immediately abolish slavery but I do think it sort of touched the chords of northern conscience in the way that had very powerful and concrete political effects. >> Edna Greene Medford: When you think about the kinds of challenges they faced as abolitionists, especially when they involved with the enslaved act after the 1860's, they're going to jail; they're being fined, ostracized by their neighbors when their neighbors know what they're doing. So it's a tremendous personal sacrifice to them to be involved in attempting to end slavery and especially to help fugitives end slavery. So the average person is not going to risk all the way some of these people did. We have to remember that they're the bad guys during this from the perspective of many people in their neighborhoods. They're the troublemakers. They get beaten up. It's a very difficult thing to be an abolitionist during this period. >> Eric Foner: Wherever that 2% number comes from, there were pockets of abolitionists. Those 2% were not spread evenly across the whole north, as you know. There were areas. And this is very connected to the Underground Railroad, southeastern Pennsylvania where there were a lot of rural Quaker farming families. A lot of them were abolitionists. If slaves got across the Mason-Dixon line, they could receive help there or upstate New York where really abolitionism was much stronger than 2%. Places like Syracuse I write about. The Underground Railroad was totally open. One of the reasons it's not totally under ground is in some places it was quite public. The head of the Underground Railroad in Syracuse, Jermaine Logan himself a fugitive slave, advertised in the newspaper. He said: I'm the head of the Underground Railroad in this town. Anyone who comes across a fugitive slave, send them to my house. He raised money. He had fundraising parties. Nobody arrested him. That was a place where anti-slavery was strong enough that it was possible to be public. So there were these pockets, not a majority by any stretch of the imagination, but where fugitive slaves could receive assistance as they moved eventually to Canada. After the 1850 law only Canada would really offer you security. >> Ed Ayers: So in the same way the Underground Railroad connects to a few places, excellent maps in a wonderful book, but it's also the case that politics would also focus on these few places. So rather than imagine them like peanut butter spread across the North, instead sort of concentrated in places where they ended up having very large effects. >> Adam Rothman: I just want to add, this is one of the things that's so wonderful about Professor Foner's book. It really focuses on one of the places where you might not expect to find a thriving and significant -- >> Ed Ayers: Oh, Adam, how could that be? We all know New York City is the capital of Yankeedom. >> Eric Foner: Liberalism. >> Adam Rothman: But it wasn't before the Civil War. New York City, as the key cotton port in the United States, had very close ties to the slave south. The Democratic Party conceded to slavery, was very powerful in New York City. And New York City was a pro slavery bastion in the North. So it's one of the places where abolitionists would have found themselves under the most intense pressure. And what "Gateway to Freedom" shows is how these few dedicated and courageous abolitionists in the heart of New York City managed to hustle hundreds of slaves toward freedom. I think that's a remarkable achievement of historical analysis, to draw our attention to that place at that time. >> Eric Foner: Thank you, Adam. This goes back to your point I estimate that at any one time there were probably more than a dozen people in New York City kind of working more or less full-time on helping fugitive slaves. So the abolitionist movement was pretty small. But then there were these anonymous larger groups, most African-Americans. New York had a pretty thriving black community, people who worked on the docks, in hotels, people who came into contact with fugitive slaves. They knew where to send them. These are people we don't even know their names mostly but they knew, ok, if I come across a fugitive slave, I send him to this office, the anti-slavery office. >> Ed Ayers: Whoever Frederick Douglass -- >> Eric Foner: Center to the vigilist community. You have a tiny core of people working on this. Then you have a somewhat larger group around them who are just happy to help out a fugitive slave if they encountered them. They're not working on it but if they encountered them, they know what to do. >> Ed Ayers: What would motivate people to risk their lives in this public way to be the bad guys? Not you. You wrote a book about it. >> [Laughter] >> Eric Foner: What motivates people any time? >> Ed Ayers: One of the things about the book, it shows you how risky it was to do this, for black and white people to do it. So what do you think the motivations were? >> Edna Greene Medford: I think it's mixed. It depends upon the individual. There are some people who are doing it because they're caught up in this whole evangelical movement, this second great awakening. And this is all a part of that it's sort of the tail end of that. There are others who believe that everyone has a right to what America stands for. Lincoln, for instance, is talking about hating slavery not just because of the moral issue but because of what it does to the reputation of America. It makes Americans look like hypocrite. So some people, I'm sure, are doing it for that reason. I think it depends upon the individual. I was struck as well by the fact that there are some people who are defending the fugitives who might not necessarily care very much about African-Americans in general but they are defending the fugitives. So people are entering this struggle for a variety of reasons. >> Ed Ayers: Help me understand something that I find students wonder about. It feels like the white part of the story is in the 1830s which is a long time from the Civil War. Right? So does the abolitionist movement sort of peak in like a quasi, you know, and 1840s and 50s are just sort of the trailing light from that or do we think that that was the beginning of something that gained momentum until it built to the Civil War? It can only be one or the other of those. It can't be anything else. >> [Laughter] >> Eric Foner: The abolitionist movement, I think, as you well know, it split in half in 1840. >> Ed Ayers: Right there -- >> Eric Foner: It flowed into different directions. I think the 1830s is the peak in the sense that that's the decade in which they forced the slavery issue into public debate. They shattered the conspiracy of silence on slavery. Then they, themselves, split. So then the question of even defining what is an abolitionist becomes difficult. Some of them go into political activity. Some of them go into, you know, more religious anti-slavery. By the 1850s you have anti-slavery politics. They're not abolitionists but they're, you know, people like Lincoln, William Seward, and Chase and others who are in the mainstream of the political system. So the abolitionists have helped to create a public sentiment that makes anti-slavery politics possible. So the question is, did they disappear or in a sense get almost superseded by a more moderate kind of hostility to slavery, which is what eventually brings on the Civil War? >> Ed Ayers: I'd be curious to know, myself, the panelists' thoughts on this. Is anti-slavery politics, Republican Party, a delusion of the original radical impulse? There's lots of things, even in Eric's book, in which you see them kind of hedging their bets. Does the very fact that this continues into the 1850s a sign that it's a contagion of progress that's spreading? Do you have thoughts about that? I think people have a hard time understanding, well, if it was such a big deal -- it seems to have been running out of steam in the 40s and 50s. I think one of the strengths of this book is it suggests that if you just think about abolitionism as abolitionism rather than consequences -- I'd like to know how to answer my students. If you could help me out, I'd appreciate it. >> Adam Rothman: I think first of all we have to shake the image of abolitionism as exemplified by William Lloyd Garrison. William Lloyd Garrison and the way most people understand abolitionism is the beginning and end of the abolitionist movement. He defines its principles and its tactics. And he is, I think, really the leading light of the abolitionism in the 1830s. But in the 1840s and 1850s he ends up more in the margins of the movement. But that doesn't mean an abolitionism is dead or marginalized. It actually means that abolitionism has grown and moved into different directions, engaged -- American society including political arenas, actually strengthens abolitionism. It's one argument that the kinds of breaks and divides within abolitionism weaken the movement, but perhaps those breaks and divides and arguments and bitter debates actually strengthen the movement as you move it in creative directions, generate new ideas, and force it to think more about tactics and strategies. How are we going to get the white northern majority to shift on this, to look at things from our point of view? So I think the diversity of abolitionism especially in the 1850s is a strength not a weakness. >> Edna Greene Medford: So we also have to separate abolitionism from anti-slavery activities. Because it seems that what's happening by the 1850s, at least, this pressure, this whole focus on anti-slavery, the expansion -- ok, the expansion of slavery into the west, for instance, is what fuels the abolitionist movement, I think. Because certainly these folk were anti-slavery and not truly abolitionists. They're more than happy to see slavery continue where it exists; they just don't want it in the Northern states and they certainly don't want it in the west. But it seems that when the South presses that, then abolitionism becomes stronger because northerners realize that they're going to have to deal with the slavery issue. >> Ed Ayers: Trying to grasp this. It's not a rise in decline. In some ways it is situational. Something could set this off. And it seems -- each time it sets it off, there's more powder. Right? It seems to be a growing thing. One of the very interesting aspects of the book is talking -- let me ask this question. Was the Fugitive Slave Act the defining event of the conflict between the North and the South? >> Eric Foner: I don't think there was one defining event. >> Ed Ayers: There can only be one. You're not getting how this is working. >> Eric Foner: However, as you know, if you read South Carolina's declaration of the causes of secession, which they issued in December 1860 when they severed their tie to the Union, the longest -- it's a lot of complaints against the North. The longest one is about fugitive slaves. Even though not that many escaped from South Carolina. It was too far. But the fugitive slave issue polarized north and south as much as any other issue. It wasn't the only one but it was a major catalyst of the sectional crisis. I think it's fair to say that because this is in the constitution. >> Ed Ayers: I thought your book, that's what was cool about it; you showed us it was. It showed all of these conflict. It seemed to be the thing -- >> Eric Foner: Ok, I'll accept that. >> Ed Ayers: He graciously accepted that he was right. Kind of a hollow victory. Adam? >> Adam Rothman: I would say that the Fugitive Slave Act is certainly the defining event for black northerners because it really pulls the rug of freedom out from under them. It means that -- they were never fully safe in the Northern states between the states we call the free states. But after 1850 it becomes even riskier for northern blacks; especially those who were themselves slaves and subject to return to be -- to be returned to slavery but also for people who had been important free who risked being kidnapped and falsely judged to be slaves; basically re-enslaved and shipped south. So you find in the 1850s lots and lots of black northerners moving to Canada, which becomes really the land of freedom in the 1850s. There's a memoir by a guy named William Still, an African-American, free-born African-American, who was -- he was the agent of the Underground Railroad in Philadelphia. He sent a lot of fugitives to New York. Then they were sent up to Albany and eventually to Canada. There's a guy named John Henry Hill who literally escaped from a slave auction at Richmond and made his way to Philadelphia and then to Canada. And then he wrote letters back to Still about life in Canada. And they were just amazingly fiery letters, contrasting Canadian freedom with American slavery. I think that was a really important moment for black northerners' own politics. >> Edna Greene Medford: And perhaps -- I guess if we can say that the Fugitive Slave Act itself was a defining movement for northerners, then perhaps the lack of enforcement was a defining moment for southerners. >> Ed Ayers: That's good. >> Edna Greene Medford: Because New Yorkers, especially, some groups of them certainly, did not want to enforce it. The people didn't. Certainly the folks -- the authorities were more than happy to comply but there were local people who did not. And so I think it really did impact the way the South looked at things. It's about property rights versus human rights. And from a southern perspective, you don't tread on my property rights. And I think they realized that as long as people were willing to defy that loss, then they were not going to have their way with slavery. >> Ed Ayers: The irony of wanting power against the rights of the state. It seems an interesting flip there. They want it when it's useful to them. >> Eric Foner: The fugitive slave law was probably the most vigorous kind of exercise of the power of the federal government within the United States. I'm not talking about wars with other countries but internally. In the whole pre-civil war period it overrode all of these laws that the Northern states had passed, procedures for dealing with fugitive slaves. It made it a federal crime to try to obstruct the capture of fugitive slaves or even to refuse to assist. The federal marshal says, hey, I'm going after that fugitive and you have to help me and you say, no, I don't think I want to do that, you're committing a federal crime. So the idea that southerners were completely dedicated to states' rights is really not accurate if you bring the fugitive slave law into the picture. Because there it was, you know, as I say, vigorous use of federal power to enforce their claim to slave property, as you said. >> Ed Ayers: Edna, you mentioned before that the people who are sometimes working on behalf of this are doing it because it's not really sympathy for African-American people. I think one of the things that Eric's book shows is the remarkable range of relationships among black and white people. Maybe you'd like to talk about that. I think, you know, some people imagine it's just every white person hates every black person. Right? And others imagine that there are these abolitionists who are free of racial prejudice. But then we see this story and it seems all scrambled. What lessons have we drawn about racial definitions from this story? >> Edna Greene Medford: I was struck, too, by the fact that you've got fugitives coming into town and -- or on the way in, staying in the homes of people who are more than willing to help them and risk all for them. I think it's very hard for us to say that race -- well, race is clearly defined during this period. But people do things because they think it's the right thing to do or because they think that, you know, this is what America stands for or whatever. It isn't a black or white. No pun intended. It's each individual deciding what is right for them. So you have someone like John Jay, II, who is a lawyer, who is facilitating the freedom of these people. But if I'm recalling correctly, he was not someone who was terribly interested in the personal well-being of an African-American but someone who believed that these fugitives were entitled to legal support. >> Eric Foner: Or a guy like Lewis Tappan overshadowed, as Adam said, by William Lloyd Garrison. One of the things that surprised me as I was working on this book is my opinion of Lewis Tappan kept rising. He was, you know -- even though they were fighting with Garrison, he was a well-to-do merchant. He had a nice big house in Brooklyn Heights. Now, Tappan did not hire blacks in his own stores and yet he hid them in his home. What does that tell us about race? >> Ed Ayers: What does it tell us? >> Eric Foner: That people are complicated, which I think we all know from studying history. Right? Tappan was a principle guy but his egalitarianism went only so far and yet he spent a lot of his own money on this. When people needed money, they went to Tappan because he had it. Or these Quakers, you know, they were principled, anti-slavery and yet in their own churches they made blacks sit in the back. A lot of African-Americans who wanted to become Quakers were very disgruntled at the way they were treated in Quaker meetings. So it's not a very simple thing just to say is this person a racist or not a racist. There's a wide range of behaviors and attitudes that people can have. >> Ed Ayers: Adam, anything else? >> Adam Rothman: The issue in the United States before the Civil War was slavery. >> Eric Foner: Right. >> Adam Rothman: There are people who had a very low opinion -- white people with very low opinion of black people but who hated slavery because they thought it was a basic violation of natural rights or they thought it was contrary to the Bible or thought it corrupted American institutions and should be abolished. But the question of what the status of black people should be in society once slavery was abolished is a separate question. >> Ed Ayers: Yeah, it's almost like it's complicated. What I want to know -- I want you to tell us about the document in your book which you do a good job of saving until near the end. You keep looking forward to it. I'm surprised because it suggests that there are still things in archives that we don't know about. I always quote my mom, who was a fifth grade teacher -- I told her I was going to graduate school in history. She said, "What for, honey? We already know what happened." >> [Laughter] >> Ed Ayers: Which is a good line. I get the feeling, too, that sometimes it feels like -- and we've seen all the evidence now and yet here's something that was kind of hidden pretty close to you that you should have found long ago if I'm not mistaken. Tell us the story about that. >> Eric Foner: The other mistake we make Ed is partly responsible for this -- is the thought that everything is now online. >> Ed Ayers: Yeah. >> Eric Foner: He's the pioneer and in fact -- >> Ed Ayers: And only up to 96% of having everything. >> Eric Foner: Ed is the pioneer of what they call digital history long before they even had a name and deserves enormous credit for that. But there are still things out there that are not online, not digitalized. And here we are in a great archive, of course, and this particular document called the "Record of Fugitives" which was a record kept by an abolitionist editor in New York City for two years, 1855, 1856. He just interviewed over 200 fugitive slaves who passed through New York City. As a journalist, he asked them about their experiences, their owners, how they escaped, why they escaped. He wrote it all down. It's an amazing document giving you the words of these people and their experiences right at the time. Yeah, it's in the Columbia rare books library. >> Ed Ayers: Aren't you a professor at Columbia? >> Eric Foner: I've gone through every single thing there. >> Ed Ayers: And you've been there a long time. >> Eric Foner: I didn't know about this document. By the way, it also shows you that archives are only useful if they're cataloged or indexed. >> Ed Ayers: It's the Archives' fault. >> Eric Foner: No. It's the President of the university. It's his fault. A student actually pointed it out to me and said she was working on a senior thesis having to do with his journalistic career. She said, you know, in '72, "Professor, there's this thing "Record of Fugitives." You might find it interesting." I looked at it. It was fascinating. William Still kept some records like this but he was not this kind of journalist. His are more telegraphic. The stories in this are rich and full. I had never heard of it. Maybe only cited once or twice by people. That became the basis of this book. I dare say I worked outward from it to try to figure out who are these slaves who helped them. The names of people are in there. Who are these guys from Syracuse, Albany they sent them to? I began to try to work out these networks moving outward from this very, very remarkable document which really I didn't know -- and then, of course, like all historians, I started going backward, to the roots, 1830s, 1820s. Out of New Amsterdam, at least a paragraph, 1650s. We don't have too much information back then. But it is a very remarkable human story with these individuals who mostly are lost to history now. We know they came through New York. You can track them often through digitalized stuff like the Canadian Census of 1861, a good number of them. You can find them up there. So we know they reached Canada. It's a remarkable human set of stories. So there are still surprises that you can discover in archives right under your nose. >> Ed Ayers: So you've read this book. Based on this find, what do you still wish we knew about the Underground Railroad? We now know more about it than we ever did before from this. What do you wish we knew? This is not a criticism of Eric but -- >> Eric Foner: There's more to be said? >> Ed Ayers: Never can tell. You have to find the right folder. What do you wish? >> Edna Greene Medford: I think I would like to see something more detailed about what happens from the moment the person leaves the farm or the plantation or the city and just a real rich story of all of the things, all of the challenges along the way. And you deal with a lot of that, but I would like to hear more of that. I just -- just from reading it, I imagine someone spending the night or several days in a swamp. I would love to have an account day by day exactly what's happening. We'll never have that. >> Ed Ayers: I wonder if you could help our friends here understand kind of where the people who escaped slavery through this network came from and what means would they use to start this process? Would you mind telling us? >> Edna Green Medford: The ones that are going to New York are coming from Maryland and Virginia primarily because it's closer to free territory. Some are coming from as far away, though, as North Carolina. >> Eric Foner: Yes. >> Edna Greene Medford: And maybe even further south. For the most part it's Virginia -- it's Maryland, especially the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the Baltimore area, and certain areas of Virginia. And they're coming by way of sea. They're on trains. They walked part of the way. The idea of people walking for 200 miles, women are doing it. Women with children are doing it. It's just amazing. The kind of effort they put forward for freedom and all of the challenges that they're having along the way. People who never had been to very far from their homes and they strike out and they do this. Sometimes they're doing it as individuals, especially young men are. They're doing it in groups as well. So I think the book is very -- very vivid stories of what's happening. >> Ed Ayers: I was surprised how long people -- like Norfolk could get away with being allies for people who would like to escape; that they would be -- it would be known that if you could make your way to this ship, this boat, that they will take you to Philadelphia. >> Eric Foner: It's amazing. There were thousands of ships plying roots up and down the Atlantic coast, little ships, big ships. It was impossible to inspect all of them. And, yes, there were -- this goes back to motivation. There were captains for money who hid -- they weren't abolitionists. But if you could pay, they would hide you in the bottom of their ship somewhere and drop you off in Philadelphia or something like that. And there were people who knew which captains they were. There were slaves and free blacks in Norfolk who assisted others. And nobody knew. The city fathers didn't even know who was doing this. That's the astonishing thing. >> Ed Ayers: Living in Richmond it's especially amazing to me-- there's a city of Richmond -- leaving Richmond, the center of the slave trade in the Upper South. People escaping from this would have had that ship leaving a few hundred yards from the Lumpkin's, the center of the slave trade. I think as we imagine this, we don't imagine people -- the same way people imagine people just being marched in cockles in slavery, they don't think about them being put on steam ships and railroads. Neither do they imagine that the Underground Railroad was actually an above ground railroad a lot of times. I thought one of the things that was so interesting -- I'm with you. I would like to know what happens below the Mason-Dixon line. The glimpse we're able to get suggests very sophisticated and constantly changing strategies. So in some ways when the South became more and more modern, there were more ways to escape. Any questions to what you would like to know, Adam? >> Adam Rothman: There's an article about historians alarmed at the relentless expansion of the past. >> [Laughter] >> Ed Ayers: Yeah. They keep getting -- >> Adam Rothman: It keeps getting bigger. That's a problem for us. >> Ed Ayers: The future, one day shorter each day. I'm sorry. >> Adam Rothman: Pessimist over there. I think I'll say what I think we need to learn more about in a second but I also want to emphasize that many enslaved people who set out on this journey to freedom did not make it. >> Eric Foner: Right. >> Adam Rothman: This was an incredibly dangerous act to try to run away, to try to get to the North, to try to get to Canada. If you read the story saying Williams Stills' memoir, the story recounted in "Gateway to Freedom,"they're being chased all the way by bloodhounds and slave catchers in every town that they enter presenting new dangers. They talk about the risks that northern white abolitionists faced as agents of the Underground Railroad. They did face dangers but those dangers paled in comparison to the dangers and hazards that the fugitives themselves faced. So a very famous case of escape that failed was right here in Washington, D.C., 1848 I think. The case about 80 fugitives in Washington managed to get on-board a ship called The Pearl. Basically they sort of got -- what's the word? Not a -- the calmed at the mouth of the Chesapeake, were chased down and reclaimed. Many of them ended up sold. So we just have to remember that for all the stories of success and escape there are also probably more stories of failure and heartache. >> Eric Foner: And once they reached the North, as Edna said, they weren't really safe either. There were slave catchers wandering the streets of New York City in this period. According to the common law, a slave owner could just grab a slave and take him back. It was just your property. It was like you found your run-away horse or something. You don't have to go to court to get your horse back. You just grab him. You can't cause a riot by doing it, but people were in danger of just being nabbed on the street and especially after 1850. So that's why, as we said, they took off to Canada. The black population of New York City fell in the 18 -- it was the only decade in our history where the black population of the city actually declined because people left because they were afraid of being sent back to slavery. >> Ed Ayers: About the question of abolitionism, suggests things got worse before they got better. To end this point, that's the fuel that fired this. >> Eric Foner: I think it just got more polarized. The Underground Railroad I think was most active in the 1850s in defiance of this law. But pro slavery elements were also active. The situation became more and more. Irrepressible conflict got more polarize. >> Ed Ayers: More irrepressible. Adam,you wanted to say what you wished you learned more of? >> Adam Rothman: Attack. I've been waiting. I would only say "Gateway to Freedom" is a wonderful reconstruction of the Underground Railroad on the eastern seaboard. But because of the nature of the sources that Professor Foner was working with, it's a regional story. But there was also a Underground Railroad, perhaps not as well organized as on the eastern seaboard in the mid -- the Midwest and West, Mississippi Valley. I think there's a wonderful book to be written about the Mississippi Valley route to freedom. >> Ed Ayers: What do you wish you still knew? >> Eric Foner: Everything's been told. >> [Laughter] >> Ed Ayers: We'll see about that. I'm guessing the folks here -- what do you wish? >> Eric Foner: I agree with Edna. I wish I knew more about what happened below the Mason-Dixon line, where things were much less organized and where most fugitives just got random assistance. They would run into a free black person or would come by a farm and the slave would bring some food out to them in the woods. There wasn't anything planned. It wasn't a station that they knew. And how this happened. There are stories in the book where people tell what happened but we really don't know nearly enough about what assistance was given to fugitives in the slave states themselves. >> Ed Ayers: To Adam's point, you think about the numbers. How many people do you guesstimate? >> Eric Foner: Well, I think about 100 a year passed through New York City. So that's 3,000 in the 30 years before the Civil War. Remember, there were four million slaves in 1860. But that's only one route. So let's say 1,000 a year reached the North. That's a complete guess. But let's just say. So that's 30,000. That's not insignificant but it's certainly not, you know, destroying the institution of slavery. >> Ed Ayers: If we think about the very same place of the Upper South, Virginia, Maryland, around here that is the sea bed for most of the people who managed to get on the Eastern Underground Railroad, 750, 850,000 people are sold from here to the Deep South. >> Eric Foner: A lot more going the other way. >> Ed Ayers: That's a scale for us to imagine. That maybe a million people are forcibly shipped, marched, driven from here. One of the things I find people have a hard time managing, that slavery -- and African-American, Civil War in general, was constantly on the move. People imagine slavery as the absence of history. It's when nothing was happening. And instead, this book gives us a glimpse into the constant hope and dream, the possibility, maybe this would be the day that we could escape. But it's more likely it would be the day where your children would be sold from you. Any day that you could wake up. I think as we're putting the pieces together, interesting books coming out the last couple years about the dynamism of slavery. This is kind of the dynamism of the escape from slavery. I think you put these pieces together and we're beginning to understand that there is a constant churning at the heart of this institution of slavery that I think we're just now beginning to see. So I'm getting ready to ask our colleagues here if they have questions. If there's something else you would like to say. Adam, a question I should have asked? No? >> Eric Foner: Yeah, one -- I want to put on the agenda, one person, Adam knows, Louis Napoleon who was a free black man, illiterate. He signed his little things with an X. He was a key operative in New York City scouring the docks, meeting fugitives, taking them to a train to get up to update New York and also going to court. Louis Napoleon, though illiterate, would get writs of habeas corpus if a slave was recaptured to try to get them before a court. Obviously a resonant name. In one of these cases, the attorney for Virginia asked, "Is this Louis Napoleon who brought this case the emperor of France?" >> [Laughter] >> Eric Foner: And John Jay II, the lawyer, said, no, a much better man. >> [Laughter] >> Ed Ayers: It would have been a remarkable story if it had have been. Great. So when you do get back to questions, we have a leader who is ready for the microphone. We ask that you go to that so everyone can hear your questions. Yes, sir? >> Thank you. Maybe I'll change my mind after I read the book. I've always had this kind of cynical suspicion, though, that the Underground Railroad is one of those stories that people sort of overemphasize to make ourselves feel good; like the way people overemphasize the plot to assassinate Hitler or the troops of World War I. It was just a blip. So I guess my question is: Is the Underground Railroad a feud that set off abolitionist sparks or just one of the sparks? >> Eric Foner: I think it is very possible to exaggerate the Underground Railroad. People have done it. But it was more than a blip. Certainly for the people who it helped get to freedom, it was a very important thing. Whether it was 30,000, 20,000-some number is still, you know, an important number of people who achieved freedom with the help of other people. As we said, a somewhat loosely organized set of networks. I can understand why -- the Underground Railroad is popular. It's a popular subject of children's books. There's the Underground Railroad Center in Cincinnati. I think that's good. I think -- in a way, especially given what we've lived through in the last year, race relations in this country, the experience of black and white people working together, whatever their inner feelings, they worked together in a common cause to help people reach freedom. I think that's something to be proud of in our history. So I think it's good to study it and think about it as a model of that kind of cooperation being possible. >> Ed Ayers: Yes, sir? >> A couple of questions. One, I know this was referenced earlier. I'm just curious if you can expand on it, escape through the Mississippi Valley. Kentucky was a border state, Tennessee maybe, and then, you know, enslaved folks coming up through Mississippi. I'm just curious. I would think that -- there may have been whites who were not necessarily abolitionists in these areas but they were possibly anti --- involved in anti-slavery. So I'm just curious about the research in that area. I think -- I would think that there is a lot more sympathy for folks being moved out of Tennessee and Kentucky into Indiana and Ohio. The other question I have is this. I'm an assistant curator at the National Poster Museum. We're about to do a major exhibit. And one of the things we found interesting was that in trying to acquire slave letters we realized that there aren't that many slave letters out here on the open market. So we're just curious whether people -- particularly people that owned slaves, whites who owned slaves, whether that was a sense of shame about the ownership of slaves in their families and whether or not these letters were destroyed. Because there aren't that many on the market. And when they do come on the market, they're very expensive. So just wondering, perhaps, if you can share some insight on that. >> Ed Ayers: Two questions. One, Adam, you brought up the possibility of the Underground Railroad in the Midwest. Maybe you could talk about that. I heard another question in that. Were there actually white allies in the South? Of folks -- he thought maybe they were more prevalent in the farther West than the East. Then we'll talk about slave letters. Do you want to address that? >> Adam Rothman: One of the most famous frontiers between slavery and freedom in the United States is the Ohio River. Of course, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" narrates the story of a slave who runs across the frozen Ohio from Kentucky to Ohio. In fact, William Stills' journal describes a fugitive who comes into Philadelphia who says basically that he read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and thought: Why not me? >> Ed Ayers: I'm not even carrying a baby. >> Adam Rothman: So Kentucky to Ohio was a fairly well-known crossing point. But also there's some evidence that the steamboats that ran up and down the Mississippi River carried fugitive slaves. That was probably the principle avenue for escape for enslaved people who were really trapped. And they were trapped in the Deep South, trapped to a much greater extent than enslaved people in the Chesapeake. So laws were passed preventing steamboat captains from harboring stowaways. So there's a consciousness that this might be going on. There were a lot of black workers along the river. We know that some of them helped fugitive slaves escape. There's a famous story of William Wells Brown who wrote his autobiography. He worked on steamboats. He worked on the Western steamboats and used his skills and talents as a steamboat man to ultimately escape. He moved up to buffalo. So there is a story there but I don't think it has ever really been pieced together in the same way that Professor Foner -- >> Eric Foner: There were slaves who escaped from Georgia to Florida where the Seminole Indians gave them refuge. >> Adam Rothman: To Mexico. >> Eric Foner: In Texas, slaves escaped to Mexico. Mexico was a refuge like Canada. Mexico refused to send back escaped slaves to the U.S. just as Canada did. So if you were on the periphery, there were all sorts of different directions you might try. >> Ed Ayers: Or near water. >> Eric Foner: Right. Some slaves apprehended or took boats and went out to Bermuda. But if you were in the heart of the Deep South, in the black belt of Alabama, you didn't have a heck of a lot of opportunities there. >> Adam Rothman: You'd be better off running south to Mobile or trying to get on a boat out to England than you would trying to go north. >> Ed Ayers: That's one of the things about "12 Years A Slave" so powerful, just how trapped you were. Do we think there were white southerners who were helpful? >> Eric Foner: There were a few who pop up in my book. I don't think there were a heck of a lot. There were some. >> Edna Greene Medford: Keep in mind, too, there were some Quakers in the South as well. So they were more likely to get assistance from them. But if I could answer -- >> Ed Ayers: Yes, please. >> Edna Greene Medford: About the slave letters. First of all, we have to remember that the majority of enslaved people were illiterate. They were not allowed to learn to read. Some did anyway. And some might have been able to dictate a letter to a sympathetic white person who then wrote the letter. But I don't think there would have been many of those letters anyway. We do know, I think, about most of them. I wouldn't be surprised, however, that there are letters lurking in someone's attic or whatever. I think that we don't always appreciate the history that we have right among us. So we throw things out. Someone, you know, may have had some kind of treasure-trove and you just threw it out because we just saw it as junk. So the next time you're cleaning out grandmother's attic, you need to pay close attention to what's there because that is how people find these things. >> Ed Ayers: Some Eric Foner of the future may find it useful. Something that looked ike a list to a lot of people. Suddenly in a different context we can understand how -- yes, sir? >> A question for Professor Foner which might be a bit of trivi. I don't know the answer to this. Richard Riker, the city recorder, was Riker's Island named after him? He seemed to be a despicable character. >> Eric Foner: I don't think so. I think Riker's Island was named earlier after some Dutch person. Richard Riker is in my book, who is a rather notorious judicial official in New York who collaborated with kidnappers, who were sent picking blacks off the street and selling them into slavery or helping to get fugitive slaves. I don't think Riker's Island is named after Richard Riker. I hope not. If it is, we may try to change the name. >> The other question for the panel as a whole. My notion of slaves escaping from bondage was always sort of influenced by this idea of following the North Star. But I don't see any real reference to following the North Star here. Where did that idea arise about following the North Star? I don't know which side of the tree is trying to see if there's moss on that side of the tree as you're escaping, what have you. >> Ed Ayers: Tree on the North, moss on the North side. I know that part. >> Eric Foner: Nobody mentioned that to Sydney Howard Gay when he interviewed. Nobody said anything about the North Star. >> Ed Ayers: The Frederick Douglass newspapers called the North Star. >> Eric Foner: Yes. And people presumably knew the North Star was toward the North. It doesn't -- there were fugitives in this who went the wrong way for a good while until somebody said: Hey, you're going south; I think you better turn around and go the opposite direction. So it's talked about in his memoir. He said nobody knew -- you think it's easy to just escape? Where do you go? You're five miles away. You've never been there before. You don't know where the roads are going. It was very, as we said, very, very difficult, very, very dangerous. So people had just a kind of vague sense and often somebody would give them a little advice or help, sympathetic person. But often another person would apprehend them and get them arrested. >> Ed Ayers: A lot of times if you were trying to get to a river, you needed to go south to get north. >> Eric Foner: Right. >> Ed Ayers: Yes, sir? >> Question for Professor Foner. What was the reaction of local political entities to having fugitives, Underground Railroad and slave catchers in their territory? I'm thinking particularly of Tammany Hall Democrats. >> Eric Foner: Political officials? >> Yeah. What was the reaction? >> Eric Foner: I think the reaction -- it really varies from place to place. There were Northern states that passed laws called the Personal Liberty laws that tried to obstruct the rendition of fugitive slaves. The fugitive slave issue is complicated because as we said before, many people who are not abolitionists and not even anti-slavery really when confronted with this on a human level will have a different reaction. You know, a person who is fleeing from slavery. You may be a complete believer in law and order but you may on a human level want to help this person. And then the notion of slave owners coming into the North to grab people rubbed a lot of people the wrong way as time went on. But certainly, I think the Northern Democratic Party was very tied in to the South as Adam said. So officials, most Northern officials like that, would be willing to cooperate in apprehending fugitive slaves. But then, you know, there were others in my book, incidences where a policeman in New York City brought a fugitive to the office of Sydney Howard Gay and basically said you better help this guy because if you don't, he's going to be arrested in a few hours. Now, he's obviously not doing what he's supposed to do as a policeman but on a human level he decided to help the guy. >> Thank you. >> Ed Ayers: Yes, sir? >> Do we know how the slaves learned about sort of freedom? Not freedom as such but that there was a free part of the United States; that there was Canada? You have the impression of slaves as being very isolated. They were prevented from reading and so on. Yet obviously at least some of them learned about all of these things. So I'm wondering how this happened. >> Eric Foner: That's an excellent question. Adam? >> Adam Rothman: I think they learned it from their owners. The owners are running around railing against the fugitive slave law, complaining about these abolitionists in the North. I think he's on to something. >> [Laughter] >> Adam Rothman: I really think that they to a great extent learned all of this from either directly from their owners or from the newspaper that their owners left lying around. >> Ed Ayers: Speeches denouncing. >> Eric Foner: Also in Maryland, particularly, half the black population was free by the 1850s. So they learned from free blacks, at least in the Upper South. There was freedom, there was the North, there was Canada. This information flowed around. Some of them -- a number of people who I cite knew that Quakers could help them. One guy got into Pennsylvania, knocked on the door of a house and said, "Send me to a Quaker." Can you tell me where a Quaker lives around here? They somehow heard. Or another said, "If you meet a white guy who says the and thou. So that knowledge. >> Edna Greene Medford: And black sailors as well coming into these port cities. People were bringing all kinds of information. So people are getting their knowledge from them as well. >> Ed Ayers: And part of that image that we're understanding now of African-American life before the Civil War. There's all of this circulation of information and knowledge and solidarity that we just weren't able to see before. Yes, sir? >> We've mentioned Canada, eh, quite a lot. >> [Laughter] >> I was curious. You've already said that the Canadian government said that they would not be sent back. Most of the refugees who ended up in Canada, did most of them stay there or did they come back? Did they wait until after the Civil War? >> Eric Foner: A lot of them came back during the Civil War. Once it was pretty clear that they were not capturing fugitive slaves anymore in the North, a good number came back. Some enlisted in the Union Army, men. But quite a few stayed, also. They had made homes, gotten jobs. And actually they had far more rights in Canada than they did in the Northern United States. They could vote there. They could serve on juries. They had better job opportunities. So, you know, some came back but a lot didn't actually. >> So you all brought up techniques of how slaves were able to get to freedom. My question is: What do you think was the best way for a slave to stay free? >> Edna Greene Medford: To stay free or to get free? >> Both. >> [Laughter] >> Edna Greene Medford: Well, depending upon where you were. If you were near a waterway, you know, the most reasonable way, perhaps, would be to stowaway onboard a ship or a boat or to take a boat, commandeer boat and just get there. But once you were there, depending upon where you were -- especially after 1850 if you are in Philadelphia or New York, you're not safe. So you have to go to Canada. And even once you're in Canada, you're not safe. Because there are people who are pursuing fugitives into Canada as well. You're not supposed to be, but they are doing that. There's some people who leave this area, the area entirely, and they go to Europe; the lucky ones. So it's a very, very difficult thing to remain free once you've acquired that freedom after 1850. >> Ed Ayers: One of the things Professor Foner mentions in passing, most of the white people in the South railing against runaway slaves thought they were running away to someplace close to home, in a swamp or the woods, the mountains, where they would -- that's a tenuous freedom. But it was a freedom that people were willing to risk their lives to get. But basically the answer is get as far away from slavery as you possibly can. But just because people couldn't escape to the North to Canada doesn't mean they didn't try to escape to whatever kind of freedom they could get. Yes? >> When a lot of people think about slavery, a lot of people think that slaves were a monolithic group but there were slaves who lived on large plantations, slaves who lived in small farms, maybe 10 or less people. There were house slaves. There were slaves who hired out. So there was a lot of diversity. There was a small number who were literate or semi-literate, some who were biracial. So the question is: Is there a common demographic profile of a runaway slave? For example, if we say that runaways tended not to be slaves who lived on large plantations or maybe tended to be biracial or tended to be semi-literate? Is there any information we have about what the average or what the most common runaway looked like or was? >> Adam Rothman: Great question. >> Eric Foner: I did this analysis of the 200 or so who were described in this "Record of Fugitives." And, yes -- first of all, the large -- 75% of them were men. It was easier. And most of them were fairly young. The average age was 25. They were young men in their 20s. But there were women. There were even young children, as you said. But it was easier for a young, strong guy like Frederick Douglass when he ran away than an older person, obviously, or an infirm person. But they represented -- these fugitives represented every single kind of slave you mentioned. There were people from plantations, from small farms, from cities. There were artisans. There were house servants, field hands. You name it. Every single kind of slave pops up in this thing. So the desire for freedom was not limited to any one particular demographic group in the slave community. But the physical ability, so to speak, to do it was presumably, you know, a certain kind of people have that more than others. >> Ed Ayers: And sometimes single men would send for their families as soon as they got there. >> Eric Foner:Right. >> Ed Ayers: We only have eight more minutes. See if we can answer as many questions as we can. Yes, sir? >> I've had an historic puzzle piece to share with Professor Rothman. It went to your comment about how the study with this book and how it would be nice to go across and West. This past summer, 150th Anniversary, Gettysburg, seminary opened up to the public and they opened this fabulous museum. They had a panel. And in it they were talking about Thaddeus Stevens and how -- he was in the Lincoln Museum, represented by Tommy Lee Jones for folks if you want to know who Thaddeus Stevens was. In the movie he had a common law black wife. The thing I found amazing, he represented at the Gettysburg Congressional District. And he was very active in the Underground Railroad. And he later became a member of Congress and later of the House. So here goes to your point that it would be nice to get a broader history of the Underground Railroad beyond just Southeastern Pennsylvania. This is Central to Western Pennsylvania. A very noted American and yet he was very active in the Underground Railroad. I had one of those a-ha moments like, wow, it all sort of makes sense and comes together but I had no idea that he was that active but for this little panel on a museum. I just wanted to get your response to that. >> Adam Rothman: Thank you. That was great. >> Ed Ayers: That's an area that I've studied. It's interesting to think about when they're recruiting 54th Massachusetts. That area right on the border of Southcentral Pennsylvania is one of the greatest producers of soldiers for that. My guess is -- they're 10 miles from slavery. >> Eric Foner: That's what I was thinking. >> Ed Ayers: I'm guessing they're there for family. So they go to fight. So I think you're right. That same county would have abolitionists but they would also have the most active slave catchers as well. I think there's something about the proximity to slavery that Eric was saying before, over time, turns up the intensity on both sides. So the same mountains that Thaddeus Stevens has his iron mines and kilns -- iron works were also places you could escape if you were enslaved. But also a place where you could escape, it would be good to have a white ally and a black ally. Yes? >> The previous question was a perfect lead-in to mine. I wanted to know if you got a flavor for personality characteristics, certain strengths of character that were consistent among those who were attempting to escape or at least among the 200 that you read about. >> Eric Foner: You know, personality is not so easy to judge from the kind of records that exist here. Some of them were very outspoken, for example. As you mentioned about -- some of them were very quiet, very hard to get information out of. I think it's more a question of opportunity. People who somehow saw the opportunity to escape and felt there was a reasonable chance of success did it. And there were many, many others, I think, who would have liked to escape but somehow the opportunity didn't arise or they were fearful, the policing system was too strong. So I'm not sure I want to say the people who escaped have a particular personality trait which set them apart from everybody else. I think they had for one reason or another -- and every slave who escaped had his own story. They had greater opportunities than other people. >> Ed Ayers: Only an opportunity for one more question. Yes, sir? >> One of you mentioned that in Maryland, for example, there was maybe 40 or 50% freed men, I presume amongst other Africans coming through or in the state. I have a freed man that was in my family, the 1820s. It's difficult to find much information about him but I am told that if you, in fact, were a freed man, you'd have to have what I refer to the equivalent of a Green Card or some other identification. Several of you think that's correct. Could you elaborate on that a little bit? >> Edna Greene Medford: Freedom papers.If you lived in a county, you had to go and register with that county. You had to indicate where you lived, what your occupation was. There was a free black registry in many of these states where your information was put down. >> Eric Foner: And you have to carry it with you. >> Edna Greene Medford: Yes. And it could be stolen. And you could be enslaved. >> Ed Ayers: And you had to pay a fee to have it renewed every year. The Green Card is a good example. >> Adam Rothman: I've actually seen one here at the National Archives in a pension file, a widow of an African-American soldier from the Civil War. Included in that pension file was his free pass from the State of Louisiana. >> Ed Ayers: Which seems a convenient way to point out the riches of the National Archives and the fact that, kidding aside, it's ripe for history all the time. The exciting thing about it is there are still so many discoveries, so many things we need to know about this history that this wonderful organization helps us to discover and it helped us discover by hosting discussions like this one when you have exciting new books. I'd like to thank Edna, Adam, Professor Foner. I thank you for coming. [Applause] >> Eric Foner: Thank you.