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Cover image for Bound for Canaan : the Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America
Format:
Book
Title:
Bound for Canaan : the Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America
Other title(s):
Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America
ISBN:
9780060524302

9780060524319

9780006395539
Edition:
First edition.
Publication:
New York : Amistad, [2005]
Physical Description:
xv, 540 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm
General Note:
A history of the Underground Railroad as the movement reflected America's moral complexities and political divisiveness offers insight into the role played by the nation's westward expansion, the spiritual beliefs that motivated each side of the conflict, and the efforts of black and white citizens to save tens of thousands of lives.
Contents:
pt. 1. Beginnings: 1800 to 1830: An evil without remedy ; The fate of millions unborn ; A gadfly in Philadelphia ; The hand of God in North Carolina ; The spreading stain -- pt. II. Connections: The 1830s: Free as sure as the devil ; Fanatics, disorganizers, and disturbers of the peace ; The grandest revolution the world has ever seen ; A whole-souled man -- pt. III. Confrontation: The 1840s: Across the Ohio ; The car of freedom ; Our watchword is ONWARD ; The saltwater underground -- pt. IV. Victory: The 1850s: A disease of the body politic ; Do we call this the land of the free? ; General Tubman ; Laboratories of freedom ; The last train.
Summary:
An important book of epic scope on America's first racially integrated, religiously-inspired political movement for change-The Underground Railroad, a movement peopled by daring heroes and heroines, and everyday folk. For most, the mention of the Underground Railroad evokes images of hidden tunnels, midnight rides, and hairsbreadth escapes. Yet the Underground Railroad's epic story is much more morally complex and politically divisive than even the myths suggest. Against a backdrop of the country's westward expansion, which brought together Easterners who had engaged in slavery primarily in the abstract alongside slaveholding Southerners and their slaves, arose a clash of values that evolved into a fierce fight for nothing less than the country's soul. Beginning six decades before the Civil War, freedom-seeking blacks and pious whites worked together to save tens of thousands of lives, often at the risk of great physical danger to themselves. Not since the American Revolution had the country engaged in an act of such vast and profound civil disobedience that not only subverted federal law but also went against prevailing mores. Flawlessly researched and uncommonly engaging, Bound for Canaan, shows why it was the Underground Railroad and not the Civil Rights movement that gave birth to this country's first racially-integrated, religiously-inspired movement for social change.
Program Information:
Accelerated Reader AR UG 10.3 35.0 114138.
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