With the Underground Railroad, the United States experienced its first important multiracial movement to create a better society. Unfortunately, most people don't know that. Bound for Canaan is a significant and much needed spelling out of the lessons of how social change can overcome the selfishness of the interested, the gullibility and passivity of the majority, and the deprivations of the victimized.

While Fergus M. Bordewich has not written the definitive history of the Underground Railroad, he has written a rich history that fills in many gaps in the average person's knowledge of the event in helpful and interesting ways. Using a variety of sources including little-read autobiographies, biographies and personal journals, he has created a rich tapestry of how individual outrage, morality and courage came to be woven together into a movement that had national consequences.

Helping slaves escape their owners was never easy. Most slaves didn't know much more about escaping than how to follow the North Star . . . and that didn't help much on cloudy nights. Rewards offered for escaped slaves meant that anyone might turn you in. Many slaves had poor skills for living off the land. Those who helped slaves were also subject to arrest, fines and possible violence from their pro-slavery neighbors.

In the beginning, some Quakers were the most likely to help . . . having formed their sensibilities against slavery from reading the Bible and the Constitution. Eventually, people of other religions joined in the efforts. As more and more slaves escaped, more and more current and ex-slaves joined the efforts.

By the time of the Civil War somewhere between 100,000 and 175,000 slaves were assisted in escaping slavery's many evils. It was a monumental accomplishment with just a few slaves at a time being carried along. Even more important, the sensibilities of the free states began to shift to favor those who were helping slaves. The Civil War accelerated the process and the difficult path to full freedom finally began . . . which still continues today.

As you read this book, you will be reminded of stories about how Communists, Socialists and Christians often combined in secret cells to thwart the Nazis through the French Resistance movement in the 1940s. Many who wanted to help slaves were terribly prejudiced against African Americans.

Canada has a proud story to tell here too in providing the safest home for those who had escaped from this physical and economic tyranny that was enshrined by our Founding Fathers. You'll be fascinated by the book's many references to the slave-holding side of many of our "greatest" patriots . . . and see those leaders in a truer light.

Of course, you will read about people like William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Lucretia Mott and John Brown whose names will be at least somewhat familiar to you. But you will probably find new heroes and heroines as you learn about Isaac Tatum Hopper, Gerrit Smith, Rowland T. Robinson, the Reverend John Rankin, Levi Coffin, Calvin Fairbank, Jonathan Walker, Jermain Loguen, William Still, Thomas Garrett, William Lambert, Mary Ann Shadd, Josiah Henson, Henry Bibb, Shields Green and Robert Purvis.

The book does a good job of tracking these important citizens through their lives and their relationships with one another. The stories are often intermeshed by tales of helping a single individual or a family to escape through many way stations along the Underground Railroad. The tales of hiding slaves will remind you at times of stories about the Holocaust, including Anne Frank's diary.

I have seldom read a book about American history that infected me with as much emotion as I experienced with this sympathetic and inspiring book about those who dared to oppose the will of the armed posses wielding their chains, ropes and whips.

Praise God that these days are behind us in the United States. Before taking too much solace in that thought, remember that many people still are held in slavery in places like the Sudan and that the ugly face of racism is seldom absent from our current American society.

Most people in America have heard of the Underground Railroad, but few have any clear sense of how it operated, or who operated it. I knew of a house a few miles from one of my Indiana homes that had been pointed out by local historians as one of the stops on the Underground Railroad, but the owners of the house were unaware of this; when pointed out to them by the local experts, they found some markers of secret hiding places. They were literally living in the old railroad, and were unaware of it.

By its very nature, the Underground Railroad is a hard phenomenon to classify or quantify. Is it an event or a thing? Is it the people or the movement? According to Bordewich, 'the meanings of the Underground Railroad seem both subtle and varied. Its most important achievement, obviously, was helping tens of thousands of enslaved Americans on their way to freedom.' Bordewich goes on to point out that the numbers, even in general terms, are unknown, because the record-keeping of the time from slaveowners and state records never agree, and the Underground Railroad itself wasn't an institution with bureaucratic intentions toward record-keeping. This also creates a difficulty in figuring out how many free Americans North and South participated in the operation of the Railroad, and where the places were that helped.

Bordewich's narrative intersperses stories of particular individuals with general historical descriptions and discussions. Some historians concentrate on great events, others on great institutions, and yet others on great people; Bordewich employes all of these methods in exploring the issues, personalities and functions of the Underground Railroad, the general conditions of slavery and race relations in North America, and the prevailing cultural, political and religious complexion of the new, growing nation of the United States. Perhaps the most prominent religious group in this book is the Quaker church, whose members provide both spiritual and material leadership in the movement in substantial amount.

Bordewich includes an interesting collection of photographs, line-art drawings, engravings and reproductions of publications in photoplates in the book. These include both passengers and crew of the Railroad, as well as important leaders in political and social circles. Included among the photographs of well-known figures such as Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, John Brown and Josiah Henson are advertisements about the Railroad that ran in newspapers (in a coded fashion) as well as a leaflet showing Jonathan Walker's branded hand (authorities in Pensacola had branded his hand with the letters SS, which for them symbolised 'slave-stealer', but came to be regarded by abolitionists and slaves as the symbol for 'slave saviour').

The Underground Railroad is an important episode in American history for many reasons of significance today, not the least of which in the continuing struggle toward equality and race relations with integrity that is an ongoing piece of the American community. 'Abolitionism taught the country that the problem of race was not on the margins but at the center of its national story.' This is a problem that continues to be at the centre of national life. Bordewich also demonstrates the intersection of this social action with the religious and pietistic temperament of the United States. The appeal to 'higher law' over the law of the states or the federal government is one that can continue to be heard in modern times. However, even beyond this appeal, Bordewich appeals to the readers that there is unmistakable import in the recognition 'that temporising and unprincipled compromise on civil rights can be risked only at the peril of damaging the nation's soul.'

This is a very important work for understanding both history in its own right, as well as how that history continues to have impact in today's world.