"This was the period when the term underground railroad came into widespread use, and if infuriated Southerners tended to overestimate the scope and power of ad hoc arrangements that helped perhaps 10,000 to 50,000 runaway slaves during that decade (a pitiful percentage of the 4 million enslaved), they accurately perceived that legal maneuvers and covert action combined to undermine what they saw as their sacred property rights."
Wendy Smith in the Los Angeles Times reviews Eric Foner's Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad.
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