In the latest Georgia Historical Quarterly (vol LXXXIX, no 4, Winter 2005) Douglas R. Egerton has a 13-page "Review Essay; Learning to Live with the Legend: Bound for Canaan on the Durable Underground Railroad" - which is a review of the new book by Fergus Bordewich (Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America) discussed in the context of the current explosion of Underground Railroad scholarship, myth, and popular imagination. The reviewer surveys both academic works and popular fiction, and addresses questions like, "Why do so many Americans want to claim a piece of this story?" -- suggesting that perhaps "romantic adventure stories" are a "welcome alternative to the complicated and conflicted race relations" of modern America. He asks why recently-created myths (like quilt codes and secret messages in slaves' work songs) are embraced unquestioningly by adults, when children can see and question the gaping illogic visible in the fabric of these stories. He critiques the idea of a monolithic and well-organized national network, and the notion (presented on some fanciful maps) of a network of overland escape routes extending all the way from Florida to Canada. Egerton gives Bordewich's book its share of criticism where he believes it stretches the story to imply that Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Theodore Weld, Harriet Jacobs and Gabriel were somehow part of the URR.

Egerton concludes that "The intrepid slaves who risked beatings and resale to the Gulf South in hopes of escaping into freedom deserve to be remembered, as do the courageous free blacks and white activists who risked their homes and farms and businesses in the name of liberty" -- and he suggests that Bordewich's Bound for Canaan provides us with a serviceable and significant "standard work" on this difficult but important subject.

Egerton has written a lively and well-informed essay that will be a quick and interesting read to for Afrigeneans blessed enough to have access to a library that subscribes to GHQ.