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The Underground Railroad is a popular topic in American history, but many of the stories people recite are more myth than fact: Secret codes stitched into quilts, safe houses with lanterns in the windows and hundreds of thousands of slaves escaping to freedom along a secret route.

The reality is much more complicated, but no less fascinating. 

In 2007, an undergraduate student at Columbia University uncovered a list of fugitive slaves in the papers of Sydney Howard Gay. Gay was an important figure in the Underground Railroad, and he kept meticulous notes on the escaped slaves he assisted: where they were from and where they were headed.

When Eric Foner saw the list, he was in the middle of writing his book on Abraham Lincoln, 

 which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. 

. "I had never heard of this document, or seen it cited." He began to dig deeper into Gay's records. 

His research gave way to a new book, "Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad," which was released this January.

 to discuss the true history of the Underground Railroad.

1. The Underground Railroad contained actual underground tunnels or passages.

"I have never actually seen any evidence of tunnels in the east," Foner said. "People talk about them, they talk about secret codes, secret passageways. The funny thing is, in the 1850s anyway, most of the slaves escaped very much above ground. They escaped on railroads, they escaped on ships."

2. Slaves used quilted maps to navigate the route.

Unfortunately, historians are professional killjoys, Foner said. It's a good legend, but unrealistic.  

"The problem is there were no set routes in the Underground Railroad in the South," Foner said. "It was not a system like a railroad map."

3. Escaped slaves stayed in northern states.

Most slaves changed their names once they hit northern states, Foner said. There is some evidence many of them ended their journey in Canada, based on the country's census. 

4. Slaves traveled the Underground Railroad alone.

5. The Underground Railroad was primarily the work of white heroes.

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