Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad

As they continue on their hard journey, Harriet notices that some of the slaves become “silent, sullen, suspicious” (139) and worries some will rebel against her instructions. Harriet tells them stories of all the successful runaway journeys she has heard about, regaling them with tales about Frederick Douglass and William and Ellen Craft. However, the group is so hungry and tired that it is difficult to motivate them. One of the men asks to go back, saying he prefers slavery to this suffering. Harriet aims her gun at the man and orders him to continue walking with the group. She tells him that if he returns, the slave master will torture him and learn the names of all their helpers on their route, ruining their plans. Harriet tells her group they must “go free or die. And freedom’s not bought with dust” (141).

Harriet abruptly falls asleep at one point, but no one in the group takes her gun or turns around; instead, they wait for her to wake up because they have “come to trust her implicitly” (142). After this, they reach Garrett’s house, and, just as Harriet had promised, he gives everyone a new pair of shoes. Eventually, all 11 runaways and Harriet reach Philadelphia, where they go to the Committee, and Still writes down their names in a secret register. William helps Harriet plan and fund the rest of their journey to Canada. Harriet and the others find the cold weather difficult but make it to New York, Syracuse, and Rochester.

They stay with activist Frederick Douglass, who houses and feeds them until he has enough money to pay for their passage to Canada. Finally, the group arrives in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, which was a “strange frozen land” (145). Harriet remains in Canada with her group to help them settle in and build a home for themselves. She takes a job in town and helps fell trees in the woods for their building. While Harriet misses the more hospitable weather and landscape of Maryland, she also comes to love St. Catharines and the freedom Black people can enjoy there. In contrast to the United States, in Canada Black men can vote, serve on juries, be elected to political office, and serve on school boards and county councils. The Black population of St. Catharines becomes quite substantial, as many former slaves choose to settle there and send their children to the local schools. Harriet decides that she will continue to live in St. Catharines when she can. Over the next few years, she spends her winters in Canada and travels back to New Jersey, Cape May, or Philadelphia to work in the spring and summer. She still regularly makes trips to the south to guide slaves to freedom, going once in the autumn and again in the spring.

In Petry’s conclusion to the chapter, she explains that at this time, the author Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which became hugely successful. Her book, which was also turned into a play, helped raise awareness of the cruelty of slavery in America.