Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad

“The talk around the fire was about the new overseer, about the corn crop, about the weather, but it always ended with the subject of freedom—just as it always did. The bold ones, young, strong, said freedom lay to the north, and one could obtain it if one could but get there.”

Petry invites the reader into Harriet Tubman’s family cabin on the plantation, where they and their neighbors often share news and opinions. In this quotation, the author claims that escape is a frequent topic among Tubman’s family and neighbors and has become a more common occurrence throughout the South at this time.

“The uncertainty and uneasiness filled the cabin again. More and more slaves were disappearing. Edward Brodas, the master, was selling them off. Each time the trader came to Maryland, came to Cambridge, the Master sold another group of slaves. Nowadays it seemed as though he was raising slaves just to sell them. Breeding them, just like the farmers bred cows or sheep.”

Slaves on the Brodas plantation live in fear of being sold to a different property, which would separate them from their friends and family members, and probably subject them to more brutal conditions. Petry’s use of the word “disappearing” underlines how slaves would not be able to know where exactly their neighbors were going or maintain contact with them once they left the plantation.

“Slaves everywhere knew what happened in Washington, Boston, New York, Norfolk, Baltimore, if it dealt with the subject of slavery. They knew it sometimes before the masters heard about it. The close communication, the rapid exchange of information among the slaves, troubled and disturbed the masters.”

Although slaves often have restricted mobility, they manage to maintain word of mouth connections with each other to spread news from the North and discuss how it would affect them. Being unable to limit and monitor this spread of information “disturbed” the masters since it makes it more difficult to control their slaves and prevent them from running away.