Freedom Train: The Story of Harriet Tubman

Harriet rests that night and the next day in her parents’ cabin. She looks around at the meagre furnishings, thinking that the only bright spot is the quilt her mother pieced together out of discarded scraps of cloth. She decides that she will make a quilt like this one day, too. She hears the horn announcing the end of the workday for the field hands, and soon, her brothers Benjamin and William Henry enter the cabin. Her sister Mary Ann works in the Big House as a chambermaid and is usually kept there until late at night. Her other four brothers live elsewhere, with their wives or on neighboring farms. Harriet’s mother, Rit, comes inside and sits with Harriet, stroking her hair and gently chiding her daughter’s lack of judgment. She says that the Master and Miss Sarah will discover that Harriet is home and come for her.

When Ben comes in, he tells Harriet that Miss Sarah is determined to whip Harriet as an example for the other children on the farm. She is threatening to sell Harriet South, a fate that has already befallen two of Harriet’s sisters. Miss Sarah has decided that Harriet will work in the fields instead. Rit chides Harriet for behaving in a way that prevents her from being allowed to do the easier work in the Big House, but Ben defends Harriet, saying that his own subservience to white people has never resulted in the benefits they promise him. The Master has promised to free Ben someday, but Ben knows it will never happen.

The next morning, Harriet is whipped so severely that she can barely make it back to her parents’ cabin, where she passes out on the floor. Rit finds her and tends to her wounds, but she has to get back into the fields to work. Harriet is dizzy with pain. She finally falls asleep, dreaming of “woods and wide rivers” and “a shining star to guide her” (23).

Harriet, as an enslaved Black child, does not attend a formal school, and she cannot read, write, or do basic math. During her childhood, an enslaved man named Nat Turner leads a rebellion in nearby Virginia. Although Nat and his followers are eventually caught and hanged, the white enslavers of Maryland are terrified of rebellion on their own farms. Strict laws are passed limiting the movement of enslaved Black people, and it is made illegal to educate enslaved people. On Harriet’s farm, the Master decides that any enslaved people singing rebellious songs about freedom will be severely punished and that they cannot gather to have meetings of their own—not even for religious purposes.

Old Cudjoe, an elderly enslaved Black man who is a leader and teacher for other enslaved people on the farm, persuades the Master to allow a white preacher to come once a week, but the white preacher tells the enslaved people to accept their enslavement and be obedient. Dissatisfied, the enslaved people begin meeting secretly in the woods at night to hear Cudjoe talk about the Bible and share news about liberation and abolition movements. The youngest children perch in the trees and act as lookouts, signaling to the others by imitating bird calls. Although Harriet does not go to a formal school, she learns much from Cudjoe. Harriet grows stronger from her backbreaking work in the fields. She also learns to navigate the woods from her father. The lesson she learns from her informal schooling is something she feels “with her body, with her mind, and with her heart: ‘Let my people go!’” (38).

Harriet grows into a teenager. Her appearance is plain, but she has a magnetic presence and is admired for her strength. Because the Master still fears her rebellious spirit, when Harriet is 15, he hires her out to work on neighboring farms. At the nearby Barretts’ farm, Harriet meets an enslaved Black man named Jim. Jim has already made two unsuccessful bids for freedom, and Harriet is enthralled by his stories about seeing places like Baltimore, Maryland, before being recaptured. It is Jim who first tells Harriet about the Underground Railroad. Jim explains that it is not an actual railroad—it is a community of people who help enslaved people who are fleeing to freedom. The freedom seekers are referred to as “passengers.” Guides are called “conductors,” and the houses and barns used to shelter freedom seekers are called “stations.”

One night, Jim says that he is going to walk to the store to buy tobacco. The long look he gives Harriet tells her that he is about to make another bid for freedom. Soon, Harriet realizes that the overseer noticed Jim’s absence and is about to pursue him. She runs to the store to look for Jim and warn him. The overseer arrives just after her and demands that she grab Jim so that he can tie Jim up and take him back to the farm. Instead, Harriet blocks the overseer’s way, giving Jim a chance to make a run for the woods. The angry overseer grabs a weight and throws it after Jim; it strikes Harriet in the head. Mr. Barrett takes her back to her parents’ cabin and tells her parents that she is dying. He tosses her onto a bed and leaves.

Harriet’s skull is fractured, and for weeks, she hovers between life and death. In her feverish dreams, she sees the history of enslaved peoples in the Americas play out in vivid images, and she sees images of herself attempting to seek freedom. Her parents tenderly nurse her back to health, and she learns that Jim’s self-emancipation was successful: He is a free man. Harriet gradually recovers her strength. On Christmas Day, months after her injury, she is able to get up and walk a bit. In the weeks that follow, she can move around more, even helping with some of the household work. Although her injury has healed, she has a permanent dent in her head and sometimes falls asleep suddenly, even while she is standing up. Rit is angry, saying that she will never be the same again and that it is her own fault for being so rebellious. Ben defends Harriet and reassures her that she has a right to feel what she feels about their circumstances. When Harriet returns to the fields, she has also learned that it is possible to stand up against her oppressors and survive.

The Master wants to sell Harriet, but no one will buy her. Miss Sarah argues against forcing her to marry and create more enslaved children—as other enslaved girls her age are required to do—because any children of Harriet’s will be “a parcel of young idiots” (50). They decide to let Harriet hire out her time to others. Harriet will be allowed to take any paying work she can find, paying the Master $1 a week for the privilege. Ben urges her to work hard so that she can save up enough money to buy her own freedom. She feels torn: Following her father’s advice will let her stay close to her family, but following Jim’s path to freedom will be quicker. She takes work with Mr. Stewart, the builder and lumberman who rents Ben’s time from the Master.

Just over a year later, Harriet has $20 of her own. She asks the Master what the cost of her freedom is. He laughs at her and tells her that it is $500. Harriet realizes that it will take a lifetime to earn that much money. She takes on as much work as she can manage and tries to earn even more by investing in some cattle and working a piece of land to raise crops to sell. On her first trip into town to sell her crops, she meets a free Black man named John Tubman. They fall in love, and in the spring, they are married. John moves into Harriet’s cabin at the Stewarts’ place, and Harriet sews her own version of her mother’s patchwork quilt. Unfortunately, John is carefree about trying to find work, and Harriet soon finds her savings diminishing. He does not believe that it is important for Harriet to purchase her freedom, and they quarrel. In the summer of 1849, the Master dies, and Harriet’s family is terrified that Sarah will sell them all south to work on cotton plantations. Harriet tells John her fears. When she announces that she plans to self-emancipate, John tells her that she will never succeed and tries to prevent her from leaving, but Harriet evades his grip and leaves their cabin, sure that she is doing the right thing.

From her conversations with Jim, Harriet knows that Quakers are white people who often help enslaved people seek freedom. She heads for the house of a local woman who she believes, from her manner of dress, is a Quaker. Harriet knocks on the woman’s door, pretending that she wants to buy some eggs. The woman invites her inside for a glass of lemonade. Harriet is cautious as she broaches the subject of Thomas Garrett, a Northern abolitionist and Quaker. Understanding what Harriet is hinting at, the woman says that she knows Thomas and mentions the names of several Quaker abolitionists. She tells Harriet that, theoretically, if she herself were going to travel north to see these friends, she would follow the Choptank River to a particular road and then turn northeast. She describes the house of Ezekiel Hunn, a Quaker abolitionist. Then, she drops the pretense and asks Harriet to pass along a message to Ezekiel. She writes the message down and slips it to Harriet and then gives her a few eggs.

Harriet considers whether to tell John what she has learned but decides not to. She will only share the information with her brothers. At her parents’ cabin, she takes her brothers aside and tells them that they will leave for the North on Saturday night. They protest about the dangers and suggest that it is better to wait to see if Sarah decides to sell them or not. Harriet fiercely tells them that if she cannot be free, she would rather be dead. They reluctantly agree to go with her. Harriet tells her brothers not to tell their parents: It will be better for them if they have no information to give up to Sarah once Harriet and her brothers are discovered missing.

On Saturday, Harriet and her brothers begin their long walk through the woods. It is pouring rain, and her brothers are discouraged by the roughness of the journey and the frighteningly dark woods. They persuade her to turn back and try again another time. Harriet’s disappointment turns to fear on Monday when Old Cudjoe’s grandson approaches her to let her know that Sarah will be sending men to collect Harriet and her brothers that evening to sell them south. That evening, Harriet collects her things—including her patchwork quilt—and discards her tattered shoes in favor of her husband’s sturdier ones. She takes the patchwork quilt to the Quaker woman’s house and lays it in her doorway as a thank you. Before leaving, Harriet stops by the Big House to tell her sister Mary Ann that she is leaving. They are unable to speak, but as Harriet leaves, she sings a song about freedom as a coded message to her sister about her plans.