Harriet Tubman: Chapters 7–12

His swiftly moving figure was in strange contrast to the languorous slow motion of his hands just a few minutes before.

She even called in the old man that they said could conjure, though she doubted that any conjurer in the world could save this child.

If she lived, she would be sold South; the overseer and the master would not keep an intractable, defiant slave, a slave who refused to help the overseer tie up a runaway, blocking the door like Harriet did.

Though Old Rit continued to deplore the audacity, the boldness in Harriet that made her defy an overseer, she stopped calling her Minta or Minty.

“William Lloyd Garrison was put into this cell on Monday afternoon, October 21, 1835, to save him from the violence of a respectable and influential mob, who sought to destroy him for preaching the abominable and dangerous doctrine that all men are created equal, and that all oppression is odious in the sight of God.”

Harriet decided that from the dilapidated look of the plantation—fields lying fallow, the Big House in need of repair—Doc Thompson would soon be selling slaves again.

In spite of his derision, she kept telling him about her dreams.

In the spring of the same year, Thomas Garrett, Quaker, who since 1822 had been offering food and shelter to runaway slaves in Wilmington, Delaware, was tried and found guilty of breaking the law covering fugitive slaves.

Even if they were lucky enough to elude the patrol, they could not possibly hide from the bloodhounds.

Then she thought of the plantation and how the land rolled gently down toward the river, thought of Ben and Old Rit, and that Old Rit would be inconsolable because her favorite daughter was missing.

Harriet Tubman's moment of exultation passed quickly.

She herself, by accident, or intuition, or the grace of God, had come all the way from Dorchester County on the Underground Railroad—and on her own two feet.

John walked down the street beside them, still holding the envelope as though it were a talisman.

Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster believed that this compromise would heal the rapidly growing breach between the North and the South.

With this knowledge she could easily refute all of John’s arguments about the dangers involved for those who ran away.