Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad

Nonfiction | Biography | Middle Grade | Published in 1955

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-10

Chapters 11-12

Chapters 13-14

Chapters 15-16

Chapters 17-18

Chapters 19-20

Chapters 21-22

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 3 Summary: “Six Years Old”

By the time Harriet is six years old, she has already “unconsciously absorbed” (21) many of the same fears as the adult slaves. She is taught to be submissive and polite to white men and women and to fear the mounted patrollers who chase runaway slaves. She also learns about the North Star and how to use it as a guide. Her father, Benjamin, has a knack for predicting the weather, a skill valued by the other slaves and Brodas. He also has a deep understanding of the land and animals and can read the signs of nature and the landscape. Harriet has a “free and wild” (23) essence due to her father’s influence. Her parents are talented storytellers, and her mother often recounts biblical stories, especially about Moses. Harriet also enjoys the monthly “Issue Day,” when slaves were given new food and clothes, and Christmastime, when the slaves are allowed more leisure time. While Harriet is still too young to work, she feels afraid in the morning when the overseer blows his horn to call the slaves into the fields to work. The slaves run quickly to the field because the overseer hits the last one to arrive. Petry describes Harriet as a “solemn-eyed, shy little girl” and hints that her “carefree idleness” (27) would soon be over as she became old enough to work on the plantation.

At the end of the chapter, Petry adds a historical note explaining that Thomas Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence included a passage that denounced slavery, but it was removed by Congress. She notes that many slaves “carried the dream of freedom,” an idea that was “contagious” (29).

Chapter 4 Summary: “Hired Out”

As a six-year-old, Harriet enjoys spending time with her family, including her nine other siblings. She completes simple tasks around the plantation, such as carrying water to the field workers. One day a local white woman named Mrs. Cook, the wife of a hunter and trapper, comes to the plantation to look for hired help. She explains that she has a small budget and wants to hire a young female slave temporarily. Harriet is abruptly selected for the job and is sent to live with the couple. The couple does not have a grand house like the Big House but lives in a small cabin. Mrs. Cook is a weaver and makes Harriet stand and wind her yarn for hours, a task she finds challenging. Harriet feels lonely, misses her family, and dislikes the house and conditions.

Mrs. Cook is unsatisfied with Harriet’s work since she is “slow” and “clumsy” (32), so the husband trains her to watch his trap lines. Harriet prefers this work to the weaving tasks since it is quiet work outdoors. She learns to be observant about the local wildlife, especially muskrats.

One day Harriet wakes up ill, but Mrs. Cook is suspicious that she is trying to avoid work, so Mr. Cook sends her outside to work anyway. Harriet wades into the water to check the traplines in the river and reflects on how even though she dislikes muskrats, she doesn’t want them to be caught. When Harriet arrives back at the house, she is visibly ill, and the Cooks allow her to rest. Her mother hears that she is ill and asks for Harriet to come home to recover; the plantation owner allows this. Her parents use their knowledge of plant medicine to help Harriet recover from her measles and bronchitis.

As soon as she is well, Harriet is sent back to the Cooks’ home, where she has to help Mrs. Cook with her weaving again. Old Rit is upset at the continued separation from her daughter and laments to Ben that the Cooks are poor and took Harriet because they cannot afford to own any slaves. She resents that they get to have Harriet “for almost nothing” and worries that she is underfed. Ben hopes that Harriet will learn weaving skills to avoid field work as an adult, adding that she is “smarter’n all the rest put together” (36). At the Cooks’ house, Harriet hates her indoor work and feels like a muskrat in a trap. She also dislikes Mrs. Cook, who frequently calls her stupid, prompting Harriet to vow to never learn to weave. Eventually, Mrs. Cook returns Harriet to her home plantation, calling her “intractable” and “stupid” (37).

In the chapter-ending note, Petry explains that, at this time in history, there are very few plantations that had never had a slave run away. There are so many fugitive slaves escaping to freedom in Canada that the US Secretary of State asks the Canadian government to help develop a plan to recapture and return escaped slaves to their original plantations. The Canadian government, however, does not agree.

Chapters 3-4 Analysis

By imagining the details of Tubman’s everyday life as a child, Petry describes a life vastly different from the experience of free white people. Petry’s vivid descriptions of how children like Tubman play, eat, work, and learn from adults show the patterns of plantation life from the slaves’ perspectives. As a young child, Tubman has time to enjoy simple pleasures such as “Issue Day,” when she receives new clothes or food, or listening to the songs and stories told by Old Rit and other adults. However, Petry concludes chapter 4 with some foreshadowing of the hardship Tubman will soon face, as her elderly babysitter “repeated the same harsh-voiced warning: ‘Overseer’ll be settin’ you a task any day now. Then you won’t be standin’ around with your mouth hangin’ open, looking at nothin’ all day long’” (28).

Petry’s descriptive and emotional language helps to enliven the setting and characters for the reader. For example, she references the “furious galloping” and “furious hoofbeats” of the patrollers who hunt runaway slaves, slaves who “freeze into stillness” (21) until the patrollers are gone. The author writes that Tubman felt “frightened,” “lonesome,” and “confused” (32) as a six-year-old at her first place of work. The image of the trapped muskrat represents the cruel oppression of enslaved people and Tubman in particular. Although Tubman finds the look and smell of the muskrats repelling, “[...] she still didn’t like to see them held fast in the traps” (34), implying that she could empathize with the pain and confinement the animals felt. Indeed, when Tubman is forced to work indoors again after her illness, Petry directly compares Harriet to the hunted muskrats, writing,

She felt like the muskrats, one moment she had seen them diving and swimming in the river, and then suddenly click! they were caught fast in the trap. She remembered that some of them had fought to free themselves, tearing fur and flesh to get free (36).

While the writer makes clear that the threat of violence underpins everyday life, she also shows how slaves’ acts of resistance persist despite it. For example, the enslaved adults on the Brodas plantation try to extend the Christmas festivities; since they can only rest while the Big House’s Yule log is still burning, they make sure it burns as slowly as possible: “So the people in the quarter spent days preparing the log. […] They soaked it in water, so that it would burn slowly and for a long time” (26). Such actions speak to the desire for rest, family time, and, ultimately, freedom.