Freedom Train

The story opens in 1827 in Maryland, and we meet Harriet. Her days' tasks found her up before the sun to light the fires, to clean and to tend the baby so the Master's wife could breakfast in peace then cooking and housekeeping, and when night finally came it was spent sitting beside the wee babe so that he might not cry and wake his mother. Meals consisted of corncakes and salt pork, meaning she was forever hungry and always malnourished. Sounds like a hard life or any person, but Harriet was not considered a person ... she is not yet 8 years old and is a slave. A final act of defiance, in trying to snitch a sugar cube, finds her paying with a whipping and being sent from the housework where she knew relative comfort to work, from that time forward, in the fields where she will know hard labor from sun-up to sun-down in all kinds of weather. Despite being told from infancy to "smile at the white folk" Harriet just can't. She even finds ways to defy the overseers, who not trusting a silent slave often tell them to sing as they work, by singing spirituals which speak of freedom. At the age of 15 she learns of the "Underground Railroad", assisted by good people from all walks of life and guided by the North Star above slaves made their way to freedom. The slave who tells her of this means of escape, Jim, has run away a number of times previously but never made his way to the North. When he tries again, Harriet acts to block the overseer's pursuit and pays with a 2 lb. weight to the head. An injury which stays with her for the rest of her life, causing episodes of narcolepsy. Disgusted with her, but unable to sell her, her Master gives her a chance. She must pay him $1 a week, rain or shine, but she can hire her own time. Whatever she can manage to save over and above her payment to him is hers alone. It takes many months to save up $20 and to gather the courage to ask how much it will cost to buy her freedom, only to get the answer $500 -- a seemingly impossible task. Still not giving up hope Harriet works even harder, working almost non-stop 6 days a week, and it is during this time that she meets John Tubman - a free black man. Despite their marriage and their love things quickly became unsatisfying. John, himself being free-born, didn't understand his wife's desire to be free nor did he share her hatred of slavery. Additionally, his not working and his tendency toward "extravagance" caused Harriet's savings (and only hope of freedom) to dwindle. Finally spurred by her Master's death and the fear of being sold she runs away ... and in 1849 she crosses over into the North and tries to make a new life in Philadelphia. One would think that her quest would end here, but it does not. Harriet is not satisfied to be free herself; she wants to help others out of the hell of slavery and thus begins her journey as a conductor on the Underground Railroad which brought HER to freedom. Even though the moment her feet cross the line into the South she is once again, by law, a slave. The remainder of the books takes us with Harriet Tubman as she travels back and forth risking, quite literally, life and limb to rescue not only her family members but other slaves as well (thought to be approximately 300 persons). First moving them to the North and, when laws change making even the North no longer a haven, into Canada. We see the Civil War unfold through her eyes and are with her in 1913, when pneumonia causes her to draw her last breath at the age of, roughly, 93.