earned only forty dollars a year after giving Brodess his 98 percent share, and it would take her twenty-five years to buy her freedom if her value did not increase, or if her master did not raise her price. White people who owned slaves did so to benefit from the labour that they could provide. Black people who owned slaves were usually successful in raising the funds necessary to buy their still enslaved family members from their owners and consequently become black slave owners in the process.
Harriet decided to have a lawyer look into the will of Athon Pattison (sometimes written as Patterson), since the Pattisons owned Rit and her ancestors before the Pattisons married into the Brodess family and brought their “property” with them. One of Harriet’s ancestors on her mother’s side was her grandmother, Modesty. Modesty came to the United States on a slave ship from Guinea and was sold to the Pattisons. Athon’s will gave Modesty’s girl, Rittia, to his granddaughter, Mary Pattison, the wife of Joseph Brodess. For the five dollars she paid her lawyer, Harriet found out that her mother had wrongfully been kept in slavery and that she was also entitled to be free. “I give and bequeath unto my granddaughter, Mary Pattison one Negro girl called ‘Rittia’ and her increase until she and they arrive to 45 years of age.” Instead of being manumitted, Rit was passed down to Mary and Joseph’s son Edward. Instead of being free, “Rittia and her increase” were still enslaved. This made Harriet resolve to be free and to see her family live in freedom.
A “free” state was a state north of the Mason-Dixon line — the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland, the boundary between the northern Union States and the southern Confederate States. In the free states, slave holding was not allowed by law. The free states came into being in 1777 and included Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, and Pennsylvania. As a compromise for allowing California entry as a free state, greater strength was given to the enforcement of slave laws to appease the slave states. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 meant that these free states were no longer safe for black people, and they could be captured, tried, and found to be runaway slaves, therefore sent back to slavery. As a result, Ontario and, to a lesser extent, Quebec and the Maritimes became magnets for freedom seekers.
4
Freedom Seeking
Harriet heard that her master, Edward Brodess, planned to sell her and two of her brothers “in the chain gang to the far south” as soon as she recovered from one of her lengthy illnesses. Harriet did not want to be separated from her husband and family, and she did not want to be part of an even more difficult work situation in the south. Picking cotton was back-breaking work. With her sleeping spells she would surely fall behind in her harvesting duties and this would result in her being severely punished. Often agricultural workers in the south would have their day’s harvest weighed and there was an expected quota for a worker. She would not survive long under those conditions, because she would be unable to remain alert and working for her entire day in the field. Being sold south would be a certain death sentence for Harriet and she knew that. Harriet had been praying for “the dear Lord to change that man’s (Edward Brodess) heart and make him a Christian,” to make him a more humane and reasonable individual, but she changed her prayer when she learned of his continuing plans to sell her. She then began praying, “Lord, if you ain’t never going to change that man’s heart, kill him, Lord, and take him out of the way, so he won’t do no more mischief.”
Edward Brodess died on March 7, 1849, after a lengthy illness. He willed his possessions to his wife Elizabeth. Ben had already been manumitted, but Rit remained a slave as she was too old to be sold profitably. Harriet took the death of her master as a powerful answer to her prayer and it reinforced her faith. She then was warned by a slave on another plantation, who had overheard the business plans of her owner, that she and her brothers were very soon to be sold further south since Elizabeth was not interested in farming on her own. This news, combined with her recurring visions of lovely white ladies with welcoming outstretched arms waiting for her in the land of freedom, forced Harriet to act. For Harriet there was only one choice: she should have been free, she desperately wanted to be free, she felt she had God’s support. The threat of being torn from her family to uncertain conditions in the south where there would be no tolerance of her sleeping fits, as they might be interpreted as insolence, was added incentive and she convinced herself to seek her freedom.
From the time she had learned that she should have been free, she had hoped to persuade her husband John to escape with her. Unfortunately, he was not interested in leaving and threatened to tell Harriet’s master of her plans to leave. This gave him more control over Harriet — he was free, and if there was a problem between them he could always threaten to tell her master. The times they shared together after his refusal were very tense, and he was constantly watching her to see if she would attempt to run. As much as she would have liked to share her dream with him, and her firm intent to leave, she knew that she could not. She had to be on her guard on the plantation and with her partner right up to the moment that she would leave. Initially she had planned to flee with her two brothers and they set out for the north, but their overwhelming fear of recapture and punishment forced the trio to return. Fortunately their brief, nighttime absence had not been seen by the master. Two days later Harriet set out on her own after singing a hymn to alert her niece, Mary Ann, of her intentions to be free through the coded message and the double meaning of the lyrics she sang while giving a nod or a meaningful look to the listener:
When dat ar ole chariot comes,
When that old chariot comes
I’m gwine to lebe you,
I’m going to leave you
I’m boun’ for de promised land,
I’m bound for the promised land
Frien’s, I’m gwine to lebe you
Friends, I’m going to leave you.
I’m sorry, frien’s, to lebe you
Farewell! oh, farewell!
But I’ll meet you in the mornin’,
Farewell! oh, farewell
I’ll meet you in the mornin’,
When you reach de promised land;
On the oder side of Jordan,
For I’m boun’ for de promised land.”
Mary Ann understood that Harriet was running, but as a worker being watched by the mistress in the big house she did not show any sign that she knew Harriet was leaving. As soon as she was able, Mary Ann alerted Harriet’s parents and brothers and sisters. John Tubman would have found out later because he lived off the plantation. Even married slaves, like Harriet, had to return to their master’s plantation during the night after being hired out all day — marriage meant that “spare” time (i.e. Saturday nights and Sundays, unless the master had other plans for your time) might be shared between husband and wife. When John did suspect Harriet had left, he advised her mistress of Harriet’s interest in finding freedom in the north.
Harriet may have carried a homemade quilt admired by a Quaker woman that she had chanced to meet on an errand for Brodess. This woman promised Harriet that if she ever needed help to contact her. Whether or not Harriet had such a quilt is immaterial — there were many Quakers in the area where Harriet found herself and they were as a group, by that time, resisting slavery. Harriet found this woman early in the days after her escape and traded the quilt for a piece of paper with two names on it, probably the names of other Quakers living further north. Harriet had been told to sweep the yard until her contact’s husband came home in the evening to avoid arousing the neighbours’ suspicions.
Both the Quaker couple and Harriet had put themselves at risk. Since slaves were considered property, running away was viewed as stealing valuable property from the owner. A slave in search of their freedom was committing a felony, stealing his or her desired labour and those who helped were assisting in theft. If caught, a slave could be maimed, disfigured, or killed as an example to others; those who helped could be harassed, isolated, fined or