“IT WAS THE FIRST TIME SINCE MY CHILDHOOD THAT I HAD EXPERIENCED ANY REAL HAPPINESS. THE DARKEST CLOUD THAT HUNG OVER MY LIFE HAD ROLLED AWAY. WHATEVER SLAVERY MIGHT DO TO ME, IT COULD NOT SHACKLE MY CHILDREN.”
“My mind was made up,” Harriet wrote. “I was resolved that I would foil my master and save my children or I would perish in the attempt. I had a woman’s pride and a mother’s love for my children. My master had power and law on his side. I had a determined will. There is might in each.”
So Harriet ran.
Immediately, Harriet’s owner, Dr. Flint, began searching for his slave.
“Early the next morning Dr. Flint was at my grandmother’s inquiring for me,” Harriet wrote. “She told him she had not seen me and supposed I was at the plantation. My grandmother’s house was searched from top to bottom. As my trunk was empty, they concluded I had taken my clothes with me.”
Dr. Flint, posted an advertisement “at every corner and in every public place for miles around.
“$300 REWARD! Ran away from the subscriber, an intelligent, bright, mulatto girl named Linda, 21 years of age. Five feet four inches high. Dark eyes and black hair inclined to curl. But it can be made straight. Has a decayed spot on a front tooth. She can read and write and in all probability will try to get too the Free States. All persons are forbidden under penalty of the law, to harbor or employ said slave.”
Meanwhile, Harriet was safe in her secret hiding place.
“I went to sleep that night with the feeling that I was for the present the most fortunate slave in town. Morning came and filled my little cell with light. I thanked the heavenly Father for this safe retreat.”
Harriet did everything she could to try to influence her master to sell her two children to their father, a prominent white lawyer and neighbor of Harriet’s grandmother who was a free woman.
“Grandmother, she knew, was consulting with Sawyer (the father), trying to win freedom for her and the children,” according to Harriet’s biographer Jean Fagan Yellin.
Harriet wrote, “She had an interview with Mr. Sands (the fictitious name Harriet used in her book for Sam Sawyer, the father of her children)…He spoke kind and encouraging words. He promised to care for my child and to buy me, be the conditions what they might.”
Harriet never lost hope that her plan would work, that the father of her children would purchase them and free them.
She wrote: “As I sat very still in my retreat, cheerful visions floated through my mind. I thought Dr. Flint would soon get discouraged and would be willing to sell my children… I was daily hoping to hear that my master had sold my children; for I knew who was on the watch to buy them.”
“Behind the scenes, Sam Sawyer was trying to negotiate to buy the children,” said Yellin. “Masking his role in the transaction, he sent a speculator to offer high prices. Norcom (the real name of Harriet’s owner) first refused, but then—strapped for money—he changed his mind.”
After the quick sale, the doctor tried to get assurances that the speculator would re-sell the children out of the state so he could avoid the embarrassment of seeing them in town.
“But it was too late,” Yellin wrote. “Sawyer had already bought them.”
“My uncle procured a wagon and carried the children back to town,” Harriet wrote. “Great was the joy in my grandmother’s house. The father was present for a while…It must be that he experienced some moments of pure joy in witnessing the happiness he had imparted.”
Deep in hiding, Harriet did not know any of this. She had no idea what happened to her children—but she never lost hope. From her prison cell, she could peek out see people passing by. She would listen to their conversations, hoping to learn something about her children.
She wrote, “I was thankful when there came a day sufficiently mild for me to wrap myself up and sit at the loophole to watch the passers by. Southerners have the habit of stopping and talking in the streets and I heard many conversations not intended to meet my ears.
“I heard slave-hunters planning how to catch some poor fugitive. Several times I heard allusions to Dr. Flint and myself and the history of my children.
“The opinion was often expressed that I was in the Free States. Very rarely did anyone suggest that I might be in the vicinity. Had the least suspicion rested on my grandmother’s house, it would have been burned to the ground. But it was the last place they thought of. Yet there was no place, where slavery existed, that could have afforded me so good a place of concealment.”
One day she overheard two women talking. It was her first hint that something had indeed happened with her children.
“I heard the voices of two women in the entry,” she said. “In one of them I recognized the housemaid. The other said to her: ‘Did you know Linda Brent’s children (Linda Brent was the fictional name Harriet used in her narrative) was sold to the speculator yesterday? They say old mass Flint was mighty glad to see ’em drove out of town. I expect it’s all their daddy’s doings.”
Harriet’s hopes soared. All along she had hoped that her children’s father would buy them and let them live with her grandmother. Did it really happen? Was it so?
“I bit my lips till the blood came to keep from crying out,” she said. “Were my children with their grandmother or had the speculator carried them off? The suspense was dreadful.”
Her aunt Betty came and Harriet told her what she had overheard about her children. She wanted to know if it was true.
“Her face was one broad, bright smile,” wrote Harriet. “‘Lord, you foolish ting!’ said she. ‘I’se gwine to tell you all ‘bout it…The chillen is all is bought by de daddy!’
She went on to tell Harriet that ‘I’se laugh more dan nuff tinking ‘bout ole mass Flint. Lor, how he will swar! He’d got ketched dis time.’ ”
“Betty went off laughing” said Harriet, “and I said to myself, ‘Can it be true that my children are free? I have not suffered for them in vain. Thank God!”
News spread throughout the town that Harriet’s children were now free and living with their grandmother.
“Great surprise was expressed when it was known that my children had returned to their grandmother’s,” said Harriet. “Many a kind word was bestowed on the little ones.”
Harriet had used her own wits to manipulate her master into selling her children to their biological father who was now the legal owner of two slave children. He allowed the children to live with their grandmother in freedom.
In her secret hideout, Harriet felt a deep sense of victory over the forces of evil. Trapped in her prison cell, powerless, with no resources other than her own natural ingenuity and gumption, she managed to protect her children and gain their freedom.
“I could lie perfectly concealed and command a view of the street through which Dr. Flint passed to his office. Anxious as I was, I felt a gleam of satisfaction when I saw him. Thus far, I had outwitted him and I triumphed over it,” she wrote.
“I had my season of joy and thanksgiving. It was the first time since my childhood that I had experienced any real happiness. The darkest cloud that hung over my life had rolled away. Whatever slavery might do to me, it could not shackle my children.”
“Who can blame slaves for being cunning?” Harriet asked. “They are constantly compelled to resort to it. It is the only weapon of the weak and oppressed against the strength of their tyrants.”
Posted By: Richard Kigel
Thursday, January 28th 2010 at 4:22PM
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