The runaway slave must cross a river, while
legendary monsters (jack-muh-lanterns) five feet
tall try to lure him into the swamps where he will
drown. He just has to keep on moving until he
reaches his goal.
The wordrunagateis then repeated three
times, on three successive lines, each line typo-
graphically arranged so the line consists of that
single word set progressively closer to the right-
hand margin. These one-word lines are followed
by a reference to a Negro spiritual, ‘‘Many Thou-
sand Go,’’ about the number of slaves who have
escaped to freedom.
The poet then hails the North as the desired
destination, connecting it to the biblical city (Jer-
usalem or Zion, although neither is directly named)
where God will protect his people and they will
find their freedom. The North beckons them like a
star, the North Star that literally guided the slaves
as they headed for freedom.
In the next three lines the poet alludes to the
variety of unusual ways in which slaves have
made their escape. One man packed himself in a
box and was transported as freight (this may be a
reference to Henry Box Brown, who was shipped
in a crate from Richmond to Philadelphia); others
have disguised themselves by their clothing.
These lines are followed by three lines that
contain more quotations from Negro spirituals.
The spirituals are ‘‘Fare Ye Well’’ and, for the
second time, ‘‘Many Thousand Go,’’ which includes
the refrain, ‘‘No more driver’s lash for me,’’ and is
also sometimes known as ‘‘No More Auction Block
for Me.’’
The next verse paragraph is in the form of a
newspaper advertisementput out by a slave owner
calling for the return of two of his escaped slaves
named Pompey and Anna. The advertisement
describes their appearance and what they may be
wearing. Anna has been branded with letters on
each cheek. The poster asks anyone seeing Pom-
pey and Anna to catch them and return them to
their owner. Issuing such advertisements as a way
of recapturing runaway slaves was common prac-
tice at the time.
Then another voice, starting at line 6 in this
verse paragraph, is heard. This is the voice of a
slave catcher, and he warns that catching the run-
aways will be difficult. They are resourceful and
may prove elusive. The poem makes reference to
a legend surrounding the escape of a slave who
swam across the Ohio River, pursued by his
owner. When they got to the other side, the mas-
ter found no trace of the slave and speculated that
he had somehow gone underground.
This verse paragraph is followed by another
two lines of a song, about being willing to die
rather than be a slave. The song is titled ‘‘Oh,
Freedom.’’ This is followed by another reference
to the North Star as the symbol of freedom, as
great as any material riches, and a line from the
traditional song ‘‘O Susanna.’’
Two more repetitions of the title word, on
separate, double-spaced lines, bring the first sec-
tion of the poem to an end.Section II
In section I, the runaway slaves were generalized,
but section II focuses on one person in particular,
Harriet Tubman, the famed woman who escaped
from slavery and then helped many others do so
via the Underground Railroad. (The Under-
ground Railroad was not an actual railroad but
a network of safe houses and hiding places and
safe routes that the slaves could take on their way
to freedom in the North.) Tubman is presented as
a woman who was somehow produced by all the
agony and suffering of the slaves, as well as by the
power they discovered in themselves. She is both
flesh-and-blood woman, her back scarred by
whippings, and also like a shining star for her
people because of her determination to be free
and to help others escape to freedom.
The introductory lines of section II give way
to another verse paragraph, this one in the voice
of an escaped slave who knew Harriet Tubman.
He tells about how the slaves journeyed to free-
dom at night, pursued by slave catchers with their
dogs. The wordpatterollersrefers to patrollers, or
members of the patrol system, who monitored
slaves in the South to make sure they did not go
out at night without authorization. The slaves are
frightened and start to doubt whether they will be
able to reach their goal. But then Tubman tells
them to stop talking like that. She points a pistol
at them, telling them they must keep going or she
will kill them.
Next, spread over six lines, is the text of a
wanted poster for Tubman, which gives some of
the epithets by which she was known, including
Moses, after the biblical figure who led the Israel-
ites to the Promised Land. Tubman, the poster
states, is working with many of the leaders of the
abolitionist movement and those sympathetic to it,
such as William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879),Runagate Runagate