Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Chapter 40 Summary & Analysis

William decides to move to California and takes Benny with him. Ellen is flourishing at school; everyone is very kind to her, especially when they discover that her mother is a fugitive slave. Meanwhile, Linda returns to work for Mr. Bruce, who has remarried and had another baby. The young Mrs. Bruce is a woman of “excellent principles” with a “hearty dislike” for slavery, who proves a loyal friend to Linda.

Around this time, the abolitionist movement suffers a blow in the form of the Fugitive Slave Laws, which empower anyone to recapture escaped slaves and return them to the South. Many families leave the city altogether; others are torn apart when one spouse finds out that the other is a fugitive. The passage of this law is one of the reasons that William moves to California and Linda, fearful for her safety, goes out as infrequently as possible and always uses back roads—she’s enraged that she has to sneak around like this in a “city calling itself free.”

In the street one day, Linda meets a former slave from her own city, Luke. This man had a particularly cruel master—although he was an invalid who relied completely on Luke for survival, he whipped him every day, often summoning the constable to carry out the punishment when he lacked strength. Linda is overjoyed to see he’s escaped, but worried that he’s not truly free, even in New York. He reassures her that he ran away not from his master but from a speculator, who’s unlikely to come looking for him.

Luke tells Linda that he plans to go to Canada. Before his escape, he cleverly obtained some money from his master by hiding some bills in an old pair of pants, which he then asked to have as a hand-me-down. Linda says that this anecdote is “a fair specimen of how the moral sense is educated by slavery,” but she does feel Luke deserves the money, given how much work he’s done unpaid.

Again, Linda receives warning that Dr. Flint knows she’s in New York and is trying to capture her. She confides in the young Mrs. Bruce, who immediately rallies to her aid. She even suggests that Linda take her baby on her escape from the city; carrying a white child will render her less suspicious, and if she’s caught, her capturers will have to return the child, and Mrs. Bruce might be able to advocate for her release.

One of young Mrs. Bruce’s relatives scolds her for risking herself this way, but she says she’d much rather pay a fine or go to prison rather than have Linda “torn from my house.” Linda goes to New England, where she stays briefly with a senator who knows Mrs. Bruce; but the man is so frightened of the fugitive slave laws that he sends her to hide in the countryside for a month, after which she returns to New York.