The Underground Railroad: Chapter 6: North Carolina Summary & Analysis

This chapter is preceded by another runaway ad, this time for a 21-year-old called Martha. The narrative then returns to Cora, who believes it has been one day since Sam’s house collapsed, though she isn’t sure. She remains alone, trapped on the underground railroad platform. She tortures herself with thoughts of what has happened to Caesar and Sam and, while sleeping, she has nightmares about a twisted, violent version of her life in South Carolina. Cora is desperately hungry, and she doesn’t know when she will eat again. The train is late, and she is too weak to walk to wherever the next station might be. She curses herself for choosing to stay in South Carolina, thinking it was ludicrous to assume they would be safe there, still in the South and so close to Randall. It is completely dark, but Cora cannot stop having visions of Caesar being captured. She hopes that he was taken with Meg, whom she assumes was his lover, so at least he is not alone. Cora feels like “a stray in every sense… the last of her tribe.”

The train speeds into the station, and at first flies past Cora. She screams after it and the conductor stops and backs up. The engineer offers her his sandwich and she gobbles it without realizing he was joking. He is only about 15 and is astonished by Cora’s story. He informs Cora that he has been told to avoid Georgia station because it has been discovered by patrollers. He tells Cora she must ride in the flatcar, where she must hold on to straps and ropes in order to avoid flying off. As they speed along, Cora realizes she has forgotten to ask where they are going.

When they eventually reach the next station, there are still empty cases of explosive powder lying around from where the rock was blasted away. The engineer tells Cora they are in North Carolina, explaining that in the past it was “a popular stop” but it isn’t anymore. He tells her he doesn’t know who the station agent is. Cora asks to go with him, but he tells her he is too young to be in charge of people and thus is only allowed to take care of the trains. He leaves her and Cora wanders around, only to find that she is completely trapped again. She cries herself to sleep until the station agent, Martin Wells, wakes her. He tells Cora that she is not supposed to be there and that it is “regrettable” that she is. Martin had been visiting the platform to inform the railroad that he couldn’t accept any more runaways because of changes to the law in North Carolina. He helps Cora to get into the back of his cart, where she hides under a piece of tarpaulin as before.

Martin lifts the tarpaulin and tells Cora that he wants her to see something. It is a long line of rotting corpses that have been mutilated and hanged. Martin explains, “They call this road the Freedom Trail now.” The next time they stop, it is at Martin’s house. On seeing Cora, Martin’s wife, Ethel, tells Martin that he’s going to get them killed. After washing, Cora is ushered up to the attic, which is cramped and hot. Ethel brings Cora food, water, and a chamber pot, and tells her that she must be absolutely quiet. If the servant, Fiona, or any visitors discover Cora’s presence, they will all be murdered. Through a tiny crack in the wall, Cora watches the citizens of the town going about their days. There is a dog that is often fed leftover scraps; in her head, Cora names him Mayor. Martin owns a store, and neither he nor Ethel visit Cora during the day while Fiona is working. Fiona is young and has a strong Irish accent. The Wells’ daughter comes to visit with her family, and from her voice Cora decides she is kind, like Martin.

In the evenings, people gather to have picnics in the town square. Unlike on Randall or in South Carolina, everyone in this North Carolina town is white. The only black people around are hanging at the end of a rope. A banner is unfurled to reveal the words “Friday Festival.” There is music, a short speech by Judge Tennyson, and a minstrel show. There is then a play about an enslaved man who runs away and is captured. When the man is brought back, he begs to be given his old “position,” but the master explains that North Carolina is different now and the slave is dragged away by patrollers. Next, a real patroller, Jamison, takes to the stage and introduces a young new recruit called Richard, who has already caught a runaway. The girl in question, Louisa, is brought to the stage—she is trembling, covered in blood and dirt, and her head has been shaved. Jamison proclaims that the night riders keep the town safe from black people who will use the darkness of night to do them harm. The patrollers take Louisa to the big oak tree and tie the noose around her neck. A woman in a pink polka-dot dress rushes at the chance to push the ramp away beneath Louisa’s feet.

As the cotton trade boomed, more and more Africans were kidnapped and brought to America, such that in some states (such as Louisiana and Georgia) the number of black and white people became roughly equal. This ratio has made many white people terrified of rebellion. During the Southampton Rebellion, Nat Turner and his crew killed 65 white people before militias and patrollers lynched three times that number of black people in revenge. One night, Martin visits Cora, speaking to her in a whisper because his neighbor’s son is a night rider. Patrollers are entitled to stop any black person, and the patrollers will beat them and take them to jail (or worse) if they are an enslaved person without a pass. The patrollers also terrify freemen, destroying their possessions and raping them. Cora tells Martin that black people “know, but don’t say” that they make up a significant proportion of the population.

The previous year, local men in North Carolina had gathered to decide what to do about this population question at a meeting called the “Justice Convention.” Jamison, who is a senator, was in attendance. The men decided to encourage white people to come to North Carolina to pick cotton; Cora remarks that she has never seen a white person pick cotton before, and Martin replies that, until he moved to North Carolina, he’d never seen “a mob rip a man limb from limb.” North Carolina essentially abolished slavery by abolishing black people. When Cora asks where the black people went, Martin replies, “you saw.” The government bought enslaved people from farmers and sold them in other slave-owning states. Black people were flat-out banned from North Carolina, and anyone caught in the state was lynched and hung up on the “Freedom Trail.”

All towns in North Carolina hold a Friday Festival. Whites found guilty of assisting black people are hanged, but their bodies are not added to the Freedom Trail. The punishment for even possessing abolitionist literature is technically jail time, although in reality it is often death. When it seems that too few white people are being arrested, towns increase the rewards given to those who turn in their friends, relatives, and neighbors. Patrollers have the right to conduct random inspections on any person’s home, and Martin’s house was searched twice before Cora arrived. Martin apologizes for Ethel’s behavior, telling Cora that it is not her fault—however, Cora responds by pointing out that the enslaved are certainly not responsible for their predicament.

The heat in the attic is sometimes so intense that Cora loses consciousness. She grows thin from lack of food and suffers from violent nightmares. At first Cora asks Martin regularly if there is any news from the underground railroad, but after a few months she stops asking. Cora complains that Martin is holding her hostage, but he insists that if she leaves they will all certainly be killed. During the days, Cora listens to Fiona cursing while Martin and Ethel are out. Cora is curious about the Irish community from which Fiona comes, wondering how they feel about doing “nigger work” in the cotton fields. Cora spends much of her time imagining either the “ornate hell” that Terrance will engineer if she is captured and brought to him, or else the life she will lead if she finally manages to escape to the north. She envisions living in a pleasant house with her husband and two children, a boy and a girl. She imagines Mabel as an old beggar woman to whom she unthinkingly flings a few coins, and she imagines sharing memories of miraculous escape with Caesar. Cora feels no guilt about the white boy she killed. She thinks to herself that fear motivates white people “even more than cotton money” and concludes that “the whites were right to be afraid.” She cheers herself by thinking of her rebellion, before remembering the attic walls—and the entire country—that keep her prisoner.

A week before the summer solstice, there are a series of “bad omens.” First, Cora accidentally knocks over her chamber pot, and the only reason why Fiona doesn’t notice is because a friend of hers happens to be visiting. Martin and Ethel fight constantly, and Cora reasons that the only reason Ethel hasn’t turned her in is because Ethel herself would be punished for her complicity. Growing up, Martin never heard his father, Donald, express an opinion about slavery, although their family was unusual for not owning slaves. After Donald’s death, Martin discovered a map to buried “treasure”—the underground railroad. It turned out that throughout Martin’s childhood, Donald had been working for the underground railroad and going on secret abolitionist missions disguised as business trips. Before his death, Donald successfully conveyed 12 runaways to freedom.

Cora watches the townspeople who linger in the park after dark because they are “too afraid to go home.” Suddenly, she notices that the night riders are on the prowl. Cora huddles in the corner of the attic when the riders arrive at Martin’s house. She listens to the riders speak politely with Martin and Ethel before asking to go upstairs. Martin tells them they don’t go up themselves much as the raccoons have made a nest, and the night riders leave. The final bad omen is the lynching of a white couple whose daughter betrayed the fact that they were hiding two black boys in their house. The little boys’ bodies are strung up on the Freedom Trail. When Ethel is told about this, she faints. That night, Cora goes to bed and reflects on the strange meaning of freedom. Is she free now, confined to a tiny attic? Or was she more free on Randall, where she had space to walk around (yet was under the control of a master)? She thinks about Martin and Ethel, who are imprisoned by their own fear. She recalls her garden on Randall, which she now considers a “joke,” and she thinks of the Declaration of Independence, which she can hardly believe is real.

That night Cora becomes very ill and violently throws up. Ethel cares for her, adopting a newly gentle attitude. Martin and Ethel tell Fiona not to come to work for a few days, knowing that Cora is too ill to hide properly. They pretend that Martin has the Venezuelan Pox and must be quarantined. Cora, delirious, dreams that Ethel kisses her forehead, and she awakens to Ethel reading scripture aloud to her. Cora tells her this isn’t necessary, but Ethel insists. Cora has been reading the Bible in an effort to improve her literacy skills, and she discusses a passage about slavery with Ethel, remarking that slavery is an abomination when white people are enslaved but apparently not when black people are. After a few days, Cora’s health improves and Fiona returns. That night, a Friday, the night riders storm into the house, pushing past Martin and Ethel. They grab Cora by the ankles and throw her down the stairs. Outside, townspeople have gathered, and a redheaded girl who Cora realizes is Fiona exclaims: “I knew they had someone up there!” and says she can’t wait to claim her reward.

Cora looks at Fiona and is astonished by how young she is. Martin says to Fiona, “We treated you nice,” and Fiona replies that they have a “queer way” and deserve whatever happens to them. Jamison appears and tells Martin that Donald would be ashamed of him. Ethel calls out that it was all Martin’s doing and she didn’t know anything. The tall man who grabbed Cora from the attic introduces himself as Ridgeway, and says that under the Fugitive Slave Law he has a right to return Cora to her owner. He tells Cora she doesn’t need to be afraid because she’s going “home.” A 10-year-old black boy (Homer) drives a wagon up, a sight Cora finds bizarre and “fantastical.” Fiona remarks that in order to get ahead in America, “a girl’s got to look after her interests.” Ridgeway’s associate fastens Cora’s ankles in chains; she watches as Martin and Ethel are tied to a tree. The townspeople begin to throw stones at Ethel, laughing at her screams. The crowd closes in.