The Underground Railroad

by Colson Whitehead

making a circle of themselves that separated the human spirits within from the degradation without.

In another country they would have been criminals, but this was America.

Here was the true Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor—if you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave or continent. The American imperative.

fast. One thing about the south, it was not patient when

in the vessel, I cannot tell; but conclude they were

Poetry and prayer put ideas in people’s heads that got them killed, distracting them from the ruthless mechanism of the world.