(! )
she told them about frederick douglass, the most famous of the escaped slaves, of his eloquence, of his magnificent appearance. then she told them of her own first vain effort at running away, evoking the memory of that miserable life she had led as a child, reliving it for a moment in the telling.

but they had been tired too long, hungry too long, afraid too long, footsore too long. one of them suddenly cried out in despair, "let me go back. it is better to be a slave than to suffer like this in order to be free."

—harriet tubman, conductor on the
underground railroad, ann petry

why was this strategy not effective?

the runaways believed that douglass was greater than them.
they didn’t trust the story tubman was telling them, so she wasn’t believable.
douglass’s story made the runaways believe freedom was very difficult to achieve.
the runaways were so miserable that the authority of the speaker didn’t matter.