In a small-town Kentucky hotel, a stranger inspects a poster advertising a reward for a runaway slave named George, dead or alive. One of the Kentuckians says that if slaves are treated well they won't run away, so he has no sympathy for the man offering this reward. The stranger, who turns out to be the factory owner for whom Eliza's husband once worked, agrees and says he knows this fugitive (it is George Harris).
At that point, another stranger (George Harris disguised as a Latino man) enters, accompanied by an apparent slave whom he calls Jim. He examines the poster, rents a room, and then calls Wilson in for some words in private. He tells Wilson his story: George's older sister was beaten by their master, Harris, and sold to a trader to be taken to New Orleans. George has come back to Kentucky with Jim, another escaped slave who is going to try to free his old mother. Wilson lends George some money and wishes him luck; George is armed with pistols and says the slave-catchers will never take him alive.
Chapter 12 returns to Tom's plight: During their journey southward, Haley attends an estate sale where he buys three slaves, including a boy named Albert whose mother is devastated because Haley refuses to buy her, too. Another purchase is John, a 30-year-old man who must leave his wife without saying goodbye. Haley takes his slaves aboard an Ohio riverboat, where they are kept in chains with the freight. Above them, a group of white travelers discusses slavery. Haley also brings aboard a young woman and her infant, whom he has bought through an agent. That evening, Haley sells her baby to another passenger. Tom tries to comfort the mother, but she is inconsolable, and that night Tom awakens to see her run past him and jump overboard to her death. Haley regards this as bad luck.
