Harriet Tubman
Written By Barbara Bullen
Harriet Tubman an abolitionist renown.
We thank God for her spirit, her strength and her love for her fellow men.
We’ll remember her birthday this March to tell her story of the love for mankind,
despite the cruelty that she, the slaves and the fugitives received
by the merciless slave masters bent on slavery.
March 10 is the day on which it is said that Harriet Tubman (Araminta Ross) famously known as an abolitionist was born. As most Blacks who were born into slavery in the 1800s, Harriet was like them but became a hero when she escaped from slavery and helped other enslaved people escape from their masters or bondage.
Harriet was born in Dorchester County, Maryland where she lived a horrific life like most slaves being beaten and whipped by her slave masters and even experiencing a life-threatening head injury that induced visions and dreams she attributed to the works of God. She became deeply religious because of her Methodist upbringing and these visions and dreams.
“She often fought illness in her childhood, but as she grew older, the “sickly” young household girl grew stronger and even became a fieldhand. On a secluded plantation during her adolescence, Tubman attempted to warn an escaping slave that his master was nearby. She was caught between the slave and his master when the two confronted each other. The master slung a lead weight at the escapee, but hit Tubman in the head. The force of the blow “broke her skull and drove a piece of her bandana” into her head. The head injury would cause her to have headaches, fainting spells, and visions for the rest of her life. In 1844, she married a free black man named John Tubman. Around this time, she hired a lawyer to investigate her family’s slave contracts. The lawyer found her mother should have been freed at the age of 45, meaning that some of her siblings should have been born free.”
https://www.crf-usa.org/images/pdf/gates/Harriet-Tubman-End-of-Slavey.pdf
In the mid-1800s she escaped to Philadelphia to return to help those she left behind; she helped her family to escape and led many others to their freedom.
“The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was part of the Compromise of 1850. This law required the United States government to actively assist slave holders in recapturing freedom seekers. Under the United States Constitution, slave holders had the right to reclaim slaves who ran away to free states. With the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, the federal government had to assist the slave holders. No such requirement had existed previously.” https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Fugitive_Slave_Law_of_1850
Harriet tried to find and help slaves in captivity escape and this included John Tubman who she later found out had remarried to a woman named Caroline thereby ending her quest to find him. Frederick Douglass an abolitionist was also said to have worked with Tubman in helping fugitives.
“There is evidence to suggest that Tubman and her group stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass.[63] In his third autobiography, Douglass wrote: “On one occasion I had eleven fugitives at the same time under my roof, and it was necessary for them to remain with me until I could collect sufficient money to get them on to Canada. It was the largest number I ever had at any one time, and I had some difficulty in providing so many with food and shelter. … “[64] The number of travelers and the time of the visit make it likely that this was Tubman’s group.[63]
Douglass and Tubman admired one another greatly as they both struggled against slavery. When an early biography of Tubman was being prepared in 1868, Douglass wrote a letter to honor her. He compared his own efforts with hers, writing:
The difference between us is very marked. Most that I have done and suffered in the service of our cause has been in public, and I have received much encouragement at every step of the way. You, on the other hand, have labored in a private way. I have wrought in the day – you in the night. … The midnight sky and the silent stars have been the witnesses of your devotion to freedom and of your heroism. Excepting John Brown – of sacred memory – I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people than you have.[65]” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman
In 11 years, Tubman helped rescue 70 slaves in what was said to have taken 13 trips that included family members. Tubman was called “Moses” because of her efforts to free and rescue the slaves from their slave masters and to help fugitives to escape to the north.
She was devout and dedicated to God aided by visions, premonitions and the voice of God which is said to sometimes be attributed to her head injury. Although a religious woman she would not hesitate to use a gun which she carried for her protection and the protection of the slaves, even to the point of using it on them if they ever turned back to their plantation.
“Despite the efforts of the slaveholders, Tubman and the fugitives she assisted were never captured. Years later, she told an audience: “I was conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say – I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”[3]…
Scouting and the Combahee River Raid
“When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Tubman considered it an important step toward the goal of liberating all Black people from slavery.[107] She renewed her support for a defeat of the Confederacy, and in early 1863 she led a band of scouts through the land around Port Royal.[108] The marshes and rivers in South Carolina were similar to those of the Eastern Shore of Maryland; thus, her knowledge of covert travel and subterfuge among potential enemies was put to good use.[108] Her group, working under the orders of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, mapped the unfamiliar terrain and reconnoitered its inhabitants. She later worked alongside Colonel James Montgomery, and provided him with key intelligence that aided in the capture of Jacksonville, Florida.[109]
Later that year, Tubman became the first woman to lead an armed assault during the Civil War.[110] When Montgomery and his troops conducted an assault on a collection of plantations along the Combahee River, Tubman served as a key adviser and accompanied the raid. On the morning of June 2, 1863, Tubman guided three steamboats around Confederate mines in the waters leading to the shore.[111] Once ashore, the Union troops set fire to the plantations, destroying infrastructure and seizing thousands of dollars worth of food and supplies.[112] When the steamboats sounded their whistles, slaves throughout the area understood that they were being liberated. Tubman watched as slaves stampeded toward the boats. “I never saw such a sight”, she said later,[113] describing a scene of chaos with women carrying still-steaming pots of rice, pigs squealing in bags slung over shoulders, and babies hanging around their parents’ necks. Although their owners, armed with handguns and whips, tried to stop the mass escape, their efforts were nearly useless in the tumult.[112] As Confederate troops raced to the scene, steamboats packed full of slaves took off toward Beaufort.[114]
More than 750 slaves were rescued in the Combahee River Raid.[115][113] Newspapers heralded Tubman’s “patriotism, sagacity, energy, [and] ability”,[116] and she was praised for her recruiting efforts – most of the newly liberated men went on to join the Union army.[116] Tubman later worked with Colonel Robert Gould Shaw at the assault on Fort Wagner, reportedly serving him his last meal.[117] She described the battle by saying: “And then we saw the lightning, and that was the guns; and then we heard the thunder, and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling, and that was the drops of blood falling; and when we came to get the crops, it was dead men that we reaped.”[118]
For two more years, Tubman worked for the Union forces, tending to newly liberated slaves, scouting into Confederate territory, and nursing wounded soldiers in Virginia.[119] She also made periodic trips back to Auburn to visit her family and care for her parents.[120] The Confederacy surrendered in April 1865; after donating several more months of service, Tubman headed home to Auburn.[121]
During a train ride to New York in 1869, the conductor told her to move from a half-price section into the baggage car. She refused, showing the government-issued papers that entitled her to ride there. He cursed at her and grabbed her, but she resisted and he summoned two other passengers for help. While she clutched at the railing, they muscled her away, breaking her arm in the process. They threw her into the baggage car, causing more injuries. As these events transpired, other white passengers cursed Tubman and shouted for the conductor to kick her off the train.[122] Her act of defiance became a historical symbol, later cited when Rosa Parks refused to move from a bus seat in 1955.[123][124]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman
Harriet Tubman,
your legacy and dream continues,
until the day when slavery,
is abolished throughout the world.
