TUBMAN, Harriet (1820?-1913)
A runaway slave herself, Harriet Tubman helped so many blacks escape to freedom that she became known as the "Moses of her people." During the Civil War she served the Union Army as a nurse, cook, scout, and spy.
Harriet Tubman was born Harriet Ross about 1820 on a plantation near Bucktown, Md. She was one of 11 children of a slave couple. At 7 she was hired out to do housework and to care for white children on nearby farms. Later she became a field hand. While still a teenager, she was struck on the head by an overseer. As a result of the blow, she fell asleep suddenly several times a day for the rest of her life. Hard work toughened her, and before she was 19 she was as strong as the men with whom she worked.
"Moses of Her People"
In 1844 Ross married a free black, John Tubman. She left him in 1849, when her fear of being sold farther south spurred her to escape. She traveled at night, aided by the Underground Railroad, a secret network of people who helped fugitive slaves reach the Northern states and Canada.
In Philadelphia, Pa., and later at Cape May, N.J., Tubman worked as a maid in hotels and clubs. By December 1850 she had saved enough money to make the first of 19 daring journeys back into the South to lead other slaves out of bondage. In 1851 she returned for her husband but found he had remarried.
Tubman worked closely with the Underground Railroad. Often she left fugitives in the care of other "conductors" after leading them part of the way herself. She maintained strict discipline during the perilous journeys to the North. If a runaway lagged behind or lost faith and wished to turn back, she forced him on at gunpoint. Before the Civil War she freed her parents and most of her brothers and sisters as well as hundreds of other slaves.
Slaveowners were constantly on the lookout for Tubman and offered large rewards for her capture, but they never succeeded in seizing her or any of the slaves she helped escape during her work for the Underground Railroad. Much later in life she proudly recalled: "I never ran my train off the track, and I never lost a passenger."
Tubman supported her parents and worked to raise money for her missions into the South. She spoke at abolitionist meetings and at women's rights assemblies, often concealing her name for protection from slave hunters. Her forceful leadership led the white abolitionist John Brown to refer to her admiringly as "General" Tubman. She helped Brown plan his October 1859 raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, W. Va., and promised that many of the slaves she had freed would join him. Only illness prevented her from fighting at Brown's side during the raid itself.
Civil War Roles
During the Civil War Tubman served the Union Army. She nursed and cooked for white soldiers, for example, as well as for sick and starving blacks who sought protection behind Union lines. She acted as both a scout and a spy, often bravely leading Union raiding parties into Confederate territory. For this, she won the respect of many grateful Union officers. But her efforts went unrewarded. She spent many decades trying to collect 1,800 dollars in back pay from the federal government, which refused to recognize her wartime services. When in 1899 she was finally granted a pension, it was given to her not for her own deeds but because she was the widow of Nelson Davis, a Civil War veteran whom she had married in 1869.
Tubman had settled in Auburn, N.Y., in 1857. After the Civil War she fed, sheltered, and nursed any blacks who came to her home for aid. Although she was in poor health, she worked to support two schools for freedmen in the South and continued to provide a home for her parents. She often had to borrow money for food from friends who gratefully remembered her heroic exploits in the fight against slavery. After many years of effort, she was able to sponsor a home for needy blacks in Auburn, which was opened in 1908.
'Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman', her first biography, published in 1869, was written by Sarah Hopkins Bradford to raise money for her support. In subsequent editions the title was changed to 'Harriet Tubman: the Moses of Her People'. Harriet Tubman died in Auburn on March 10, 1913, and was buried with military honors. A year later the city unveiled a tablet in her memory.
