Harriet Tubman (circa 1822-1913) was a former slave, abolitionist, women's rights activist, and famous conductor on the Underground Railroad. She served as a cook, nurse, scout, and spy for the Union Army during the American Civil War and, in her later years, established the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged in Auburn and Fleming, New York, now a National Historic Site.
Born as a slave in Maryland, Tubman escaped in 1849, making her way to Philadelphia and freedom. She then returned to Maryland to free her family and became a conductor on the Underground Railroad, working with fellow abolitionists William Still (1819-1902), Passmore Williamson (1822-1895), Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879), John Brown (1800-1859), and many others in assisting freedom seekers (fugitive slaves) in their flight from slavery.
She supported armed resistance to the "peculiar institution" and helped John Brown plan his assault on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859, which they hoped would encourage a large-scale slave revolt. The raid failed, and Brown was executed, but Tubman continued her advocacy for military action against slaveholders, helping to recruit Black soldiers and serving as guide and scout on the Combahee River Raid (Raid on Combahee Ferry) in 1863, which freed over 750 slaves.
After the Civil War, Tubman advocated for women's rights and civil rights from her home in Auburn, New York, established her Home for the Aged, and freely donated to any cause that advocated for equal rights for all. She died of pneumonia in 1913 and was buried with semi-military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn. In the present day, she is remembered as a great American advocate for freedom and justice for all.
Early Life, Injury, & Family
According to writers Jean Marie Wiesen and Rita Daniels, Tubman's maternal grandmother, known as Modesty, was "an Ashanti maiden…born in Ghana, on the Gold Coast of Africa" and was "among the hundreds of West Africans captured from her village in the late 1700s" (14). Tubman's mother, Harriet ("Rit") Green, married Ben Ross circa 1808 and had nine children, including Araminta ("Minty") Ross (born circa 1822), who would become Harriet Tubman.
The family was separated as Rit was owned by the Brodess family while Ben was a slave of the Thompsons. Since any children born of an enslaved woman were enslaved by her owners, all the children came to be the property of Mary Pattison Brodess and her son Edward. Edward further separated the family by hiring them out to different locations and, at one point, selling two of Tubman's sisters.
When Tubman was six years old, she was hired out to a woman as a nursemaid and, whenever the infant woke and cried, Tubman was whipped. She took to wearing layers of clothing as protection, which may have helped, but still carried the scars of those whippings for the rest of her life.
In 1835, when Tubman was around 13, she was sent on an errand, along with the plantation's cook, to a local store for a few provisions. Tubman later recalled that she was ashamed of how her hair looked, even covered with a shawl, and waited outside the shop while the cook went in. An overseer, chasing a fugitive slave, asked Tubman to help stop him, and she refused. The overseer then hurled a 2-pound weight at the fleeing slave but missed, striking Tubman in the head. Scholar Kate Clifford Larson writes:
The last thing she remembered was the overseer "raising up his arm to throw an iron weight at one of the slaves and that was the last I knew." She remembered vividly how the weight "broke my skull and cut a piece of that shawl clean off and drove it into my head. They carried me to the house all bleeding and fainting. I had no bed, no place to lie down on at all, and they lay me on the seat of the loom, and I stayed there all that day and next."
(42)
Tubman was sent back to the fields the next day, working "with the blood and sweat rolling down my face till I couldn't see" (Larson, 42) but was finally allowed to be treated by her mother, an herbalist healer, who nursed her back to health. According to Larson, this injury resulted in temporal lobe epilepsy, characterized by sleeping spells in which she would experience visions she understood as sent by God. She would remain in these states until she suddenly woke or "persistent shaking by her fellow slaves brought her back to reality, though she protested that she hadn't been asleep at all" (Larson, 43-44).
These visions would continue throughout her life and, she claimed, often told her where to go, when, and how to find those who would offer help to freedom seekers. She claimed to have seen John Brown in her visions, for example, years before she met him.
Escape from Slavery
Circa 1844, she married John Tubman, a free Black, and changed her name from Araminta to Harriet, possibly in honor of her mother. Although she was now married to a free man, she was still a slave and so could be sold. Edward Brodess tried his best to sell her, but no one would buy a damaged slave. While Brodess worked on selling her, Tubman prayed for his death, and, shortly afterward, he died. Recognizing that she and her brothers would be sold by his widow, Eliza Brodess, she escaped with two of them, Ben and Henry, in September 1849.
They were headed north when both brothers reconsidered and returned, so Tubman went back with them. In late October or November, she began again, this time alone. To allay any concerns her family might have upon finding her gone, she sang a song to a fellow slave, a spiritual, about heading to the promised land. Wiesen and Daniels comment:
Singing was not just a pastime for enslaved people. It became a strategic tool in their quest for freedom. They composed songs about their work, not only to pass the time but also to motivate themselves. Over time, these songs evolved into covert communication, with specific lyrics and melodies carrying hidden messages. They contained specific directions, guiding enslaved people to designated meeting points where they could gather and plan their escape to the North.
(43)
After her injury, Brodess had allowed her to hire herself out to other plantations, and one of these reunited her with her father working in the timber fields. There, she met various free Blacks, notably sailors, who had told her about the Underground Railroad and the routes north. When Tubman fled in 1849, she remembered their words, followed the North Star, and made her way from Maryland to the free state of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, where she was welcomed by William Still and the other abolitionists there.
Underground Railroad Conductor
Although she was now free, she felt she could not enjoy her liberty while her family remained enslaved. In 1850, she heard that her niece Kessiah, along with her children, were to be sold, and with William Still's blessing, she became a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, traveling back to Maryland to rescue them.
In Maryland, Tubman hatched a plan with her brother-in-law, Tom Tubman, and Kessiah's husband, John Bowley, a free Black. When the day of the auction came, Bowley made the winning bid on Kessiah and then, while the auctioneer was distracted by his lunch break, fled to a safe house without paying, and then, by night, sailed to the prearranged spot where they met Tubman, who took the whole family to Philadelphia.
After this first trip, Tubman returned to Maryland again and again, bringing more of her family (including her parents) north to freedom along the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad was neither underground nor a railroad but a loose confederation of abolitionists and those sympathetic to fugitive slaves who helped them find freedom in the Northern states or Canada. Participants used terminology associated with an actual railroad, however, including:
- Agents – who alerted enslaved people to the railroad and set up a meeting with a conductor
- Conductors – who led the fugitive slaves to 'stations' along the 'railroad'
- Station Masters – who ran the safe houses known as 'stations'
- Stockholders – who provided financial support for the railroad but did not necessarily actively participate
Like William Still and many others, Tubman would hold all of these positions at one time or another between 1850 and 1860, though she is best known as a conductor.
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which stipulated that citizens of free states must assist in the capture and return of freedom seekers, meant that her family was no longer safe even in Philadelphia, and so she sent them on to St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada.
In 1851, she returned for her husband, but he, thinking she had died, had remarried, and, as his second wife was pregnant, he had no desire to follow her North. Tubman, though heartbroken, carried on, making 19 trips between Maryland and Canada between 1850 and 1860. She became known as "Moses", leading her people to freedom like the biblical patriarch, personally leading 70 slaves north and providing others with information on the Underground Railroad's Northern Routes.
Among those she brought north was an eight-year-old girl named Margaret. Tubman claimed Margaret was her niece, but there is no evidence for this. Many years later, Margaret's daughter, Alice Lucas Brickler, described her mother as "Aunt Harriet's favorite niece" (Larson, 197) but also said Tubman had "kidnapped" Margaret from a prosperous home on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and Margaret herself remembered a fine house with horses and a handsome carriage. Larson speculates that Margaret may have been Tubman's illegitimate daughter, whom she handed over to a free Black couple and later reclaimed, but this cannot be substantiated. Who Margaret was, and why Tubman took her from her home and separated her from her twin brother, remains a mystery.
Passmore Williamson & John Brown
In July 1855, Passmore Williamson and William Still participated in the liberation of Jane Johnson (circa 1814/1827 to 1872) in Philadelphia. Johnson was enslaved by one John Hill Wheeler, and Williamson and Still confronted him on the docks and helped Johnson escape. Still took Johnson to a safe house, its location unknown to Williamson, and so, when Williamson was taken to court by Wheeler and the judge demanded he produce Johnson and her two sons, he honestly could not comply, as he had no idea where they were.
He was sentenced to 100 days in Moyamensing Prison for contempt of court and became a celebrity prisoner, granting interviews to reporters throughout the United States on the reason for his incarceration and the evils of slavery. By this time, Tubman was also quite famous, or infamous, depending on which side of the slavery issue one supported – and Southern slaveowners had placed a bounty of $40,000.00 (roughly $1,500,000.00 today) for the capture of the woman known as "Moses."
In spite of this, Tubman continued her efforts to free the enslaved and lead freedom seekers north, and, risking her own freedom, she visited Williamson in prison in October 1855. Larson writes:
Williamson was one of the many influential white abolitionists Tubman was drawn to; standing firm on principle, they risked their freedom and livelihoods to protect fugitive slaves and fight to end slavery. Williamson, and many like him, came to admire, some with great awe, Tubman's tenacity and commitment, recognizing that her efforts far exceeded even their most impassioned and dangerous work on behalf of the slave.
(123)
This "tenacity and commitment" went beyond helping slaves find their freedom and became more militant after meeting John Brown in 1858. Brown, an abolitionist fighting against slaveholders in so-called "Bleeding Kansas" in the 1850s, respected Tubman as she did him. They both believed they had been called by God to the work of abolition and that, as in the Old Testament of the Bible, God approved of violence in the cause of justice.
Tubman helped Brown plan his now-famous raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, where they hoped to capture the arsenal, arm the Black population, and begin an insurrection greater than Nat Turner's Rebellion of 1831, which would spread beyond the state's borders and become a national movement, overthrowing the institution of slavery.
The plans were betrayed, and the raid failed. Brown was arrested by then-Colonel Robert E. Lee (1807-1870) and hanged. Tubman had wanted to take part in the raid but was prevented by illness, which also kept her from attending Brown's execution. Later in life, settled in Auburn, New York, when she established the Home for the Aged, she named the central residence "John Brown Hall" in his honor.
Service in the Civil War
After the American Civil War broke out in 1861, Tubman first served as a nurse, using herbal remedies she had learned from her mother, then as a spy, scout, and guide. She was sent to South Carolina by Massachusetts Governor John Andrew in 1862 and worked with General David Hunter, an ardent abolitionist, who declared all the slaves in Port Royal free.
President Abraham Lincoln had not yet been persuaded that emancipation was the best idea, and so invalidated Hunter's proclamation. Hunter ignored this, continued to recruit Black soldiers for the army, and, eventually, sought Tubman's help in this. Former slaves were suspicious of Whites, but Tubman's reputation as "Moses" of the Underground Railroad helped them set aside their fears and sign up for service.
Since Tubman had spent years navigating her way through all kinds of terrain with the Underground Railroad, she served the Union Army well in scouting and mapping the area around Port Royal, and, since Confederate soldiers, slaveholders, and sympathizers never paid any attention to the Black woman going about her business, she was able to pick up information she would relay to Union officers, such as Colonel James Montgomery.
In 1863, Tubman guided the troops under Montgomery in the Raid at Combahee Ferry. The Black troops burned the plantations, seized supplies, and freed the slaves in the area, over 750, who all then escaped on board the steamboats that had brought the troops. After the raid, she returned to her duties as a scout, nurse, and spy until the war ended in 1865.
Conclusion
Tubman had purchased a farm in Fleming, New York (adjacent to Auburn), from Frances Adeline Seward (wife of abolitionist senator William H. Seward) in 1859 and, after the war, returned there. She took in boarders to help with expenses, and among these was the farmer Nelson Davis. Although he was 22 years younger than Tubman, they fell in love and were married in 1869. That same year, writer Sarah Hopkins Bradford wrote Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, the first biography of the now-famous woman, with all the profits going to her, which further helped in maintaining her farm.
Nelson Davis died of tuberculosis in 1888, and, since he was a veteran of the Civil War, Tubman received a pension as his widow. She used some of this money to support the women's suffrage movement and to establish the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged, providing housing for elderly or homeless Blacks in the region.
In 1911, Tubman became a resident of that home, and when people heard her health was failing, many supporters and admirers sent donations to keep both the farm and home operating. Tubman died of pneumonia there on 10 March 1913 and was buried with semi-military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, New York. Of her legacy, Larson writes:
Tubman was guided by an interior life shaped by a particular slave experience. Suffering under the lash, disabled by a near-fatal head injury, Tubman rose above horrific childhood adversity to emerge with a will of steel. Refusing to be bound by the chains of slavery or by the low expectations limiting the lives of women and African Americans, Tubman struggled against amazing odds to pursue her lifelong commitment to liberty, equal rights, justice, and self-determination. Owing her success to unique survival techniques, Tubman managed to transcend victimization to achieve emotional and physical freedom from her oppressors…Tubman's remarkable life, more powerful and extraordinary in its reality, is the stuff of legend and, ultimately, of a true American hero.
(xx-xxi)
In 1978, Harriet Tubman became the first African American woman to appear on a US postage stamp and was again honored in the same way in 1995. The US government has also planned to place Tubman's image on the front of the 20-dollar bill, though this initiative has stalled several times since its introduction in 2016. She has been the subject of novels, histories, television shows, and movies, most recently the 2019 film Harriet, portrayed by Cynthia Erivo. Tubman continues to be honored through place names and historic sites, and the story of her life inspires people today just as it did when she lived.
