# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Who Was Harriet Tubman?

Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses. A leading abolitionist before the American Civil War, Tubman also helped the Union Army during the war, working as a spy among other roles.

After the Civil War ended, Tubman dedicated her life to helping impoverished former slaves and the elderly. In honor of her life and by popular demand, in 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill.

Early Life and Family

Tubman's date of birth is unknown, although it probably occurred between 1820 and 1825. She was one of nine children born between 1808 and 1832 to enslaved parents in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her mother, Harriet "Rit" Green, was owned by Mary Pattison Brodess. Her father, Ben Ross, who was owned by Anthony Thompson (Thompson and Brodess eventually married).

Originally named Araminta Harriet Ross, Tubman was nicknamed "Minty" by her parents. Araminta changed her name to Harriet around the time of her marriage, possibly to honor her mother.

Tubman's early life was full of hardship. Mary Brodess' son Edward sold three of Tubman's sisters to distant plantations, severing the family. When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, Rit successfully resisted the further fracturing of her family, setting a powerful example for her young daughter.

Physical violence was a part of daily life for Tubman and her family. The violence she suffered early in life caused permanent physical injuries. Tubman later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life.

The most severe injury occurred when Tubman was an adolescent. Sent to a dry-goods store for supplies, she encountered a slave who had left the fields without permission. The man's overseer demanded that Tubman help restrain the runaway. When Tubman refused, the overseer threw a two-pound weight that struck her in the head. Tubman endured seizures, severe headaches and narcoleptic episodes for the rest of her life. She also experienced intense dream states, which she classified as religious experiences.

The line between freedom and slavery was hazy for Tubman and her family. Tubman's father, Ben, was freed from slavery at the age of 45, as stipulated in the will of a previous owner. Nonetheless, Ben had few options but to continue working as a timber estimator and foreman for his former owners.

Although similar manumission stipulations applied to Rit and her children, the individuals who owned the family chose not to free them. Despite his free status, Ben had little power to challenge their decision.

Husbands and Children

In 1844, Harriet married a free black man named John Tubman. At the time around half of the African American people on the eastern shore of Maryland were free, and was not unusual for a family to include both free and enslaved people.

Little is known about John or his marriage to Harriet, including whether and how long they lived together. Any children they might have had would have been considered enslaved, since the mother's status dictated that of any offspring. John declined to make the voyage on the Underground Railroad with Harriet, preferring to stay in Maryland with a new wife.

In 1869, Tubman married a Civil War veteran named Nelson Davis. In 1874, the couple adopted a baby girl named Gertie.

The Underground Railroad

Between 1850 and 1860, Tubman made 19 trips from the South to the North following the network known as the Underground Railroad. She guided more than 300 people, including her parents and several siblings, from slavery to freedom, earning the nickname "Moses" for her leadership.

Tubman first encountered the Underground Railroad when she used it to escape slavery herself in 1849. Following a bout of illness and the death of her owner, Tubman decided to escape slavery in Maryland for Philadelphia. She feared that her family would be further severed and was concerned for her own fate as a sickly slave of low economic value.

Two of her brothers, Ben and Harry, accompanied her on September 17, 1849. However, after a notice was published in the Cambridge Democrat offering a $300 reward for the return of Araminta, Harry and Ben had second thoughts and returned to the plantation. Tubman had no plans to remain in bondage. Seeing her brothers safely home, she soon set off alone for Pennsylvania.

Making use of the Underground Railroad, Tubman traveled nearly 90 miles to Philadelphia. She crossed into the free state of Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe, and recalled later: "When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven."

Rather than remaining in the safety of the North, Tubman made it her mission to rescue her family and others living in slavery via the Underground Railroad. In December 1850, Tubman received a warning that her niece Kessiah was going to be sold, along with her two young children. Kessiah's husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife at an auction in Baltimore. Tubman then helped the entire family make the journey to Philadelphia. This was the first of many trips by Tubman.

The dynamics of escaping slavery changed in 1850, with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. This law stated that escaped slaves could be captured in the North and returned to slavery, leading to the abduction of former slaves and free blacks living in Free States. Law enforcement officials in the North were compelled to aid in the capture of slaves, regardless of their personal principles.

In response to the law, Tubman re-routed the Underground Railroad to Canada, which prohibited slavery categorically. In December 1851, Tubman guided a group of 11 fugitives northward. There is evidence to suggest that the party stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass.

In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, who advocated the use of violence to disrupt and destroy the institution of slavery. Tubman shared Brown's goals and at least tolerated his methods. Tubman claimed to have had a prophetic vision of Brown before they met.

When Brown began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders at Harper's Ferry, he turned to "General Tubman" for help. After Brown's subsequent execution, Tubman praised him as a martyr.

Tubman remained active during the Civil War. Working for the Union Army as a cook and nurse, Tubman quickly became an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the Combahee River Raid, which liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina.
READ MORE: How Harriet Tubman and William Still Helped the Underground Railroad

Photo: Benjamin F. Powelson Collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture shared with the Library of Congress, 2017.30.4

Later Life

In early 1859, abolitionist Senator William H. Seward sold Tubman a small piece of land on the outskirts of Auburn, New York. The land in Auburn became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. Tubman spent the years following the war on this property, tending to her family and others who had taken up residence there.

Despite Tubman's fame and reputation, she was never financially secure. Tubman's friends and supporters were able to raise some funds to support her. One admirer, Sarah H. Bradford, wrote a biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, with the proceeds going to Tubman and her family.

Tubman continued to give freely in spite of her economic woes. In 1903, she donated a parcel of her land to the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Auburn. The Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged opened on this site in 1908.
READ MORE: Inside Harriet Tubman's Life of Service After the Underground Railroad
Death

Tubman died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913, surrounded by friends and family, at around the age of 93. As Tubman aged, the head injuries sustained early in her life became more painful and disruptive. She underwent brain surgery at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to alleviate the pains and "buzzing" she experienced regularly. Tubman was eventually admitted into the rest home named in her honor. She was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S HARRIET TUBMAN FACT CARD

Legacy

Widely known and well-respected while she was alive, Tubman became an American icon in the years after she died. A survey at the end of the 20th century named her as one of the most famous civilians in American history before the Civil War, third only to Betsy Ross and Paul Revere. She continues to inspire generations of Americans struggling for civil rights.

When Tubman died, the city of Auburn commemorated her life with a plaque on the courthouse. Tubman was celebrated in many other ways throughout the nation in the 20th century. Dozens of schools were named in her honor, and both the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn and the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cambridge serve as monuments to her life.

A 1978 movie, A Woman Called Moses, commemorated her life and career, and the 2019 film Harriet chronicled Tubman's service as a conductor for the Underground Railroad.

Tubman on the New $20 Bill

In April 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman would replace Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill. The announcement came after the Treasury Department received a groundswell of public comments, following Women on 20s' campaign calling for a notable American woman to appear on U.S. currency. The decision was celebrated, as Tubman devoted her life to racial equality and fought for women's rights.

In June 2015, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew was criticized for saying that it was likely a woman would appear on the $10 bill, which features a portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the influential founding father who found renewed popularity because of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. The ultimate decision to have Tubman replace Jackson, a slaveholder who played a role in the removal of Native Americans from their land, was widely praised.

The unveiling of the new $20 bill featuring Tubman was planned for 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote. However, in May 2019, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that no new designs will be unveiled until 2026 at the earliest due to what he called counterfeiting issues. In June, the Treasury Department's inspector general said that it would look into why the launch had been delayed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Harriet Tubman, née Araminta Ross, (born c. 1820, Dorchester county, Maryland, U.S.-died March 10, 1913, Auburn, New York), American bondwoman who escaped from slavery in the South to become a leading abolitionist before the American Civil War. She led dozens of enslaved people to freedom in the North along the route of the Underground Railroad-an elaborate secret network of safe houses organized for that purpose.

Born into slavery, Araminta Ross later adopted her mother's first name, Harriet. At about age five she was first hired out to work, initially serving as a nursemaid and later as a field hand, a cook, and a woodcutter. When she was about 12 years old she reportedly refused to help an overseer punish another enslaved person, and she suffered a severe head injury when he threw an iron weight that accidentally struck her; she subsequently suffered seizures throughout her life. About 1844 she married John Tubman, a free Black man.

In 1849, on the strength of rumours that she was about to be sold, Tubman fled to Philadelphia, leaving behind her husband (who refused to leave), parents, and siblings. In December 1850 she made her way to Baltimore, Maryland, whence she led her sister and two children to freedom. That journey was the first of some 13 increasingly dangerous forays into Maryland in which, over the next decade, she conducted about 70 fugitive enslaved people along the Underground Railroad to Canada.(Owing to exaggerated figures in Sara Bradford's 1868 biography of Tubman, it was long held that Tubman had made about 19 journeys into Maryland and guided upward of 300 people out of enslavement.) Tubman displayed extraordinary courage, persistence, and iron discipline, which she enforced upon her charges. If anyone decided to turn back-thereby endangering the mission-she reportedly threatened them with a gun and said, "You'll be free or die." She also was inventive, devising various strategies to better ensure success. One such example was escaping on Saturday nights, since it would not appear in newspapers until Monday. The railroad's most famous conductor, Tubman became known as the "Moses of her people." It has been said that she never lost a fugitive she was leading to freedom.

Rewards were offered by slaveholders for Tubman's capture, while Abolitionists celebrated her courage. John Brown, who consulted her about his own plans to organize an antislavery raid of a federal armoury in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now in West Virginia), referred to her as "General" Tubman. About 1858 she bought a small farm near Auburn, New York, where she placed her aged parents (she had brought them out of Maryland in June 1857) and herself lived thereafter. From 1862 to 1865 she served as a scout, as well as nurse and laundress, for Union forces in South Carolina during the Civil War. For the Second Carolina Volunteers, under the command of Col. James Montgomery, Tubman spied on Confederate territory. When she returned with information about the locations of warehouses and ammunition, Montgomery's troops were able to make carefully planned attacks. For her wartime service Tubman was paid so little that she had to support herself by selling homemade baked goods.

After the Civil War Tubman settled in Auburn and began taking in orphans and the elderly, a practice that eventuated in the Harriet Tubman Home for Indigent Aged Negroes. The home later attracted the support of former abolitionist comrades and the citizens of Auburn, and it continued in existence for some years after her death. Tubman also became involved in various other causes, including women's suffrage. In the late 1860s and again in the late '90s she applied for a federal pension for her work during the Civil War. Some 30 years after her service a private bill providing for $20 monthly was passed by Congress.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Harriet Tubman | Biography, Facts, & Underground Railroad

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Harriet Tubman, American bondwoman who escaped from slavery in the South to become a leading abolitionist before the American Civil War. She led dozens of enslaved people to freedom in the North along the route of the Underground Railroad. Learn more about Tubman's life.

# data[].attributes.body
All demonstrating Tubman spying in war

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.harriet-tubman.org/after-the-civil-war/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Life after the Civil War : Harriet Tubman

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 1869 Tubman met Nelson Davis, a man who had looked for shelter in her home. He had been a slave in North Carolina and served as a soldier in the Civil War. Davis was a brick maker. Tubman and Davis married on March 18, 1869 at the Presbyterian Church in Auburn.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
During the Civil War, Tubman worked for the Union army as a nurse, a cook, and a spy. Her experience leading slaves along the Underground Railroad was especially helpful because she knew the land well. She recruited a group of former slaves to hunt for rebel camps and report on the movement of the Confederate troops.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, c. March 1822 - March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist. After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known collectively as the Underground Railroad. During the American Civil War, she served as an armed scout and spy for the Union Army. In her later years, Tubman was an activist in the movement for women's suffrage.

Born into slavery in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten and whipped by enslavers as a child. Early in life, she suffered a traumatic head wound when an irate overseer threw a heavy metal weight, intending to hit another slave, but hit her instead. The injury caused dizziness, pain, and spells of hypersomnia, which occurred throughout her life. After her injury, Tubman began experiencing strange visions and vivid dreams, which she ascribed to premonitions from God. These experiences, combined with her Methodist upbringing, led her to become devoutly religious.

In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, only to return to Maryland to rescue her family soon after. Slowly, one group at a time, she brought relatives with her out of the state, and eventually guided dozens of other enslaved people to freedom. Traveling by night and in extreme secrecy, Tubman (or " Moses", as she was called) "never lost a passenger". After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed, she helped guide escapees farther north into British North America (Canada), and helped newly freed people find work. Tubman met John Brown in 1858, and helped him plan and recruit supporters for his 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry.

When the Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. For her guidance of the raid at Combahee Ferry, which liberated more than 700 enslaved people, she is widely credited as first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war. After the war, she retired to the family home on property she had purchased in 1859 in Auburn, New York, where she cared for her aging parents. She was active in the women's suffrage movement until illness overtook her, and she had to be admitted to a home for elderly African Americans that she had helped to establish years earlier. She became an icon of courage and freedom.

Birth and family

Map of key locations in Tubman's life

Tubman was born Araminta "Minty" Ross to enslaved parents, Harriet ("Rit") Green and Ben Ross. Rit was enslaved by Mary Pattison Brodess (and later her son Edward). Ben was enslaved by Anthony Thompson, who became Mary Brodess's second husband, and who ran a large plantation near the Blackwater River in the Madison area of Dorchester County, Maryland.

As with many enslaved people in the United States, neither the exact year nor place of Tubman's birth is known. Tubman reported the year of her birth as 1825, while her death certificate lists 1815 and her gravestone lists 1820. Historian Kate Larson's 2004 biography of Tubman records the year as 1822, based on a midwife payment and several other historical documents, including her runaway advertisement. Based on Larson's work, more recent biographies have accepted March 1822 as the most likely timing of Tubman's birth.

Tubman's maternal grandmother, Modesty, arrived in the U.S. on a slave ship from Africa; no information is available about her other ancestors. As a child, Tubman was told that she seemed like an Ashanti person because of her character traits, though no evidence has been found to confirm or deny this lineage. Her mother, Rit (who may have had a white father), was a cook for the Brodess family. Her father, Ben, was a skilled woodsman who managed the timber work on Thompson's plantation. They married around 1808 and, according to court records, had nine children together: Linah, Mariah Ritty, Soph, Robert, Minty (Harriet), Ben, Rachel, Henry, and Moses.

Rit struggled to keep her family together as slavery threatened to tear it apart. Edward Brodess sold three of her daughters (Linah, Mariah Ritty, and Soph), separating them from the family forever. When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, she hid him for a month, aided by other enslaved people and freedmen in the community. At one point she confronted Brodess about the sale. Finally, Brodess and "the Georgia man" came toward the slave quarters to seize the child, where Rit told them, "You are after my son; but the first man that comes into my house, I will split his head open." Brodess backed away and abandoned the sale. Tubman's biographers agree that stories told about this event within the family influenced her belief in the possibilities of resistance.

Tubman's mother was assigned to "the big house" and had scarce time for her own family; consequently, as a child Tubman took care of a younger brother and baby, as was typical in large families. When she was five or six years old, Brodess hired her out as a nursemaid to a woman named "Miss Susan". Tubman was ordered to care for the baby and rock the cradle as it slept; when the baby woke up and cried, Tubman was whipped. She later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life. She found ways to resist, such as running away for five days, wearing layers of clothing as protection against beatings, and fighting back.

Also in her childhood, Tubman was sent to work for a planter named James Cook. She had to check his muskrat traps in nearby marshes, even after contracting measles. She became so ill that Cook sent her back to Brodess, where her mother nursed her back to health. Brodess then hired her out again. She spoke later of her acute childhood homesickness, comparing herself to "the boy on the Swanee River", an allusion to Stephen Foster's song " Old Folks at Home". As she grew older and stronger, she was assigned to field and forest work, driving oxen, plowing, and hauling logs.

As an adolescent, Tubman suffered a severe head injury when an overseer threw a two-pound (1 kg) metal weight at another slave who was attempting to flee. The weight struck Tubman instead, which she said: "broke my skull". Bleeding and unconscious, she was returned to her enslaver's house and laid on the seat of a loom, where she remained without medical care for two days. After this incident, Tubman frequently experienced extremely painful headaches. She also began having seizures and would seemingly fall unconscious, although she claimed to be aware of her surroundings while appearing to be asleep. Larson suggests she may have had temporal lobe epilepsy, possibly as a result of brain injury; Clinton suggests her condition may have been narcolepsy or cataplexy. A definitive diagnosis is not possible due to lack of contemporary medical evidence, but this condition remained with her for the rest of her life.

After her injury, Tubman began experiencing visions and vivid dreams, which she interpreted as revelations from God. These spiritual experiences had a profound effect on Tubman's personality and she acquired a passionate faith in God. Although Tubman was illiterate, she was told Bible stories by her mother and likely attended a Methodist church with her family. She rejected the teachings of white preachers who urged enslaved people to be passive and obedient victims to those who trafficked and enslaved them; instead she found guidance in the Old Testament tales of deliverance. This religious perspective informed her actions throughout her life.

Family and marriage

Anthony Thompson promised to manumit Tubman's father at age 45. After Thompson died, his son followed through with that promise in 1840. Tubman's father continued working as a timber estimator and foreman for the Thompson family. Later in the 1840s, Tubman paid a white attorney five dollars (equivalent to $160 in 2022) to investigate the legal status of her mother, Rit. The lawyer discovered that Atthow Pattison, the grandfather of Mary Brodess, indicated in his will that Rit and any of her children would be manumitted at age 45, and that any children born after she reached age 45 would be freeborn. The Pattison and Brodess families ignored this stipulation when they inherited the enslaved family, but taking legal action to enforce it was an impossible task for Tubman.

Around 1844, she married a free black man named John Tubman. Although little is known about him or their time together, the union was complicated because of her enslaved status. The mother's status dictated that of children, and any children born to Harriet and John would be enslaved. Such blended marriages - free people of color marrying enslaved people - were not uncommon on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where by this time, half the black population was free. Most African-American families had both free and enslaved members. Larson suggests that they might have planned to buy Tubman's freedom.

Tubman changed her name from Araminta to Harriet soon after her marriage, though the exact timing is unclear. Larson suggests this happened right after the wedding, and Clinton suggests that it coincided with Tubman's plans to escape from slavery. She adopted her mother's name, possibly as part of a religious conversion, or to honor another relative.

Escape from slavery

Notice offering a reward of US$100 (equivalent to $3,520 in 2022) for the capture and return of "Minty" (Harriet Tubman) and her brothers Henry and Ben

In 1849, Tubman became ill again, which diminished her value to slave traders. Edward Brodess tried to sell her, but could not find a buyer. Angry at him for trying to sell her and for continuing to enslave her relatives, Tubman began to pray for God to make Brodess change his ways. She said later: "I prayed all night long for my master till the first of March; and all the time he was bringing people to look at me, and trying to sell me." When it appeared as though a sale was being concluded, Tubman changed her prayer: "First of March I began to pray, 'Oh Lord, if you ain't never going to change that man's heart, kill him, Lord, and take him out of the way'." A week later, Brodess died, and Tubman expressed regret for her earlier sentiments.

As in many estate settlements, Brodess's death increased the likelihood that Tubman would be sold and her family broken apart. His widow, Eliza, began working to sell the family's enslaved people. Tubman refused to wait for the Brodess family to decide her fate, despite her husband's efforts to dissuade her. "[T]here was one of two things I had a right to", she explained later, "liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other".

Tubman and her brothers, Ben and Henry, escaped from slavery on September 17, 1849. Tubman had been hired out to Anthony Thompson (the son of her father's former owner), who owned a large plantation in an area called Poplar Neck in neighboring Caroline County; it is likely her brothers labored for Thompson as well. Because they were hired out, Eliza Brodess probably did not recognize their absence as an escape attempt for some time. Two weeks later, she posted a runaway notice in the Cambridge Democrat, offering a reward of up to US$100 each (equivalent to $3,520 in 2022) for their capture and return to slavery. Once they had left, Tubman's brothers had second thoughts. Ben may have regretted leaving his wife and children. The two men went back, forcing Tubman to return with them.

Sometime in October or November, Tubman escaped again, this time without her brothers. Before leaving she sang a farewell song to hint at her intentions, which she hoped would be understood by Mary, a trusted fellow slave: "I'll meet you in the morning", she intoned, "I'm bound for the promised land." While her exact route is unknown, Tubman made use of the network known as the Underground Railroad. This informal system was composed of free and enslaved black people, white abolitionists, and other activists. Most prominent among the latter in Maryland at the time were Quakers (members of the Religious Society of Friends). The Preston area near Poplar Neck contained a substantial Quaker community and was probably an important first stop during Tubman's escape. From there, she probably took a common route for people fleeing slavery - northeast along the Choptank River, through Delaware, and then north into Pennsylvania. A journey of nearly 90 miles (145 km) by foot would have taken between five days and three weeks.

Tubman had to travel by night, guided by the North Star and trying to avoid slave catchers eager to collect rewards for fugitive slaves. The "conductors" in the Underground Railroad used deceptions for protection. At an early stop, the lady of the house instructed Tubman to sweep the yard so as to seem to be working for the family. When night fell, the family hid her in a cart and took her to the next friendly house. Given her familiarity with the woods and marshes of the region, Tubman likely hid in these locales during the day. The particulars of her first journey are unknown; because other escapees from slavery used the routes, Tubman did not discuss them until later in life. She crossed into Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe, and recalled the experience years later:

When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.

Nicknamed "Moses"

Tubman sitting (1868 or 1869)

After reaching Philadelphia, Tubman thought of her family. "I was a stranger in a strange land," she said later. "[M]y father, my mother, my brothers, and sisters, and friends were [in Maryland]. But I was free, and they should be free." While Tubman saved money from working odd jobs in Philadelphia and Cape May, New Jersey, the U.S. Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which forced law enforcement officials to assist in the capture of escaped slaves - even in states that had outlawed slavery - and heavily punished abetting escape. The law increased risks for those who had escaped slavery, more of whom therefore sought refuge in Southern Ontario, where slavery had been abolished. Racial tensions were also increasing in Philadelphia as poor Irish immigrants competed with free blacks for work.

In December 1850, Tubman was warned that her niece Kessiah and Kessiah's children would soon be sold in Cambridge. Tubman went to Baltimore, where her brother-in-law Tom Tubman hid her until the sale. Kessiah's husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife. While the auctioneer stepped away to have lunch, John, Kessiah and their children escaped to a nearby safe house. When night fell, Bowley sailed the family on a log canoe 60 miles (97 kilometres) to Baltimore, where they met with Tubman, who brought the family to Philadelphia.

Early next year she returned to Maryland to guide away other family members. During her second trip, she recovered her youngest brother, Moses, along with two other men. Word of her exploits had encouraged her family, and she became more confident with each trip to Maryland.

In late 1851, Tubman returned to Dorchester County for the first time since her escape, this time to find her husband John. When she arrived there, she learned that John had married another woman named Caroline. Tubman sent word that he should join her, but he insisted that he was happy where he was. Suppressing her anger, she found some enslaved people who wanted to escape and led them to Philadelphia.

Frederick Douglass worked for slavery's abolition alongside Tubman.

Because the Fugitive Slave Law had made the northern United States a more dangerous place for those escaping slavery to remain, many escapees began migrating to Southern Ontario. In December 1851, Tubman guided an unidentified group of 11 escapees, possibly including the Bowleys and several others she had helped rescue earlier, northward. There is evidence to suggest that Tubman and her group stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass. Douglass and Tubman admired one another greatly as they both struggled against slavery. Years later he contrasted his efforts with hers, writing:

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.

From 1851 to 1862, Tubman returned repeatedly to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, rescuing some 70 slaves in about 13 expeditions, including her other brothers, Henry, Ben, and Robert, their wives and some of their children. She also provided specific instructions to 50 to 60 additional enslaved people who escaped. Because of her efforts, she was nicknamed "Moses", alluding to the biblical prophet who led the Hebrews to freedom from Egypt. One of her last missions into Maryland was to retrieve her aging parents. Her father purchased her mother from Eliza Brodess in 1855, but even when they were both free, the area was hostile. In 1857, Tubman received word that her father was at risk of arrest for harboring a group of eight people escaping slavery. She led her parents north to St. Catharines, Canada, where a community of formerly enslaved people, including other relatives and friends of Tubman, had gathered.

Routes and methods

Tubman's dangerous work required ingenuity. She usually worked during winter, when long nights and cold weather minimized the chance of being seen. She would start the escapes on Saturday evenings, since newspapers would not print runaway notices until Monday morning. She used subterfuges to avoid detection. Tubman once disguised herself with a bonnet and carried two live chickens to give the appearance of running errands. Suddenly finding herself walking toward a former enslaver, she yanked the strings holding the birds' legs, and their agitation allowed her to avoid eye contact. Later she recognized a fellow train passenger as a former enslaver; she snatched a nearby newspaper and pretended to read. Tubman was known to be illiterate, and the man ignored her.

In an 1897 interview with historian Wilbur Siebert, Tubman named some people who helped her and places she stayed along the Underground Railroad. She stayed with Sam Green, a free black minister living in East New Market, Maryland; she also hid near her parents' home at Poplar Neck. She would travel from there northeast to Sandtown and Willow Grove, Delaware, and to the Camden area where free black agents, William and Nat Brinkley and Abraham Gibbs, guided her north past Dover, Smyrna, and Blackbird, where other agents would take her across the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal to New Castle and Wilmington. In Wilmington, Quaker Thomas Garrett would secure transportation to William Still's office or the homes of other Underground Railroad operators in the greater Philadelphia area. Still is credited with helping hundreds escape to safer places in New York, New England, and Southern Ontario.

Tubman's faith was another important resource as she ventured repeatedly into Maryland. The visions from her childhood head injury continued, and she saw them as divine premonitions. She spoke of "consulting with God", and trusted that He would keep her safe. Garrett once said of her, "I never met with any person of any color who had more confidence in the voice of God, as spoken direct to her soul." Her faith also provided immediate assistance. She used spirituals as coded messages, warning fellow travelers of danger or to signal a clear path. She sang versions of " Go Down Moses" and changed the lyrics to indicate that it was either safe or too dangerous to proceed. As she led escapees across the border, she would call out, "Glory to God and Jesus, too. One more soul is safe!"

She carried a revolver as protection from slave catchers and their dogs. Tubman also threatened to shoot anyone who tried to turn back since that would risk the safety of the remaining group, as well as anyone who helped them on the way. Tubman spoke of one man who insisted he was going to go back to the plantation. She pointed the gun at his head and said, "Go on or die." Several days later, the man who wavered crossed into Canada with the rest of the group.

By the late 1850s, Eastern Shore slaveholders were holding public meetings about the large number of escapes in the area; they cast suspicion on free blacks and white abolitionists. They did not know that "Minty", the petite, disabled woman who had run away years before, was responsible for freeing so many enslaved people. Though a popular legend persists about a reward of $40,000 (equivalent to $1,303,000 in 2022) for Tubman's capture, this is a manufactured figure: in 1867, in support of Tubman's claim for a military pension, an abolitionist named Sallie Holley wrote that $40,000 "was not too great a reward for Maryland slaveholders to offer for her". If it were real, such a high reward would have garnered national attention. A reward of $12,000 has also been claimed, though no documentation has been found for either figure.

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."

John Brown and Harpers Ferry

Tubman helped John Brown plan and recruit for the raid at Harpers Ferry.

In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, an insurgent who advocated the use of violence to destroy slavery in the United States. Although she was not previously involved in armed insurrection, she agreed with his course of direct action and supported his goals. Like Tubman, he spoke of being called by God, and trusted the divine to protect him from the wrath of slavers. She, meanwhile, claimed to have had a prophetic vision of meeting Brown before their encounter.

Thus, as he began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders, Brown was joined by "General Tubman", as he called her. Her knowledge of support networks and resources in the border states of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware was invaluable to Brown and his planners. Although other abolitionists like Douglass did not endorse his tactics, Brown dreamed of fighting to create a new state for those freed from slavery, and made preparations for military action. He believed that after he began the first battle, the enslaved would rise up and carry out a rebellion across the slave states. He asked Tubman to gather former slaves then living in Southern Ontario who might be willing to join his fighting force, which she did.

On May 8, 1858, Brown held a meeting in Chatham, Canada, where he unveiled his plan for a raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia. When word of the plan was leaked to the government, Brown put the scheme on hold and began raising funds for its eventual resumption. Tubman aided him in this effort and with more detailed plans for the assault.

Tubman was busy during this time, giving talks to abolitionist audiences and tending to her relatives. In early October 1859, as Brown and his men prepared to launch the attack, Tubman was ill in New Bedford, Massachusetts. It is not known whether she still intended to join Brown's raid or if she had become skeptical of the plan, but when the raid on Harpers Ferry took place on October 16, Tubman had recovered from her illness and was in New York City.

The raid failed; Brown was convicted of treason, murder, and inciting a rebellion, and he was hanged on December 2. His actions were seen by many abolitionists as a symbol of proud resistance, carried out by a noble martyr. Tubman herself was effusive with praise. She later told a friend: "[H]e done more in dying, than 100 men would in living."

Auburn and Margaret

In early 1859, Frances Adeline Seward, the wife of abolitionist Republican U.S. Senator William H. Seward, sold Tubman a seven-acre (2.8 ha) farm in Fleming, New York, for $1,200 (equivalent to $42,200 in 2022). The adjacent city of Auburn was a hotbed of antislavery activism, and Tubman took the opportunity to move her parents from Canada back to the U.S. Her farmstead became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. For years, she took in relatives and boarders, offering a safe place for black Americans seeking a better life in the north.

Shortly after acquiring the farm, Tubman went back to Maryland and returned with an eight-year-old light-skinned black girl named Margaret, who Tubman said was her niece. She also indicated the girl's parents were free blacks. According to Margaret's daughter Alice, Margaret later described her childhood home as prosperous and said that she left behind a twin brother. These descriptions conflict with what is known about the families of Tubman's siblings, which created uncertainty among historians about the relationship and Tubman's motivations. Alice called Tubman's actions a "kidnapping", saying, "she had taken the child from a sheltered good home to a place where there was nobody to care for her". After speculating in her 2004 biography of Tubman that Margaret might have been Tubman's own secret daughter, Kate Larson found evidence that Margaret was the daughter of Isaac and Mary Woolford, a free black couple who were neighbors of Tubman's parents in Maryland and who had twins named James and Margaret.

In November 1860, Tubman conducted her last rescue mission. Throughout the 1850s, Tubman had been unable to effect the escape of her sister Rachel, and Rachel's two children Ben and Angerine. Upon returning to Dorchester County, Tubman discovered that Rachel had died, and the children could be rescued only if she could pay a bribe of $30 (equivalent to $980 in 2022). She did not have the money, so the children remained enslaved. Their fates remain unknown. Never one to waste a trip, Tubman gathered another group, including the Ennalls family, ready and willing to take the risks of the journey north. It took them weeks to get away safely because of slave catchers forcing them to hide out longer than expected. The weather was unseasonably cold and they had little food. The Ennalls' infant child was quieted with paregoric while slave patrols rode by. They safely reached the home of David and Martha Wright in Auburn on December 28, 1860.

American Civil War

A woodcut of Tubman in her Civil War clothing

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Tubman had a vision that the war would soon lead to the abolition of slavery. More immediately, enslaved people near Union positions began began escaping in large numbers. General Benjamin Butler declared these escapees to be " contraband" - property seized by northern forces - and put them to work, initially without pay, at Fort Monroe in Virginia. The number of "contrabands" encamped at Fort Monroe and other Union positions rapidly increased. In January 1862, Tubman volunteered to support the Union cause and began helping refugees in the camps, particularly in Port Royal, South Carolina.

In South Carolina, Tubman met General David Hunter, a strong supporter of abolition. He declared all of the "contrabands" in the Port Royal district free, and began gathering formerly enslaved people for a regiment of black soldiers. U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was not yet prepared to enforce emancipation on the southern states and reprimanded Hunter for his actions. Tubman condemned Lincoln's response and his general unwillingness to consider ending slavery in the U.S., for both moral and practical reasons:

God won't let master Lincoln beat the South till he does the right thing. Master Lincoln, he's a great man, and I am a poor negro; but the negro can tell master Lincoln how to save the money and the young men. He can do it by setting the negro free.

Tubman served as a nurse in Port Royal, preparing remedies from local plants and aiding soldiers suffering from dysentery and infectious diseases. At first, she received government rations for her work, but to dispel a perception that she was getting special treatment, she gave up her right to these supplies and made money selling pies and root beer, which she made in the evenings.

Scouting and the Combahee River Raid

When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Tubman considered it a positive but incomplete step toward the goal of liberating all black people from slavery. She turned her own efforts towards more direct actions to defeat the Confederacy. In early 1863, Tubman used her knowledge of covert travel and subterfuge to lead a band of scouts through the land around Port Royal. 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.

Illustration of the Combahee River Raid from Harper's Weekly

Later that year, Tubman's intelligence gathering played a key role in the raid at Combahee Ferry. She guided three steamboats with black soldiers under Montgomery's command past mines on the Combahee River to assault several plantations. Once ashore, the Union troops set fire to the plantations, destroying infrastructure and seizing thousands of dollars worth of food and supplies. Forewarned of the raid by Tubman's spy network, enslaved people throughout the area heard steamboats' whistles and understood that they were being liberated. Tubman watched as those fleeing slavery stampeded toward the boats; she later described 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. Armed overseers tried to stop the mass escape, but their efforts were nearly useless in the tumult. As Confederate troops raced to the scene, the steamboats took off toward Beaufort with more than 750 formerly enslaved people.

Newspapers heralded Tubman's "patriotism, sagacity, energy, [and] ability" in the raid, and she was praised for her recruiting efforts - more than 100 of the newly liberated men joined the Union army. Reports about her involvement in the raid led to a revival of the "General Tubman" appellation previously given to her by John Brown. Although her contributions have sometimes been exaggerated, her role in the raid led to her being widely credited as the first woman to lead U.S. troops in an armed assault.

In July 1863, Tubman worked with Colonel Robert Gould Shaw at the assault on Fort Wagner, reportedly serving him his last meal. She later described the battle to historian Albert Bushnell Hart:

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.

For two more years, Tubman worked for the Union forces, tending to newly liberated people, scouting into Confederate territory, and nursing wounded soldiers in Virginia, a task she continued for several months after the Confederacy surrendered in April 1865.

Formal portrait of Tubman taken after the Civil War and circulated as a carte de visite

Tubman had received little pay for her Union military service. She was not a regular soldier and was only occasionally compensated for her work as a spy and scout; her work as a nurse was entirely unpaid. For over three years of service, she received a total of $200 (equivalent to $3,820 in 2022). Her unofficial status caused great difficulty in documenting her service, and the U.S. government was slow in recognizing its debt to her. Meanwhile, her humanitarian work for her family and the formerly enslaved kept her in a state of constant poverty.

When a promised appointment to an official military nursing position fell through in July 1865, Tubman decided to return to her home in New York. During a train ride to New York in October 1865, Tubman traveled on a half-fare ticket provided to her because of her service. A conductor told her to move from a regular passenger car into the less-desirable smoking car. When she refused, he cursed at her and grabbed her. She resisted, and he summoned additional men for help. They muscled her into the smoking car, injuring her in the process. As these events transpired, white passengers cursed Tubman and told the conductor to kick her off the train.

Tubman spent her remaining years in Auburn, tending to her family and other people in need. In addition to managing her farm, she took in boarders and worked various jobs to pay the bills and support her elderly parents. One of the people Tubman took in was a farmer named Nelson Davis. Born enslaved in North Carolina, he had served as a private in the 8th United States Colored Infantry Regiment from September 1863 to November 1865. He began working in Auburn as a bricklayer, and they soon fell in love. Though he was 22 years younger than she was, on March 18, 1869, they were married at the Central Presbyterian Church. They adopted a baby girl named Gertie in 1874.

Tubman in 1887 (far left), with her husband Davis (seated, with cane), their adopted daughter Gertie (beside Tubman), Lee Cheney, John "Pop" Alexander, Walter Green, "Blind Aunty" Sarah Parker, and her great-niece Dora Stewart at Tubman's home in Auburn, New York

Tubman's friends and supporters from the days of abolition, meanwhile, raised funds to support her. One admirer, Sarah Hopkins Bradford, wrote an authorized biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman. The 132-page volume was published in 1869 and brought Tubman some $1,200 in income (equivalent to $26,400 in 2022). Even with this assistance, paying off the mortgage on her farm in May 1873 exhausted Tubman's savings. That October, she fell prey to swindlers. Two black men claimed to know a former slave who had a trunk of gold coins smuggled out of South Carolina, which they would sell for cash at less than half the coins' value. She knew white people in the South had buried valuables when Union forces threatened the region, and black men were frequently assigned to digging duties, so the claim seemed plausible to her. She borrowed money from a wealthy friend and arranged to receive the gold late one night. Once the men had lured her into the woods, they knocked her out with chloroform and stole her purse. Tubman was found dazed and injured; the trunk was filled with rocks.

The crime brought new attention from local leaders to Tubman's precarious financial state and spurred renewed efforts to get compensation for her Civil War service. In 1874, Representatives Clinton D. MacDougall of New York and Gerry W. Hazelton of Wisconsin introduced a bill to pay Tubman a $2,000 (~$51,729 in 2022) lump sum "for services rendered by her to the Union Army as scout, nurse, and spy", but it was defeated in the Senate. In February 1880, Tubman's wood-framed house burned down, but with the help of her supporters it was quickly replaced with a new brick home.

Nelson Davis died of tuberculosis on October 14, 1888. The Dependent and Disability Pension Act of 1890 made Tubman eligible for a pension as his widow. After she documented her marriage and her husband's service record to the satisfaction of the Bureau of Pensions, in 1895 Tubman was granted a monthly widow's pension of $8 (equivalent to $281 in 2022), plus a lump sum of $500 to cover the five-year delay in approval. In December 1897, New York Congressman Sereno E. Payne introduced a bill to grant Tubman a soldier's monthly pension of $25 (~$879.00 in 2022). Although Congress received documents and letters to support Tubman's claims, some members objected to a woman being paid a full soldier's pension. In February 1899, Congress approved a compromise amount of $20 per (~$704.00 in 2022) month (the $8 from her widow's pension plus $12 for her service as a nurse), but did not acknowledge her as a scout and spy.

Suffragist activism

Tubman in 1911

In her later years, Tubman worked to promote the cause of women's suffrage. A white woman once asked Tubman whether she believed women ought to have the vote, and received the reply: "I suffered enough to believe it." Tubman began attending meetings of suffragist organizations, and was soon working alongside women such as Susan B. Anthony and Emily Howland.

Tubman traveled to New York, Boston and Washington, D.C. to speak in favor of women's voting rights. She described her actions during and after the Civil War, and used the sacrifices of countless women throughout modern history as evidence of women's equality to men. When the National Federation of Afro-American Women was founded in 1896, Tubman was the keynote speaker at its first meeting.

This wave of activism kindled a new wave of admiration for Tubman among the press in the United States. A publication called The Woman's Era launched a series of articles on "Eminent Women" with a profile of Tubman. An 1897 suffragist newspaper reported a series of receptions in Boston honoring Tubman and her lifetime of service to the nation. However, her endless contributions to others had left her in poverty, and she had to sell a cow to buy a train ticket to these celebrations.

Church, illness, and death

In the 1870s, Tubman became active in the Thompson Memorial African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church in Auburn. In 1895, she began discussions with AME Zion leaders and others to create a Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged that would care for "indigent colored people". Despite her financial limitations, in 1896 Tubman bid $1215 (~$42,739 in 2022) at auction for a 25-acre (10 ha) farm adjacent to the one she already owned, to use for the new facility. She designated one of the farm's buildings as its primary residence and named it "John Brown Hall" to honor her late abolitionist ally. However, raising funds for the project was difficult, and attempts to donate the property were complicated by the multiple mortgage loans used to pay for it. After Tubman almost lost the property due her financial difficulties, AME Zion agreed to take it over in 1903.

The home did not open for another five years, and Tubman was dismayed when the church ordered residents to pay a $100 entrance fee (equivalent to $3,260 in 2022). She said: "[T]hey make a rule that nobody should come in without they have a hundred dollars. Now I wanted to make a rule that nobody should come in unless they didn't have no money at all." She was frustrated by the new rule but was the guest of honor nonetheless when the home celebrated its opening on June 23, 1908.

As Tubman aged, her childhood head trauma continued to trouble her. Unable to sleep because of pain and "buzzing" in her head, in the late 1890s she asked a doctor at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to operate. In her words, he "sawed open my skull, and raised it up, and now it feels more comfortable". She reportedly received no anesthesia and instead bit down on a bullet, as she had seen Civil War soldiers do when their limbs were amputated.

By 1911, Tubman's body was so frail that she was admitted into the rest home named in her honor. A New York newspaper described her as "ill and penniless", prompting supporters to offer a new round of donations. Surrounded by friends and family members, she died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913. Just before she died, she quoted the Gospel of John to those in the room: "I go away to prepare a place for you." Tubman was buried with semi-military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

Tubman's great-niece, Eva Stewart Northrup, launching the SS Harriet Tubman

Widely known and well-respected while she was alive, Tubman became an American icon in the years after she died. By the 1980s, Tubman was one of American history's most famous figures. She inspired generations of African Americans struggling for equality and civil rights; she was praised by leaders across the political spectrum.

Parks, monuments and historical sites

National parks and national monuments related to Tubman in the United States are the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument and the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park, both in Maryland, and the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn. The Salem Chapel in St. Catharines, where Tubman worshipped, is a National Historic Site of Canada.

The city of Auburn has several historical sites related to Tubman, including her gravesite. Other state and local historical sites about Tubman include a state park and memorial garden in Maryland, and a museum in New Jersey.

Artistic portrayals

Tubman is the subject of many works of art. Musicians including Woody Guthrie, Wynton Marsalis, and Walter Robinson have written songs celebrating her. She is the subject of operas by Thea Musgrave, Nkeiru Okoye, and Hilda Paredes, as well as plays by Carolyn Gage and a collaboration of May Miller and Willis Richardson. Tubman is the focus of novels by Elizabeth Cobbs, Marcy Heidish, and Anne Parrish, and is a character in novels by Terry Bisson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and James McBride.

Since Tubman's life was first dramatized on television in a 1963 episode of the series The Great Adventure, she has been portrayed in TV productions such as The Good Lord Bird, , Underground, and A Woman Called Moses. Cynthia Erivo received an Academy Award nomination for portraying Tubman in the 2019 theatrical film .

Artists including Fern Cunningham, Jane DeDecker, Nina Cooke John, and Alison Saar have presented Tubman in sculptures. She has been drawn or painted by numerous artists, including Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas, William Johnson, Jacob Lawrence, and Faith Ringgold.

Other honors and commemorations

Official $20 bill prototype

In 1978, Tubman became the first African-American woman honored on a U.S. postage stamp; she appeared on a second stamp in 1995. Beginning in 2016, there have been plans to add a portrait of Tubman to the front of the twenty-dollar bill, moving the portrait of President Andrew Jackson, a slaveholder, to the back of the bill.

Dozens of schools, streets and highways, church groups, social organizations, and government agencies have been named after Tubman. In 1944, the United States Maritime Commission launched the SS Harriet Tubman, its first Liberty ship named for a black woman.

Historiography

Tubman hoped to become literate and write her own memoirs, but she never did. Instead, Sarah Hopkins Bradford combined Tubman's personal recollections, journalistic accounts, and letters from Tubman's friends and supporters to create Scenes from the Life of Harriet Tubman in 1868. Criticized by modern biographers for its artistic license and highly subjective point of view, the book nevertheless provides insight into Tubman's own view of her experiences. In 1886, Bradford released a re-written volume called Harriet, the Moses of her People. In both volumes Harriet Tubman is hailed as a latter-day Joan of Arc. The revision took a more moralistic and literary tone than the prior work, including changes of many event descriptions from first to third person. A final revision in 1901 added an appendix with more stories about Tubman's life.

The first full biography of Tubman to be published after Bradford's was Earl Conrad's Harriet Tubman (1943). Conrad experienced great difficulty in finding a publisher - the search took four years - and endured disdain and contempt for his efforts to construct a more objective, detailed account of Tubman's life for adults. Several highly dramatized versions of Tubman's life had been written for children, and many more came later, but Conrad wrote in an academic style. Though she was a popular historical figure, another book-length biography based on original scholarship did not appear for 60 years, when Jean Humez published a close reading of Tubman's life stories in 2003. Larson and Clinton both published their biographies soon after in 2004. Historian Milton Sernett's 2007 book Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory, and History discusses the major biographies of Tubman up to that time.

References

Clinton, Catherine (2004). Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom. New York: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 978-0-316-14492-6 - via Open Library.

"Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800-". Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

Franklin, Jonathan (March 13, 2023). "A Monument of Harriet Tubman Now Replaces a Statue of Christopher Columbus in Newark". . Archived from the original on June 15, 2023.

Gaige, Amity (August 23, 2013). "The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride". San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on July 25, 2019.

Gibson, Chantal N. & Silverman, Monique (2005). "Sur/Rendering Her Image: The Unknowable Harriet Tubman". Canadian Art Review. 30 (1): 25-38. JSTOR 42630711.

Hobson, Janell (2022). When God Lost Her Tongue: Historical Consciousness and the Black Feminist Imagination. Subversive Histories, Feminist Futures series. New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780429243554. ISBN 978-0-429-24355-4. S2CID 240990028.

Humez, Jean M. (Summer 1993). "In Search of Harriet Tubman's Spiritual Autobiography". NWSA Journal. 5 (2): 162-182. JSTOR 4316258.

Humez, Jean (2003). Harriet Tubman: The Life and Life Stories. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-19120-7 - via Open Library.

Kaufman, Rachel (May 13, 2018). "Pilot, Thinker, Soldier, Spy: The Epic Timeless Season Finale Twofer". Smithsonian Magazine. Archived from the original on October 17, 2020.

Larson, Kate Clifford (2004). Bound For the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 978-0-345-45627-4 - via Open Library.

Oertel, Kristen T. (2015). Harriet Tubman: Slavery, the Civil War, and Civil Rights in the Nineteenth-century America. Routledge Historical Americans series. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-94897-9.

Portelli, Alessandro (Fall 1988). "Fire on the Mountain". Review. Appalachian Journal. 16 (1): 87-90. JSTOR 40933404.

Roma, Catherine (2001). "Contemporary British Composers". In Pendle, Karin (ed.). Women and Music: A History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 227-251. ISBN 978-0-253-11503-4 - via Open Library.

Rosenberg, Amy S. (September 17, 2020). "The Harriet Tubman Museum in Cape May Marked Its Opening. Here's What's Inside, and Why It's in Cape May". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Archived from the original on September 21, 2020.

Sacks, Sam (May 17, 2019). "Fiction: Tales of History and Imagination". Books & Arts in Review. The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on July 25, 2019.

Vargas, Ángel (October 17, 2018). "La gesta de Harriet Tubman llega al Cervantino en forma de ópera" [The deeds of Harriet Tubman arrive at the Cervantino in the form of an opera]. (in Spanish). Archived from the original on April 17, 2021.

Further reading

External links

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, c. March 1822 - March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist. After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known collectively as the Underground Railroad.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Life after the Civil War : Harriet Tubman

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 1869 Tubman met Nelson Davis, a man who had looked for shelter in her home. He had been a slave in North Carolina and served as a soldier in the Civil War. Davis was a brick maker. Tubman and Davis married on March 18, 1869 at the Presbyterian Church in Auburn.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.civilwar.org/learn/biographies/harriet-tubman

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, c. March 1822 - March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist. After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known collectively as the Underground Railroad. During the American Civil War, she served as an armed scout and spy for the Union Army. In her later years, Tubman was an activist in the movement for women's suffrage.

Born into slavery in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten and whipped by enslavers as a child. Early in life, she suffered a traumatic head wound when an irate overseer threw a heavy metal weight, intending to hit another slave, but hit her instead. The injury caused dizziness, pain, and spells of hypersomnia, which occurred throughout her life. After her injury, Tubman began experiencing strange visions and vivid dreams, which she ascribed to premonitions from God. These experiences, combined with her Methodist upbringing, led her to become devoutly religious.

In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, only to return to Maryland to rescue her family soon after. Slowly, one group at a time, she brought relatives with her out of the state, and eventually guided dozens of other enslaved people to freedom. Traveling by night and in extreme secrecy, Tubman (or " Moses", as she was called) "never lost a passenger". After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed, she helped guide escapees farther north into British North America (Canada), and helped newly freed people find work. Tubman met John Brown in 1858, and helped him plan and recruit supporters for his 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry.

When the Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. For her guidance of the raid at Combahee Ferry, which liberated more than 700 enslaved people, she is widely credited as first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war. After the war, she retired to the family home on property she had purchased in 1859 in Auburn, New York, where she cared for her aging parents. She was active in the women's suffrage movement until illness overtook her, and she had to be admitted to a home for elderly African Americans that she had helped to establish years earlier. She became an icon of courage and freedom.

Birth and family

Map of key locations in Tubman's life

Tubman was born Araminta "Minty" Ross to enslaved parents, Harriet ("Rit") Green and Ben Ross. Rit was enslaved by Mary Pattison Brodess (and later her son Edward). Ben was enslaved by Anthony Thompson, who became Mary Brodess's second husband, and who ran a large plantation near the Blackwater River in the Madison area of Dorchester County, Maryland.

As with many enslaved people in the United States, neither the exact year nor place of Tubman's birth is known. Tubman reported the year of her birth as 1825, while her death certificate lists 1815 and her gravestone lists 1820. Historian Kate Larson's 2004 biography of Tubman records the year as 1822, based on a midwife payment and several other historical documents, including her runaway advertisement. Based on Larson's work, more recent biographies have accepted March 1822 as the most likely timing of Tubman's birth.

Tubman's maternal grandmother, Modesty, arrived in the U.S. on a slave ship from Africa; no information is available about her other ancestors. As a child, Tubman was told that she seemed like an Ashanti person because of her character traits, though no evidence has been found to confirm or deny this lineage. Her mother, Rit (who may have had a white father), was a cook for the Brodess family. Her father, Ben, was a skilled woodsman who managed the timber work on Thompson's plantation. They married around 1808 and, according to court records, had nine children together: Linah, Mariah Ritty, Soph, Robert, Minty (Harriet), Ben, Rachel, Henry, and Moses.

Rit struggled to keep her family together as slavery threatened to tear it apart. Edward Brodess sold three of her daughters (Linah, Mariah Ritty, and Soph), separating them from the family forever. When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, she hid him for a month, aided by other enslaved people and freedmen in the community. At one point she confronted Brodess about the sale. Finally, Brodess and "the Georgia man" came toward the slave quarters to seize the child, where Rit told them, "You are after my son; but the first man that comes into my house, I will split his head open." Brodess backed away and abandoned the sale. Tubman's biographers agree that stories told about this event within the family influenced her belief in the possibilities of resistance.

Tubman's mother was assigned to "the big house" and had scarce time for her own family; consequently, as a child Tubman took care of a younger brother and baby, as was typical in large families. When she was five or six years old, Brodess hired her out as a nursemaid to a woman named "Miss Susan". Tubman was ordered to care for the baby and rock the cradle as it slept; when the baby woke up and cried, Tubman was whipped. She later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life. She found ways to resist, such as running away for five days, wearing layers of clothing as protection against beatings, and fighting back.

Also in her childhood, Tubman was sent to work for a planter named James Cook. She had to check his muskrat traps in nearby marshes, even after contracting measles. She became so ill that Cook sent her back to Brodess, where her mother nursed her back to health. Brodess then hired her out again. She spoke later of her acute childhood homesickness, comparing herself to "the boy on the Swanee River", an allusion to Stephen Foster's song " Old Folks at Home". As she grew older and stronger, she was assigned to field and forest work, driving oxen, plowing, and hauling logs.

As an adolescent, Tubman suffered a severe head injury when an overseer threw a two-pound (1 kg) metal weight at another slave who was attempting to flee. The weight struck Tubman instead, which she said: "broke my skull". Bleeding and unconscious, she was returned to her enslaver's house and laid on the seat of a loom, where she remained without medical care for two days. After this incident, Tubman frequently experienced extremely painful headaches. She also began having seizures and would seemingly fall unconscious, although she claimed to be aware of her surroundings while appearing to be asleep. Larson suggests she may have had temporal lobe epilepsy, possibly as a result of brain injury; Clinton suggests her condition may have been narcolepsy or cataplexy. A definitive diagnosis is not possible due to lack of contemporary medical evidence, but this condition remained with her for the rest of her life.

After her injury, Tubman began experiencing visions and vivid dreams, which she interpreted as revelations from God. These spiritual experiences had a profound effect on Tubman's personality and she acquired a passionate faith in God. Although Tubman was illiterate, she was told Bible stories by her mother and likely attended a Methodist church with her family. She rejected the teachings of white preachers who urged enslaved people to be passive and obedient victims to those who trafficked and enslaved them; instead she found guidance in the Old Testament tales of deliverance. This religious perspective informed her actions throughout her life.

Family and marriage

Anthony Thompson promised to manumit Tubman's father at age 45. After Thompson died, his son followed through with that promise in 1840. Tubman's father continued working as a timber estimator and foreman for the Thompson family. Later in the 1840s, Tubman paid a white attorney five dollars (equivalent to $160 in 2022) to investigate the legal status of her mother, Rit. The lawyer discovered that Atthow Pattison, the grandfather of Mary Brodess, indicated in his will that Rit and any of her children would be manumitted at age 45, and that any children born after she reached age 45 would be freeborn. The Pattison and Brodess families ignored this stipulation when they inherited the enslaved family, but taking legal action to enforce it was an impossible task for Tubman.

Around 1844, she married a free black man named John Tubman. Although little is known about him or their time together, the union was complicated because of her enslaved status. The mother's status dictated that of children, and any children born to Harriet and John would be enslaved. Such blended marriages - free people of color marrying enslaved people - were not uncommon on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where by this time, half the black population was free. Most African-American families had both free and enslaved members. Larson suggests that they might have planned to buy Tubman's freedom.

Tubman changed her name from Araminta to Harriet soon after her marriage, though the exact timing is unclear. Larson suggests this happened right after the wedding, and Clinton suggests that it coincided with Tubman's plans to escape from slavery. She adopted her mother's name, possibly as part of a religious conversion, or to honor another relative.

Escape from slavery

Notice offering a reward of US$100 (equivalent to $3,520 in 2022) for the capture and return of "Minty" (Harriet Tubman) and her brothers Henry and Ben

In 1849, Tubman became ill again, which diminished her value to slave traders. Edward Brodess tried to sell her, but could not find a buyer. Angry at him for trying to sell her and for continuing to enslave her relatives, Tubman began to pray for God to make Brodess change his ways. She said later: "I prayed all night long for my master till the first of March; and all the time he was bringing people to look at me, and trying to sell me." When it appeared as though a sale was being concluded, Tubman changed her prayer: "First of March I began to pray, 'Oh Lord, if you ain't never going to change that man's heart, kill him, Lord, and take him out of the way'." A week later, Brodess died, and Tubman expressed regret for her earlier sentiments.

As in many estate settlements, Brodess's death increased the likelihood that Tubman would be sold and her family broken apart. His widow, Eliza, began working to sell the family's enslaved people. Tubman refused to wait for the Brodess family to decide her fate, despite her husband's efforts to dissuade her. "[T]here was one of two things I had a right to", she explained later, "liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other".

Tubman and her brothers, Ben and Henry, escaped from slavery on September 17, 1849. Tubman had been hired out to Anthony Thompson (the son of her father's former owner), who owned a large plantation in an area called Poplar Neck in neighboring Caroline County; it is likely her brothers labored for Thompson as well. Because they were hired out, Eliza Brodess probably did not recognize their absence as an escape attempt for some time. Two weeks later, she posted a runaway notice in the Cambridge Democrat, offering a reward of up to US$100 each (equivalent to $3,520 in 2022) for their capture and return to slavery. Once they had left, Tubman's brothers had second thoughts. Ben may have regretted leaving his wife and children. The two men went back, forcing Tubman to return with them.

Sometime in October or November, Tubman escaped again, this time without her brothers. Before leaving she sang a farewell song to hint at her intentions, which she hoped would be understood by Mary, a trusted fellow slave: "I'll meet you in the morning", she intoned, "I'm bound for the promised land." While her exact route is unknown, Tubman made use of the network known as the Underground Railroad. This informal system was composed of free and enslaved black people, white abolitionists, and other activists. Most prominent among the latter in Maryland at the time were Quakers (members of the Religious Society of Friends). The Preston area near Poplar Neck contained a substantial Quaker community and was probably an important first stop during Tubman's escape. From there, she probably took a common route for people fleeing slavery - northeast along the Choptank River, through Delaware, and then north into Pennsylvania. A journey of nearly 90 miles (145 km) by foot would have taken between five days and three weeks.

Tubman had to travel by night, guided by the North Star and trying to avoid slave catchers eager to collect rewards for fugitive slaves. The "conductors" in the Underground Railroad used deceptions for protection. At an early stop, the lady of the house instructed Tubman to sweep the yard so as to seem to be working for the family. When night fell, the family hid her in a cart and took her to the next friendly house. Given her familiarity with the woods and marshes of the region, Tubman likely hid in these locales during the day. The particulars of her first journey are unknown; because other escapees from slavery used the routes, Tubman did not discuss them until later in life. She crossed into Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe, and recalled the experience years later:

When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.

Nicknamed "Moses"

Tubman sitting (1868 or 1869)

After reaching Philadelphia, Tubman thought of her family. "I was a stranger in a strange land," she said later. "[M]y father, my mother, my brothers, and sisters, and friends were [in Maryland]. But I was free, and they should be free." While Tubman saved money from working odd jobs in Philadelphia and Cape May, New Jersey, the U.S. Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which forced law enforcement officials to assist in the capture of escaped slaves - even in states that had outlawed slavery - and heavily punished abetting escape. The law increased risks for those who had escaped slavery, more of whom therefore sought refuge in Southern Ontario, where slavery had been abolished. Racial tensions were also increasing in Philadelphia as poor Irish immigrants competed with free blacks for work.

In December 1850, Tubman was warned that her niece Kessiah and Kessiah's children would soon be sold in Cambridge. Tubman went to Baltimore, where her brother-in-law Tom Tubman hid her until the sale. Kessiah's husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife. While the auctioneer stepped away to have lunch, John, Kessiah and their children escaped to a nearby safe house. When night fell, Bowley sailed the family on a log canoe 60 miles (97 kilometres) to Baltimore, where they met with Tubman, who brought the family to Philadelphia.

Early next year she returned to Maryland to guide away other family members. During her second trip, she recovered her youngest brother, Moses, along with two other men. Word of her exploits had encouraged her family, and she became more confident with each trip to Maryland.

In late 1851, Tubman returned to Dorchester County for the first time since her escape, this time to find her husband John. When she arrived there, she learned that John had married another woman named Caroline. Tubman sent word that he should join her, but he insisted that he was happy where he was. Suppressing her anger, she found some enslaved people who wanted to escape and led them to Philadelphia.

Frederick Douglass worked for slavery's abolition alongside Tubman.

Because the Fugitive Slave Law had made the northern United States a more dangerous place for those escaping slavery to remain, many escapees began migrating to Southern Ontario. In December 1851, Tubman guided an unidentified group of 11 escapees, possibly including the Bowleys and several others she had helped rescue earlier, northward. There is evidence to suggest that Tubman and her group stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass. Douglass and Tubman admired one another greatly as they both struggled against slavery. Years later he contrasted his efforts with hers, writing:

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.

From 1851 to 1862, Tubman returned repeatedly to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, rescuing some 70 slaves in about 13 expeditions, including her other brothers, Henry, Ben, and Robert, their wives and some of their children. She also provided specific instructions to 50 to 60 additional enslaved people who escaped. Because of her efforts, she was nicknamed "Moses", alluding to the biblical prophet who led the Hebrews to freedom from Egypt. One of her last missions into Maryland was to retrieve her aging parents. Her father purchased her mother from Eliza Brodess in 1855, but even when they were both free, the area was hostile. In 1857, Tubman received word that her father was at risk of arrest for harboring a group of eight people escaping slavery. She led her parents north to St. Catharines, Canada, where a community of formerly enslaved people, including other relatives and friends of Tubman, had gathered.

Routes and methods

Tubman's dangerous work required ingenuity. She usually worked during winter, when long nights and cold weather minimized the chance of being seen. She would start the escapes on Saturday evenings, since newspapers would not print runaway notices until Monday morning. She used subterfuges to avoid detection. Tubman once disguised herself with a bonnet and carried two live chickens to give the appearance of running errands. Suddenly finding herself walking toward a former enslaver, she yanked the strings holding the birds' legs, and their agitation allowed her to avoid eye contact. Later she recognized a fellow train passenger as a former enslaver; she snatched a nearby newspaper and pretended to read. Tubman was known to be illiterate, and the man ignored her.

In an 1897 interview with historian Wilbur Siebert, Tubman named some people who helped her and places she stayed along the Underground Railroad. She stayed with Sam Green, a free black minister living in East New Market, Maryland; she also hid near her parents' home at Poplar Neck. She would travel from there northeast to Sandtown and Willow Grove, Delaware, and to the Camden area where free black agents, William and Nat Brinkley and Abraham Gibbs, guided her north past Dover, Smyrna, and Blackbird, where other agents would take her across the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal to New Castle and Wilmington. In Wilmington, Quaker Thomas Garrett would secure transportation to William Still's office or the homes of other Underground Railroad operators in the greater Philadelphia area. Still is credited with helping hundreds escape to safer places in New York, New England, and Southern Ontario.

Tubman's faith was another important resource as she ventured repeatedly into Maryland. The visions from her childhood head injury continued, and she saw them as divine premonitions. She spoke of "consulting with God", and trusted that He would keep her safe. Garrett once said of her, "I never met with any person of any color who had more confidence in the voice of God, as spoken direct to her soul." Her faith also provided immediate assistance. She used spirituals as coded messages, warning fellow travelers of danger or to signal a clear path. She sang versions of " Go Down Moses" and changed the lyrics to indicate that it was either safe or too dangerous to proceed. As she led escapees across the border, she would call out, "Glory to God and Jesus, too. One more soul is safe!"

She carried a revolver as protection from slave catchers and their dogs. Tubman also threatened to shoot anyone who tried to turn back since that would risk the safety of the remaining group, as well as anyone who helped them on the way. Tubman spoke of one man who insisted he was going to go back to the plantation. She pointed the gun at his head and said, "Go on or die." Several days later, the man who wavered crossed into Canada with the rest of the group.

By the late 1850s, Eastern Shore slaveholders were holding public meetings about the large number of escapes in the area; they cast suspicion on free blacks and white abolitionists. They did not know that "Minty", the petite, disabled woman who had run away years before, was responsible for freeing so many enslaved people. Though a popular legend persists about a reward of $40,000 (equivalent to $1,303,000 in 2022) for Tubman's capture, this is a manufactured figure: in 1867, in support of Tubman's claim for a military pension, an abolitionist named Sallie Holley wrote that $40,000 "was not too great a reward for Maryland slaveholders to offer for her". If it were real, such a high reward would have garnered national attention. A reward of $12,000 has also been claimed, though no documentation has been found for either figure.

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."

John Brown and Harpers Ferry

Tubman helped John Brown plan and recruit for the raid at Harpers Ferry.

In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, an insurgent who advocated the use of violence to destroy slavery in the United States. Although she was not previously involved in armed insurrection, she agreed with his course of direct action and supported his goals. Like Tubman, he spoke of being called by God, and trusted the divine to protect him from the wrath of slavers. She, meanwhile, claimed to have had a prophetic vision of meeting Brown before their encounter.

Thus, as he began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders, Brown was joined by "General Tubman", as he called her. Her knowledge of support networks and resources in the border states of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware was invaluable to Brown and his planners. Although other abolitionists like Douglass did not endorse his tactics, Brown dreamed of fighting to create a new state for those freed from slavery, and made preparations for military action. He believed that after he began the first battle, the enslaved would rise up and carry out a rebellion across the slave states. He asked Tubman to gather former slaves then living in Southern Ontario who might be willing to join his fighting force, which she did.

On May 8, 1858, Brown held a meeting in Chatham, Canada, where he unveiled his plan for a raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia. When word of the plan was leaked to the government, Brown put the scheme on hold and began raising funds for its eventual resumption. Tubman aided him in this effort and with more detailed plans for the assault.

Tubman was busy during this time, giving talks to abolitionist audiences and tending to her relatives. In early October 1859, as Brown and his men prepared to launch the attack, Tubman was ill in New Bedford, Massachusetts. It is not known whether she still intended to join Brown's raid or if she had become skeptical of the plan, but when the raid on Harpers Ferry took place on October 16, Tubman had recovered from her illness and was in New York City.

The raid failed; Brown was convicted of treason, murder, and inciting a rebellion, and he was hanged on December 2. His actions were seen by many abolitionists as a symbol of proud resistance, carried out by a noble martyr. Tubman herself was effusive with praise. She later told a friend: "[H]e done more in dying, than 100 men would in living."

Auburn and Margaret

In early 1859, Frances Adeline Seward, the wife of abolitionist Republican U.S. Senator William H. Seward, sold Tubman a seven-acre (2.8 ha) farm in Fleming, New York, for $1,200 (equivalent to $42,200 in 2022). The adjacent city of Auburn was a hotbed of antislavery activism, and Tubman took the opportunity to move her parents from Canada back to the U.S. Her farmstead became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. For years, she took in relatives and boarders, offering a safe place for black Americans seeking a better life in the north.

Shortly after acquiring the farm, Tubman went back to Maryland and returned with an eight-year-old light-skinned black girl named Margaret, who Tubman said was her niece. She also indicated the girl's parents were free blacks. According to Margaret's daughter Alice, Margaret later described her childhood home as prosperous and said that she left behind a twin brother. These descriptions conflict with what is known about the families of Tubman's siblings, which created uncertainty among historians about the relationship and Tubman's motivations. Alice called Tubman's actions a "kidnapping", saying, "she had taken the child from a sheltered good home to a place where there was nobody to care for her". After speculating in her 2004 biography of Tubman that Margaret might have been Tubman's own secret daughter, Kate Larson found evidence that Margaret was the daughter of Isaac and Mary Woolford, a free black couple who were neighbors of Tubman's parents in Maryland and who had twins named James and Margaret.

In November 1860, Tubman conducted her last rescue mission. Throughout the 1850s, Tubman had been unable to effect the escape of her sister Rachel, and Rachel's two children Ben and Angerine. Upon returning to Dorchester County, Tubman discovered that Rachel had died, and the children could be rescued only if she could pay a bribe of $30 (equivalent to $980 in 2022). She did not have the money, so the children remained enslaved. Their fates remain unknown. Never one to waste a trip, Tubman gathered another group, including the Ennalls family, ready and willing to take the risks of the journey north. It took them weeks to get away safely because of slave catchers forcing them to hide out longer than expected. The weather was unseasonably cold and they had little food. The Ennalls' infant child was quieted with paregoric while slave patrols rode by. They safely reached the home of David and Martha Wright in Auburn on December 28, 1860.

American Civil War

A woodcut of Tubman in her Civil War clothing

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Tubman had a vision that the war would soon lead to the abolition of slavery. More immediately, enslaved people near Union positions began began escaping in large numbers. General Benjamin Butler declared these escapees to be " contraband" - property seized by northern forces - and put them to work, initially without pay, at Fort Monroe in Virginia. The number of "contrabands" encamped at Fort Monroe and other Union positions rapidly increased. In January 1862, Tubman volunteered to support the Union cause and began helping refugees in the camps, particularly in Port Royal, South Carolina.

In South Carolina, Tubman met General David Hunter, a strong supporter of abolition. He declared all of the "contrabands" in the Port Royal district free, and began gathering formerly enslaved people for a regiment of black soldiers. U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was not yet prepared to enforce emancipation on the southern states and reprimanded Hunter for his actions. Tubman condemned Lincoln's response and his general unwillingness to consider ending slavery in the U.S., for both moral and practical reasons:

God won't let master Lincoln beat the South till he does the right thing. Master Lincoln, he's a great man, and I am a poor negro; but the negro can tell master Lincoln how to save the money and the young men. He can do it by setting the negro free.

Tubman served as a nurse in Port Royal, preparing remedies from local plants and aiding soldiers suffering from dysentery and infectious diseases. At first, she received government rations for her work, but to dispel a perception that she was getting special treatment, she gave up her right to these supplies and made money selling pies and root beer, which she made in the evenings.

Scouting and the Combahee River Raid

When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Tubman considered it a positive but incomplete step toward the goal of liberating all black people from slavery. She turned her own efforts towards more direct actions to defeat the Confederacy. In early 1863, Tubman used her knowledge of covert travel and subterfuge to lead a band of scouts through the land around Port Royal. 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.

Illustration of the Combahee River Raid from Harper's Weekly

Later that year, Tubman's intelligence gathering played a key role in the raid at Combahee Ferry. She guided three steamboats with black soldiers under Montgomery's command past mines on the Combahee River to assault several plantations. Once ashore, the Union troops set fire to the plantations, destroying infrastructure and seizing thousands of dollars worth of food and supplies. Forewarned of the raid by Tubman's spy network, enslaved people throughout the area heard steamboats' whistles and understood that they were being liberated. Tubman watched as those fleeing slavery stampeded toward the boats; she later described 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. Armed overseers tried to stop the mass escape, but their efforts were nearly useless in the tumult. As Confederate troops raced to the scene, the steamboats took off toward Beaufort with more than 750 formerly enslaved people.

Newspapers heralded Tubman's "patriotism, sagacity, energy, [and] ability" in the raid, and she was praised for her recruiting efforts - more than 100 of the newly liberated men joined the Union army. Reports about her involvement in the raid led to a revival of the "General Tubman" appellation previously given to her by John Brown. Although her contributions have sometimes been exaggerated, her role in the raid led to her being widely credited as the first woman to lead U.S. troops in an armed assault.

In July 1863, Tubman worked with Colonel Robert Gould Shaw at the assault on Fort Wagner, reportedly serving him his last meal. She later described the battle to historian Albert Bushnell Hart:

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.

For two more years, Tubman worked for the Union forces, tending to newly liberated people, scouting into Confederate territory, and nursing wounded soldiers in Virginia, a task she continued for several months after the Confederacy surrendered in April 1865.

Formal portrait of Tubman taken after the Civil War and circulated as a carte de visite

Tubman had received little pay for her Union military service. She was not a regular soldier and was only occasionally compensated for her work as a spy and scout; her work as a nurse was entirely unpaid. For over three years of service, she received a total of $200 (equivalent to $3,820 in 2022). Her unofficial status caused great difficulty in documenting her service, and the U.S. government was slow in recognizing its debt to her. Meanwhile, her humanitarian work for her family and the formerly enslaved kept her in a state of constant poverty.

When a promised appointment to an official military nursing position fell through in July 1865, Tubman decided to return to her home in New York. During a train ride to New York in October 1865, Tubman traveled on a half-fare ticket provided to her because of her service. A conductor told her to move from a regular passenger car into the less-desirable smoking car. When she refused, he cursed at her and grabbed her. She resisted, and he summoned additional men for help. They muscled her into the smoking car, injuring her in the process. As these events transpired, white passengers cursed Tubman and told the conductor to kick her off the train.

Tubman spent her remaining years in Auburn, tending to her family and other people in need. In addition to managing her farm, she took in boarders and worked various jobs to pay the bills and support her elderly parents. One of the people Tubman took in was a farmer named Nelson Davis. Born enslaved in North Carolina, he had served as a private in the 8th United States Colored Infantry Regiment from September 1863 to November 1865. He began working in Auburn as a bricklayer, and they soon fell in love. Though he was 22 years younger than she was, on March 18, 1869, they were married at the Central Presbyterian Church. They adopted a baby girl named Gertie in 1874.

Tubman in 1887 (far left), with her husband Davis (seated, with cane), their adopted daughter Gertie (beside Tubman), Lee Cheney, John "Pop" Alexander, Walter Green, "Blind Aunty" Sarah Parker, and her great-niece Dora Stewart at Tubman's home in Auburn, New York

Tubman's friends and supporters from the days of abolition, meanwhile, raised funds to support her. One admirer, Sarah Hopkins Bradford, wrote an authorized biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman. The 132-page volume was published in 1869 and brought Tubman some $1,200 in income (equivalent to $26,400 in 2022). Even with this assistance, paying off the mortgage on her farm in May 1873 exhausted Tubman's savings. That October, she fell prey to swindlers. Two black men claimed to know a former slave who had a trunk of gold coins smuggled out of South Carolina, which they would sell for cash at less than half the coins' value. She knew white people in the South had buried valuables when Union forces threatened the region, and black men were frequently assigned to digging duties, so the claim seemed plausible to her. She borrowed money from a wealthy friend and arranged to receive the gold late one night. Once the men had lured her into the woods, they knocked her out with chloroform and stole her purse. Tubman was found dazed and injured; the trunk was filled with rocks.

The crime brought new attention from local leaders to Tubman's precarious financial state and spurred renewed efforts to get compensation for her Civil War service. In 1874, Representatives Clinton D. MacDougall of New York and Gerry W. Hazelton of Wisconsin introduced a bill to pay Tubman a $2,000 (~$51,729 in 2022) lump sum "for services rendered by her to the Union Army as scout, nurse, and spy", but it was defeated in the Senate. In February 1880, Tubman's wood-framed house burned down, but with the help of her supporters it was quickly replaced with a new brick home.

Nelson Davis died of tuberculosis on October 14, 1888. The Dependent and Disability Pension Act of 1890 made Tubman eligible for a pension as his widow. After she documented her marriage and her husband's service record to the satisfaction of the Bureau of Pensions, in 1895 Tubman was granted a monthly widow's pension of $8 (equivalent to $281 in 2022), plus a lump sum of $500 to cover the five-year delay in approval. In December 1897, New York Congressman Sereno E. Payne introduced a bill to grant Tubman a soldier's monthly pension of $25 (~$879.00 in 2022). Although Congress received documents and letters to support Tubman's claims, some members objected to a woman being paid a full soldier's pension. In February 1899, Congress approved a compromise amount of $20 per (~$704.00 in 2022) month (the $8 from her widow's pension plus $12 for her service as a nurse), but did not acknowledge her as a scout and spy.

Suffragist activism

Tubman in 1911

In her later years, Tubman worked to promote the cause of women's suffrage. A white woman once asked Tubman whether she believed women ought to have the vote, and received the reply: "I suffered enough to believe it." Tubman began attending meetings of suffragist organizations, and was soon working alongside women such as Susan B. Anthony and Emily Howland.

Tubman traveled to New York, Boston and Washington, D.C. to speak in favor of women's voting rights. She described her actions during and after the Civil War, and used the sacrifices of countless women throughout modern history as evidence of women's equality to men. When the National Federation of Afro-American Women was founded in 1896, Tubman was the keynote speaker at its first meeting.

This wave of activism kindled a new wave of admiration for Tubman among the press in the United States. A publication called The Woman's Era launched a series of articles on "Eminent Women" with a profile of Tubman. An 1897 suffragist newspaper reported a series of receptions in Boston honoring Tubman and her lifetime of service to the nation. However, her endless contributions to others had left her in poverty, and she had to sell a cow to buy a train ticket to these celebrations.

Church, illness, and death

In the 1870s, Tubman became active in the Thompson Memorial African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church in Auburn. In 1895, she began discussions with AME Zion leaders and others to create a Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged that would care for "indigent colored people". Despite her financial limitations, in 1896 Tubman bid $1215 (~$42,739 in 2022) at auction for a 25-acre (10 ha) farm adjacent to the one she already owned, to use for the new facility. She designated one of the farm's buildings as its primary residence and named it "John Brown Hall" to honor her late abolitionist ally. However, raising funds for the project was difficult, and attempts to donate the property were complicated by the multiple mortgage loans used to pay for it. After Tubman almost lost the property due her financial difficulties, AME Zion agreed to take it over in 1903.

The home did not open for another five years, and Tubman was dismayed when the church ordered residents to pay a $100 entrance fee (equivalent to $3,260 in 2022). She said: "[T]hey make a rule that nobody should come in without they have a hundred dollars. Now I wanted to make a rule that nobody should come in unless they didn't have no money at all." She was frustrated by the new rule but was the guest of honor nonetheless when the home celebrated its opening on June 23, 1908.

As Tubman aged, her childhood head trauma continued to trouble her. Unable to sleep because of pain and "buzzing" in her head, in the late 1890s she asked a doctor at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to operate. In her words, he "sawed open my skull, and raised it up, and now it feels more comfortable". She reportedly received no anesthesia and instead bit down on a bullet, as she had seen Civil War soldiers do when their limbs were amputated.

By 1911, Tubman's body was so frail that she was admitted into the rest home named in her honor. A New York newspaper described her as "ill and penniless", prompting supporters to offer a new round of donations. Surrounded by friends and family members, she died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913. Just before she died, she quoted the Gospel of John to those in the room: "I go away to prepare a place for you." Tubman was buried with semi-military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

Tubman's great-niece, Eva Stewart Northrup, launching the SS Harriet Tubman

Widely known and well-respected while she was alive, Tubman became an American icon in the years after she died. By the 1980s, Tubman was one of American history's most famous figures. She inspired generations of African Americans struggling for equality and civil rights; she was praised by leaders across the political spectrum.

Parks, monuments and historical sites

National parks and national monuments related to Tubman in the United States are the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument and the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park, both in Maryland, and the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn. The Salem Chapel in St. Catharines, where Tubman worshipped, is a National Historic Site of Canada.

The city of Auburn has several historical sites related to Tubman, including her gravesite. Other state and local historical sites about Tubman include a state park and memorial garden in Maryland, and a museum in New Jersey.

Artistic portrayals

Tubman is the subject of many works of art. Musicians including Woody Guthrie, Wynton Marsalis, and Walter Robinson have written songs celebrating her. She is the subject of operas by Thea Musgrave, Nkeiru Okoye, and Hilda Paredes, as well as plays by Carolyn Gage and a collaboration of May Miller and Willis Richardson. Tubman is the focus of novels by Elizabeth Cobbs, Marcy Heidish, and Anne Parrish, and is a character in novels by Terry Bisson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and James McBride.

Since Tubman's life was first dramatized on television in a 1963 episode of the series The Great Adventure, she has been portrayed in TV productions such as The Good Lord Bird, , Underground, and A Woman Called Moses. Cynthia Erivo received an Academy Award nomination for portraying Tubman in the 2019 theatrical film .

Artists including Fern Cunningham, Jane DeDecker, Nina Cooke John, and Alison Saar have presented Tubman in sculptures. She has been drawn or painted by numerous artists, including Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas, William Johnson, Jacob Lawrence, and Faith Ringgold.

Other honors and commemorations

Official $20 bill prototype

In 1978, Tubman became the first African-American woman honored on a U.S. postage stamp; she appeared on a second stamp in 1995. Beginning in 2016, there have been plans to add a portrait of Tubman to the front of the twenty-dollar bill, moving the portrait of President Andrew Jackson, a slaveholder, to the back of the bill.

Dozens of schools, streets and highways, church groups, social organizations, and government agencies have been named after Tubman. In 1944, the United States Maritime Commission launched the SS Harriet Tubman, its first Liberty ship named for a black woman.

Historiography

Tubman hoped to become literate and write her own memoirs, but she never did. Instead, Sarah Hopkins Bradford combined Tubman's personal recollections, journalistic accounts, and letters from Tubman's friends and supporters to create Scenes from the Life of Harriet Tubman in 1868. Criticized by modern biographers for its artistic license and highly subjective point of view, the book nevertheless provides insight into Tubman's own view of her experiences. In 1886, Bradford released a re-written volume called Harriet, the Moses of her People. In both volumes Harriet Tubman is hailed as a latter-day Joan of Arc. The revision took a more moralistic and literary tone than the prior work, including changes of many event descriptions from first to third person. A final revision in 1901 added an appendix with more stories about Tubman's life.

The first full biography of Tubman to be published after Bradford's was Earl Conrad's Harriet Tubman (1943). Conrad experienced great difficulty in finding a publisher - the search took four years - and endured disdain and contempt for his efforts to construct a more objective, detailed account of Tubman's life for adults. Several highly dramatized versions of Tubman's life had been written for children, and many more came later, but Conrad wrote in an academic style. Though she was a popular historical figure, another book-length biography based on original scholarship did not appear for 60 years, when Jean Humez published a close reading of Tubman's life stories in 2003. Larson and Clinton both published their biographies soon after in 2004. Historian Milton Sernett's 2007 book Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory, and History discusses the major biographies of Tubman up to that time.

References

Clinton, Catherine (2004). Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom. New York: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 978-0-316-14492-6 - via Open Library.

"Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800-". Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

Franklin, Jonathan (March 13, 2023). "A Monument of Harriet Tubman Now Replaces a Statue of Christopher Columbus in Newark". . Archived from the original on June 15, 2023.

Gaige, Amity (August 23, 2013). "The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride". San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on July 25, 2019.

Gibson, Chantal N. & Silverman, Monique (2005). "Sur/Rendering Her Image: The Unknowable Harriet Tubman". Canadian Art Review. 30 (1): 25-38. JSTOR 42630711.

Hobson, Janell (2022). When God Lost Her Tongue: Historical Consciousness and the Black Feminist Imagination. Subversive Histories, Feminist Futures series. New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780429243554. ISBN 978-0-429-24355-4. S2CID 240990028.

Humez, Jean M. (Summer 1993). "In Search of Harriet Tubman's Spiritual Autobiography". NWSA Journal. 5 (2): 162-182. JSTOR 4316258.

Humez, Jean (2003). Harriet Tubman: The Life and Life Stories. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-19120-7 - via Open Library.

Kaufman, Rachel (May 13, 2018). "Pilot, Thinker, Soldier, Spy: The Epic Timeless Season Finale Twofer". Smithsonian Magazine. Archived from the original on October 17, 2020.

Larson, Kate Clifford (2004). Bound For the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 978-0-345-45627-4 - via Open Library.

Oertel, Kristen T. (2015). Harriet Tubman: Slavery, the Civil War, and Civil Rights in the Nineteenth-century America. Routledge Historical Americans series. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-94897-9.

Portelli, Alessandro (Fall 1988). "Fire on the Mountain". Review. Appalachian Journal. 16 (1): 87-90. JSTOR 40933404.

Roma, Catherine (2001). "Contemporary British Composers". In Pendle, Karin (ed.). Women and Music: A History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 227-251. ISBN 978-0-253-11503-4 - via Open Library.

Rosenberg, Amy S. (September 17, 2020). "The Harriet Tubman Museum in Cape May Marked Its Opening. Here's What's Inside, and Why It's in Cape May". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Archived from the original on September 21, 2020.

Sacks, Sam (May 17, 2019). "Fiction: Tales of History and Imagination". Books & Arts in Review. The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on July 25, 2019.

Vargas, Ángel (October 17, 2018). "La gesta de Harriet Tubman llega al Cervantino en forma de ópera" [The deeds of Harriet Tubman arrive at the Cervantino in the form of an opera]. (in Spanish). Archived from the original on April 17, 2021.

Further reading

External links

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, c. March 1822 - March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist. After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known collectively as the Underground Railroad.

# data[].attributes.body
When the Civil War ended Harriet Tubman returned home to Auburn, New York. ...Tubman was a philanthropist who provided to those who sought her help. She left the door of her residence, at South Street , open for those who needed shelter and food. For years freed slaves came and left when they were ready to move on.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We invite you and your family to participate in these activities, inspired by the collections, programs, and expertise of the Library of Congress.

Author Programs

Activity Kits

The activities below require just a few simple items you can find easily around the house and items from the Library's website. Kids are encouraged to use their creativity to enhance, adapt, or recreate anything we share. Check back often for new activities and opportunities with engage with us!

All Ages

Ages 7-10

Ages 10-12

Printables

More Online Resources for Kids and Families

Imagination Library

View bedtime stories from Goodnight with Dolly External and Imagination Library story times at the Library of Congress. Imagination Library is a 2014 Library of Congress Literacy Awards Program Best Practice Honoree.

Stay in Touch!

We'd love to hear from you!

Find activity ideas and connect with us on our blog for families, Minerva's Kaleidoscope.

Share your feedback on these resources or others you'd like to see at learn@loc.gov.

Connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, and sign up for email updates for new resources as they become available.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Resources for Family Engagement from the Library of Congress | Library of Congress

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We invite you and your family to participate in these activities, inspired by the collections, programs, and expertise of the Library of Congress.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When the Civil War ended Harriet Tubman returned home to Auburn, New York. Her parents were old and had a good support system during her absence but they still needed her daughter's financial support. Her brothers and their families eventually moved from St. Catharine's to Auburn. Her parents passed away of old age.

# data[].attributes.body
Harriet Tubman life after civil war

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Life after the Civil War : Harriet Tubman

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 1869 Tubman met Nelson Davis, a man who had looked for shelter in her home. He had been a slave in North Carolina and served as a soldier in the Civil War. Davis was a brick maker. Tubman and Davis married on March 18, 1869 at the Presbyterian Church in Auburn.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
During the Civil War, Tubman worked for the Union army as a nurse, a cook, and a spy. Her experience leading slaves along the Underground Railroad was especially helpful because she knew the land well. She recruited a group of former slaves to hunt for rebel camps and report on the movement of the Confederate troops.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Life after the Civil War : Harriet Tubman

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 1869 Tubman met Nelson Davis, a man who had looked for shelter in her home. He had been a slave in North Carolina and served as a soldier in the Civil War. Davis was a brick maker. Tubman and Davis married on March 18, 1869 at the Presbyterian Church in Auburn.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Who Was Harriet Tubman?

Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses. A leading abolitionist before the American Civil War, Tubman also helped the Union Army during the war, working as a spy among other roles.

After the Civil War ended, Tubman dedicated her life to helping impoverished former slaves and the elderly. In honor of her life and by popular demand, in 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill.

Early Life and Family

Tubman's date of birth is unknown, although it probably occurred between 1820 and 1825. She was one of nine children born between 1808 and 1832 to enslaved parents in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her mother, Harriet "Rit" Green, was owned by Mary Pattison Brodess. Her father, Ben Ross, who was owned by Anthony Thompson (Thompson and Brodess eventually married).

Originally named Araminta Harriet Ross, Tubman was nicknamed "Minty" by her parents. Araminta changed her name to Harriet around the time of her marriage, possibly to honor her mother.

Tubman's early life was full of hardship. Mary Brodess' son Edward sold three of Tubman's sisters to distant plantations, severing the family. When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, Rit successfully resisted the further fracturing of her family, setting a powerful example for her young daughter.

Physical violence was a part of daily life for Tubman and her family. The violence she suffered early in life caused permanent physical injuries. Tubman later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life.

The most severe injury occurred when Tubman was an adolescent. Sent to a dry-goods store for supplies, she encountered a slave who had left the fields without permission. The man's overseer demanded that Tubman help restrain the runaway. When Tubman refused, the overseer threw a two-pound weight that struck her in the head. Tubman endured seizures, severe headaches and narcoleptic episodes for the rest of her life. She also experienced intense dream states, which she classified as religious experiences.

The line between freedom and slavery was hazy for Tubman and her family. Tubman's father, Ben, was freed from slavery at the age of 45, as stipulated in the will of a previous owner. Nonetheless, Ben had few options but to continue working as a timber estimator and foreman for his former owners.

Although similar manumission stipulations applied to Rit and her children, the individuals who owned the family chose not to free them. Despite his free status, Ben had little power to challenge their decision.

Husbands and Children

In 1844, Harriet married a free black man named John Tubman. At the time around half of the African American people on the eastern shore of Maryland were free, and was not unusual for a family to include both free and enslaved people.

Little is known about John or his marriage to Harriet, including whether and how long they lived together. Any children they might have had would have been considered enslaved, since the mother's status dictated that of any offspring. John declined to make the voyage on the Underground Railroad with Harriet, preferring to stay in Maryland with a new wife.

In 1869, Tubman married a Civil War veteran named Nelson Davis. In 1874, the couple adopted a baby girl named Gertie.

The Underground Railroad

Between 1850 and 1860, Tubman made 19 trips from the South to the North following the network known as the Underground Railroad. She guided more than 300 people, including her parents and several siblings, from slavery to freedom, earning the nickname "Moses" for her leadership.

Tubman first encountered the Underground Railroad when she used it to escape slavery herself in 1849. Following a bout of illness and the death of her owner, Tubman decided to escape slavery in Maryland for Philadelphia. She feared that her family would be further severed and was concerned for her own fate as a sickly slave of low economic value.

Two of her brothers, Ben and Harry, accompanied her on September 17, 1849. However, after a notice was published in the Cambridge Democrat offering a $300 reward for the return of Araminta, Harry and Ben had second thoughts and returned to the plantation. Tubman had no plans to remain in bondage. Seeing her brothers safely home, she soon set off alone for Pennsylvania.

Making use of the Underground Railroad, Tubman traveled nearly 90 miles to Philadelphia. She crossed into the free state of Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe, and recalled later: "When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven."

Rather than remaining in the safety of the North, Tubman made it her mission to rescue her family and others living in slavery via the Underground Railroad. In December 1850, Tubman received a warning that her niece Kessiah was going to be sold, along with her two young children. Kessiah's husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife at an auction in Baltimore. Tubman then helped the entire family make the journey to Philadelphia. This was the first of many trips by Tubman.

The dynamics of escaping slavery changed in 1850, with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. This law stated that escaped slaves could be captured in the North and returned to slavery, leading to the abduction of former slaves and free blacks living in Free States. Law enforcement officials in the North were compelled to aid in the capture of slaves, regardless of their personal principles.

In response to the law, Tubman re-routed the Underground Railroad to Canada, which prohibited slavery categorically. In December 1851, Tubman guided a group of 11 fugitives northward. There is evidence to suggest that the party stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass.

In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, who advocated the use of violence to disrupt and destroy the institution of slavery. Tubman shared Brown's goals and at least tolerated his methods. Tubman claimed to have had a prophetic vision of Brown before they met.

When Brown began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders at Harper's Ferry, he turned to "General Tubman" for help. After Brown's subsequent execution, Tubman praised him as a martyr.

Tubman remained active during the Civil War. Working for the Union Army as a cook and nurse, Tubman quickly became an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the Combahee River Raid, which liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina.
READ MORE: How Harriet Tubman and William Still Helped the Underground Railroad

Photo: Benjamin F. Powelson Collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture shared with the Library of Congress, 2017.30.4

Later Life

In early 1859, abolitionist Senator William H. Seward sold Tubman a small piece of land on the outskirts of Auburn, New York. The land in Auburn became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. Tubman spent the years following the war on this property, tending to her family and others who had taken up residence there.

Despite Tubman's fame and reputation, she was never financially secure. Tubman's friends and supporters were able to raise some funds to support her. One admirer, Sarah H. Bradford, wrote a biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, with the proceeds going to Tubman and her family.

Tubman continued to give freely in spite of her economic woes. In 1903, she donated a parcel of her land to the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Auburn. The Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged opened on this site in 1908.
READ MORE: Inside Harriet Tubman's Life of Service After the Underground Railroad
Death

Tubman died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913, surrounded by friends and family, at around the age of 93. As Tubman aged, the head injuries sustained early in her life became more painful and disruptive. She underwent brain surgery at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to alleviate the pains and "buzzing" she experienced regularly. Tubman was eventually admitted into the rest home named in her honor. She was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S HARRIET TUBMAN FACT CARD

Legacy

Widely known and well-respected while she was alive, Tubman became an American icon in the years after she died. A survey at the end of the 20th century named her as one of the most famous civilians in American history before the Civil War, third only to Betsy Ross and Paul Revere. She continues to inspire generations of Americans struggling for civil rights.

When Tubman died, the city of Auburn commemorated her life with a plaque on the courthouse. Tubman was celebrated in many other ways throughout the nation in the 20th century. Dozens of schools were named in her honor, and both the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn and the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cambridge serve as monuments to her life.

A 1978 movie, A Woman Called Moses, commemorated her life and career, and the 2019 film Harriet chronicled Tubman's service as a conductor for the Underground Railroad.

Tubman on the New $20 Bill

In April 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman would replace Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill. The announcement came after the Treasury Department received a groundswell of public comments, following Women on 20s' campaign calling for a notable American woman to appear on U.S. currency. The decision was celebrated, as Tubman devoted her life to racial equality and fought for women's rights.

In June 2015, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew was criticized for saying that it was likely a woman would appear on the $10 bill, which features a portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the influential founding father who found renewed popularity because of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. The ultimate decision to have Tubman replace Jackson, a slaveholder who played a role in the removal of Native Americans from their land, was widely praised.

The unveiling of the new $20 bill featuring Tubman was planned for 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote. However, in May 2019, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that no new designs will be unveiled until 2026 at the earliest due to what he called counterfeiting issues. In June, the Treasury Department's inspector general said that it would look into why the launch had been delayed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Life after the Civil War : Harriet Tubman

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 1869 Tubman met Nelson Davis, a man who had looked for shelter in her home. He had been a slave in North Carolina and served as a soldier in the Civil War. Davis was a brick maker. Tubman and Davis married on March 18, 1869 at the Presbyterian Church in Auburn.

# data[].attributes.body
When the Civil War ended Harriet Tubman returned home to Auburn, New York. ...Tubman was a philanthropist who provided to those who sought her help. She left the door of her residence, at South Street , open for those who needed shelter and food. For years freed slaves came and left when they were ready to move on.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Who Was Harriet Tubman?

Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses. A leading abolitionist before the American Civil War, Tubman also helped the Union Army during the war, working as a spy among other roles.

After the Civil War ended, Tubman dedicated her life to helping impoverished former slaves and the elderly. In honor of her life and by popular demand, in 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill.

Early Life and Family

Tubman's date of birth is unknown, although it probably occurred between 1820 and 1825. She was one of nine children born between 1808 and 1832 to enslaved parents in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her mother, Harriet "Rit" Green, was owned by Mary Pattison Brodess. Her father, Ben Ross, who was owned by Anthony Thompson (Thompson and Brodess eventually married).

Originally named Araminta Harriet Ross, Tubman was nicknamed "Minty" by her parents. Araminta changed her name to Harriet around the time of her marriage, possibly to honor her mother.

Tubman's early life was full of hardship. Mary Brodess' son Edward sold three of Tubman's sisters to distant plantations, severing the family. When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, Rit successfully resisted the further fracturing of her family, setting a powerful example for her young daughter.

Physical violence was a part of daily life for Tubman and her family. The violence she suffered early in life caused permanent physical injuries. Tubman later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life.

The most severe injury occurred when Tubman was an adolescent. Sent to a dry-goods store for supplies, she encountered a slave who had left the fields without permission. The man's overseer demanded that Tubman help restrain the runaway. When Tubman refused, the overseer threw a two-pound weight that struck her in the head. Tubman endured seizures, severe headaches and narcoleptic episodes for the rest of her life. She also experienced intense dream states, which she classified as religious experiences.

The line between freedom and slavery was hazy for Tubman and her family. Tubman's father, Ben, was freed from slavery at the age of 45, as stipulated in the will of a previous owner. Nonetheless, Ben had few options but to continue working as a timber estimator and foreman for his former owners.

Although similar manumission stipulations applied to Rit and her children, the individuals who owned the family chose not to free them. Despite his free status, Ben had little power to challenge their decision.

Husbands and Children

In 1844, Harriet married a free black man named John Tubman. At the time around half of the African American people on the eastern shore of Maryland were free, and was not unusual for a family to include both free and enslaved people.

Little is known about John or his marriage to Harriet, including whether and how long they lived together. Any children they might have had would have been considered enslaved, since the mother's status dictated that of any offspring. John declined to make the voyage on the Underground Railroad with Harriet, preferring to stay in Maryland with a new wife.

In 1869, Tubman married a Civil War veteran named Nelson Davis. In 1874, the couple adopted a baby girl named Gertie.

The Underground Railroad

Between 1850 and 1860, Tubman made 19 trips from the South to the North following the network known as the Underground Railroad. She guided more than 300 people, including her parents and several siblings, from slavery to freedom, earning the nickname "Moses" for her leadership.

Tubman first encountered the Underground Railroad when she used it to escape slavery herself in 1849. Following a bout of illness and the death of her owner, Tubman decided to escape slavery in Maryland for Philadelphia. She feared that her family would be further severed and was concerned for her own fate as a sickly slave of low economic value.

Two of her brothers, Ben and Harry, accompanied her on September 17, 1849. However, after a notice was published in the Cambridge Democrat offering a $300 reward for the return of Araminta, Harry and Ben had second thoughts and returned to the plantation. Tubman had no plans to remain in bondage. Seeing her brothers safely home, she soon set off alone for Pennsylvania.

Making use of the Underground Railroad, Tubman traveled nearly 90 miles to Philadelphia. She crossed into the free state of Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe, and recalled later: "When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven."

Rather than remaining in the safety of the North, Tubman made it her mission to rescue her family and others living in slavery via the Underground Railroad. In December 1850, Tubman received a warning that her niece Kessiah was going to be sold, along with her two young children. Kessiah's husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife at an auction in Baltimore. Tubman then helped the entire family make the journey to Philadelphia. This was the first of many trips by Tubman.

The dynamics of escaping slavery changed in 1850, with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. This law stated that escaped slaves could be captured in the North and returned to slavery, leading to the abduction of former slaves and free blacks living in Free States. Law enforcement officials in the North were compelled to aid in the capture of slaves, regardless of their personal principles.

In response to the law, Tubman re-routed the Underground Railroad to Canada, which prohibited slavery categorically. In December 1851, Tubman guided a group of 11 fugitives northward. There is evidence to suggest that the party stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass.

In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, who advocated the use of violence to disrupt and destroy the institution of slavery. Tubman shared Brown's goals and at least tolerated his methods. Tubman claimed to have had a prophetic vision of Brown before they met.

When Brown began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders at Harper's Ferry, he turned to "General Tubman" for help. After Brown's subsequent execution, Tubman praised him as a martyr.

Tubman remained active during the Civil War. Working for the Union Army as a cook and nurse, Tubman quickly became an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the Combahee River Raid, which liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina.
READ MORE: How Harriet Tubman and William Still Helped the Underground Railroad

Photo: Benjamin F. Powelson Collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture shared with the Library of Congress, 2017.30.4

Later Life

In early 1859, abolitionist Senator William H. Seward sold Tubman a small piece of land on the outskirts of Auburn, New York. The land in Auburn became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. Tubman spent the years following the war on this property, tending to her family and others who had taken up residence there.

Despite Tubman's fame and reputation, she was never financially secure. Tubman's friends and supporters were able to raise some funds to support her. One admirer, Sarah H. Bradford, wrote a biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, with the proceeds going to Tubman and her family.

Tubman continued to give freely in spite of her economic woes. In 1903, she donated a parcel of her land to the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Auburn. The Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged opened on this site in 1908.
READ MORE: Inside Harriet Tubman's Life of Service After the Underground Railroad
Death

Tubman died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913, surrounded by friends and family, at around the age of 93. As Tubman aged, the head injuries sustained early in her life became more painful and disruptive. She underwent brain surgery at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to alleviate the pains and "buzzing" she experienced regularly. Tubman was eventually admitted into the rest home named in her honor. She was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S HARRIET TUBMAN FACT CARD

Legacy

Widely known and well-respected while she was alive, Tubman became an American icon in the years after she died. A survey at the end of the 20th century named her as one of the most famous civilians in American history before the Civil War, third only to Betsy Ross and Paul Revere. She continues to inspire generations of Americans struggling for civil rights.

When Tubman died, the city of Auburn commemorated her life with a plaque on the courthouse. Tubman was celebrated in many other ways throughout the nation in the 20th century. Dozens of schools were named in her honor, and both the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn and the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cambridge serve as monuments to her life.

A 1978 movie, A Woman Called Moses, commemorated her life and career, and the 2019 film Harriet chronicled Tubman's service as a conductor for the Underground Railroad.

Tubman on the New $20 Bill

In April 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman would replace Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill. The announcement came after the Treasury Department received a groundswell of public comments, following Women on 20s' campaign calling for a notable American woman to appear on U.S. currency. The decision was celebrated, as Tubman devoted her life to racial equality and fought for women's rights.

In June 2015, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew was criticized for saying that it was likely a woman would appear on the $10 bill, which features a portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the influential founding father who found renewed popularity because of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. The ultimate decision to have Tubman replace Jackson, a slaveholder who played a role in the removal of Native Americans from their land, was widely praised.

The unveiling of the new $20 bill featuring Tubman was planned for 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote. However, in May 2019, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that no new designs will be unveiled until 2026 at the earliest due to what he called counterfeiting issues. In June, the Treasury Department's inspector general said that it would look into why the launch had been delayed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Life after the Civil War : Harriet Tubman

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 1869 Tubman met Nelson Davis, a man who had looked for shelter in her home. He had been a slave in North Carolina and served as a soldier in the Civil War. Davis was a brick maker. Tubman and Davis married on March 18, 1869 at the Presbyterian Church in Auburn.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Life after the Civil War : Harriet Tubman

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 1869 Tubman met Nelson Davis, a man who had looked for shelter in her home. He had been a slave in North Carolina and served as a soldier in the Civil War. Davis was a brick maker. Tubman and Davis married on March 18, 1869 at the Presbyterian Church in Auburn.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
During the Civil War, Tubman worked for the Union army as a nurse, a cook, and a spy. Her experience leading slaves along the Underground Railroad was especially helpful because she knew the land well. She recruited a group of former slaves to hunt for rebel camps and report on the movement of the Confederate troops.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Life after the Civil War : Harriet Tubman

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 1869 Tubman met Nelson Davis, a man who had looked for shelter in her home. He had been a slave in North Carolina and served as a soldier in the Civil War. Davis was a brick maker. Tubman and Davis married on March 18, 1869 at the Presbyterian Church in Auburn.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The 1850s saw a deeper divide between north and south. The passage of the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854 only delayed the inevitable, Civil War. Middle class whites in the north started to sympathize with the plight of slaves and a growing number of abolitionists condemned the institution of slavery. In March 1852 the public's imagination was captivated by the publication of Harriet Beecher Stow's Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860 and immediately, in December of that year, South Carolina passed an Ordinance of Secession. Other southern states joined South Carolina forming the Confederate States of America. It did not take long for war to erupt as the north and south could not agree on the issue of slavery and its expansion. As war began, Harriet Tubman was a cautious supporter of Lincoln.

African American leaders responded to the call to fight for their country with enthusiasm. One of the early leaders to call for action of all African Americans was Frederick Douglass. He supported the inclusion of African American troops as a way to test their loyalty and as a path to full citizenship. Other African American leaders such as Jermain Loguen and William Wells Brown also advocated their enlistment in the Union Army.

Fort Monroe

In 1861 Tubman was recruited as a volunteer as part of the Massachusetts troop led by General Benjamin Buttler. She was the only African American among the all white troop. They were stationed at Fort Monroe, Virginia, on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Her role at Fort Monroe was not official and unrelated to military operations. The fort was overwhelmingly flooded with fugitives or as they were called "contrabands", most of them came with families and small children. They were given food and put to work as manual laborers, building roads and dikes. They were not paid, and critics suggested that they had only changed masters. Women were put to cook and do the laundry. Tubman was assigned to assist them, she worked as a nurse, cook and washing clothes.

Port Royal

In May of 1862 Tubman traveled to South Carolina where she joined Dr Henry K. Durand, the Director of the freedman's hospital at Port Royal. Soldiers as well as fugitives were dying; some of the most common illnesses were typhoid, cholera, malaria, yellow fever, chicken pox and dysentery. Tubman was knowledgeable in local roots to treat diseases; her healing powers became legendary among soldiers.

Combahee River Raid

After the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863 colored people were allowed to enroll in the military. They were under scrutiny and many doubted about their commitment and bravery.

Tubman became part of a group of scouts in charge of espionage and she was the commander of the team. She reported directly to Generals David Hunter and Rufus Saxton. She was assigned to create lifelines and escape routes for trapped slaves.

On the night of June 2, 1863 Tubman guided a troop of 150 black soldiers of the Second South Carolina battalion on the Combahee River. The plan was to liberate as many slaves by catching slaveholders by surprise. The attack became known as the Combahee River Raid and liberated more than 750 slaves.

Tubman's accomplishments in the Combahee River Raid stayed anonymous until July 10, 1863 when a journalist Franklin B. Sanborn published an article "Harriet Tubman", it was a biographical outline of Tubman's life. Sanborn's article was published in the Commonwealth, an antislavery newspaper in Boston. He brought Tubman to the spotlight for the first time praising her for guiding slaves to freedom using the Underground Railroad and by risking her life.

Efforts to recruit African Americans to the Union Army

Meanwhile efforts to recruit free African Americans were taking place in the north. With the effort of James Forten, Frederick Douglass and John Mercer Langston, the Massachusetts 54 th regiment was one of the first official African American regiments to fight in the Civil War. Nearly 1,000 men were drafted. Frederick Douglass' two sons and Sojourner Truth's grandson were enlisted in the regiment.

When the war was over in 1865 she returned home to Auburn, New York. A battle to get compensation for her services would last 30 years.

Tags: Abraham Lincoln, civil war, Combahee River Raid, Fort Monroe, Frederick Douglass, Massachusetts 54th, Port Royal, union army

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The 1850s saw a deeper divide between north and south. The passage of the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854 only delayed the inevitable, Civil War. Middle class whites in the north started to sympathize with the plight of slaves and a growing number of abolitionists condemned the institution of slavery.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
After war broke out, Harriet Tubman went South to assist and work with "contrabands" -- escaped slaves who were attached to the Union Army. She also briefly went to Florida on a similar mission.

In 1862, Governor Andrew of Massachusetts arranged for Tubman to go to Beaufort, South Carolina, as a nurse and teacher to the Gullah people of the Sea Islands who had been left behind by their owners when they fled the advance of the Union Army, which remained in control of the islands.

The next year, the Union Army asked Tubman to organize a network of scouts -- and spies -- among the black men of the area. She not only organized a sophisticated information-gathering operation, she led several forays herself in pursuit of information. Not so incidentally, another purpose of these forays was to persuade slaves to leave their masters, many to join the regiments of black soldiers. Her years as "Moses" and her ability to move about secretly were excellent background for this new assignment.

In July of 1863, Harriet Tubman led troops under the command of Colonel James Montgomery in the Combahee River expedition, disrupting Southern supply lines by destroying bridges and railroads. The mission also freed more than 750 slaves. Tubman is credited not only with significant leadership responsibilities for the mission itself, but with singing to calm the slaves and keep the situation in hand.

Tubman came under Confederate fire on this mission. General Saxton, who reported the raid to Secretary of War Stanton, said "This is the only military command in American history wherein a woman, black or white, led the raid and under whose inspiration it was originated and conducted." Tubman reported later that most of the freed slaves joined "the colored regiment."

Tubman was also present for the defeat of the 54th Massachusetts, the black unit led by Robert Gould Shaw.

Catherine Clinton, in Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War, suggests that Harriet Tubman may have been allowed to go beyond women's traditional boundaries more than most women, because of her race. (Clinton, p. 94)

Tubman believed that she was in the employ of the U.S. Army. When she received her first paycheck, she spent it to build a place where freed black women could earn a living doing laundry for the soldiers. But then she wasn't paid regularly again, and wasn't given the military rations she believed she was entitled to. She was paid only a total of $200 in three years of service. She supported herself and her work by selling baked goods and root beer which she made after she completed her regular work duties.

After the war was over, Tubman was never paid her back military pay. In addition, when she applied for a pension -- with the support of Secretary of State William Seward, Colonel T. W. Higginson, and General Rufus -- her application was denied. Harriet Tubman did eventually receive a pension -- but as the widow of a soldier, her second husband.
Next: 4: Later Years of Activism and Reform
Harriet Tubman Biography: From Slavery to Freedom

1. Harriet Tubman's Life in Slavery

2. Harriet Tubman as Underground Railroad Conductor, Abolitionist, Women's Rights Advocate

3. Harriet Tubman's Civil War Service: Nurse, Scout, Spy

4. Harriet Tubman's Later Years of Activism and Reform

More About Harriet Tubman:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Harriet Tubman: Nurse, Scout and Spy in the Civil War

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After war broke out, Harriet Tubman went South to assist and work with "contrabands" -- escaped slaves who were attached to the Union Army. She also briefly went to Florida on a similar mission.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Life after the Civil War : Harriet Tubman

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 1869 Tubman met Nelson Davis, a man who had looked for shelter in her home. He had been a slave in North Carolina and served as a soldier in the Civil War. Davis was a brick maker. Tubman and Davis married on March 18, 1869 at the Presbyterian Church in Auburn.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
After war broke out, Harriet Tubman went South to assist and work with "contrabands" -- escaped slaves who were attached to the Union Army. She also briefly went to Florida on a similar mission.

In 1862, Governor Andrew of Massachusetts arranged for Tubman to go to Beaufort, South Carolina, as a nurse and teacher to the Gullah people of the Sea Islands who had been left behind by their owners when they fled the advance of the Union Army, which remained in control of the islands.

The next year, the Union Army asked Tubman to organize a network of scouts -- and spies -- among the black men of the area. She not only organized a sophisticated information-gathering operation, she led several forays herself in pursuit of information. Not so incidentally, another purpose of these forays was to persuade slaves to leave their masters, many to join the regiments of black soldiers. Her years as "Moses" and her ability to move about secretly were excellent background for this new assignment.

In July of 1863, Harriet Tubman led troops under the command of Colonel James Montgomery in the Combahee River expedition, disrupting Southern supply lines by destroying bridges and railroads. The mission also freed more than 750 slaves. Tubman is credited not only with significant leadership responsibilities for the mission itself, but with singing to calm the slaves and keep the situation in hand.

Tubman came under Confederate fire on this mission. General Saxton, who reported the raid to Secretary of War Stanton, said "This is the only military command in American history wherein a woman, black or white, led the raid and under whose inspiration it was originated and conducted." Tubman reported later that most of the freed slaves joined "the colored regiment."

Tubman was also present for the defeat of the 54th Massachusetts, the black unit led by Robert Gould Shaw.

Catherine Clinton, in Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War, suggests that Harriet Tubman may have been allowed to go beyond women's traditional boundaries more than most women, because of her race. (Clinton, p. 94)

Tubman believed that she was in the employ of the U.S. Army. When she received her first paycheck, she spent it to build a place where freed black women could earn a living doing laundry for the soldiers. But then she wasn't paid regularly again, and wasn't given the military rations she believed she was entitled to. She was paid only a total of $200 in three years of service. She supported herself and her work by selling baked goods and root beer which she made after she completed her regular work duties.

After the war was over, Tubman was never paid her back military pay. In addition, when she applied for a pension -- with the support of Secretary of State William Seward, Colonel T. W. Higginson, and General Rufus -- her application was denied. Harriet Tubman did eventually receive a pension -- but as the widow of a soldier, her second husband.
Next: 4: Later Years of Activism and Reform
Harriet Tubman Biography: From Slavery to Freedom

1. Harriet Tubman's Life in Slavery

2. Harriet Tubman as Underground Railroad Conductor, Abolitionist, Women's Rights Advocate

3. Harriet Tubman's Civil War Service: Nurse, Scout, Spy

4. Harriet Tubman's Later Years of Activism and Reform

More About Harriet Tubman:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Harriet Tubman: Nurse, Scout and Spy in the Civil War

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After war broke out, Harriet Tubman went South to assist and work with "contrabands" -- escaped slaves who were attached to the Union Army. She also briefly went to Florida on a similar mission.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
During the Civil War, Tubman worked for the Union army as a nurse, a cook, and a spy. Her experience leading slaves along the Underground Railroad was especially helpful because she knew the land well. She recruited a group of former slaves to hunt for rebel camps and report on the movement of the Confederate troops.

# data[].attributes.body
Harriet Tubman was a Nurse, Scout and a Spy during the war

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
After war broke out, Harriet Tubman went South to assist and work with "contrabands" -- escaped slaves who were attached to the Union Army. She also briefly went to Florida on a similar mission.

In 1862, Governor Andrew of Massachusetts arranged for Tubman to go to Beaufort, South Carolina, as a nurse and teacher to the Gullah people of the Sea Islands who had been left behind by their owners when they fled the advance of the Union Army, which remained in control of the islands.

The next year, the Union Army asked Tubman to organize a network of scouts -- and spies -- among the black men of the area. She not only organized a sophisticated information-gathering operation, she led several forays herself in pursuit of information. Not so incidentally, another purpose of these forays was to persuade slaves to leave their masters, many to join the regiments of black soldiers. Her years as "Moses" and her ability to move about secretly were excellent background for this new assignment.

In July of 1863, Harriet Tubman led troops under the command of Colonel James Montgomery in the Combahee River expedition, disrupting Southern supply lines by destroying bridges and railroads. The mission also freed more than 750 slaves. Tubman is credited not only with significant leadership responsibilities for the mission itself, but with singing to calm the slaves and keep the situation in hand.

Tubman came under Confederate fire on this mission. General Saxton, who reported the raid to Secretary of War Stanton, said "This is the only military command in American history wherein a woman, black or white, led the raid and under whose inspiration it was originated and conducted." Tubman reported later that most of the freed slaves joined "the colored regiment."

Tubman was also present for the defeat of the 54th Massachusetts, the black unit led by Robert Gould Shaw.

Catherine Clinton, in Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War, suggests that Harriet Tubman may have been allowed to go beyond women's traditional boundaries more than most women, because of her race. (Clinton, p. 94)

Tubman believed that she was in the employ of the U.S. Army. When she received her first paycheck, she spent it to build a place where freed black women could earn a living doing laundry for the soldiers. But then she wasn't paid regularly again, and wasn't given the military rations she believed she was entitled to. She was paid only a total of $200 in three years of service. She supported herself and her work by selling baked goods and root beer which she made after she completed her regular work duties.

After the war was over, Tubman was never paid her back military pay. In addition, when she applied for a pension -- with the support of Secretary of State William Seward, Colonel T. W. Higginson, and General Rufus -- her application was denied. Harriet Tubman did eventually receive a pension -- but as the widow of a soldier, her second husband.
Next: 4: Later Years of Activism and Reform
Harriet Tubman Biography: From Slavery to Freedom

1. Harriet Tubman's Life in Slavery

2. Harriet Tubman as Underground Railroad Conductor, Abolitionist, Women's Rights Advocate

3. Harriet Tubman's Civil War Service: Nurse, Scout, Spy

4. Harriet Tubman's Later Years of Activism and Reform

More About Harriet Tubman:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Harriet Tubman: Nurse, Scout and Spy in the Civil War

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After war broke out, Harriet Tubman went South to assist and work with "contrabands" -- escaped slaves who were attached to the Union Army. She also briefly went to Florida on a similar mission.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Though best known for conducting enslaved members of her family and many other slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman also aided the cause of liberty by becoming a spy for the Union during the Civil War.

A particular set of skills

In her years of guiding people away from slavery on the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman had to arrange clandestine meetings, scout routes without drawing attention to herself and think on her feet. And though she was illiterate, she'd learned to keep track of complex amounts of information. These were all skills that any aspiring spy would do well to acquire.

A difficult start

In the spring of 1862, Tubman traveled to a Union camp in South Carolina. She was ostensibly there to assist former slaves who'd taken refuge with Union troops, but her Underground Railroad work made it likely she also intended to serve as a spy.

Unfortunately, Tubman wasn't able to immediately start gathering intelligence. One problem was that, being from Maryland, she had no local knowledge to draw on. And the liberated people from the area mostly spoke Gullah (a patois combining English and African languages), which made communication difficult. Harriet would later remark, "They laughed when they heard me talk, and I could not understand them, no how."

Building a spy ring

Tubman took steps to bridge the distance between herself and the newly freed locals. Because they resented the fact that she received army rations while they had no such support, she gave hers up. To make ends meet, she made pies and root beer to sell to soldiers, and operated a washing house; she hired some former slaves to help her do laundry and distribute her wares.

Tubman ended up assembling a group of trusted scouts to map territory and waterways; she also did some scouting herself. Having received $100 in Secret Service funds in January 1863, Tubman was also able to pay those who offered useful information, such as the location of Confederate troops or ordnance.

Information in action

In June 1863, Union boats carrying black troops journeyed on the Combahee River into Confederate territory. The usefulness of Tubman's information was demonstrated when the ships proceeded unharmed because they knew where Confederate mines had been submerged. Tubman oversaw the expedition alongside a colonel she trusted, making her the first and only woman to organize and lead a military operation during the Civil War.

During the raid, Union soldiers gathered supplies and destroyed Confederate property. In addition, Tubman had told local slaves that these Union boats could carry them to freedom. When signaled, hundreds came rushing to be rescued; more than 700 people would be freed (approximately 100 would go on to enlist in the Union army).

Espionage success

The Combahee Raid overwhelmed the Confederates thanks in large part to Tubman's espionage work, as one of their reports would concede: "The enemy seems to have been well posted as to the character and capacity of our troops and their small chance of encountering opposition, and to have been well guided by persons thoroughly acquainted with the river and country."

A Wisconsin paper wrote about the success of the expedition, noting that a black woman had overseen the operation, but didn't name Tubman. In July 1863, a Boston anti-slavery publication did credit Tubman by name.

Her work continued

Tubman went on other expeditions, though few details are known about these, and continued to gather information for the Union. In 1864, a soldier noted that one general was reluctant to let Tubman leave South Carolina because he felt "her services are too valuable to lose," as she was "able to get more intelligence than anybody else" from newly liberated people.

Limited recognition

Tubman was only paid $200 during the war. She did get a small pension because her husband had been a Civil War veteran; this was later supplemented due to her service as a nurse during the conflict. However, she was never paid all the benefits she was owed.

It wasn't until 2003, after students told then New York Senator Hillary Clinton about Tubman's missing remuneration, that Congress provided $11,750 - the amount Tubman should have been given, adjusted for inflation - to the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn, New York.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Harriet Tubman: Her Service as a Union Spy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Though best known for conducting enslaved members of her family and many other slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman also aided the cause of liberty by becoming a spy for the Union during the Civil War.

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/tubman/aa_tubman_youth_1.html

# data[].attributes.body
During the Civil War Harriet Tubman worked as a cook, nurse and a spy while traveling to Beaufort

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Harriet Tubman came to Beaufort during the Civil War On November 7, 1861 a Federal fleet commanded by Commodore Samuel Francis DuPont, with a force of 12,0

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
During the Civil War, Tubman worked for the Union army as a nurse, a cook, and a spy. Her experience leading slaves along the Underground Railroad was especially helpful because she knew the land well. She recruited a group of former slaves to hunt for rebel camps and report on the movement of the Confederate troops.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
During the Civil War, Tubman worked for the Union army as a nurse, a cook, and a spy. Her experience leading slaves along the Underground Railroad was especially helpful because she knew the land well. She recruited a group of former slaves to hunt for rebel camps and report on the movement of the Confederate troops.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
After war broke out, Harriet Tubman went South to assist and work with "contrabands" -- escaped slaves who were attached to the Union Army. She also briefly went to Florida on a similar mission.

In 1862, Governor Andrew of Massachusetts arranged for Tubman to go to Beaufort, South Carolina, as a nurse and teacher to the Gullah people of the Sea Islands who had been left behind by their owners when they fled the advance of the Union Army, which remained in control of the islands.

The next year, the Union Army asked Tubman to organize a network of scouts -- and spies -- among the black men of the area. She not only organized a sophisticated information-gathering operation, she led several forays herself in pursuit of information. Not so incidentally, another purpose of these forays was to persuade slaves to leave their masters, many to join the regiments of black soldiers. Her years as "Moses" and her ability to move about secretly were excellent background for this new assignment.

In July of 1863, Harriet Tubman led troops under the command of Colonel James Montgomery in the Combahee River expedition, disrupting Southern supply lines by destroying bridges and railroads. The mission also freed more than 750 slaves. Tubman is credited not only with significant leadership responsibilities for the mission itself, but with singing to calm the slaves and keep the situation in hand.

Tubman came under Confederate fire on this mission. General Saxton, who reported the raid to Secretary of War Stanton, said "This is the only military command in American history wherein a woman, black or white, led the raid and under whose inspiration it was originated and conducted." Tubman reported later that most of the freed slaves joined "the colored regiment."

Tubman was also present for the defeat of the 54th Massachusetts, the black unit led by Robert Gould Shaw.

Catherine Clinton, in Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War, suggests that Harriet Tubman may have been allowed to go beyond women's traditional boundaries more than most women, because of her race. (Clinton, p. 94)

Tubman believed that she was in the employ of the U.S. Army. When she received her first paycheck, she spent it to build a place where freed black women could earn a living doing laundry for the soldiers. But then she wasn't paid regularly again, and wasn't given the military rations she believed she was entitled to. She was paid only a total of $200 in three years of service. She supported herself and her work by selling baked goods and root beer which she made after she completed her regular work duties.

After the war was over, Tubman was never paid her back military pay. In addition, when she applied for a pension -- with the support of Secretary of State William Seward, Colonel T. W. Higginson, and General Rufus -- her application was denied. Harriet Tubman did eventually receive a pension -- but as the widow of a soldier, her second husband.
Next: 4: Later Years of Activism and Reform
Harriet Tubman Biography: From Slavery to Freedom

1. Harriet Tubman's Life in Slavery

2. Harriet Tubman as Underground Railroad Conductor, Abolitionist, Women's Rights Advocate

3. Harriet Tubman's Civil War Service: Nurse, Scout, Spy

4. Harriet Tubman's Later Years of Activism and Reform

More About Harriet Tubman:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Harriet Tubman: Nurse, Scout and Spy in the Civil War

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After war broke out, Harriet Tubman went South to assist and work with "contrabands" -- escaped slaves who were attached to the Union Army. She also briefly went to Florida on a similar mission.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, c. March 1822 - March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist. After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known collectively as the Underground Railroad. During the American Civil War, she served as an armed scout and spy for the Union Army. In her later years, Tubman was an activist in the movement for women's suffrage.

Born into slavery in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten and whipped by enslavers as a child. Early in life, she suffered a traumatic head wound when an irate overseer threw a heavy metal weight, intending to hit another slave, but hit her instead. The injury caused dizziness, pain, and spells of hypersomnia, which occurred throughout her life. After her injury, Tubman began experiencing strange visions and vivid dreams, which she ascribed to premonitions from God. These experiences, combined with her Methodist upbringing, led her to become devoutly religious.

In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, only to return to Maryland to rescue her family soon after. Slowly, one group at a time, she brought relatives with her out of the state, and eventually guided dozens of other enslaved people to freedom. Traveling by night and in extreme secrecy, Tubman (or " Moses", as she was called) "never lost a passenger". After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed, she helped guide escapees farther north into British North America (Canada), and helped newly freed people find work. Tubman met John Brown in 1858, and helped him plan and recruit supporters for his 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry.

When the Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. For her guidance of the raid at Combahee Ferry, which liberated more than 700 enslaved people, she is widely credited as first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war. After the war, she retired to the family home on property she had purchased in 1859 in Auburn, New York, where she cared for her aging parents. She was active in the women's suffrage movement until illness overtook her, and she had to be admitted to a home for elderly African Americans that she had helped to establish years earlier. She became an icon of courage and freedom.

Birth and family

Map of key locations in Tubman's life

Tubman was born Araminta "Minty" Ross to enslaved parents, Harriet ("Rit") Green and Ben Ross. Rit was enslaved by Mary Pattison Brodess (and later her son Edward). Ben was enslaved by Anthony Thompson, who became Mary Brodess's second husband, and who ran a large plantation near the Blackwater River in the Madison area of Dorchester County, Maryland.

As with many enslaved people in the United States, neither the exact year nor place of Tubman's birth is known. Tubman reported the year of her birth as 1825, while her death certificate lists 1815 and her gravestone lists 1820. Historian Kate Larson's 2004 biography of Tubman records the year as 1822, based on a midwife payment and several other historical documents, including her runaway advertisement. Based on Larson's work, more recent biographies have accepted March 1822 as the most likely timing of Tubman's birth.

Tubman's maternal grandmother, Modesty, arrived in the U.S. on a slave ship from Africa; no information is available about her other ancestors. As a child, Tubman was told that she seemed like an Ashanti person because of her character traits, though no evidence has been found to confirm or deny this lineage. Her mother, Rit (who may have had a white father), was a cook for the Brodess family. Her father, Ben, was a skilled woodsman who managed the timber work on Thompson's plantation. They married around 1808 and, according to court records, had nine children together: Linah, Mariah Ritty, Soph, Robert, Minty (Harriet), Ben, Rachel, Henry, and Moses.

Rit struggled to keep her family together as slavery threatened to tear it apart. Edward Brodess sold three of her daughters (Linah, Mariah Ritty, and Soph), separating them from the family forever. When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, she hid him for a month, aided by other enslaved people and freedmen in the community. At one point she confronted Brodess about the sale. Finally, Brodess and "the Georgia man" came toward the slave quarters to seize the child, where Rit told them, "You are after my son; but the first man that comes into my house, I will split his head open." Brodess backed away and abandoned the sale. Tubman's biographers agree that stories told about this event within the family influenced her belief in the possibilities of resistance.

Tubman's mother was assigned to "the big house" and had scarce time for her own family; consequently, as a child Tubman took care of a younger brother and baby, as was typical in large families. When she was five or six years old, Brodess hired her out as a nursemaid to a woman named "Miss Susan". Tubman was ordered to care for the baby and rock the cradle as it slept; when the baby woke up and cried, Tubman was whipped. She later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life. She found ways to resist, such as running away for five days, wearing layers of clothing as protection against beatings, and fighting back.

Also in her childhood, Tubman was sent to work for a planter named James Cook. She had to check his muskrat traps in nearby marshes, even after contracting measles. She became so ill that Cook sent her back to Brodess, where her mother nursed her back to health. Brodess then hired her out again. She spoke later of her acute childhood homesickness, comparing herself to "the boy on the Swanee River", an allusion to Stephen Foster's song " Old Folks at Home". As she grew older and stronger, she was assigned to field and forest work, driving oxen, plowing, and hauling logs.

As an adolescent, Tubman suffered a severe head injury when an overseer threw a two-pound (1 kg) metal weight at another slave who was attempting to flee. The weight struck Tubman instead, which she said: "broke my skull". Bleeding and unconscious, she was returned to her enslaver's house and laid on the seat of a loom, where she remained without medical care for two days. After this incident, Tubman frequently experienced extremely painful headaches. She also began having seizures and would seemingly fall unconscious, although she claimed to be aware of her surroundings while appearing to be asleep. Larson suggests she may have had temporal lobe epilepsy, possibly as a result of brain injury; Clinton suggests her condition may have been narcolepsy or cataplexy. A definitive diagnosis is not possible due to lack of contemporary medical evidence, but this condition remained with her for the rest of her life.

After her injury, Tubman began experiencing visions and vivid dreams, which she interpreted as revelations from God. These spiritual experiences had a profound effect on Tubman's personality and she acquired a passionate faith in God. Although Tubman was illiterate, she was told Bible stories by her mother and likely attended a Methodist church with her family. She rejected the teachings of white preachers who urged enslaved people to be passive and obedient victims to those who trafficked and enslaved them; instead she found guidance in the Old Testament tales of deliverance. This religious perspective informed her actions throughout her life.

Family and marriage

Anthony Thompson promised to manumit Tubman's father at age 45. After Thompson died, his son followed through with that promise in 1840. Tubman's father continued working as a timber estimator and foreman for the Thompson family. Later in the 1840s, Tubman paid a white attorney five dollars (equivalent to $160 in 2022) to investigate the legal status of her mother, Rit. The lawyer discovered that Atthow Pattison, the grandfather of Mary Brodess, indicated in his will that Rit and any of her children would be manumitted at age 45, and that any children born after she reached age 45 would be freeborn. The Pattison and Brodess families ignored this stipulation when they inherited the enslaved family, but taking legal action to enforce it was an impossible task for Tubman.

Around 1844, she married a free black man named John Tubman. Although little is known about him or their time together, the union was complicated because of her enslaved status. The mother's status dictated that of children, and any children born to Harriet and John would be enslaved. Such blended marriages - free people of color marrying enslaved people - were not uncommon on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where by this time, half the black population was free. Most African-American families had both free and enslaved members. Larson suggests that they might have planned to buy Tubman's freedom.

Tubman changed her name from Araminta to Harriet soon after her marriage, though the exact timing is unclear. Larson suggests this happened right after the wedding, and Clinton suggests that it coincided with Tubman's plans to escape from slavery. She adopted her mother's name, possibly as part of a religious conversion, or to honor another relative.

Escape from slavery

Notice offering a reward of US$100 (equivalent to $3,520 in 2022) for the capture and return of "Minty" (Harriet Tubman) and her brothers Henry and Ben

In 1849, Tubman became ill again, which diminished her value to slave traders. Edward Brodess tried to sell her, but could not find a buyer. Angry at him for trying to sell her and for continuing to enslave her relatives, Tubman began to pray for God to make Brodess change his ways. She said later: "I prayed all night long for my master till the first of March; and all the time he was bringing people to look at me, and trying to sell me." When it appeared as though a sale was being concluded, Tubman changed her prayer: "First of March I began to pray, 'Oh Lord, if you ain't never going to change that man's heart, kill him, Lord, and take him out of the way'." A week later, Brodess died, and Tubman expressed regret for her earlier sentiments.

As in many estate settlements, Brodess's death increased the likelihood that Tubman would be sold and her family broken apart. His widow, Eliza, began working to sell the family's enslaved people. Tubman refused to wait for the Brodess family to decide her fate, despite her husband's efforts to dissuade her. "[T]here was one of two things I had a right to", she explained later, "liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other".

Tubman and her brothers, Ben and Henry, escaped from slavery on September 17, 1849. Tubman had been hired out to Anthony Thompson (the son of her father's former owner), who owned a large plantation in an area called Poplar Neck in neighboring Caroline County; it is likely her brothers labored for Thompson as well. Because they were hired out, Eliza Brodess probably did not recognize their absence as an escape attempt for some time. Two weeks later, she posted a runaway notice in the Cambridge Democrat, offering a reward of up to US$100 each (equivalent to $3,520 in 2022) for their capture and return to slavery. Once they had left, Tubman's brothers had second thoughts. Ben may have regretted leaving his wife and children. The two men went back, forcing Tubman to return with them.

Sometime in October or November, Tubman escaped again, this time without her brothers. Before leaving she sang a farewell song to hint at her intentions, which she hoped would be understood by Mary, a trusted fellow slave: "I'll meet you in the morning", she intoned, "I'm bound for the promised land." While her exact route is unknown, Tubman made use of the network known as the Underground Railroad. This informal system was composed of free and enslaved black people, white abolitionists, and other activists. Most prominent among the latter in Maryland at the time were Quakers (members of the Religious Society of Friends). The Preston area near Poplar Neck contained a substantial Quaker community and was probably an important first stop during Tubman's escape. From there, she probably took a common route for people fleeing slavery - northeast along the Choptank River, through Delaware, and then north into Pennsylvania. A journey of nearly 90 miles (145 km) by foot would have taken between five days and three weeks.

Tubman had to travel by night, guided by the North Star and trying to avoid slave catchers eager to collect rewards for fugitive slaves. The "conductors" in the Underground Railroad used deceptions for protection. At an early stop, the lady of the house instructed Tubman to sweep the yard so as to seem to be working for the family. When night fell, the family hid her in a cart and took her to the next friendly house. Given her familiarity with the woods and marshes of the region, Tubman likely hid in these locales during the day. The particulars of her first journey are unknown; because other escapees from slavery used the routes, Tubman did not discuss them until later in life. She crossed into Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe, and recalled the experience years later:

When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.

Nicknamed "Moses"

Tubman sitting (1868 or 1869)

After reaching Philadelphia, Tubman thought of her family. "I was a stranger in a strange land," she said later. "[M]y father, my mother, my brothers, and sisters, and friends were [in Maryland]. But I was free, and they should be free." While Tubman saved money from working odd jobs in Philadelphia and Cape May, New Jersey, the U.S. Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which forced law enforcement officials to assist in the capture of escaped slaves - even in states that had outlawed slavery - and heavily punished abetting escape. The law increased risks for those who had escaped slavery, more of whom therefore sought refuge in Southern Ontario, where slavery had been abolished. Racial tensions were also increasing in Philadelphia as poor Irish immigrants competed with free blacks for work.

In December 1850, Tubman was warned that her niece Kessiah and Kessiah's children would soon be sold in Cambridge. Tubman went to Baltimore, where her brother-in-law Tom Tubman hid her until the sale. Kessiah's husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife. While the auctioneer stepped away to have lunch, John, Kessiah and their children escaped to a nearby safe house. When night fell, Bowley sailed the family on a log canoe 60 miles (97 kilometres) to Baltimore, where they met with Tubman, who brought the family to Philadelphia.

Early next year she returned to Maryland to guide away other family members. During her second trip, she recovered her youngest brother, Moses, along with two other men. Word of her exploits had encouraged her family, and she became more confident with each trip to Maryland.

In late 1851, Tubman returned to Dorchester County for the first time since her escape, this time to find her husband John. When she arrived there, she learned that John had married another woman named Caroline. Tubman sent word that he should join her, but he insisted that he was happy where he was. Suppressing her anger, she found some enslaved people who wanted to escape and led them to Philadelphia.

Frederick Douglass worked for slavery's abolition alongside Tubman.

Because the Fugitive Slave Law had made the northern United States a more dangerous place for those escaping slavery to remain, many escapees began migrating to Southern Ontario. In December 1851, Tubman guided an unidentified group of 11 escapees, possibly including the Bowleys and several others she had helped rescue earlier, northward. There is evidence to suggest that Tubman and her group stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass. Douglass and Tubman admired one another greatly as they both struggled against slavery. Years later he contrasted his efforts with hers, writing:

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.

From 1851 to 1862, Tubman returned repeatedly to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, rescuing some 70 slaves in about 13 expeditions, including her other brothers, Henry, Ben, and Robert, their wives and some of their children. She also provided specific instructions to 50 to 60 additional enslaved people who escaped. Because of her efforts, she was nicknamed "Moses", alluding to the biblical prophet who led the Hebrews to freedom from Egypt. One of her last missions into Maryland was to retrieve her aging parents. Her father purchased her mother from Eliza Brodess in 1855, but even when they were both free, the area was hostile. In 1857, Tubman received word that her father was at risk of arrest for harboring a group of eight people escaping slavery. She led her parents north to St. Catharines, Canada, where a community of formerly enslaved people, including other relatives and friends of Tubman, had gathered.

Routes and methods

Tubman's dangerous work required ingenuity. She usually worked during winter, when long nights and cold weather minimized the chance of being seen. She would start the escapes on Saturday evenings, since newspapers would not print runaway notices until Monday morning. She used subterfuges to avoid detection. Tubman once disguised herself with a bonnet and carried two live chickens to give the appearance of running errands. Suddenly finding herself walking toward a former enslaver, she yanked the strings holding the birds' legs, and their agitation allowed her to avoid eye contact. Later she recognized a fellow train passenger as a former enslaver; she snatched a nearby newspaper and pretended to read. Tubman was known to be illiterate, and the man ignored her.

In an 1897 interview with historian Wilbur Siebert, Tubman named some people who helped her and places she stayed along the Underground Railroad. She stayed with Sam Green, a free black minister living in East New Market, Maryland; she also hid near her parents' home at Poplar Neck. She would travel from there northeast to Sandtown and Willow Grove, Delaware, and to the Camden area where free black agents, William and Nat Brinkley and Abraham Gibbs, guided her north past Dover, Smyrna, and Blackbird, where other agents would take her across the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal to New Castle and Wilmington. In Wilmington, Quaker Thomas Garrett would secure transportation to William Still's office or the homes of other Underground Railroad operators in the greater Philadelphia area. Still is credited with helping hundreds escape to safer places in New York, New England, and Southern Ontario.

Tubman's faith was another important resource as she ventured repeatedly into Maryland. The visions from her childhood head injury continued, and she saw them as divine premonitions. She spoke of "consulting with God", and trusted that He would keep her safe. Garrett once said of her, "I never met with any person of any color who had more confidence in the voice of God, as spoken direct to her soul." Her faith also provided immediate assistance. She used spirituals as coded messages, warning fellow travelers of danger or to signal a clear path. She sang versions of " Go Down Moses" and changed the lyrics to indicate that it was either safe or too dangerous to proceed. As she led escapees across the border, she would call out, "Glory to God and Jesus, too. One more soul is safe!"

She carried a revolver as protection from slave catchers and their dogs. Tubman also threatened to shoot anyone who tried to turn back since that would risk the safety of the remaining group, as well as anyone who helped them on the way. Tubman spoke of one man who insisted he was going to go back to the plantation. She pointed the gun at his head and said, "Go on or die." Several days later, the man who wavered crossed into Canada with the rest of the group.

By the late 1850s, Eastern Shore slaveholders were holding public meetings about the large number of escapes in the area; they cast suspicion on free blacks and white abolitionists. They did not know that "Minty", the petite, disabled woman who had run away years before, was responsible for freeing so many enslaved people. Though a popular legend persists about a reward of $40,000 (equivalent to $1,303,000 in 2022) for Tubman's capture, this is a manufactured figure: in 1867, in support of Tubman's claim for a military pension, an abolitionist named Sallie Holley wrote that $40,000 "was not too great a reward for Maryland slaveholders to offer for her". If it were real, such a high reward would have garnered national attention. A reward of $12,000 has also been claimed, though no documentation has been found for either figure.

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."

John Brown and Harpers Ferry

Tubman helped John Brown plan and recruit for the raid at Harpers Ferry.

In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, an insurgent who advocated the use of violence to destroy slavery in the United States. Although she was not previously involved in armed insurrection, she agreed with his course of direct action and supported his goals. Like Tubman, he spoke of being called by God, and trusted the divine to protect him from the wrath of slavers. She, meanwhile, claimed to have had a prophetic vision of meeting Brown before their encounter.

Thus, as he began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders, Brown was joined by "General Tubman", as he called her. Her knowledge of support networks and resources in the border states of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware was invaluable to Brown and his planners. Although other abolitionists like Douglass did not endorse his tactics, Brown dreamed of fighting to create a new state for those freed from slavery, and made preparations for military action. He believed that after he began the first battle, the enslaved would rise up and carry out a rebellion across the slave states. He asked Tubman to gather former slaves then living in Southern Ontario who might be willing to join his fighting force, which she did.

On May 8, 1858, Brown held a meeting in Chatham, Canada, where he unveiled his plan for a raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia. When word of the plan was leaked to the government, Brown put the scheme on hold and began raising funds for its eventual resumption. Tubman aided him in this effort and with more detailed plans for the assault.

Tubman was busy during this time, giving talks to abolitionist audiences and tending to her relatives. In early October 1859, as Brown and his men prepared to launch the attack, Tubman was ill in New Bedford, Massachusetts. It is not known whether she still intended to join Brown's raid or if she had become skeptical of the plan, but when the raid on Harpers Ferry took place on October 16, Tubman had recovered from her illness and was in New York City.

The raid failed; Brown was convicted of treason, murder, and inciting a rebellion, and he was hanged on December 2. His actions were seen by many abolitionists as a symbol of proud resistance, carried out by a noble martyr. Tubman herself was effusive with praise. She later told a friend: "[H]e done more in dying, than 100 men would in living."

Auburn and Margaret

In early 1859, Frances Adeline Seward, the wife of abolitionist Republican U.S. Senator William H. Seward, sold Tubman a seven-acre (2.8 ha) farm in Fleming, New York, for $1,200 (equivalent to $42,200 in 2022). The adjacent city of Auburn was a hotbed of antislavery activism, and Tubman took the opportunity to move her parents from Canada back to the U.S. Her farmstead became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. For years, she took in relatives and boarders, offering a safe place for black Americans seeking a better life in the north.

Shortly after acquiring the farm, Tubman went back to Maryland and returned with an eight-year-old light-skinned black girl named Margaret, who Tubman said was her niece. She also indicated the girl's parents were free blacks. According to Margaret's daughter Alice, Margaret later described her childhood home as prosperous and said that she left behind a twin brother. These descriptions conflict with what is known about the families of Tubman's siblings, which created uncertainty among historians about the relationship and Tubman's motivations. Alice called Tubman's actions a "kidnapping", saying, "she had taken the child from a sheltered good home to a place where there was nobody to care for her". After speculating in her 2004 biography of Tubman that Margaret might have been Tubman's own secret daughter, Kate Larson found evidence that Margaret was the daughter of Isaac and Mary Woolford, a free black couple who were neighbors of Tubman's parents in Maryland and who had twins named James and Margaret.

In November 1860, Tubman conducted her last rescue mission. Throughout the 1850s, Tubman had been unable to effect the escape of her sister Rachel, and Rachel's two children Ben and Angerine. Upon returning to Dorchester County, Tubman discovered that Rachel had died, and the children could be rescued only if she could pay a bribe of $30 (equivalent to $980 in 2022). She did not have the money, so the children remained enslaved. Their fates remain unknown. Never one to waste a trip, Tubman gathered another group, including the Ennalls family, ready and willing to take the risks of the journey north. It took them weeks to get away safely because of slave catchers forcing them to hide out longer than expected. The weather was unseasonably cold and they had little food. The Ennalls' infant child was quieted with paregoric while slave patrols rode by. They safely reached the home of David and Martha Wright in Auburn on December 28, 1860.

American Civil War

A woodcut of Tubman in her Civil War clothing

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Tubman had a vision that the war would soon lead to the abolition of slavery. More immediately, enslaved people near Union positions began began escaping in large numbers. General Benjamin Butler declared these escapees to be " contraband" - property seized by northern forces - and put them to work, initially without pay, at Fort Monroe in Virginia. The number of "contrabands" encamped at Fort Monroe and other Union positions rapidly increased. In January 1862, Tubman volunteered to support the Union cause and began helping refugees in the camps, particularly in Port Royal, South Carolina.

In South Carolina, Tubman met General David Hunter, a strong supporter of abolition. He declared all of the "contrabands" in the Port Royal district free, and began gathering formerly enslaved people for a regiment of black soldiers. U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was not yet prepared to enforce emancipation on the southern states and reprimanded Hunter for his actions. Tubman condemned Lincoln's response and his general unwillingness to consider ending slavery in the U.S., for both moral and practical reasons:

God won't let master Lincoln beat the South till he does the right thing. Master Lincoln, he's a great man, and I am a poor negro; but the negro can tell master Lincoln how to save the money and the young men. He can do it by setting the negro free.

Tubman served as a nurse in Port Royal, preparing remedies from local plants and aiding soldiers suffering from dysentery and infectious diseases. At first, she received government rations for her work, but to dispel a perception that she was getting special treatment, she gave up her right to these supplies and made money selling pies and root beer, which she made in the evenings.

Scouting and the Combahee River Raid

When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Tubman considered it a positive but incomplete step toward the goal of liberating all black people from slavery. She turned her own efforts towards more direct actions to defeat the Confederacy. In early 1863, Tubman used her knowledge of covert travel and subterfuge to lead a band of scouts through the land around Port Royal. 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.

Illustration of the Combahee River Raid from Harper's Weekly

Later that year, Tubman's intelligence gathering played a key role in the raid at Combahee Ferry. She guided three steamboats with black soldiers under Montgomery's command past mines on the Combahee River to assault several plantations. Once ashore, the Union troops set fire to the plantations, destroying infrastructure and seizing thousands of dollars worth of food and supplies. Forewarned of the raid by Tubman's spy network, enslaved people throughout the area heard steamboats' whistles and understood that they were being liberated. Tubman watched as those fleeing slavery stampeded toward the boats; she later described 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. Armed overseers tried to stop the mass escape, but their efforts were nearly useless in the tumult. As Confederate troops raced to the scene, the steamboats took off toward Beaufort with more than 750 formerly enslaved people.

Newspapers heralded Tubman's "patriotism, sagacity, energy, [and] ability" in the raid, and she was praised for her recruiting efforts - more than 100 of the newly liberated men joined the Union army. Reports about her involvement in the raid led to a revival of the "General Tubman" appellation previously given to her by John Brown. Although her contributions have sometimes been exaggerated, her role in the raid led to her being widely credited as the first woman to lead U.S. troops in an armed assault.

In July 1863, Tubman worked with Colonel Robert Gould Shaw at the assault on Fort Wagner, reportedly serving him his last meal. She later described the battle to historian Albert Bushnell Hart:

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.

For two more years, Tubman worked for the Union forces, tending to newly liberated people, scouting into Confederate territory, and nursing wounded soldiers in Virginia, a task she continued for several months after the Confederacy surrendered in April 1865.

Formal portrait of Tubman taken after the Civil War and circulated as a carte de visite

Tubman had received little pay for her Union military service. She was not a regular soldier and was only occasionally compensated for her work as a spy and scout; her work as a nurse was entirely unpaid. For over three years of service, she received a total of $200 (equivalent to $3,820 in 2022). Her unofficial status caused great difficulty in documenting her service, and the U.S. government was slow in recognizing its debt to her. Meanwhile, her humanitarian work for her family and the formerly enslaved kept her in a state of constant poverty.

When a promised appointment to an official military nursing position fell through in July 1865, Tubman decided to return to her home in New York. During a train ride to New York in October 1865, Tubman traveled on a half-fare ticket provided to her because of her service. A conductor told her to move from a regular passenger car into the less-desirable smoking car. When she refused, he cursed at her and grabbed her. She resisted, and he summoned additional men for help. They muscled her into the smoking car, injuring her in the process. As these events transpired, white passengers cursed Tubman and told the conductor to kick her off the train.

Tubman spent her remaining years in Auburn, tending to her family and other people in need. In addition to managing her farm, she took in boarders and worked various jobs to pay the bills and support her elderly parents. One of the people Tubman took in was a farmer named Nelson Davis. Born enslaved in North Carolina, he had served as a private in the 8th United States Colored Infantry Regiment from September 1863 to November 1865. He began working in Auburn as a bricklayer, and they soon fell in love. Though he was 22 years younger than she was, on March 18, 1869, they were married at the Central Presbyterian Church. They adopted a baby girl named Gertie in 1874.

Tubman in 1887 (far left), with her husband Davis (seated, with cane), their adopted daughter Gertie (beside Tubman), Lee Cheney, John "Pop" Alexander, Walter Green, "Blind Aunty" Sarah Parker, and her great-niece Dora Stewart at Tubman's home in Auburn, New York

Tubman's friends and supporters from the days of abolition, meanwhile, raised funds to support her. One admirer, Sarah Hopkins Bradford, wrote an authorized biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman. The 132-page volume was published in 1869 and brought Tubman some $1,200 in income (equivalent to $26,400 in 2022). Even with this assistance, paying off the mortgage on her farm in May 1873 exhausted Tubman's savings. That October, she fell prey to swindlers. Two black men claimed to know a former slave who had a trunk of gold coins smuggled out of South Carolina, which they would sell for cash at less than half the coins' value. She knew white people in the South had buried valuables when Union forces threatened the region, and black men were frequently assigned to digging duties, so the claim seemed plausible to her. She borrowed money from a wealthy friend and arranged to receive the gold late one night. Once the men had lured her into the woods, they knocked her out with chloroform and stole her purse. Tubman was found dazed and injured; the trunk was filled with rocks.

The crime brought new attention from local leaders to Tubman's precarious financial state and spurred renewed efforts to get compensation for her Civil War service. In 1874, Representatives Clinton D. MacDougall of New York and Gerry W. Hazelton of Wisconsin introduced a bill to pay Tubman a $2,000 (~$51,729 in 2022) lump sum "for services rendered by her to the Union Army as scout, nurse, and spy", but it was defeated in the Senate. In February 1880, Tubman's wood-framed house burned down, but with the help of her supporters it was quickly replaced with a new brick home.

Nelson Davis died of tuberculosis on October 14, 1888. The Dependent and Disability Pension Act of 1890 made Tubman eligible for a pension as his widow. After she documented her marriage and her husband's service record to the satisfaction of the Bureau of Pensions, in 1895 Tubman was granted a monthly widow's pension of $8 (equivalent to $281 in 2022), plus a lump sum of $500 to cover the five-year delay in approval. In December 1897, New York Congressman Sereno E. Payne introduced a bill to grant Tubman a soldier's monthly pension of $25 (~$879.00 in 2022). Although Congress received documents and letters to support Tubman's claims, some members objected to a woman being paid a full soldier's pension. In February 1899, Congress approved a compromise amount of $20 per (~$704.00 in 2022) month (the $8 from her widow's pension plus $12 for her service as a nurse), but did not acknowledge her as a scout and spy.

Suffragist activism

Tubman in 1911

In her later years, Tubman worked to promote the cause of women's suffrage. A white woman once asked Tubman whether she believed women ought to have the vote, and received the reply: "I suffered enough to believe it." Tubman began attending meetings of suffragist organizations, and was soon working alongside women such as Susan B. Anthony and Emily Howland.

Tubman traveled to New York, Boston and Washington, D.C. to speak in favor of women's voting rights. She described her actions during and after the Civil War, and used the sacrifices of countless women throughout modern history as evidence of women's equality to men. When the National Federation of Afro-American Women was founded in 1896, Tubman was the keynote speaker at its first meeting.

This wave of activism kindled a new wave of admiration for Tubman among the press in the United States. A publication called The Woman's Era launched a series of articles on "Eminent Women" with a profile of Tubman. An 1897 suffragist newspaper reported a series of receptions in Boston honoring Tubman and her lifetime of service to the nation. However, her endless contributions to others had left her in poverty, and she had to sell a cow to buy a train ticket to these celebrations.

Church, illness, and death

In the 1870s, Tubman became active in the Thompson Memorial African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church in Auburn. In 1895, she began discussions with AME Zion leaders and others to create a Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged that would care for "indigent colored people". Despite her financial limitations, in 1896 Tubman bid $1215 (~$42,739 in 2022) at auction for a 25-acre (10 ha) farm adjacent to the one she already owned, to use for the new facility. She designated one of the farm's buildings as its primary residence and named it "John Brown Hall" to honor her late abolitionist ally. However, raising funds for the project was difficult, and attempts to donate the property were complicated by the multiple mortgage loans used to pay for it. After Tubman almost lost the property due her financial difficulties, AME Zion agreed to take it over in 1903.

The home did not open for another five years, and Tubman was dismayed when the church ordered residents to pay a $100 entrance fee (equivalent to $3,260 in 2022). She said: "[T]hey make a rule that nobody should come in without they have a hundred dollars. Now I wanted to make a rule that nobody should come in unless they didn't have no money at all." She was frustrated by the new rule but was the guest of honor nonetheless when the home celebrated its opening on June 23, 1908.

As Tubman aged, her childhood head trauma continued to trouble her. Unable to sleep because of pain and "buzzing" in her head, in the late 1890s she asked a doctor at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to operate. In her words, he "sawed open my skull, and raised it up, and now it feels more comfortable". She reportedly received no anesthesia and instead bit down on a bullet, as she had seen Civil War soldiers do when their limbs were amputated.

By 1911, Tubman's body was so frail that she was admitted into the rest home named in her honor. A New York newspaper described her as "ill and penniless", prompting supporters to offer a new round of donations. Surrounded by friends and family members, she died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913. Just before she died, she quoted the Gospel of John to those in the room: "I go away to prepare a place for you." Tubman was buried with semi-military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

Tubman's great-niece, Eva Stewart Northrup, launching the SS Harriet Tubman

Widely known and well-respected while she was alive, Tubman became an American icon in the years after she died. By the 1980s, Tubman was one of American history's most famous figures. She inspired generations of African Americans struggling for equality and civil rights; she was praised by leaders across the political spectrum.

Parks, monuments and historical sites

National parks and national monuments related to Tubman in the United States are the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument and the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park, both in Maryland, and the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn. The Salem Chapel in St. Catharines, where Tubman worshipped, is a National Historic Site of Canada.

The city of Auburn has several historical sites related to Tubman, including her gravesite. Other state and local historical sites about Tubman include a state park and memorial garden in Maryland, and a museum in New Jersey.

Artistic portrayals

Tubman is the subject of many works of art. Musicians including Woody Guthrie, Wynton Marsalis, and Walter Robinson have written songs celebrating her. She is the subject of operas by Thea Musgrave, Nkeiru Okoye, and Hilda Paredes, as well as plays by Carolyn Gage and a collaboration of May Miller and Willis Richardson. Tubman is the focus of novels by Elizabeth Cobbs, Marcy Heidish, and Anne Parrish, and is a character in novels by Terry Bisson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and James McBride.

Since Tubman's life was first dramatized on television in a 1963 episode of the series The Great Adventure, she has been portrayed in TV productions such as The Good Lord Bird, , Underground, and A Woman Called Moses. Cynthia Erivo received an Academy Award nomination for portraying Tubman in the 2019 theatrical film .

Artists including Fern Cunningham, Jane DeDecker, Nina Cooke John, and Alison Saar have presented Tubman in sculptures. She has been drawn or painted by numerous artists, including Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas, William Johnson, Jacob Lawrence, and Faith Ringgold.

Other honors and commemorations

Official $20 bill prototype

In 1978, Tubman became the first African-American woman honored on a U.S. postage stamp; she appeared on a second stamp in 1995. Beginning in 2016, there have been plans to add a portrait of Tubman to the front of the twenty-dollar bill, moving the portrait of President Andrew Jackson, a slaveholder, to the back of the bill.

Dozens of schools, streets and highways, church groups, social organizations, and government agencies have been named after Tubman. In 1944, the United States Maritime Commission launched the SS Harriet Tubman, its first Liberty ship named for a black woman.

Historiography

Tubman hoped to become literate and write her own memoirs, but she never did. Instead, Sarah Hopkins Bradford combined Tubman's personal recollections, journalistic accounts, and letters from Tubman's friends and supporters to create Scenes from the Life of Harriet Tubman in 1868. Criticized by modern biographers for its artistic license and highly subjective point of view, the book nevertheless provides insight into Tubman's own view of her experiences. In 1886, Bradford released a re-written volume called Harriet, the Moses of her People. In both volumes Harriet Tubman is hailed as a latter-day Joan of Arc. The revision took a more moralistic and literary tone than the prior work, including changes of many event descriptions from first to third person. A final revision in 1901 added an appendix with more stories about Tubman's life.

The first full biography of Tubman to be published after Bradford's was Earl Conrad's Harriet Tubman (1943). Conrad experienced great difficulty in finding a publisher - the search took four years - and endured disdain and contempt for his efforts to construct a more objective, detailed account of Tubman's life for adults. Several highly dramatized versions of Tubman's life had been written for children, and many more came later, but Conrad wrote in an academic style. Though she was a popular historical figure, another book-length biography based on original scholarship did not appear for 60 years, when Jean Humez published a close reading of Tubman's life stories in 2003. Larson and Clinton both published their biographies soon after in 2004. Historian Milton Sernett's 2007 book Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory, and History discusses the major biographies of Tubman up to that time.

References

Clinton, Catherine (2004). Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom. New York: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 978-0-316-14492-6 - via Open Library.

"Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800-". Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

Franklin, Jonathan (March 13, 2023). "A Monument of Harriet Tubman Now Replaces a Statue of Christopher Columbus in Newark". . Archived from the original on June 15, 2023.

Gaige, Amity (August 23, 2013). "The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride". San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on July 25, 2019.

Gibson, Chantal N. & Silverman, Monique (2005). "Sur/Rendering Her Image: The Unknowable Harriet Tubman". Canadian Art Review. 30 (1): 25-38. JSTOR 42630711.

Hobson, Janell (2022). When God Lost Her Tongue: Historical Consciousness and the Black Feminist Imagination. Subversive Histories, Feminist Futures series. New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780429243554. ISBN 978-0-429-24355-4. S2CID 240990028.

Humez, Jean M. (Summer 1993). "In Search of Harriet Tubman's Spiritual Autobiography". NWSA Journal. 5 (2): 162-182. JSTOR 4316258.

Humez, Jean (2003). Harriet Tubman: The Life and Life Stories. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-19120-7 - via Open Library.

Kaufman, Rachel (May 13, 2018). "Pilot, Thinker, Soldier, Spy: The Epic Timeless Season Finale Twofer". Smithsonian Magazine. Archived from the original on October 17, 2020.

Larson, Kate Clifford (2004). Bound For the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 978-0-345-45627-4 - via Open Library.

Oertel, Kristen T. (2015). Harriet Tubman: Slavery, the Civil War, and Civil Rights in the Nineteenth-century America. Routledge Historical Americans series. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-94897-9.

Portelli, Alessandro (Fall 1988). "Fire on the Mountain". Review. Appalachian Journal. 16 (1): 87-90. JSTOR 40933404.

Roma, Catherine (2001). "Contemporary British Composers". In Pendle, Karin (ed.). Women and Music: A History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 227-251. ISBN 978-0-253-11503-4 - via Open Library.

Rosenberg, Amy S. (September 17, 2020). "The Harriet Tubman Museum in Cape May Marked Its Opening. Here's What's Inside, and Why It's in Cape May". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Archived from the original on September 21, 2020.

Sacks, Sam (May 17, 2019). "Fiction: Tales of History and Imagination". Books & Arts in Review. The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on July 25, 2019.

Vargas, Ángel (October 17, 2018). "La gesta de Harriet Tubman llega al Cervantino en forma de ópera" [The deeds of Harriet Tubman arrive at the Cervantino in the form of an opera]. (in Spanish). Archived from the original on April 17, 2021.

Further reading

External links

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, c. March 1822 - March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist. After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known collectively as the Underground Railroad.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We invite you and your family to participate in these activities, inspired by the collections, programs, and expertise of the Library of Congress.

Author Programs

Activity Kits

The activities below require just a few simple items you can find easily around the house and items from the Library's website. Kids are encouraged to use their creativity to enhance, adapt, or recreate anything we share. Check back often for new activities and opportunities with engage with us!

All Ages

Ages 7-10

Ages 10-12

Printables

More Online Resources for Kids and Families

Imagination Library

View bedtime stories from Goodnight with Dolly External and Imagination Library story times at the Library of Congress. Imagination Library is a 2014 Library of Congress Literacy Awards Program Best Practice Honoree.

Stay in Touch!

We'd love to hear from you!

Find activity ideas and connect with us on our blog for families, Minerva's Kaleidoscope.

Share your feedback on these resources or others you'd like to see at learn@loc.gov.

Connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, and sign up for email updates for new resources as they become available.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Resources for Family Engagement from the Library of Congress | Library of Congress

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We invite you and your family to participate in these activities, inspired by the collections, programs, and expertise of the Library of Congress.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We invite you and your family to participate in these activities, inspired by the collections, programs, and expertise of the Library of Congress.

Author Programs

Activity Kits

The activities below require just a few simple items you can find easily around the house and items from the Library's website. Kids are encouraged to use their creativity to enhance, adapt, or recreate anything we share. Check back often for new activities and opportunities with engage with us!

All Ages

Ages 7-10

Ages 10-12

Printables

More Online Resources for Kids and Families

Imagination Library

View bedtime stories from Goodnight with Dolly External and Imagination Library story times at the Library of Congress. Imagination Library is a 2014 Library of Congress Literacy Awards Program Best Practice Honoree.

Stay in Touch!

We'd love to hear from you!

Find activity ideas and connect with us on our blog for families, Minerva's Kaleidoscope.

Share your feedback on these resources or others you'd like to see at learn@loc.gov.

Connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, and sign up for email updates for new resources as they become available.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Resources for Family Engagement from the Library of Congress | Library of Congress

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We invite you and your family to participate in these activities, inspired by the collections, programs, and expertise of the Library of Congress.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
During the Civil War, Tubman worked for the Union army as a nurse, a cook, and a spy. Her experience leading slaves along the Underground Railroad was especially helpful because she knew the land well. She recruited a group of former slaves to hunt for rebel camps and report on the movement of the Confederate troops.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
After war broke out, Harriet Tubman went South to assist and work with "contrabands" -- escaped slaves who were attached to the Union Army. She also briefly went to Florida on a similar mission.

In 1862, Governor Andrew of Massachusetts arranged for Tubman to go to Beaufort, South Carolina, as a nurse and teacher to the Gullah people of the Sea Islands who had been left behind by their owners when they fled the advance of the Union Army, which remained in control of the islands.

The next year, the Union Army asked Tubman to organize a network of scouts -- and spies -- among the black men of the area. She not only organized a sophisticated information-gathering operation, she led several forays herself in pursuit of information. Not so incidentally, another purpose of these forays was to persuade slaves to leave their masters, many to join the regiments of black soldiers. Her years as "Moses" and her ability to move about secretly were excellent background for this new assignment.

In July of 1863, Harriet Tubman led troops under the command of Colonel James Montgomery in the Combahee River expedition, disrupting Southern supply lines by destroying bridges and railroads. The mission also freed more than 750 slaves. Tubman is credited not only with significant leadership responsibilities for the mission itself, but with singing to calm the slaves and keep the situation in hand.

Tubman came under Confederate fire on this mission. General Saxton, who reported the raid to Secretary of War Stanton, said "This is the only military command in American history wherein a woman, black or white, led the raid and under whose inspiration it was originated and conducted." Tubman reported later that most of the freed slaves joined "the colored regiment."

Tubman was also present for the defeat of the 54th Massachusetts, the black unit led by Robert Gould Shaw.

Catherine Clinton, in Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War, suggests that Harriet Tubman may have been allowed to go beyond women's traditional boundaries more than most women, because of her race. (Clinton, p. 94)

Tubman believed that she was in the employ of the U.S. Army. When she received her first paycheck, she spent it to build a place where freed black women could earn a living doing laundry for the soldiers. But then she wasn't paid regularly again, and wasn't given the military rations she believed she was entitled to. She was paid only a total of $200 in three years of service. She supported herself and her work by selling baked goods and root beer which she made after she completed her regular work duties.

After the war was over, Tubman was never paid her back military pay. In addition, when she applied for a pension -- with the support of Secretary of State William Seward, Colonel T. W. Higginson, and General Rufus -- her application was denied. Harriet Tubman did eventually receive a pension -- but as the widow of a soldier, her second husband.
Next: 4: Later Years of Activism and Reform
Harriet Tubman Biography: From Slavery to Freedom

1. Harriet Tubman's Life in Slavery

2. Harriet Tubman as Underground Railroad Conductor, Abolitionist, Women's Rights Advocate

3. Harriet Tubman's Civil War Service: Nurse, Scout, Spy

4. Harriet Tubman's Later Years of Activism and Reform

More About Harriet Tubman:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Harriet Tubman: Nurse, Scout and Spy in the Civil War

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After war broke out, Harriet Tubman went South to assist and work with "contrabands" -- escaped slaves who were attached to the Union Army. She also briefly went to Florida on a similar mission.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Who Was Harriet Tubman?

Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses. A leading abolitionist before the American Civil War, Tubman also helped the Union Army during the war, working as a spy among other roles.

After the Civil War ended, Tubman dedicated her life to helping impoverished former slaves and the elderly. In honor of her life and by popular demand, in 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill.

Early Life and Family

Tubman's date of birth is unknown, although it probably occurred between 1820 and 1825. She was one of nine children born between 1808 and 1832 to enslaved parents in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her mother, Harriet "Rit" Green, was owned by Mary Pattison Brodess. Her father, Ben Ross, who was owned by Anthony Thompson (Thompson and Brodess eventually married).

Originally named Araminta Harriet Ross, Tubman was nicknamed "Minty" by her parents. Araminta changed her name to Harriet around the time of her marriage, possibly to honor her mother.

Tubman's early life was full of hardship. Mary Brodess' son Edward sold three of Tubman's sisters to distant plantations, severing the family. When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, Rit successfully resisted the further fracturing of her family, setting a powerful example for her young daughter.

Physical violence was a part of daily life for Tubman and her family. The violence she suffered early in life caused permanent physical injuries. Tubman later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life.

The most severe injury occurred when Tubman was an adolescent. Sent to a dry-goods store for supplies, she encountered a slave who had left the fields without permission. The man's overseer demanded that Tubman help restrain the runaway. When Tubman refused, the overseer threw a two-pound weight that struck her in the head. Tubman endured seizures, severe headaches and narcoleptic episodes for the rest of her life. She also experienced intense dream states, which she classified as religious experiences.

The line between freedom and slavery was hazy for Tubman and her family. Tubman's father, Ben, was freed from slavery at the age of 45, as stipulated in the will of a previous owner. Nonetheless, Ben had few options but to continue working as a timber estimator and foreman for his former owners.

Although similar manumission stipulations applied to Rit and her children, the individuals who owned the family chose not to free them. Despite his free status, Ben had little power to challenge their decision.

Husbands and Children

In 1844, Harriet married a free black man named John Tubman. At the time around half of the African American people on the eastern shore of Maryland were free, and was not unusual for a family to include both free and enslaved people.

Little is known about John or his marriage to Harriet, including whether and how long they lived together. Any children they might have had would have been considered enslaved, since the mother's status dictated that of any offspring. John declined to make the voyage on the Underground Railroad with Harriet, preferring to stay in Maryland with a new wife.

In 1869, Tubman married a Civil War veteran named Nelson Davis. In 1874, the couple adopted a baby girl named Gertie.

The Underground Railroad

Between 1850 and 1860, Tubman made 19 trips from the South to the North following the network known as the Underground Railroad. She guided more than 300 people, including her parents and several siblings, from slavery to freedom, earning the nickname "Moses" for her leadership.

Tubman first encountered the Underground Railroad when she used it to escape slavery herself in 1849. Following a bout of illness and the death of her owner, Tubman decided to escape slavery in Maryland for Philadelphia. She feared that her family would be further severed and was concerned for her own fate as a sickly slave of low economic value.

Two of her brothers, Ben and Harry, accompanied her on September 17, 1849. However, after a notice was published in the Cambridge Democrat offering a $300 reward for the return of Araminta, Harry and Ben had second thoughts and returned to the plantation. Tubman had no plans to remain in bondage. Seeing her brothers safely home, she soon set off alone for Pennsylvania.

Making use of the Underground Railroad, Tubman traveled nearly 90 miles to Philadelphia. She crossed into the free state of Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe, and recalled later: "When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven."

Rather than remaining in the safety of the North, Tubman made it her mission to rescue her family and others living in slavery via the Underground Railroad. In December 1850, Tubman received a warning that her niece Kessiah was going to be sold, along with her two young children. Kessiah's husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife at an auction in Baltimore. Tubman then helped the entire family make the journey to Philadelphia. This was the first of many trips by Tubman.

The dynamics of escaping slavery changed in 1850, with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. This law stated that escaped slaves could be captured in the North and returned to slavery, leading to the abduction of former slaves and free blacks living in Free States. Law enforcement officials in the North were compelled to aid in the capture of slaves, regardless of their personal principles.

In response to the law, Tubman re-routed the Underground Railroad to Canada, which prohibited slavery categorically. In December 1851, Tubman guided a group of 11 fugitives northward. There is evidence to suggest that the party stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass.

In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, who advocated the use of violence to disrupt and destroy the institution of slavery. Tubman shared Brown's goals and at least tolerated his methods. Tubman claimed to have had a prophetic vision of Brown before they met.

When Brown began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders at Harper's Ferry, he turned to "General Tubman" for help. After Brown's subsequent execution, Tubman praised him as a martyr.

Tubman remained active during the Civil War. Working for the Union Army as a cook and nurse, Tubman quickly became an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the Combahee River Raid, which liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina.
READ MORE: How Harriet Tubman and William Still Helped the Underground Railroad

Photo: Benjamin F. Powelson Collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture shared with the Library of Congress, 2017.30.4

Later Life

In early 1859, abolitionist Senator William H. Seward sold Tubman a small piece of land on the outskirts of Auburn, New York. The land in Auburn became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. Tubman spent the years following the war on this property, tending to her family and others who had taken up residence there.

Despite Tubman's fame and reputation, she was never financially secure. Tubman's friends and supporters were able to raise some funds to support her. One admirer, Sarah H. Bradford, wrote a biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, with the proceeds going to Tubman and her family.

Tubman continued to give freely in spite of her economic woes. In 1903, she donated a parcel of her land to the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Auburn. The Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged opened on this site in 1908.
READ MORE: Inside Harriet Tubman's Life of Service After the Underground Railroad
Death

Tubman died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913, surrounded by friends and family, at around the age of 93. As Tubman aged, the head injuries sustained early in her life became more painful and disruptive. She underwent brain surgery at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to alleviate the pains and "buzzing" she experienced regularly. Tubman was eventually admitted into the rest home named in her honor. She was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S HARRIET TUBMAN FACT CARD

Legacy

Widely known and well-respected while she was alive, Tubman became an American icon in the years after she died. A survey at the end of the 20th century named her as one of the most famous civilians in American history before the Civil War, third only to Betsy Ross and Paul Revere. She continues to inspire generations of Americans struggling for civil rights.

When Tubman died, the city of Auburn commemorated her life with a plaque on the courthouse. Tubman was celebrated in many other ways throughout the nation in the 20th century. Dozens of schools were named in her honor, and both the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn and the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cambridge serve as monuments to her life.

A 1978 movie, A Woman Called Moses, commemorated her life and career, and the 2019 film Harriet chronicled Tubman's service as a conductor for the Underground Railroad.

Tubman on the New $20 Bill

In April 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman would replace Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill. The announcement came after the Treasury Department received a groundswell of public comments, following Women on 20s' campaign calling for a notable American woman to appear on U.S. currency. The decision was celebrated, as Tubman devoted her life to racial equality and fought for women's rights.

In June 2015, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew was criticized for saying that it was likely a woman would appear on the $10 bill, which features a portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the influential founding father who found renewed popularity because of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. The ultimate decision to have Tubman replace Jackson, a slaveholder who played a role in the removal of Native Americans from their land, was widely praised.

The unveiling of the new $20 bill featuring Tubman was planned for 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote. However, in May 2019, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that no new designs will be unveiled until 2026 at the earliest due to what he called counterfeiting issues. In June, the Treasury Department's inspector general said that it would look into why the launch had been delayed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
After war broke out, Harriet Tubman went South to assist and work with "contrabands" -- escaped slaves who were attached to the Union Army. She also briefly went to Florida on a similar mission.

In 1862, Governor Andrew of Massachusetts arranged for Tubman to go to Beaufort, South Carolina, as a nurse and teacher to the Gullah people of the Sea Islands who had been left behind by their owners when they fled the advance of the Union Army, which remained in control of the islands.

The next year, the Union Army asked Tubman to organize a network of scouts -- and spies -- among the black men of the area. She not only organized a sophisticated information-gathering operation, she led several forays herself in pursuit of information. Not so incidentally, another purpose of these forays was to persuade slaves to leave their masters, many to join the regiments of black soldiers. Her years as "Moses" and her ability to move about secretly were excellent background for this new assignment.

In July of 1863, Harriet Tubman led troops under the command of Colonel James Montgomery in the Combahee River expedition, disrupting Southern supply lines by destroying bridges and railroads. The mission also freed more than 750 slaves. Tubman is credited not only with significant leadership responsibilities for the mission itself, but with singing to calm the slaves and keep the situation in hand.

Tubman came under Confederate fire on this mission. General Saxton, who reported the raid to Secretary of War Stanton, said "This is the only military command in American history wherein a woman, black or white, led the raid and under whose inspiration it was originated and conducted." Tubman reported later that most of the freed slaves joined "the colored regiment."

Tubman was also present for the defeat of the 54th Massachusetts, the black unit led by Robert Gould Shaw.

Catherine Clinton, in Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War, suggests that Harriet Tubman may have been allowed to go beyond women's traditional boundaries more than most women, because of her race. (Clinton, p. 94)

Tubman believed that she was in the employ of the U.S. Army. When she received her first paycheck, she spent it to build a place where freed black women could earn a living doing laundry for the soldiers. But then she wasn't paid regularly again, and wasn't given the military rations she believed she was entitled to. She was paid only a total of $200 in three years of service. She supported herself and her work by selling baked goods and root beer which she made after she completed her regular work duties.

After the war was over, Tubman was never paid her back military pay. In addition, when she applied for a pension -- with the support of Secretary of State William Seward, Colonel T. W. Higginson, and General Rufus -- her application was denied. Harriet Tubman did eventually receive a pension -- but as the widow of a soldier, her second husband.
Next: 4: Later Years of Activism and Reform
Harriet Tubman Biography: From Slavery to Freedom

1. Harriet Tubman's Life in Slavery

2. Harriet Tubman as Underground Railroad Conductor, Abolitionist, Women's Rights Advocate

3. Harriet Tubman's Civil War Service: Nurse, Scout, Spy

4. Harriet Tubman's Later Years of Activism and Reform

More About Harriet Tubman:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Harriet Tubman: Nurse, Scout and Spy in the Civil War

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After war broke out, Harriet Tubman went South to assist and work with "contrabands" -- escaped slaves who were attached to the Union Army. She also briefly went to Florida on a similar mission.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, c. March 1822 - March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist. After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known collectively as the Underground Railroad. During the American Civil War, she served as an armed scout and spy for the Union Army. In her later years, Tubman was an activist in the movement for women's suffrage.

Born into slavery in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten and whipped by enslavers as a child. Early in life, she suffered a traumatic head wound when an irate overseer threw a heavy metal weight, intending to hit another slave, but hit her instead. The injury caused dizziness, pain, and spells of hypersomnia, which occurred throughout her life. After her injury, Tubman began experiencing strange visions and vivid dreams, which she ascribed to premonitions from God. These experiences, combined with her Methodist upbringing, led her to become devoutly religious.

In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, only to return to Maryland to rescue her family soon after. Slowly, one group at a time, she brought relatives with her out of the state, and eventually guided dozens of other enslaved people to freedom. Traveling by night and in extreme secrecy, Tubman (or " Moses", as she was called) "never lost a passenger". After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed, she helped guide escapees farther north into British North America (Canada), and helped newly freed people find work. Tubman met John Brown in 1858, and helped him plan and recruit supporters for his 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry.

When the Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. For her guidance of the raid at Combahee Ferry, which liberated more than 700 enslaved people, she is widely credited as first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war. After the war, she retired to the family home on property she had purchased in 1859 in Auburn, New York, where she cared for her aging parents. She was active in the women's suffrage movement until illness overtook her, and she had to be admitted to a home for elderly African Americans that she had helped to establish years earlier. She became an icon of courage and freedom.

Birth and family

Map of key locations in Tubman's life

Tubman was born Araminta "Minty" Ross to enslaved parents, Harriet ("Rit") Green and Ben Ross. Rit was enslaved by Mary Pattison Brodess (and later her son Edward). Ben was enslaved by Anthony Thompson, who became Mary Brodess's second husband, and who ran a large plantation near the Blackwater River in the Madison area of Dorchester County, Maryland.

As with many enslaved people in the United States, neither the exact year nor place of Tubman's birth is known. Tubman reported the year of her birth as 1825, while her death certificate lists 1815 and her gravestone lists 1820. Historian Kate Larson's 2004 biography of Tubman records the year as 1822, based on a midwife payment and several other historical documents, including her runaway advertisement. Based on Larson's work, more recent biographies have accepted March 1822 as the most likely timing of Tubman's birth.

Tubman's maternal grandmother, Modesty, arrived in the U.S. on a slave ship from Africa; no information is available about her other ancestors. As a child, Tubman was told that she seemed like an Ashanti person because of her character traits, though no evidence has been found to confirm or deny this lineage. Her mother, Rit (who may have had a white father), was a cook for the Brodess family. Her father, Ben, was a skilled woodsman who managed the timber work on Thompson's plantation. They married around 1808 and, according to court records, had nine children together: Linah, Mariah Ritty, Soph, Robert, Minty (Harriet), Ben, Rachel, Henry, and Moses.

Rit struggled to keep her family together as slavery threatened to tear it apart. Edward Brodess sold three of her daughters (Linah, Mariah Ritty, and Soph), separating them from the family forever. When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, she hid him for a month, aided by other enslaved people and freedmen in the community. At one point she confronted Brodess about the sale. Finally, Brodess and "the Georgia man" came toward the slave quarters to seize the child, where Rit told them, "You are after my son; but the first man that comes into my house, I will split his head open." Brodess backed away and abandoned the sale. Tubman's biographers agree that stories told about this event within the family influenced her belief in the possibilities of resistance.

Tubman's mother was assigned to "the big house" and had scarce time for her own family; consequently, as a child Tubman took care of a younger brother and baby, as was typical in large families. When she was five or six years old, Brodess hired her out as a nursemaid to a woman named "Miss Susan". Tubman was ordered to care for the baby and rock the cradle as it slept; when the baby woke up and cried, Tubman was whipped. She later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life. She found ways to resist, such as running away for five days, wearing layers of clothing as protection against beatings, and fighting back.

Also in her childhood, Tubman was sent to work for a planter named James Cook. She had to check his muskrat traps in nearby marshes, even after contracting measles. She became so ill that Cook sent her back to Brodess, where her mother nursed her back to health. Brodess then hired her out again. She spoke later of her acute childhood homesickness, comparing herself to "the boy on the Swanee River", an allusion to Stephen Foster's song " Old Folks at Home". As she grew older and stronger, she was assigned to field and forest work, driving oxen, plowing, and hauling logs.

As an adolescent, Tubman suffered a severe head injury when an overseer threw a two-pound (1 kg) metal weight at another slave who was attempting to flee. The weight struck Tubman instead, which she said: "broke my skull". Bleeding and unconscious, she was returned to her enslaver's house and laid on the seat of a loom, where she remained without medical care for two days. After this incident, Tubman frequently experienced extremely painful headaches. She also began having seizures and would seemingly fall unconscious, although she claimed to be aware of her surroundings while appearing to be asleep. Larson suggests she may have had temporal lobe epilepsy, possibly as a result of brain injury; Clinton suggests her condition may have been narcolepsy or cataplexy. A definitive diagnosis is not possible due to lack of contemporary medical evidence, but this condition remained with her for the rest of her life.

After her injury, Tubman began experiencing visions and vivid dreams, which she interpreted as revelations from God. These spiritual experiences had a profound effect on Tubman's personality and she acquired a passionate faith in God. Although Tubman was illiterate, she was told Bible stories by her mother and likely attended a Methodist church with her family. She rejected the teachings of white preachers who urged enslaved people to be passive and obedient victims to those who trafficked and enslaved them; instead she found guidance in the Old Testament tales of deliverance. This religious perspective informed her actions throughout her life.

Family and marriage

Anthony Thompson promised to manumit Tubman's father at age 45. After Thompson died, his son followed through with that promise in 1840. Tubman's father continued working as a timber estimator and foreman for the Thompson family. Later in the 1840s, Tubman paid a white attorney five dollars (equivalent to $160 in 2022) to investigate the legal status of her mother, Rit. The lawyer discovered that Atthow Pattison, the grandfather of Mary Brodess, indicated in his will that Rit and any of her children would be manumitted at age 45, and that any children born after she reached age 45 would be freeborn. The Pattison and Brodess families ignored this stipulation when they inherited the enslaved family, but taking legal action to enforce it was an impossible task for Tubman.

Around 1844, she married a free black man named John Tubman. Although little is known about him or their time together, the union was complicated because of her enslaved status. The mother's status dictated that of children, and any children born to Harriet and John would be enslaved. Such blended marriages - free people of color marrying enslaved people - were not uncommon on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where by this time, half the black population was free. Most African-American families had both free and enslaved members. Larson suggests that they might have planned to buy Tubman's freedom.

Tubman changed her name from Araminta to Harriet soon after her marriage, though the exact timing is unclear. Larson suggests this happened right after the wedding, and Clinton suggests that it coincided with Tubman's plans to escape from slavery. She adopted her mother's name, possibly as part of a religious conversion, or to honor another relative.

Escape from slavery

Notice offering a reward of US$100 (equivalent to $3,520 in 2022) for the capture and return of "Minty" (Harriet Tubman) and her brothers Henry and Ben

In 1849, Tubman became ill again, which diminished her value to slave traders. Edward Brodess tried to sell her, but could not find a buyer. Angry at him for trying to sell her and for continuing to enslave her relatives, Tubman began to pray for God to make Brodess change his ways. She said later: "I prayed all night long for my master till the first of March; and all the time he was bringing people to look at me, and trying to sell me." When it appeared as though a sale was being concluded, Tubman changed her prayer: "First of March I began to pray, 'Oh Lord, if you ain't never going to change that man's heart, kill him, Lord, and take him out of the way'." A week later, Brodess died, and Tubman expressed regret for her earlier sentiments.

As in many estate settlements, Brodess's death increased the likelihood that Tubman would be sold and her family broken apart. His widow, Eliza, began working to sell the family's enslaved people. Tubman refused to wait for the Brodess family to decide her fate, despite her husband's efforts to dissuade her. "[T]here was one of two things I had a right to", she explained later, "liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other".

Tubman and her brothers, Ben and Henry, escaped from slavery on September 17, 1849. Tubman had been hired out to Anthony Thompson (the son of her father's former owner), who owned a large plantation in an area called Poplar Neck in neighboring Caroline County; it is likely her brothers labored for Thompson as well. Because they were hired out, Eliza Brodess probably did not recognize their absence as an escape attempt for some time. Two weeks later, she posted a runaway notice in the Cambridge Democrat, offering a reward of up to US$100 each (equivalent to $3,520 in 2022) for their capture and return to slavery. Once they had left, Tubman's brothers had second thoughts. Ben may have regretted leaving his wife and children. The two men went back, forcing Tubman to return with them.

Sometime in October or November, Tubman escaped again, this time without her brothers. Before leaving she sang a farewell song to hint at her intentions, which she hoped would be understood by Mary, a trusted fellow slave: "I'll meet you in the morning", she intoned, "I'm bound for the promised land." While her exact route is unknown, Tubman made use of the network known as the Underground Railroad. This informal system was composed of free and enslaved black people, white abolitionists, and other activists. Most prominent among the latter in Maryland at the time were Quakers (members of the Religious Society of Friends). The Preston area near Poplar Neck contained a substantial Quaker community and was probably an important first stop during Tubman's escape. From there, she probably took a common route for people fleeing slavery - northeast along the Choptank River, through Delaware, and then north into Pennsylvania. A journey of nearly 90 miles (145 km) by foot would have taken between five days and three weeks.

Tubman had to travel by night, guided by the North Star and trying to avoid slave catchers eager to collect rewards for fugitive slaves. The "conductors" in the Underground Railroad used deceptions for protection. At an early stop, the lady of the house instructed Tubman to sweep the yard so as to seem to be working for the family. When night fell, the family hid her in a cart and took her to the next friendly house. Given her familiarity with the woods and marshes of the region, Tubman likely hid in these locales during the day. The particulars of her first journey are unknown; because other escapees from slavery used the routes, Tubman did not discuss them until later in life. She crossed into Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe, and recalled the experience years later:

When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.

Nicknamed "Moses"

Tubman sitting (1868 or 1869)

After reaching Philadelphia, Tubman thought of her family. "I was a stranger in a strange land," she said later. "[M]y father, my mother, my brothers, and sisters, and friends were [in Maryland]. But I was free, and they should be free." While Tubman saved money from working odd jobs in Philadelphia and Cape May, New Jersey, the U.S. Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which forced law enforcement officials to assist in the capture of escaped slaves - even in states that had outlawed slavery - and heavily punished abetting escape. The law increased risks for those who had escaped slavery, more of whom therefore sought refuge in Southern Ontario, where slavery had been abolished. Racial tensions were also increasing in Philadelphia as poor Irish immigrants competed with free blacks for work.

In December 1850, Tubman was warned that her niece Kessiah and Kessiah's children would soon be sold in Cambridge. Tubman went to Baltimore, where her brother-in-law Tom Tubman hid her until the sale. Kessiah's husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife. While the auctioneer stepped away to have lunch, John, Kessiah and their children escaped to a nearby safe house. When night fell, Bowley sailed the family on a log canoe 60 miles (97 kilometres) to Baltimore, where they met with Tubman, who brought the family to Philadelphia.

Early next year she returned to Maryland to guide away other family members. During her second trip, she recovered her youngest brother, Moses, along with two other men. Word of her exploits had encouraged her family, and she became more confident with each trip to Maryland.

In late 1851, Tubman returned to Dorchester County for the first time since her escape, this time to find her husband John. When she arrived there, she learned that John had married another woman named Caroline. Tubman sent word that he should join her, but he insisted that he was happy where he was. Suppressing her anger, she found some enslaved people who wanted to escape and led them to Philadelphia.

Frederick Douglass worked for slavery's abolition alongside Tubman.

Because the Fugitive Slave Law had made the northern United States a more dangerous place for those escaping slavery to remain, many escapees began migrating to Southern Ontario. In December 1851, Tubman guided an unidentified group of 11 escapees, possibly including the Bowleys and several others she had helped rescue earlier, northward. There is evidence to suggest that Tubman and her group stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass. Douglass and Tubman admired one another greatly as they both struggled against slavery. Years later he contrasted his efforts with hers, writing:

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.

From 1851 to 1862, Tubman returned repeatedly to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, rescuing some 70 slaves in about 13 expeditions, including her other brothers, Henry, Ben, and Robert, their wives and some of their children. She also provided specific instructions to 50 to 60 additional enslaved people who escaped. Because of her efforts, she was nicknamed "Moses", alluding to the biblical prophet who led the Hebrews to freedom from Egypt. One of her last missions into Maryland was to retrieve her aging parents. Her father purchased her mother from Eliza Brodess in 1855, but even when they were both free, the area was hostile. In 1857, Tubman received word that her father was at risk of arrest for harboring a group of eight people escaping slavery. She led her parents north to St. Catharines, Canada, where a community of formerly enslaved people, including other relatives and friends of Tubman, had gathered.

Routes and methods

Tubman's dangerous work required ingenuity. She usually worked during winter, when long nights and cold weather minimized the chance of being seen. She would start the escapes on Saturday evenings, since newspapers would not print runaway notices until Monday morning. She used subterfuges to avoid detection. Tubman once disguised herself with a bonnet and carried two live chickens to give the appearance of running errands. Suddenly finding herself walking toward a former enslaver, she yanked the strings holding the birds' legs, and their agitation allowed her to avoid eye contact. Later she recognized a fellow train passenger as a former enslaver; she snatched a nearby newspaper and pretended to read. Tubman was known to be illiterate, and the man ignored her.

In an 1897 interview with historian Wilbur Siebert, Tubman named some people who helped her and places she stayed along the Underground Railroad. She stayed with Sam Green, a free black minister living in East New Market, Maryland; she also hid near her parents' home at Poplar Neck. She would travel from there northeast to Sandtown and Willow Grove, Delaware, and to the Camden area where free black agents, William and Nat Brinkley and Abraham Gibbs, guided her north past Dover, Smyrna, and Blackbird, where other agents would take her across the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal to New Castle and Wilmington. In Wilmington, Quaker Thomas Garrett would secure transportation to William Still's office or the homes of other Underground Railroad operators in the greater Philadelphia area. Still is credited with helping hundreds escape to safer places in New York, New England, and Southern Ontario.

Tubman's faith was another important resource as she ventured repeatedly into Maryland. The visions from her childhood head injury continued, and she saw them as divine premonitions. She spoke of "consulting with God", and trusted that He would keep her safe. Garrett once said of her, "I never met with any person of any color who had more confidence in the voice of God, as spoken direct to her soul." Her faith also provided immediate assistance. She used spirituals as coded messages, warning fellow travelers of danger or to signal a clear path. She sang versions of " Go Down Moses" and changed the lyrics to indicate that it was either safe or too dangerous to proceed. As she led escapees across the border, she would call out, "Glory to God and Jesus, too. One more soul is safe!"

She carried a revolver as protection from slave catchers and their dogs. Tubman also threatened to shoot anyone who tried to turn back since that would risk the safety of the remaining group, as well as anyone who helped them on the way. Tubman spoke of one man who insisted he was going to go back to the plantation. She pointed the gun at his head and said, "Go on or die." Several days later, the man who wavered crossed into Canada with the rest of the group.

By the late 1850s, Eastern Shore slaveholders were holding public meetings about the large number of escapes in the area; they cast suspicion on free blacks and white abolitionists. They did not know that "Minty", the petite, disabled woman who had run away years before, was responsible for freeing so many enslaved people. Though a popular legend persists about a reward of $40,000 (equivalent to $1,303,000 in 2022) for Tubman's capture, this is a manufactured figure: in 1867, in support of Tubman's claim for a military pension, an abolitionist named Sallie Holley wrote that $40,000 "was not too great a reward for Maryland slaveholders to offer for her". If it were real, such a high reward would have garnered national attention. A reward of $12,000 has also been claimed, though no documentation has been found for either figure.

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."

John Brown and Harpers Ferry

Tubman helped John Brown plan and recruit for the raid at Harpers Ferry.

In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, an insurgent who advocated the use of violence to destroy slavery in the United States. Although she was not previously involved in armed insurrection, she agreed with his course of direct action and supported his goals. Like Tubman, he spoke of being called by God, and trusted the divine to protect him from the wrath of slavers. She, meanwhile, claimed to have had a prophetic vision of meeting Brown before their encounter.

Thus, as he began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders, Brown was joined by "General Tubman", as he called her. Her knowledge of support networks and resources in the border states of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware was invaluable to Brown and his planners. Although other abolitionists like Douglass did not endorse his tactics, Brown dreamed of fighting to create a new state for those freed from slavery, and made preparations for military action. He believed that after he began the first battle, the enslaved would rise up and carry out a rebellion across the slave states. He asked Tubman to gather former slaves then living in Southern Ontario who might be willing to join his fighting force, which she did.

On May 8, 1858, Brown held a meeting in Chatham, Canada, where he unveiled his plan for a raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia. When word of the plan was leaked to the government, Brown put the scheme on hold and began raising funds for its eventual resumption. Tubman aided him in this effort and with more detailed plans for the assault.

Tubman was busy during this time, giving talks to abolitionist audiences and tending to her relatives. In early October 1859, as Brown and his men prepared to launch the attack, Tubman was ill in New Bedford, Massachusetts. It is not known whether she still intended to join Brown's raid or if she had become skeptical of the plan, but when the raid on Harpers Ferry took place on October 16, Tubman had recovered from her illness and was in New York City.

The raid failed; Brown was convicted of treason, murder, and inciting a rebellion, and he was hanged on December 2. His actions were seen by many abolitionists as a symbol of proud resistance, carried out by a noble martyr. Tubman herself was effusive with praise. She later told a friend: "[H]e done more in dying, than 100 men would in living."

Auburn and Margaret

In early 1859, Frances Adeline Seward, the wife of abolitionist Republican U.S. Senator William H. Seward, sold Tubman a seven-acre (2.8 ha) farm in Fleming, New York, for $1,200 (equivalent to $42,200 in 2022). The adjacent city of Auburn was a hotbed of antislavery activism, and Tubman took the opportunity to move her parents from Canada back to the U.S. Her farmstead became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. For years, she took in relatives and boarders, offering a safe place for black Americans seeking a better life in the north.

Shortly after acquiring the farm, Tubman went back to Maryland and returned with an eight-year-old light-skinned black girl named Margaret, who Tubman said was her niece. She also indicated the girl's parents were free blacks. According to Margaret's daughter Alice, Margaret later described her childhood home as prosperous and said that she left behind a twin brother. These descriptions conflict with what is known about the families of Tubman's siblings, which created uncertainty among historians about the relationship and Tubman's motivations. Alice called Tubman's actions a "kidnapping", saying, "she had taken the child from a sheltered good home to a place where there was nobody to care for her". After speculating in her 2004 biography of Tubman that Margaret might have been Tubman's own secret daughter, Kate Larson found evidence that Margaret was the daughter of Isaac and Mary Woolford, a free black couple who were neighbors of Tubman's parents in Maryland and who had twins named James and Margaret.

In November 1860, Tubman conducted her last rescue mission. Throughout the 1850s, Tubman had been unable to effect the escape of her sister Rachel, and Rachel's two children Ben and Angerine. Upon returning to Dorchester County, Tubman discovered that Rachel had died, and the children could be rescued only if she could pay a bribe of $30 (equivalent to $980 in 2022). She did not have the money, so the children remained enslaved. Their fates remain unknown. Never one to waste a trip, Tubman gathered another group, including the Ennalls family, ready and willing to take the risks of the journey north. It took them weeks to get away safely because of slave catchers forcing them to hide out longer than expected. The weather was unseasonably cold and they had little food. The Ennalls' infant child was quieted with paregoric while slave patrols rode by. They safely reached the home of David and Martha Wright in Auburn on December 28, 1860.

American Civil War

A woodcut of Tubman in her Civil War clothing

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Tubman had a vision that the war would soon lead to the abolition of slavery. More immediately, enslaved people near Union positions began began escaping in large numbers. General Benjamin Butler declared these escapees to be " contraband" - property seized by northern forces - and put them to work, initially without pay, at Fort Monroe in Virginia. The number of "contrabands" encamped at Fort Monroe and other Union positions rapidly increased. In January 1862, Tubman volunteered to support the Union cause and began helping refugees in the camps, particularly in Port Royal, South Carolina.

In South Carolina, Tubman met General David Hunter, a strong supporter of abolition. He declared all of the "contrabands" in the Port Royal district free, and began gathering formerly enslaved people for a regiment of black soldiers. U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was not yet prepared to enforce emancipation on the southern states and reprimanded Hunter for his actions. Tubman condemned Lincoln's response and his general unwillingness to consider ending slavery in the U.S., for both moral and practical reasons:

God won't let master Lincoln beat the South till he does the right thing. Master Lincoln, he's a great man, and I am a poor negro; but the negro can tell master Lincoln how to save the money and the young men. He can do it by setting the negro free.

Tubman served as a nurse in Port Royal, preparing remedies from local plants and aiding soldiers suffering from dysentery and infectious diseases. At first, she received government rations for her work, but to dispel a perception that she was getting special treatment, she gave up her right to these supplies and made money selling pies and root beer, which she made in the evenings.

Scouting and the Combahee River Raid

When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Tubman considered it a positive but incomplete step toward the goal of liberating all black people from slavery. She turned her own efforts towards more direct actions to defeat the Confederacy. In early 1863, Tubman used her knowledge of covert travel and subterfuge to lead a band of scouts through the land around Port Royal. 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.

Illustration of the Combahee River Raid from Harper's Weekly

Later that year, Tubman's intelligence gathering played a key role in the raid at Combahee Ferry. She guided three steamboats with black soldiers under Montgomery's command past mines on the Combahee River to assault several plantations. Once ashore, the Union troops set fire to the plantations, destroying infrastructure and seizing thousands of dollars worth of food and supplies. Forewarned of the raid by Tubman's spy network, enslaved people throughout the area heard steamboats' whistles and understood that they were being liberated. Tubman watched as those fleeing slavery stampeded toward the boats; she later described 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. Armed overseers tried to stop the mass escape, but their efforts were nearly useless in the tumult. As Confederate troops raced to the scene, the steamboats took off toward Beaufort with more than 750 formerly enslaved people.

Newspapers heralded Tubman's "patriotism, sagacity, energy, [and] ability" in the raid, and she was praised for her recruiting efforts - more than 100 of the newly liberated men joined the Union army. Reports about her involvement in the raid led to a revival of the "General Tubman" appellation previously given to her by John Brown. Although her contributions have sometimes been exaggerated, her role in the raid led to her being widely credited as the first woman to lead U.S. troops in an armed assault.

In July 1863, Tubman worked with Colonel Robert Gould Shaw at the assault on Fort Wagner, reportedly serving him his last meal. She later described the battle to historian Albert Bushnell Hart:

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.

For two more years, Tubman worked for the Union forces, tending to newly liberated people, scouting into Confederate territory, and nursing wounded soldiers in Virginia, a task she continued for several months after the Confederacy surrendered in April 1865.

Formal portrait of Tubman taken after the Civil War and circulated as a carte de visite

Tubman had received little pay for her Union military service. She was not a regular soldier and was only occasionally compensated for her work as a spy and scout; her work as a nurse was entirely unpaid. For over three years of service, she received a total of $200 (equivalent to $3,820 in 2022). Her unofficial status caused great difficulty in documenting her service, and the U.S. government was slow in recognizing its debt to her. Meanwhile, her humanitarian work for her family and the formerly enslaved kept her in a state of constant poverty.

When a promised appointment to an official military nursing position fell through in July 1865, Tubman decided to return to her home in New York. During a train ride to New York in October 1865, Tubman traveled on a half-fare ticket provided to her because of her service. A conductor told her to move from a regular passenger car into the less-desirable smoking car. When she refused, he cursed at her and grabbed her. She resisted, and he summoned additional men for help. They muscled her into the smoking car, injuring her in the process. As these events transpired, white passengers cursed Tubman and told the conductor to kick her off the train.

Tubman spent her remaining years in Auburn, tending to her family and other people in need. In addition to managing her farm, she took in boarders and worked various jobs to pay the bills and support her elderly parents. One of the people Tubman took in was a farmer named Nelson Davis. Born enslaved in North Carolina, he had served as a private in the 8th United States Colored Infantry Regiment from September 1863 to November 1865. He began working in Auburn as a bricklayer, and they soon fell in love. Though he was 22 years younger than she was, on March 18, 1869, they were married at the Central Presbyterian Church. They adopted a baby girl named Gertie in 1874.

Tubman in 1887 (far left), with her husband Davis (seated, with cane), their adopted daughter Gertie (beside Tubman), Lee Cheney, John "Pop" Alexander, Walter Green, "Blind Aunty" Sarah Parker, and her great-niece Dora Stewart at Tubman's home in Auburn, New York

Tubman's friends and supporters from the days of abolition, meanwhile, raised funds to support her. One admirer, Sarah Hopkins Bradford, wrote an authorized biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman. The 132-page volume was published in 1869 and brought Tubman some $1,200 in income (equivalent to $26,400 in 2022). Even with this assistance, paying off the mortgage on her farm in May 1873 exhausted Tubman's savings. That October, she fell prey to swindlers. Two black men claimed to know a former slave who had a trunk of gold coins smuggled out of South Carolina, which they would sell for cash at less than half the coins' value. She knew white people in the South had buried valuables when Union forces threatened the region, and black men were frequently assigned to digging duties, so the claim seemed plausible to her. She borrowed money from a wealthy friend and arranged to receive the gold late one night. Once the men had lured her into the woods, they knocked her out with chloroform and stole her purse. Tubman was found dazed and injured; the trunk was filled with rocks.

The crime brought new attention from local leaders to Tubman's precarious financial state and spurred renewed efforts to get compensation for her Civil War service. In 1874, Representatives Clinton D. MacDougall of New York and Gerry W. Hazelton of Wisconsin introduced a bill to pay Tubman a $2,000 (~$51,729 in 2022) lump sum "for services rendered by her to the Union Army as scout, nurse, and spy", but it was defeated in the Senate. In February 1880, Tubman's wood-framed house burned down, but with the help of her supporters it was quickly replaced with a new brick home.

Nelson Davis died of tuberculosis on October 14, 1888. The Dependent and Disability Pension Act of 1890 made Tubman eligible for a pension as his widow. After she documented her marriage and her husband's service record to the satisfaction of the Bureau of Pensions, in 1895 Tubman was granted a monthly widow's pension of $8 (equivalent to $281 in 2022), plus a lump sum of $500 to cover the five-year delay in approval. In December 1897, New York Congressman Sereno E. Payne introduced a bill to grant Tubman a soldier's monthly pension of $25 (~$879.00 in 2022). Although Congress received documents and letters to support Tubman's claims, some members objected to a woman being paid a full soldier's pension. In February 1899, Congress approved a compromise amount of $20 per (~$704.00 in 2022) month (the $8 from her widow's pension plus $12 for her service as a nurse), but did not acknowledge her as a scout and spy.

Suffragist activism

Tubman in 1911

In her later years, Tubman worked to promote the cause of women's suffrage. A white woman once asked Tubman whether she believed women ought to have the vote, and received the reply: "I suffered enough to believe it." Tubman began attending meetings of suffragist organizations, and was soon working alongside women such as Susan B. Anthony and Emily Howland.

Tubman traveled to New York, Boston and Washington, D.C. to speak in favor of women's voting rights. She described her actions during and after the Civil War, and used the sacrifices of countless women throughout modern history as evidence of women's equality to men. When the National Federation of Afro-American Women was founded in 1896, Tubman was the keynote speaker at its first meeting.

This wave of activism kindled a new wave of admiration for Tubman among the press in the United States. A publication called The Woman's Era launched a series of articles on "Eminent Women" with a profile of Tubman. An 1897 suffragist newspaper reported a series of receptions in Boston honoring Tubman and her lifetime of service to the nation. However, her endless contributions to others had left her in poverty, and she had to sell a cow to buy a train ticket to these celebrations.

Church, illness, and death

In the 1870s, Tubman became active in the Thompson Memorial African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church in Auburn. In 1895, she began discussions with AME Zion leaders and others to create a Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged that would care for "indigent colored people". Despite her financial limitations, in 1896 Tubman bid $1215 (~$42,739 in 2022) at auction for a 25-acre (10 ha) farm adjacent to the one she already owned, to use for the new facility. She designated one of the farm's buildings as its primary residence and named it "John Brown Hall" to honor her late abolitionist ally. However, raising funds for the project was difficult, and attempts to donate the property were complicated by the multiple mortgage loans used to pay for it. After Tubman almost lost the property due her financial difficulties, AME Zion agreed to take it over in 1903.

The home did not open for another five years, and Tubman was dismayed when the church ordered residents to pay a $100 entrance fee (equivalent to $3,260 in 2022). She said: "[T]hey make a rule that nobody should come in without they have a hundred dollars. Now I wanted to make a rule that nobody should come in unless they didn't have no money at all." She was frustrated by the new rule but was the guest of honor nonetheless when the home celebrated its opening on June 23, 1908.

As Tubman aged, her childhood head trauma continued to trouble her. Unable to sleep because of pain and "buzzing" in her head, in the late 1890s she asked a doctor at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to operate. In her words, he "sawed open my skull, and raised it up, and now it feels more comfortable". She reportedly received no anesthesia and instead bit down on a bullet, as she had seen Civil War soldiers do when their limbs were amputated.

By 1911, Tubman's body was so frail that she was admitted into the rest home named in her honor. A New York newspaper described her as "ill and penniless", prompting supporters to offer a new round of donations. Surrounded by friends and family members, she died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913. Just before she died, she quoted the Gospel of John to those in the room: "I go away to prepare a place for you." Tubman was buried with semi-military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

Tubman's great-niece, Eva Stewart Northrup, launching the SS Harriet Tubman

Widely known and well-respected while she was alive, Tubman became an American icon in the years after she died. By the 1980s, Tubman was one of American history's most famous figures. She inspired generations of African Americans struggling for equality and civil rights; she was praised by leaders across the political spectrum.

Parks, monuments and historical sites

National parks and national monuments related to Tubman in the United States are the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument and the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park, both in Maryland, and the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn. The Salem Chapel in St. Catharines, where Tubman worshipped, is a National Historic Site of Canada.

The city of Auburn has several historical sites related to Tubman, including her gravesite. Other state and local historical sites about Tubman include a state park and memorial garden in Maryland, and a museum in New Jersey.

Artistic portrayals

Tubman is the subject of many works of art. Musicians including Woody Guthrie, Wynton Marsalis, and Walter Robinson have written songs celebrating her. She is the subject of operas by Thea Musgrave, Nkeiru Okoye, and Hilda Paredes, as well as plays by Carolyn Gage and a collaboration of May Miller and Willis Richardson. Tubman is the focus of novels by Elizabeth Cobbs, Marcy Heidish, and Anne Parrish, and is a character in novels by Terry Bisson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and James McBride.

Since Tubman's life was first dramatized on television in a 1963 episode of the series The Great Adventure, she has been portrayed in TV productions such as The Good Lord Bird, , Underground, and A Woman Called Moses. Cynthia Erivo received an Academy Award nomination for portraying Tubman in the 2019 theatrical film .

Artists including Fern Cunningham, Jane DeDecker, Nina Cooke John, and Alison Saar have presented Tubman in sculptures. She has been drawn or painted by numerous artists, including Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas, William Johnson, Jacob Lawrence, and Faith Ringgold.

Other honors and commemorations

Official $20 bill prototype

In 1978, Tubman became the first African-American woman honored on a U.S. postage stamp; she appeared on a second stamp in 1995. Beginning in 2016, there have been plans to add a portrait of Tubman to the front of the twenty-dollar bill, moving the portrait of President Andrew Jackson, a slaveholder, to the back of the bill.

Dozens of schools, streets and highways, church groups, social organizations, and government agencies have been named after Tubman. In 1944, the United States Maritime Commission launched the SS Harriet Tubman, its first Liberty ship named for a black woman.

Historiography

Tubman hoped to become literate and write her own memoirs, but she never did. Instead, Sarah Hopkins Bradford combined Tubman's personal recollections, journalistic accounts, and letters from Tubman's friends and supporters to create Scenes from the Life of Harriet Tubman in 1868. Criticized by modern biographers for its artistic license and highly subjective point of view, the book nevertheless provides insight into Tubman's own view of her experiences. In 1886, Bradford released a re-written volume called Harriet, the Moses of her People. In both volumes Harriet Tubman is hailed as a latter-day Joan of Arc. The revision took a more moralistic and literary tone than the prior work, including changes of many event descriptions from first to third person. A final revision in 1901 added an appendix with more stories about Tubman's life.

The first full biography of Tubman to be published after Bradford's was Earl Conrad's Harriet Tubman (1943). Conrad experienced great difficulty in finding a publisher - the search took four years - and endured disdain and contempt for his efforts to construct a more objective, detailed account of Tubman's life for adults. Several highly dramatized versions of Tubman's life had been written for children, and many more came later, but Conrad wrote in an academic style. Though she was a popular historical figure, another book-length biography based on original scholarship did not appear for 60 years, when Jean Humez published a close reading of Tubman's life stories in 2003. Larson and Clinton both published their biographies soon after in 2004. Historian Milton Sernett's 2007 book Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory, and History discusses the major biographies of Tubman up to that time.

References

Clinton, Catherine (2004). Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom. New York: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 978-0-316-14492-6 - via Open Library.

"Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800-". Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

Franklin, Jonathan (March 13, 2023). "A Monument of Harriet Tubman Now Replaces a Statue of Christopher Columbus in Newark". . Archived from the original on June 15, 2023.

Gaige, Amity (August 23, 2013). "The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride". San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on July 25, 2019.

Gibson, Chantal N. & Silverman, Monique (2005). "Sur/Rendering Her Image: The Unknowable Harriet Tubman". Canadian Art Review. 30 (1): 25-38. JSTOR 42630711.

Hobson, Janell (2022). When God Lost Her Tongue: Historical Consciousness and the Black Feminist Imagination. Subversive Histories, Feminist Futures series. New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780429243554. ISBN 978-0-429-24355-4. S2CID 240990028.

Humez, Jean M. (Summer 1993). "In Search of Harriet Tubman's Spiritual Autobiography". NWSA Journal. 5 (2): 162-182. JSTOR 4316258.

Humez, Jean (2003). Harriet Tubman: The Life and Life Stories. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-19120-7 - via Open Library.

Kaufman, Rachel (May 13, 2018). "Pilot, Thinker, Soldier, Spy: The Epic Timeless Season Finale Twofer". Smithsonian Magazine. Archived from the original on October 17, 2020.

Larson, Kate Clifford (2004). Bound For the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 978-0-345-45627-4 - via Open Library.

Oertel, Kristen T. (2015). Harriet Tubman: Slavery, the Civil War, and Civil Rights in the Nineteenth-century America. Routledge Historical Americans series. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-94897-9.

Portelli, Alessandro (Fall 1988). "Fire on the Mountain". Review. Appalachian Journal. 16 (1): 87-90. JSTOR 40933404.

Roma, Catherine (2001). "Contemporary British Composers". In Pendle, Karin (ed.). Women and Music: A History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 227-251. ISBN 978-0-253-11503-4 - via Open Library.

Rosenberg, Amy S. (September 17, 2020). "The Harriet Tubman Museum in Cape May Marked Its Opening. Here's What's Inside, and Why It's in Cape May". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Archived from the original on September 21, 2020.

Sacks, Sam (May 17, 2019). "Fiction: Tales of History and Imagination". Books & Arts in Review. The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on July 25, 2019.

Vargas, Ángel (October 17, 2018). "La gesta de Harriet Tubman llega al Cervantino en forma de ópera" [The deeds of Harriet Tubman arrive at the Cervantino in the form of an opera]. (in Spanish). Archived from the original on April 17, 2021.

Further reading

External links

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, c. March 1822 - March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist. After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known collectively as the Underground Railroad.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Who Was Harriet Tubman?

Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses. A leading abolitionist before the American Civil War, Tubman also helped the Union Army during the war, working as a spy among other roles.

After the Civil War ended, Tubman dedicated her life to helping impoverished former slaves and the elderly. In honor of her life and by popular demand, in 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill.

Early Life and Family

Tubman's date of birth is unknown, although it probably occurred between 1820 and 1825. She was one of nine children born between 1808 and 1832 to enslaved parents in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her mother, Harriet "Rit" Green, was owned by Mary Pattison Brodess. Her father, Ben Ross, who was owned by Anthony Thompson (Thompson and Brodess eventually married).

Originally named Araminta Harriet Ross, Tubman was nicknamed "Minty" by her parents. Araminta changed her name to Harriet around the time of her marriage, possibly to honor her mother.

Tubman's early life was full of hardship. Mary Brodess' son Edward sold three of Tubman's sisters to distant plantations, severing the family. When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, Rit successfully resisted the further fracturing of her family, setting a powerful example for her young daughter.

Physical violence was a part of daily life for Tubman and her family. The violence she suffered early in life caused permanent physical injuries. Tubman later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life.

The most severe injury occurred when Tubman was an adolescent. Sent to a dry-goods store for supplies, she encountered a slave who had left the fields without permission. The man's overseer demanded that Tubman help restrain the runaway. When Tubman refused, the overseer threw a two-pound weight that struck her in the head. Tubman endured seizures, severe headaches and narcoleptic episodes for the rest of her life. She also experienced intense dream states, which she classified as religious experiences.

The line between freedom and slavery was hazy for Tubman and her family. Tubman's father, Ben, was freed from slavery at the age of 45, as stipulated in the will of a previous owner. Nonetheless, Ben had few options but to continue working as a timber estimator and foreman for his former owners.

Although similar manumission stipulations applied to Rit and her children, the individuals who owned the family chose not to free them. Despite his free status, Ben had little power to challenge their decision.

Husbands and Children

In 1844, Harriet married a free black man named John Tubman. At the time around half of the African American people on the eastern shore of Maryland were free, and was not unusual for a family to include both free and enslaved people.

Little is known about John or his marriage to Harriet, including whether and how long they lived together. Any children they might have had would have been considered enslaved, since the mother's status dictated that of any offspring. John declined to make the voyage on the Underground Railroad with Harriet, preferring to stay in Maryland with a new wife.

In 1869, Tubman married a Civil War veteran named Nelson Davis. In 1874, the couple adopted a baby girl named Gertie.

The Underground Railroad

Between 1850 and 1860, Tubman made 19 trips from the South to the North following the network known as the Underground Railroad. She guided more than 300 people, including her parents and several siblings, from slavery to freedom, earning the nickname "Moses" for her leadership.

Tubman first encountered the Underground Railroad when she used it to escape slavery herself in 1849. Following a bout of illness and the death of her owner, Tubman decided to escape slavery in Maryland for Philadelphia. She feared that her family would be further severed and was concerned for her own fate as a sickly slave of low economic value.

Two of her brothers, Ben and Harry, accompanied her on September 17, 1849. However, after a notice was published in the Cambridge Democrat offering a $300 reward for the return of Araminta, Harry and Ben had second thoughts and returned to the plantation. Tubman had no plans to remain in bondage. Seeing her brothers safely home, she soon set off alone for Pennsylvania.

Making use of the Underground Railroad, Tubman traveled nearly 90 miles to Philadelphia. She crossed into the free state of Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe, and recalled later: "When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven."

Rather than remaining in the safety of the North, Tubman made it her mission to rescue her family and others living in slavery via the Underground Railroad. In December 1850, Tubman received a warning that her niece Kessiah was going to be sold, along with her two young children. Kessiah's husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife at an auction in Baltimore. Tubman then helped the entire family make the journey to Philadelphia. This was the first of many trips by Tubman.

The dynamics of escaping slavery changed in 1850, with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. This law stated that escaped slaves could be captured in the North and returned to slavery, leading to the abduction of former slaves and free blacks living in Free States. Law enforcement officials in the North were compelled to aid in the capture of slaves, regardless of their personal principles.

In response to the law, Tubman re-routed the Underground Railroad to Canada, which prohibited slavery categorically. In December 1851, Tubman guided a group of 11 fugitives northward. There is evidence to suggest that the party stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass.

In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, who advocated the use of violence to disrupt and destroy the institution of slavery. Tubman shared Brown's goals and at least tolerated his methods. Tubman claimed to have had a prophetic vision of Brown before they met.

When Brown began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders at Harper's Ferry, he turned to "General Tubman" for help. After Brown's subsequent execution, Tubman praised him as a martyr.

Tubman remained active during the Civil War. Working for the Union Army as a cook and nurse, Tubman quickly became an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the Combahee River Raid, which liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina.
READ MORE: How Harriet Tubman and William Still Helped the Underground Railroad

Photo: Benjamin F. Powelson Collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture shared with the Library of Congress, 2017.30.4

Later Life

In early 1859, abolitionist Senator William H. Seward sold Tubman a small piece of land on the outskirts of Auburn, New York. The land in Auburn became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. Tubman spent the years following the war on this property, tending to her family and others who had taken up residence there.

Despite Tubman's fame and reputation, she was never financially secure. Tubman's friends and supporters were able to raise some funds to support her. One admirer, Sarah H. Bradford, wrote a biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, with the proceeds going to Tubman and her family.

Tubman continued to give freely in spite of her economic woes. In 1903, she donated a parcel of her land to the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Auburn. The Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged opened on this site in 1908.
READ MORE: Inside Harriet Tubman's Life of Service After the Underground Railroad
Death

Tubman died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913, surrounded by friends and family, at around the age of 93. As Tubman aged, the head injuries sustained early in her life became more painful and disruptive. She underwent brain surgery at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to alleviate the pains and "buzzing" she experienced regularly. Tubman was eventually admitted into the rest home named in her honor. She was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S HARRIET TUBMAN FACT CARD

Legacy

Widely known and well-respected while she was alive, Tubman became an American icon in the years after she died. A survey at the end of the 20th century named her as one of the most famous civilians in American history before the Civil War, third only to Betsy Ross and Paul Revere. She continues to inspire generations of Americans struggling for civil rights.

When Tubman died, the city of Auburn commemorated her life with a plaque on the courthouse. Tubman was celebrated in many other ways throughout the nation in the 20th century. Dozens of schools were named in her honor, and both the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn and the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cambridge serve as monuments to her life.

A 1978 movie, A Woman Called Moses, commemorated her life and career, and the 2019 film Harriet chronicled Tubman's service as a conductor for the Underground Railroad.

Tubman on the New $20 Bill

In April 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman would replace Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill. The announcement came after the Treasury Department received a groundswell of public comments, following Women on 20s' campaign calling for a notable American woman to appear on U.S. currency. The decision was celebrated, as Tubman devoted her life to racial equality and fought for women's rights.

In June 2015, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew was criticized for saying that it was likely a woman would appear on the $10 bill, which features a portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the influential founding father who found renewed popularity because of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. The ultimate decision to have Tubman replace Jackson, a slaveholder who played a role in the removal of Native Americans from their land, was widely praised.

The unveiling of the new $20 bill featuring Tubman was planned for 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote. However, in May 2019, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that no new designs will be unveiled until 2026 at the earliest due to what he called counterfeiting issues. In June, the Treasury Department's inspector general said that it would look into why the launch had been delayed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses.

# data[].attributes.body
Harriet Tubman as a kid

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Harriet Tubman was a deeply spiritual woman who lived her ideals and dedicated her life to freedom. She is the Underground Railroad's best known conductor and before the Civil War repeatedly risked her life to guide nearly 70 enslaved people north to new lives of freedom.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, c. March 1822 - March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist. After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known collectively as the Underground Railroad. During the American Civil War, she served as an armed scout and spy for the Union Army. In her later years, Tubman was an activist in the movement for women's suffrage.

Born into slavery in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten and whipped by enslavers as a child. Early in life, she suffered a traumatic head wound when an irate overseer threw a heavy metal weight, intending to hit another slave, but hit her instead. The injury caused dizziness, pain, and spells of hypersomnia, which occurred throughout her life. After her injury, Tubman began experiencing strange visions and vivid dreams, which she ascribed to premonitions from God. These experiences, combined with her Methodist upbringing, led her to become devoutly religious.

In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, only to return to Maryland to rescue her family soon after. Slowly, one group at a time, she brought relatives with her out of the state, and eventually guided dozens of other enslaved people to freedom. Traveling by night and in extreme secrecy, Tubman (or " Moses", as she was called) "never lost a passenger". After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed, she helped guide escapees farther north into British North America (Canada), and helped newly freed people find work. Tubman met John Brown in 1858, and helped him plan and recruit supporters for his 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry.

When the Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. For her guidance of the raid at Combahee Ferry, which liberated more than 700 enslaved people, she is widely credited as first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war. After the war, she retired to the family home on property she had purchased in 1859 in Auburn, New York, where she cared for her aging parents. She was active in the women's suffrage movement until illness overtook her, and she had to be admitted to a home for elderly African Americans that she had helped to establish years earlier. She became an icon of courage and freedom.

Birth and family

Map of key locations in Tubman's life

Tubman was born Araminta "Minty" Ross to enslaved parents, Harriet ("Rit") Green and Ben Ross. Rit was enslaved by Mary Pattison Brodess (and later her son Edward). Ben was enslaved by Anthony Thompson, who became Mary Brodess's second husband, and who ran a large plantation near the Blackwater River in the Madison area of Dorchester County, Maryland.

As with many enslaved people in the United States, neither the exact year nor place of Tubman's birth is known. Tubman reported the year of her birth as 1825, while her death certificate lists 1815 and her gravestone lists 1820. Historian Kate Larson's 2004 biography of Tubman records the year as 1822, based on a midwife payment and several other historical documents, including her runaway advertisement. Based on Larson's work, more recent biographies have accepted March 1822 as the most likely timing of Tubman's birth.

Tubman's maternal grandmother, Modesty, arrived in the U.S. on a slave ship from Africa; no information is available about her other ancestors. As a child, Tubman was told that she seemed like an Ashanti person because of her character traits, though no evidence has been found to confirm or deny this lineage. Her mother, Rit (who may have had a white father), was a cook for the Brodess family. Her father, Ben, was a skilled woodsman who managed the timber work on Thompson's plantation. They married around 1808 and, according to court records, had nine children together: Linah, Mariah Ritty, Soph, Robert, Minty (Harriet), Ben, Rachel, Henry, and Moses.

Rit struggled to keep her family together as slavery threatened to tear it apart. Edward Brodess sold three of her daughters (Linah, Mariah Ritty, and Soph), separating them from the family forever. When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, she hid him for a month, aided by other enslaved people and freedmen in the community. At one point she confronted Brodess about the sale. Finally, Brodess and "the Georgia man" came toward the slave quarters to seize the child, where Rit told them, "You are after my son; but the first man that comes into my house, I will split his head open." Brodess backed away and abandoned the sale. Tubman's biographers agree that stories told about this event within the family influenced her belief in the possibilities of resistance.

Tubman's mother was assigned to "the big house" and had scarce time for her own family; consequently, as a child Tubman took care of a younger brother and baby, as was typical in large families. When she was five or six years old, Brodess hired her out as a nursemaid to a woman named "Miss Susan". Tubman was ordered to care for the baby and rock the cradle as it slept; when the baby woke up and cried, Tubman was whipped. She later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life. She found ways to resist, such as running away for five days, wearing layers of clothing as protection against beatings, and fighting back.

Also in her childhood, Tubman was sent to work for a planter named James Cook. She had to check his muskrat traps in nearby marshes, even after contracting measles. She became so ill that Cook sent her back to Brodess, where her mother nursed her back to health. Brodess then hired her out again. She spoke later of her acute childhood homesickness, comparing herself to "the boy on the Swanee River", an allusion to Stephen Foster's song " Old Folks at Home". As she grew older and stronger, she was assigned to field and forest work, driving oxen, plowing, and hauling logs.

As an adolescent, Tubman suffered a severe head injury when an overseer threw a two-pound (1 kg) metal weight at another slave who was attempting to flee. The weight struck Tubman instead, which she said: "broke my skull". Bleeding and unconscious, she was returned to her enslaver's house and laid on the seat of a loom, where she remained without medical care for two days. After this incident, Tubman frequently experienced extremely painful headaches. She also began having seizures and would seemingly fall unconscious, although she claimed to be aware of her surroundings while appearing to be asleep. Larson suggests she may have had temporal lobe epilepsy, possibly as a result of brain injury; Clinton suggests her condition may have been narcolepsy or cataplexy. A definitive diagnosis is not possible due to lack of contemporary medical evidence, but this condition remained with her for the rest of her life.

After her injury, Tubman began experiencing visions and vivid dreams, which she interpreted as revelations from God. These spiritual experiences had a profound effect on Tubman's personality and she acquired a passionate faith in God. Although Tubman was illiterate, she was told Bible stories by her mother and likely attended a Methodist church with her family. She rejected the teachings of white preachers who urged enslaved people to be passive and obedient victims to those who trafficked and enslaved them; instead she found guidance in the Old Testament tales of deliverance. This religious perspective informed her actions throughout her life.

Family and marriage

Anthony Thompson promised to manumit Tubman's father at age 45. After Thompson died, his son followed through with that promise in 1840. Tubman's father continued working as a timber estimator and foreman for the Thompson family. Later in the 1840s, Tubman paid a white attorney five dollars (equivalent to $160 in 2022) to investigate the legal status of her mother, Rit. The lawyer discovered that Atthow Pattison, the grandfather of Mary Brodess, indicated in his will that Rit and any of her children would be manumitted at age 45, and that any children born after she reached age 45 would be freeborn. The Pattison and Brodess families ignored this stipulation when they inherited the enslaved family, but taking legal action to enforce it was an impossible task for Tubman.

Around 1844, she married a free black man named John Tubman. Although little is known about him or their time together, the union was complicated because of her enslaved status. The mother's status dictated that of children, and any children born to Harriet and John would be enslaved. Such blended marriages - free people of color marrying enslaved people - were not uncommon on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where by this time, half the black population was free. Most African-American families had both free and enslaved members. Larson suggests that they might have planned to buy Tubman's freedom.

Tubman changed her name from Araminta to Harriet soon after her marriage, though the exact timing is unclear. Larson suggests this happened right after the wedding, and Clinton suggests that it coincided with Tubman's plans to escape from slavery. She adopted her mother's name, possibly as part of a religious conversion, or to honor another relative.

Escape from slavery

Notice offering a reward of US$100 (equivalent to $3,520 in 2022) for the capture and return of "Minty" (Harriet Tubman) and her brothers Henry and Ben

In 1849, Tubman became ill again, which diminished her value to slave traders. Edward Brodess tried to sell her, but could not find a buyer. Angry at him for trying to sell her and for continuing to enslave her relatives, Tubman began to pray for God to make Brodess change his ways. She said later: "I prayed all night long for my master till the first of March; and all the time he was bringing people to look at me, and trying to sell me." When it appeared as though a sale was being concluded, Tubman changed her prayer: "First of March I began to pray, 'Oh Lord, if you ain't never going to change that man's heart, kill him, Lord, and take him out of the way'." A week later, Brodess died, and Tubman expressed regret for her earlier sentiments.

As in many estate settlements, Brodess's death increased the likelihood that Tubman would be sold and her family broken apart. His widow, Eliza, began working to sell the family's enslaved people. Tubman refused to wait for the Brodess family to decide her fate, despite her husband's efforts to dissuade her. "[T]here was one of two things I had a right to", she explained later, "liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other".

Tubman and her brothers, Ben and Henry, escaped from slavery on September 17, 1849. Tubman had been hired out to Anthony Thompson (the son of her father's former owner), who owned a large plantation in an area called Poplar Neck in neighboring Caroline County; it is likely her brothers labored for Thompson as well. Because they were hired out, Eliza Brodess probably did not recognize their absence as an escape attempt for some time. Two weeks later, she posted a runaway notice in the Cambridge Democrat, offering a reward of up to US$100 each (equivalent to $3,520 in 2022) for their capture and return to slavery. Once they had left, Tubman's brothers had second thoughts. Ben may have regretted leaving his wife and children. The two men went back, forcing Tubman to return with them.

Sometime in October or November, Tubman escaped again, this time without her brothers. Before leaving she sang a farewell song to hint at her intentions, which she hoped would be understood by Mary, a trusted fellow slave: "I'll meet you in the morning", she intoned, "I'm bound for the promised land." While her exact route is unknown, Tubman made use of the network known as the Underground Railroad. This informal system was composed of free and enslaved black people, white abolitionists, and other activists. Most prominent among the latter in Maryland at the time were Quakers (members of the Religious Society of Friends). The Preston area near Poplar Neck contained a substantial Quaker community and was probably an important first stop during Tubman's escape. From there, she probably took a common route for people fleeing slavery - northeast along the Choptank River, through Delaware, and then north into Pennsylvania. A journey of nearly 90 miles (145 km) by foot would have taken between five days and three weeks.

Tubman had to travel by night, guided by the North Star and trying to avoid slave catchers eager to collect rewards for fugitive slaves. The "conductors" in the Underground Railroad used deceptions for protection. At an early stop, the lady of the house instructed Tubman to sweep the yard so as to seem to be working for the family. When night fell, the family hid her in a cart and took her to the next friendly house. Given her familiarity with the woods and marshes of the region, Tubman likely hid in these locales during the day. The particulars of her first journey are unknown; because other escapees from slavery used the routes, Tubman did not discuss them until later in life. She crossed into Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe, and recalled the experience years later:

When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.

Nicknamed "Moses"

Tubman sitting (1868 or 1869)

After reaching Philadelphia, Tubman thought of her family. "I was a stranger in a strange land," she said later. "[M]y father, my mother, my brothers, and sisters, and friends were [in Maryland]. But I was free, and they should be free." While Tubman saved money from working odd jobs in Philadelphia and Cape May, New Jersey, the U.S. Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which forced law enforcement officials to assist in the capture of escaped slaves - even in states that had outlawed slavery - and heavily punished abetting escape. The law increased risks for those who had escaped slavery, more of whom therefore sought refuge in Southern Ontario, where slavery had been abolished. Racial tensions were also increasing in Philadelphia as poor Irish immigrants competed with free blacks for work.

In December 1850, Tubman was warned that her niece Kessiah and Kessiah's children would soon be sold in Cambridge. Tubman went to Baltimore, where her brother-in-law Tom Tubman hid her until the sale. Kessiah's husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife. While the auctioneer stepped away to have lunch, John, Kessiah and their children escaped to a nearby safe house. When night fell, Bowley sailed the family on a log canoe 60 miles (97 kilometres) to Baltimore, where they met with Tubman, who brought the family to Philadelphia.

Early next year she returned to Maryland to guide away other family members. During her second trip, she recovered her youngest brother, Moses, along with two other men. Word of her exploits had encouraged her family, and she became more confident with each trip to Maryland.

In late 1851, Tubman returned to Dorchester County for the first time since her escape, this time to find her husband John. When she arrived there, she learned that John had married another woman named Caroline. Tubman sent word that he should join her, but he insisted that he was happy where he was. Suppressing her anger, she found some enslaved people who wanted to escape and led them to Philadelphia.

Frederick Douglass worked for slavery's abolition alongside Tubman.

Because the Fugitive Slave Law had made the northern United States a more dangerous place for those escaping slavery to remain, many escapees began migrating to Southern Ontario. In December 1851, Tubman guided an unidentified group of 11 escapees, possibly including the Bowleys and several others she had helped rescue earlier, northward. There is evidence to suggest that Tubman and her group stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass. Douglass and Tubman admired one another greatly as they both struggled against slavery. Years later he contrasted his efforts with hers, writing:

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.

From 1851 to 1862, Tubman returned repeatedly to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, rescuing some 70 slaves in about 13 expeditions, including her other brothers, Henry, Ben, and Robert, their wives and some of their children. She also provided specific instructions to 50 to 60 additional enslaved people who escaped. Because of her efforts, she was nicknamed "Moses", alluding to the biblical prophet who led the Hebrews to freedom from Egypt. One of her last missions into Maryland was to retrieve her aging parents. Her father purchased her mother from Eliza Brodess in 1855, but even when they were both free, the area was hostile. In 1857, Tubman received word that her father was at risk of arrest for harboring a group of eight people escaping slavery. She led her parents north to St. Catharines, Canada, where a community of formerly enslaved people, including other relatives and friends of Tubman, had gathered.

Routes and methods

Tubman's dangerous work required ingenuity. She usually worked during winter, when long nights and cold weather minimized the chance of being seen. She would start the escapes on Saturday evenings, since newspapers would not print runaway notices until Monday morning. She used subterfuges to avoid detection. Tubman once disguised herself with a bonnet and carried two live chickens to give the appearance of running errands. Suddenly finding herself walking toward a former enslaver, she yanked the strings holding the birds' legs, and their agitation allowed her to avoid eye contact. Later she recognized a fellow train passenger as a former enslaver; she snatched a nearby newspaper and pretended to read. Tubman was known to be illiterate, and the man ignored her.

In an 1897 interview with historian Wilbur Siebert, Tubman named some people who helped her and places she stayed along the Underground Railroad. She stayed with Sam Green, a free black minister living in East New Market, Maryland; she also hid near her parents' home at Poplar Neck. She would travel from there northeast to Sandtown and Willow Grove, Delaware, and to the Camden area where free black agents, William and Nat Brinkley and Abraham Gibbs, guided her north past Dover, Smyrna, and Blackbird, where other agents would take her across the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal to New Castle and Wilmington. In Wilmington, Quaker Thomas Garrett would secure transportation to William Still's office or the homes of other Underground Railroad operators in the greater Philadelphia area. Still is credited with helping hundreds escape to safer places in New York, New England, and Southern Ontario.

Tubman's faith was another important resource as she ventured repeatedly into Maryland. The visions from her childhood head injury continued, and she saw them as divine premonitions. She spoke of "consulting with God", and trusted that He would keep her safe. Garrett once said of her, "I never met with any person of any color who had more confidence in the voice of God, as spoken direct to her soul." Her faith also provided immediate assistance. She used spirituals as coded messages, warning fellow travelers of danger or to signal a clear path. She sang versions of " Go Down Moses" and changed the lyrics to indicate that it was either safe or too dangerous to proceed. As she led escapees across the border, she would call out, "Glory to God and Jesus, too. One more soul is safe!"

She carried a revolver as protection from slave catchers and their dogs. Tubman also threatened to shoot anyone who tried to turn back since that would risk the safety of the remaining group, as well as anyone who helped them on the way. Tubman spoke of one man who insisted he was going to go back to the plantation. She pointed the gun at his head and said, "Go on or die." Several days later, the man who wavered crossed into Canada with the rest of the group.

By the late 1850s, Eastern Shore slaveholders were holding public meetings about the large number of escapes in the area; they cast suspicion on free blacks and white abolitionists. They did not know that "Minty", the petite, disabled woman who had run away years before, was responsible for freeing so many enslaved people. Though a popular legend persists about a reward of $40,000 (equivalent to $1,303,000 in 2022) for Tubman's capture, this is a manufactured figure: in 1867, in support of Tubman's claim for a military pension, an abolitionist named Sallie Holley wrote that $40,000 "was not too great a reward for Maryland slaveholders to offer for her". If it were real, such a high reward would have garnered national attention. A reward of $12,000 has also been claimed, though no documentation has been found for either figure.

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."

John Brown and Harpers Ferry

Tubman helped John Brown plan and recruit for the raid at Harpers Ferry.

In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, an insurgent who advocated the use of violence to destroy slavery in the United States. Although she was not previously involved in armed insurrection, she agreed with his course of direct action and supported his goals. Like Tubman, he spoke of being called by God, and trusted the divine to protect him from the wrath of slavers. She, meanwhile, claimed to have had a prophetic vision of meeting Brown before their encounter.

Thus, as he began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders, Brown was joined by "General Tubman", as he called her. Her knowledge of support networks and resources in the border states of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware was invaluable to Brown and his planners. Although other abolitionists like Douglass did not endorse his tactics, Brown dreamed of fighting to create a new state for those freed from slavery, and made preparations for military action. He believed that after he began the first battle, the enslaved would rise up and carry out a rebellion across the slave states. He asked Tubman to gather former slaves then living in Southern Ontario who might be willing to join his fighting force, which she did.

On May 8, 1858, Brown held a meeting in Chatham, Canada, where he unveiled his plan for a raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia. When word of the plan was leaked to the government, Brown put the scheme on hold and began raising funds for its eventual resumption. Tubman aided him in this effort and with more detailed plans for the assault.

Tubman was busy during this time, giving talks to abolitionist audiences and tending to her relatives. In early October 1859, as Brown and his men prepared to launch the attack, Tubman was ill in New Bedford, Massachusetts. It is not known whether she still intended to join Brown's raid or if she had become skeptical of the plan, but when the raid on Harpers Ferry took place on October 16, Tubman had recovered from her illness and was in New York City.

The raid failed; Brown was convicted of treason, murder, and inciting a rebellion, and he was hanged on December 2. His actions were seen by many abolitionists as a symbol of proud resistance, carried out by a noble martyr. Tubman herself was effusive with praise. She later told a friend: "[H]e done more in dying, than 100 men would in living."

Auburn and Margaret

In early 1859, Frances Adeline Seward, the wife of abolitionist Republican U.S. Senator William H. Seward, sold Tubman a seven-acre (2.8 ha) farm in Fleming, New York, for $1,200 (equivalent to $42,200 in 2022). The adjacent city of Auburn was a hotbed of antislavery activism, and Tubman took the opportunity to move her parents from Canada back to the U.S. Her farmstead became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. For years, she took in relatives and boarders, offering a safe place for black Americans seeking a better life in the north.

Shortly after acquiring the farm, Tubman went back to Maryland and returned with an eight-year-old light-skinned black girl named Margaret, who Tubman said was her niece. She also indicated the girl's parents were free blacks. According to Margaret's daughter Alice, Margaret later described her childhood home as prosperous and said that she left behind a twin brother. These descriptions conflict with what is known about the families of Tubman's siblings, which created uncertainty among historians about the relationship and Tubman's motivations. Alice called Tubman's actions a "kidnapping", saying, "she had taken the child from a sheltered good home to a place where there was nobody to care for her". After speculating in her 2004 biography of Tubman that Margaret might have been Tubman's own secret daughter, Kate Larson found evidence that Margaret was the daughter of Isaac and Mary Woolford, a free black couple who were neighbors of Tubman's parents in Maryland and who had twins named James and Margaret.

In November 1860, Tubman conducted her last rescue mission. Throughout the 1850s, Tubman had been unable to effect the escape of her sister Rachel, and Rachel's two children Ben and Angerine. Upon returning to Dorchester County, Tubman discovered that Rachel had died, and the children could be rescued only if she could pay a bribe of $30 (equivalent to $980 in 2022). She did not have the money, so the children remained enslaved. Their fates remain unknown. Never one to waste a trip, Tubman gathered another group, including the Ennalls family, ready and willing to take the risks of the journey north. It took them weeks to get away safely because of slave catchers forcing them to hide out longer than expected. The weather was unseasonably cold and they had little food. The Ennalls' infant child was quieted with paregoric while slave patrols rode by. They safely reached the home of David and Martha Wright in Auburn on December 28, 1860.

American Civil War

A woodcut of Tubman in her Civil War clothing

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Tubman had a vision that the war would soon lead to the abolition of slavery. More immediately, enslaved people near Union positions began began escaping in large numbers. General Benjamin Butler declared these escapees to be " contraband" - property seized by northern forces - and put them to work, initially without pay, at Fort Monroe in Virginia. The number of "contrabands" encamped at Fort Monroe and other Union positions rapidly increased. In January 1862, Tubman volunteered to support the Union cause and began helping refugees in the camps, particularly in Port Royal, South Carolina.

In South Carolina, Tubman met General David Hunter, a strong supporter of abolition. He declared all of the "contrabands" in the Port Royal district free, and began gathering formerly enslaved people for a regiment of black soldiers. U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was not yet prepared to enforce emancipation on the southern states and reprimanded Hunter for his actions. Tubman condemned Lincoln's response and his general unwillingness to consider ending slavery in the U.S., for both moral and practical reasons:

God won't let master Lincoln beat the South till he does the right thing. Master Lincoln, he's a great man, and I am a poor negro; but the negro can tell master Lincoln how to save the money and the young men. He can do it by setting the negro free.

Tubman served as a nurse in Port Royal, preparing remedies from local plants and aiding soldiers suffering from dysentery and infectious diseases. At first, she received government rations for her work, but to dispel a perception that she was getting special treatment, she gave up her right to these supplies and made money selling pies and root beer, which she made in the evenings.

Scouting and the Combahee River Raid

When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Tubman considered it a positive but incomplete step toward the goal of liberating all black people from slavery. She turned her own efforts towards more direct actions to defeat the Confederacy. In early 1863, Tubman used her knowledge of covert travel and subterfuge to lead a band of scouts through the land around Port Royal. 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.

Illustration of the Combahee River Raid from Harper's Weekly

Later that year, Tubman's intelligence gathering played a key role in the raid at Combahee Ferry. She guided three steamboats with black soldiers under Montgomery's command past mines on the Combahee River to assault several plantations. Once ashore, the Union troops set fire to the plantations, destroying infrastructure and seizing thousands of dollars worth of food and supplies. Forewarned of the raid by Tubman's spy network, enslaved people throughout the area heard steamboats' whistles and understood that they were being liberated. Tubman watched as those fleeing slavery stampeded toward the boats; she later described 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. Armed overseers tried to stop the mass escape, but their efforts were nearly useless in the tumult. As Confederate troops raced to the scene, the steamboats took off toward Beaufort with more than 750 formerly enslaved people.

Newspapers heralded Tubman's "patriotism, sagacity, energy, [and] ability" in the raid, and she was praised for her recruiting efforts - more than 100 of the newly liberated men joined the Union army. Reports about her involvement in the raid led to a revival of the "General Tubman" appellation previously given to her by John Brown. Although her contributions have sometimes been exaggerated, her role in the raid led to her being widely credited as the first woman to lead U.S. troops in an armed assault.

In July 1863, Tubman worked with Colonel Robert Gould Shaw at the assault on Fort Wagner, reportedly serving him his last meal. She later described the battle to historian Albert Bushnell Hart:

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.

For two more years, Tubman worked for the Union forces, tending to newly liberated people, scouting into Confederate territory, and nursing wounded soldiers in Virginia, a task she continued for several months after the Confederacy surrendered in April 1865.

Formal portrait of Tubman taken after the Civil War and circulated as a carte de visite

Tubman had received little pay for her Union military service. She was not a regular soldier and was only occasionally compensated for her work as a spy and scout; her work as a nurse was entirely unpaid. For over three years of service, she received a total of $200 (equivalent to $3,820 in 2022). Her unofficial status caused great difficulty in documenting her service, and the U.S. government was slow in recognizing its debt to her. Meanwhile, her humanitarian work for her family and the formerly enslaved kept her in a state of constant poverty.

When a promised appointment to an official military nursing position fell through in July 1865, Tubman decided to return to her home in New York. During a train ride to New York in October 1865, Tubman traveled on a half-fare ticket provided to her because of her service. A conductor told her to move from a regular passenger car into the less-desirable smoking car. When she refused, he cursed at her and grabbed her. She resisted, and he summoned additional men for help. They muscled her into the smoking car, injuring her in the process. As these events transpired, white passengers cursed Tubman and told the conductor to kick her off the train.

Tubman spent her remaining years in Auburn, tending to her family and other people in need. In addition to managing her farm, she took in boarders and worked various jobs to pay the bills and support her elderly parents. One of the people Tubman took in was a farmer named Nelson Davis. Born enslaved in North Carolina, he had served as a private in the 8th United States Colored Infantry Regiment from September 1863 to November 1865. He began working in Auburn as a bricklayer, and they soon fell in love. Though he was 22 years younger than she was, on March 18, 1869, they were married at the Central Presbyterian Church. They adopted a baby girl named Gertie in 1874.

Tubman in 1887 (far left), with her husband Davis (seated, with cane), their adopted daughter Gertie (beside Tubman), Lee Cheney, John "Pop" Alexander, Walter Green, "Blind Aunty" Sarah Parker, and her great-niece Dora Stewart at Tubman's home in Auburn, New York

Tubman's friends and supporters from the days of abolition, meanwhile, raised funds to support her. One admirer, Sarah Hopkins Bradford, wrote an authorized biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman. The 132-page volume was published in 1869 and brought Tubman some $1,200 in income (equivalent to $26,400 in 2022). Even with this assistance, paying off the mortgage on her farm in May 1873 exhausted Tubman's savings. That October, she fell prey to swindlers. Two black men claimed to know a former slave who had a trunk of gold coins smuggled out of South Carolina, which they would sell for cash at less than half the coins' value. She knew white people in the South had buried valuables when Union forces threatened the region, and black men were frequently assigned to digging duties, so the claim seemed plausible to her. She borrowed money from a wealthy friend and arranged to receive the gold late one night. Once the men had lured her into the woods, they knocked her out with chloroform and stole her purse. Tubman was found dazed and injured; the trunk was filled with rocks.

The crime brought new attention from local leaders to Tubman's precarious financial state and spurred renewed efforts to get compensation for her Civil War service. In 1874, Representatives Clinton D. MacDougall of New York and Gerry W. Hazelton of Wisconsin introduced a bill to pay Tubman a $2,000 (~$51,729 in 2022) lump sum "for services rendered by her to the Union Army as scout, nurse, and spy", but it was defeated in the Senate. In February 1880, Tubman's wood-framed house burned down, but with the help of her supporters it was quickly replaced with a new brick home.

Nelson Davis died of tuberculosis on October 14, 1888. The Dependent and Disability Pension Act of 1890 made Tubman eligible for a pension as his widow. After she documented her marriage and her husband's service record to the satisfaction of the Bureau of Pensions, in 1895 Tubman was granted a monthly widow's pension of $8 (equivalent to $281 in 2022), plus a lump sum of $500 to cover the five-year delay in approval. In December 1897, New York Congressman Sereno E. Payne introduced a bill to grant Tubman a soldier's monthly pension of $25 (~$879.00 in 2022). Although Congress received documents and letters to support Tubman's claims, some members objected to a woman being paid a full soldier's pension. In February 1899, Congress approved a compromise amount of $20 per (~$704.00 in 2022) month (the $8 from her widow's pension plus $12 for her service as a nurse), but did not acknowledge her as a scout and spy.

Suffragist activism

Tubman in 1911

In her later years, Tubman worked to promote the cause of women's suffrage. A white woman once asked Tubman whether she believed women ought to have the vote, and received the reply: "I suffered enough to believe it." Tubman began attending meetings of suffragist organizations, and was soon working alongside women such as Susan B. Anthony and Emily Howland.

Tubman traveled to New York, Boston and Washington, D.C. to speak in favor of women's voting rights. She described her actions during and after the Civil War, and used the sacrifices of countless women throughout modern history as evidence of women's equality to men. When the National Federation of Afro-American Women was founded in 1896, Tubman was the keynote speaker at its first meeting.

This wave of activism kindled a new wave of admiration for Tubman among the press in the United States. A publication called The Woman's Era launched a series of articles on "Eminent Women" with a profile of Tubman. An 1897 suffragist newspaper reported a series of receptions in Boston honoring Tubman and her lifetime of service to the nation. However, her endless contributions to others had left her in poverty, and she had to sell a cow to buy a train ticket to these celebrations.

Church, illness, and death

In the 1870s, Tubman became active in the Thompson Memorial African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church in Auburn. In 1895, she began discussions with AME Zion leaders and others to create a Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged that would care for "indigent colored people". Despite her financial limitations, in 1896 Tubman bid $1215 (~$42,739 in 2022) at auction for a 25-acre (10 ha) farm adjacent to the one she already owned, to use for the new facility. She designated one of the farm's buildings as its primary residence and named it "John Brown Hall" to honor her late abolitionist ally. However, raising funds for the project was difficult, and attempts to donate the property were complicated by the multiple mortgage loans used to pay for it. After Tubman almost lost the property due her financial difficulties, AME Zion agreed to take it over in 1903.

The home did not open for another five years, and Tubman was dismayed when the church ordered residents to pay a $100 entrance fee (equivalent to $3,260 in 2022). She said: "[T]hey make a rule that nobody should come in without they have a hundred dollars. Now I wanted to make a rule that nobody should come in unless they didn't have no money at all." She was frustrated by the new rule but was the guest of honor nonetheless when the home celebrated its opening on June 23, 1908.

As Tubman aged, her childhood head trauma continued to trouble her. Unable to sleep because of pain and "buzzing" in her head, in the late 1890s she asked a doctor at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to operate. In her words, he "sawed open my skull, and raised it up, and now it feels more comfortable". She reportedly received no anesthesia and instead bit down on a bullet, as she had seen Civil War soldiers do when their limbs were amputated.

By 1911, Tubman's body was so frail that she was admitted into the rest home named in her honor. A New York newspaper described her as "ill and penniless", prompting supporters to offer a new round of donations. Surrounded by friends and family members, she died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913. Just before she died, she quoted the Gospel of John to those in the room: "I go away to prepare a place for you." Tubman was buried with semi-military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

Tubman's great-niece, Eva Stewart Northrup, launching the SS Harriet Tubman

Widely known and well-respected while she was alive, Tubman became an American icon in the years after she died. By the 1980s, Tubman was one of American history's most famous figures. She inspired generations of African Americans struggling for equality and civil rights; she was praised by leaders across the political spectrum.

Parks, monuments and historical sites

National parks and national monuments related to Tubman in the United States are the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument and the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park, both in Maryland, and the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn. The Salem Chapel in St. Catharines, where Tubman worshipped, is a National Historic Site of Canada.

The city of Auburn has several historical sites related to Tubman, including her gravesite. Other state and local historical sites about Tubman include a state park and memorial garden in Maryland, and a museum in New Jersey.

Artistic portrayals

Tubman is the subject of many works of art. Musicians including Woody Guthrie, Wynton Marsalis, and Walter Robinson have written songs celebrating her. She is the subject of operas by Thea Musgrave, Nkeiru Okoye, and Hilda Paredes, as well as plays by Carolyn Gage and a collaboration of May Miller and Willis Richardson. Tubman is the focus of novels by Elizabeth Cobbs, Marcy Heidish, and Anne Parrish, and is a character in novels by Terry Bisson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and James McBride.

Since Tubman's life was first dramatized on television in a 1963 episode of the series The Great Adventure, she has been portrayed in TV productions such as The Good Lord Bird, , Underground, and A Woman Called Moses. Cynthia Erivo received an Academy Award nomination for portraying Tubman in the 2019 theatrical film .

Artists including Fern Cunningham, Jane DeDecker, Nina Cooke John, and Alison Saar have presented Tubman in sculptures. She has been drawn or painted by numerous artists, including Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas, William Johnson, Jacob Lawrence, and Faith Ringgold.

Other honors and commemorations

Official $20 bill prototype

In 1978, Tubman became the first African-American woman honored on a U.S. postage stamp; she appeared on a second stamp in 1995. Beginning in 2016, there have been plans to add a portrait of Tubman to the front of the twenty-dollar bill, moving the portrait of President Andrew Jackson, a slaveholder, to the back of the bill.

Dozens of schools, streets and highways, church groups, social organizations, and government agencies have been named after Tubman. In 1944, the United States Maritime Commission launched the SS Harriet Tubman, its first Liberty ship named for a black woman.

Historiography

Tubman hoped to become literate and write her own memoirs, but she never did. Instead, Sarah Hopkins Bradford combined Tubman's personal recollections, journalistic accounts, and letters from Tubman's friends and supporters to create Scenes from the Life of Harriet Tubman in 1868. Criticized by modern biographers for its artistic license and highly subjective point of view, the book nevertheless provides insight into Tubman's own view of her experiences. In 1886, Bradford released a re-written volume called Harriet, the Moses of her People. In both volumes Harriet Tubman is hailed as a latter-day Joan of Arc. The revision took a more moralistic and literary tone than the prior work, including changes of many event descriptions from first to third person. A final revision in 1901 added an appendix with more stories about Tubman's life.

The first full biography of Tubman to be published after Bradford's was Earl Conrad's Harriet Tubman (1943). Conrad experienced great difficulty in finding a publisher - the search took four years - and endured disdain and contempt for his efforts to construct a more objective, detailed account of Tubman's life for adults. Several highly dramatized versions of Tubman's life had been written for children, and many more came later, but Conrad wrote in an academic style. Though she was a popular historical figure, another book-length biography based on original scholarship did not appear for 60 years, when Jean Humez published a close reading of Tubman's life stories in 2003. Larson and Clinton both published their biographies soon after in 2004. Historian Milton Sernett's 2007 book Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory, and History discusses the major biographies of Tubman up to that time.

References

Clinton, Catherine (2004). Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom. New York: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 978-0-316-14492-6 - via Open Library.

"Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800-". Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

Franklin, Jonathan (March 13, 2023). "A Monument of Harriet Tubman Now Replaces a Statue of Christopher Columbus in Newark". . Archived from the original on June 15, 2023.

Gaige, Amity (August 23, 2013). "The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride". San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on July 25, 2019.

Gibson, Chantal N. & Silverman, Monique (2005). "Sur/Rendering Her Image: The Unknowable Harriet Tubman". Canadian Art Review. 30 (1): 25-38. JSTOR 42630711.

Hobson, Janell (2022). When God Lost Her Tongue: Historical Consciousness and the Black Feminist Imagination. Subversive Histories, Feminist Futures series. New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780429243554. ISBN 978-0-429-24355-4. S2CID 240990028.

Humez, Jean M. (Summer 1993). "In Search of Harriet Tubman's Spiritual Autobiography". NWSA Journal. 5 (2): 162-182. JSTOR 4316258.

Humez, Jean (2003). Harriet Tubman: The Life and Life Stories. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-19120-7 - via Open Library.

Kaufman, Rachel (May 13, 2018). "Pilot, Thinker, Soldier, Spy: The Epic Timeless Season Finale Twofer". Smithsonian Magazine. Archived from the original on October 17, 2020.

Larson, Kate Clifford (2004). Bound For the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 978-0-345-45627-4 - via Open Library.

Oertel, Kristen T. (2015). Harriet Tubman: Slavery, the Civil War, and Civil Rights in the Nineteenth-century America. Routledge Historical Americans series. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-94897-9.

Portelli, Alessandro (Fall 1988). "Fire on the Mountain". Review. Appalachian Journal. 16 (1): 87-90. JSTOR 40933404.

Roma, Catherine (2001). "Contemporary British Composers". In Pendle, Karin (ed.). Women and Music: A History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 227-251. ISBN 978-0-253-11503-4 - via Open Library.

Rosenberg, Amy S. (September 17, 2020). "The Harriet Tubman Museum in Cape May Marked Its Opening. Here's What's Inside, and Why It's in Cape May". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Archived from the original on September 21, 2020.

Sacks, Sam (May 17, 2019). "Fiction: Tales of History and Imagination". Books & Arts in Review. The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on July 25, 2019.

Vargas, Ángel (October 17, 2018). "La gesta de Harriet Tubman llega al Cervantino en forma de ópera" [The deeds of Harriet Tubman arrive at the Cervantino in the form of an opera]. (in Spanish). Archived from the original on April 17, 2021.

Further reading

External links

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, c. March 1822 - March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist. After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known collectively as the Underground Railroad.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Who Was Harriet Tubman?

Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses. A leading abolitionist before the American Civil War, Tubman also helped the Union Army during the war, working as a spy among other roles.

After the Civil War ended, Tubman dedicated her life to helping impoverished former slaves and the elderly. In honor of her life and by popular demand, in 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill.

Early Life and Family

Tubman's date of birth is unknown, although it probably occurred between 1820 and 1825. She was one of nine children born between 1808 and 1832 to enslaved parents in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her mother, Harriet "Rit" Green, was owned by Mary Pattison Brodess. Her father, Ben Ross, who was owned by Anthony Thompson (Thompson and Brodess eventually married).

Originally named Araminta Harriet Ross, Tubman was nicknamed "Minty" by her parents. Araminta changed her name to Harriet around the time of her marriage, possibly to honor her mother.

Tubman's early life was full of hardship. Mary Brodess' son Edward sold three of Tubman's sisters to distant plantations, severing the family. When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, Rit successfully resisted the further fracturing of her family, setting a powerful example for her young daughter.

Physical violence was a part of daily life for Tubman and her family. The violence she suffered early in life caused permanent physical injuries. Tubman later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life.

The most severe injury occurred when Tubman was an adolescent. Sent to a dry-goods store for supplies, she encountered a slave who had left the fields without permission. The man's overseer demanded that Tubman help restrain the runaway. When Tubman refused, the overseer threw a two-pound weight that struck her in the head. Tubman endured seizures, severe headaches and narcoleptic episodes for the rest of her life. She also experienced intense dream states, which she classified as religious experiences.

The line between freedom and slavery was hazy for Tubman and her family. Tubman's father, Ben, was freed from slavery at the age of 45, as stipulated in the will of a previous owner. Nonetheless, Ben had few options but to continue working as a timber estimator and foreman for his former owners.

Although similar manumission stipulations applied to Rit and her children, the individuals who owned the family chose not to free them. Despite his free status, Ben had little power to challenge their decision.

Husbands and Children

In 1844, Harriet married a free black man named John Tubman. At the time around half of the African American people on the eastern shore of Maryland were free, and was not unusual for a family to include both free and enslaved people.

Little is known about John or his marriage to Harriet, including whether and how long they lived together. Any children they might have had would have been considered enslaved, since the mother's status dictated that of any offspring. John declined to make the voyage on the Underground Railroad with Harriet, preferring to stay in Maryland with a new wife.

In 1869, Tubman married a Civil War veteran named Nelson Davis. In 1874, the couple adopted a baby girl named Gertie.

The Underground Railroad

Between 1850 and 1860, Tubman made 19 trips from the South to the North following the network known as the Underground Railroad. She guided more than 300 people, including her parents and several siblings, from slavery to freedom, earning the nickname "Moses" for her leadership.

Tubman first encountered the Underground Railroad when she used it to escape slavery herself in 1849. Following a bout of illness and the death of her owner, Tubman decided to escape slavery in Maryland for Philadelphia. She feared that her family would be further severed and was concerned for her own fate as a sickly slave of low economic value.

Two of her brothers, Ben and Harry, accompanied her on September 17, 1849. However, after a notice was published in the Cambridge Democrat offering a $300 reward for the return of Araminta, Harry and Ben had second thoughts and returned to the plantation. Tubman had no plans to remain in bondage. Seeing her brothers safely home, she soon set off alone for Pennsylvania.

Making use of the Underground Railroad, Tubman traveled nearly 90 miles to Philadelphia. She crossed into the free state of Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe, and recalled later: "When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven."

Rather than remaining in the safety of the North, Tubman made it her mission to rescue her family and others living in slavery via the Underground Railroad. In December 1850, Tubman received a warning that her niece Kessiah was going to be sold, along with her two young children. Kessiah's husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife at an auction in Baltimore. Tubman then helped the entire family make the journey to Philadelphia. This was the first of many trips by Tubman.

The dynamics of escaping slavery changed in 1850, with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. This law stated that escaped slaves could be captured in the North and returned to slavery, leading to the abduction of former slaves and free blacks living in Free States. Law enforcement officials in the North were compelled to aid in the capture of slaves, regardless of their personal principles.

In response to the law, Tubman re-routed the Underground Railroad to Canada, which prohibited slavery categorically. In December 1851, Tubman guided a group of 11 fugitives northward. There is evidence to suggest that the party stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass.

In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, who advocated the use of violence to disrupt and destroy the institution of slavery. Tubman shared Brown's goals and at least tolerated his methods. Tubman claimed to have had a prophetic vision of Brown before they met.

When Brown began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders at Harper's Ferry, he turned to "General Tubman" for help. After Brown's subsequent execution, Tubman praised him as a martyr.

Tubman remained active during the Civil War. Working for the Union Army as a cook and nurse, Tubman quickly became an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the Combahee River Raid, which liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina.
READ MORE: How Harriet Tubman and William Still Helped the Underground Railroad

Photo: Benjamin F. Powelson Collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture shared with the Library of Congress, 2017.30.4

Later Life

In early 1859, abolitionist Senator William H. Seward sold Tubman a small piece of land on the outskirts of Auburn, New York. The land in Auburn became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. Tubman spent the years following the war on this property, tending to her family and others who had taken up residence there.

Despite Tubman's fame and reputation, she was never financially secure. Tubman's friends and supporters were able to raise some funds to support her. One admirer, Sarah H. Bradford, wrote a biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, with the proceeds going to Tubman and her family.

Tubman continued to give freely in spite of her economic woes. In 1903, she donated a parcel of her land to the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Auburn. The Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged opened on this site in 1908.
READ MORE: Inside Harriet Tubman's Life of Service After the Underground Railroad
Death

Tubman died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913, surrounded by friends and family, at around the age of 93. As Tubman aged, the head injuries sustained early in her life became more painful and disruptive. She underwent brain surgery at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to alleviate the pains and "buzzing" she experienced regularly. Tubman was eventually admitted into the rest home named in her honor. She was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S HARRIET TUBMAN FACT CARD

Legacy

Widely known and well-respected while she was alive, Tubman became an American icon in the years after she died. A survey at the end of the 20th century named her as one of the most famous civilians in American history before the Civil War, third only to Betsy Ross and Paul Revere. She continues to inspire generations of Americans struggling for civil rights.

When Tubman died, the city of Auburn commemorated her life with a plaque on the courthouse. Tubman was celebrated in many other ways throughout the nation in the 20th century. Dozens of schools were named in her honor, and both the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn and the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cambridge serve as monuments to her life.

A 1978 movie, A Woman Called Moses, commemorated her life and career, and the 2019 film Harriet chronicled Tubman's service as a conductor for the Underground Railroad.

Tubman on the New $20 Bill

In April 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman would replace Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill. The announcement came after the Treasury Department received a groundswell of public comments, following Women on 20s' campaign calling for a notable American woman to appear on U.S. currency. The decision was celebrated, as Tubman devoted her life to racial equality and fought for women's rights.

In June 2015, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew was criticized for saying that it was likely a woman would appear on the $10 bill, which features a portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the influential founding father who found renewed popularity because of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. The ultimate decision to have Tubman replace Jackson, a slaveholder who played a role in the removal of Native Americans from their land, was widely praised.

The unveiling of the new $20 bill featuring Tubman was planned for 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote. However, in May 2019, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that no new designs will be unveiled until 2026 at the earliest due to what he called counterfeiting issues. In June, the Treasury Department's inspector general said that it would look into why the launch had been delayed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses.

# data[].attributes.body
Harriet Tubman Life during Civil War

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Harriet Tubman was born Araminta Ross in Dorchester County, Maryland. She was also known by the nickname "Moses" due to her success in leading slaves to freedom during the Civil War. The exact year of her birth is unknown, but it was probably around 1822. She was born into slavery but escaped and used her own freedom to help others slaves.

She is remembered for her work during the Civil War where she worked as a scout, a nurse, and a spy as well as taking part many raids to free slaves from the Southern Plantations. Her most famous mission was the raid on Combahee Ferry. As well as helping to free as many as 700 slaves, it is notable as the first time an assault campaign was led by a woman. After the war, her activism continued, and she became involved in the woman's suffragist movement.

The Underground Railway

Once she escaped from slavery, Harriet Tubman went to Philadelphia and began to work for the Union army believing that supporting the Unionist side was the only way to ensure the emancipation of slaves. She initially worked in the more traditional woman's role as a cook and a nurse, but later she became active as a scout a spy and a soldier.

Returning to the south, she was able to help to rescue her friends and family from the plantations. Like many abolitionists, she became part of the "Underground Railway". This was a secret network of activists who provided safehouses for escaped slaves and helped them to make their way across the border to safer territory.

The Underground Railway played a key role in the struggle against slavery especially after the passing of the 1850 fugitive slave act which required that any slaves who were captured should be returned to their masters. Tubman's success in leading so many slaves to freedom earned her the nickname "Moses" from her fellow activists.

Once the slaves had escaped from the plantation, Harriet would lead them to the safety of British North America - where part of modern Canada is now. There she would help them find work before returning to bring out another group.

Tubman also played an important role in helping recruit volunteers for the raid on Harpers Ferry. This was an armed revolt of slaves organised and led by John Brown, although, in the end, she didn't take part due to ill health.

The Raid at Combahee Ferry

One of Harriet's most famous and successful missions was the raid at Combahee Ferry in South Carolina which took place in June 1863. On 1st June three ships had set off bringing 300 Union troops to the Combahee River. Unfortunately one ran aground not long after setting off so only two of the ships reached their destination in the early hours of June 3rd. Tubman was on board the John Adams with the soldiers of the 2 nd South Carolina heading up the river to the Combahee Ferry. Thanks to Tubman's previous scouting and spying activities she had valuable knowledge of the placement of Confederate mines in the river and was able to steer the boat safely.

As they travelled on, the boat picked up escaped slaves who were hiding along the riverbank. Many were initially afraid of the Union soldiers that thanks to reassurances from Tubman they were persuaded to come on board. The alarm was soon raised, but the operation met less resistance from the Confederate army than expected because this was the worst season for diseases, and many of the Confederate soldiers were laid low with smallpox, malaria and typhoid fever.

A few hours later reinforcements arrived. The pontoon bridge was destroyed, and the boat had to stop at the causeway. However, the Confederate troops were quickly defeated by gunfire from the John Adams and retreated. Tubman was free to lead her fellow Unionists and the slaves who had joined the boat, along the way to make their raid on the nearby plantations.

The John Adams blasted its whistles and, thanks to the underground network of spies and messengers, the slaves knew that it was a sign that the Union forces were there to rescue them. Hundreds of slaves stormed out of the plantations onto the waiting ships bringing with them supplies of rice and cotton, potatoes, corn, and livestock to help them on the next part of their journey. The plantation owners tried to stop the mass exodus with whips and handguns, but they stood no chance again so many single-minded slaves rushing to seize their freedom. Once the slaves had escaped, the plantation buildings were burnt down, and the ships then set off for Beaufort.
Read more on page two...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Life of Harriet Tubman - Civil War Nurse, Spy, Soldier and Activist

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Harriet Tubman was born Araminta Ross in Dorchester County, Maryland. She was also known by the nickname "Moses" due to her success in leading slaves to freedom during the Civil War. The exact year of her birth is unknown, but it was probably around 1822.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, c. March 1822 - March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist. After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known collectively as the Underground Railroad. During the American Civil War, she served as an armed scout and spy for the Union Army. In her later years, Tubman was an activist in the movement for women's suffrage.

Born into slavery in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten and whipped by enslavers as a child. Early in life, she suffered a traumatic head wound when an irate overseer threw a heavy metal weight, intending to hit another slave, but hit her instead. The injury caused dizziness, pain, and spells of hypersomnia, which occurred throughout her life. After her injury, Tubman began experiencing strange visions and vivid dreams, which she ascribed to premonitions from God. These experiences, combined with her Methodist upbringing, led her to become devoutly religious.

In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, only to return to Maryland to rescue her family soon after. Slowly, one group at a time, she brought relatives with her out of the state, and eventually guided dozens of other enslaved people to freedom. Traveling by night and in extreme secrecy, Tubman (or " Moses", as she was called) "never lost a passenger". After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed, she helped guide escapees farther north into British North America (Canada), and helped newly freed people find work. Tubman met John Brown in 1858, and helped him plan and recruit supporters for his 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry.

When the Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. For her guidance of the raid at Combahee Ferry, which liberated more than 700 enslaved people, she is widely credited as first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war. After the war, she retired to the family home on property she had purchased in 1859 in Auburn, New York, where she cared for her aging parents. She was active in the women's suffrage movement until illness overtook her, and she had to be admitted to a home for elderly African Americans that she had helped to establish years earlier. She became an icon of courage and freedom.

Birth and family

Map of key locations in Tubman's life

Tubman was born Araminta "Minty" Ross to enslaved parents, Harriet ("Rit") Green and Ben Ross. Rit was enslaved by Mary Pattison Brodess (and later her son Edward). Ben was enslaved by Anthony Thompson, who became Mary Brodess's second husband, and who ran a large plantation near the Blackwater River in the Madison area of Dorchester County, Maryland.

As with many enslaved people in the United States, neither the exact year nor place of Tubman's birth is known. Tubman reported the year of her birth as 1825, while her death certificate lists 1815 and her gravestone lists 1820. Historian Kate Larson's 2004 biography of Tubman records the year as 1822, based on a midwife payment and several other historical documents, including her runaway advertisement. Based on Larson's work, more recent biographies have accepted March 1822 as the most likely timing of Tubman's birth.

Tubman's maternal grandmother, Modesty, arrived in the U.S. on a slave ship from Africa; no information is available about her other ancestors. As a child, Tubman was told that she seemed like an Ashanti person because of her character traits, though no evidence has been found to confirm or deny this lineage. Her mother, Rit (who may have had a white father), was a cook for the Brodess family. Her father, Ben, was a skilled woodsman who managed the timber work on Thompson's plantation. They married around 1808 and, according to court records, had nine children together: Linah, Mariah Ritty, Soph, Robert, Minty (Harriet), Ben, Rachel, Henry, and Moses.

Rit struggled to keep her family together as slavery threatened to tear it apart. Edward Brodess sold three of her daughters (Linah, Mariah Ritty, and Soph), separating them from the family forever. When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, she hid him for a month, aided by other enslaved people and freedmen in the community. At one point she confronted Brodess about the sale. Finally, Brodess and "the Georgia man" came toward the slave quarters to seize the child, where Rit told them, "You are after my son; but the first man that comes into my house, I will split his head open." Brodess backed away and abandoned the sale. Tubman's biographers agree that stories told about this event within the family influenced her belief in the possibilities of resistance.

Tubman's mother was assigned to "the big house" and had scarce time for her own family; consequently, as a child Tubman took care of a younger brother and baby, as was typical in large families. When she was five or six years old, Brodess hired her out as a nursemaid to a woman named "Miss Susan". Tubman was ordered to care for the baby and rock the cradle as it slept; when the baby woke up and cried, Tubman was whipped. She later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life. She found ways to resist, such as running away for five days, wearing layers of clothing as protection against beatings, and fighting back.

Also in her childhood, Tubman was sent to work for a planter named James Cook. She had to check his muskrat traps in nearby marshes, even after contracting measles. She became so ill that Cook sent her back to Brodess, where her mother nursed her back to health. Brodess then hired her out again. She spoke later of her acute childhood homesickness, comparing herself to "the boy on the Swanee River", an allusion to Stephen Foster's song " Old Folks at Home". As she grew older and stronger, she was assigned to field and forest work, driving oxen, plowing, and hauling logs.

As an adolescent, Tubman suffered a severe head injury when an overseer threw a two-pound (1 kg) metal weight at another slave who was attempting to flee. The weight struck Tubman instead, which she said: "broke my skull". Bleeding and unconscious, she was returned to her enslaver's house and laid on the seat of a loom, where she remained without medical care for two days. After this incident, Tubman frequently experienced extremely painful headaches. She also began having seizures and would seemingly fall unconscious, although she claimed to be aware of her surroundings while appearing to be asleep. Larson suggests she may have had temporal lobe epilepsy, possibly as a result of brain injury; Clinton suggests her condition may have been narcolepsy or cataplexy. A definitive diagnosis is not possible due to lack of contemporary medical evidence, but this condition remained with her for the rest of her life.

After her injury, Tubman began experiencing visions and vivid dreams, which she interpreted as revelations from God. These spiritual experiences had a profound effect on Tubman's personality and she acquired a passionate faith in God. Although Tubman was illiterate, she was told Bible stories by her mother and likely attended a Methodist church with her family. She rejected the teachings of white preachers who urged enslaved people to be passive and obedient victims to those who trafficked and enslaved them; instead she found guidance in the Old Testament tales of deliverance. This religious perspective informed her actions throughout her life.

Family and marriage

Anthony Thompson promised to manumit Tubman's father at age 45. After Thompson died, his son followed through with that promise in 1840. Tubman's father continued working as a timber estimator and foreman for the Thompson family. Later in the 1840s, Tubman paid a white attorney five dollars (equivalent to $160 in 2022) to investigate the legal status of her mother, Rit. The lawyer discovered that Atthow Pattison, the grandfather of Mary Brodess, indicated in his will that Rit and any of her children would be manumitted at age 45, and that any children born after she reached age 45 would be freeborn. The Pattison and Brodess families ignored this stipulation when they inherited the enslaved family, but taking legal action to enforce it was an impossible task for Tubman.

Around 1844, she married a free black man named John Tubman. Although little is known about him or their time together, the union was complicated because of her enslaved status. The mother's status dictated that of children, and any children born to Harriet and John would be enslaved. Such blended marriages - free people of color marrying enslaved people - were not uncommon on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where by this time, half the black population was free. Most African-American families had both free and enslaved members. Larson suggests that they might have planned to buy Tubman's freedom.

Tubman changed her name from Araminta to Harriet soon after her marriage, though the exact timing is unclear. Larson suggests this happened right after the wedding, and Clinton suggests that it coincided with Tubman's plans to escape from slavery. She adopted her mother's name, possibly as part of a religious conversion, or to honor another relative.

Escape from slavery

Notice offering a reward of US$100 (equivalent to $3,520 in 2022) for the capture and return of "Minty" (Harriet Tubman) and her brothers Henry and Ben

In 1849, Tubman became ill again, which diminished her value to slave traders. Edward Brodess tried to sell her, but could not find a buyer. Angry at him for trying to sell her and for continuing to enslave her relatives, Tubman began to pray for God to make Brodess change his ways. She said later: "I prayed all night long for my master till the first of March; and all the time he was bringing people to look at me, and trying to sell me." When it appeared as though a sale was being concluded, Tubman changed her prayer: "First of March I began to pray, 'Oh Lord, if you ain't never going to change that man's heart, kill him, Lord, and take him out of the way'." A week later, Brodess died, and Tubman expressed regret for her earlier sentiments.

As in many estate settlements, Brodess's death increased the likelihood that Tubman would be sold and her family broken apart. His widow, Eliza, began working to sell the family's enslaved people. Tubman refused to wait for the Brodess family to decide her fate, despite her husband's efforts to dissuade her. "[T]here was one of two things I had a right to", she explained later, "liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other".

Tubman and her brothers, Ben and Henry, escaped from slavery on September 17, 1849. Tubman had been hired out to Anthony Thompson (the son of her father's former owner), who owned a large plantation in an area called Poplar Neck in neighboring Caroline County; it is likely her brothers labored for Thompson as well. Because they were hired out, Eliza Brodess probably did not recognize their absence as an escape attempt for some time. Two weeks later, she posted a runaway notice in the Cambridge Democrat, offering a reward of up to US$100 each (equivalent to $3,520 in 2022) for their capture and return to slavery. Once they had left, Tubman's brothers had second thoughts. Ben may have regretted leaving his wife and children. The two men went back, forcing Tubman to return with them.

Sometime in October or November, Tubman escaped again, this time without her brothers. Before leaving she sang a farewell song to hint at her intentions, which she hoped would be understood by Mary, a trusted fellow slave: "I'll meet you in the morning", she intoned, "I'm bound for the promised land." While her exact route is unknown, Tubman made use of the network known as the Underground Railroad. This informal system was composed of free and enslaved black people, white abolitionists, and other activists. Most prominent among the latter in Maryland at the time were Quakers (members of the Religious Society of Friends). The Preston area near Poplar Neck contained a substantial Quaker community and was probably an important first stop during Tubman's escape. From there, she probably took a common route for people fleeing slavery - northeast along the Choptank River, through Delaware, and then north into Pennsylvania. A journey of nearly 90 miles (145 km) by foot would have taken between five days and three weeks.

Tubman had to travel by night, guided by the North Star and trying to avoid slave catchers eager to collect rewards for fugitive slaves. The "conductors" in the Underground Railroad used deceptions for protection. At an early stop, the lady of the house instructed Tubman to sweep the yard so as to seem to be working for the family. When night fell, the family hid her in a cart and took her to the next friendly house. Given her familiarity with the woods and marshes of the region, Tubman likely hid in these locales during the day. The particulars of her first journey are unknown; because other escapees from slavery used the routes, Tubman did not discuss them until later in life. She crossed into Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe, and recalled the experience years later:

When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.

Nicknamed "Moses"

Tubman sitting (1868 or 1869)

After reaching Philadelphia, Tubman thought of her family. "I was a stranger in a strange land," she said later. "[M]y father, my mother, my brothers, and sisters, and friends were [in Maryland]. But I was free, and they should be free." While Tubman saved money from working odd jobs in Philadelphia and Cape May, New Jersey, the U.S. Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which forced law enforcement officials to assist in the capture of escaped slaves - even in states that had outlawed slavery - and heavily punished abetting escape. The law increased risks for those who had escaped slavery, more of whom therefore sought refuge in Southern Ontario, where slavery had been abolished. Racial tensions were also increasing in Philadelphia as poor Irish immigrants competed with free blacks for work.

In December 1850, Tubman was warned that her niece Kessiah and Kessiah's children would soon be sold in Cambridge. Tubman went to Baltimore, where her brother-in-law Tom Tubman hid her until the sale. Kessiah's husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife. While the auctioneer stepped away to have lunch, John, Kessiah and their children escaped to a nearby safe house. When night fell, Bowley sailed the family on a log canoe 60 miles (97 kilometres) to Baltimore, where they met with Tubman, who brought the family to Philadelphia.

Early next year she returned to Maryland to guide away other family members. During her second trip, she recovered her youngest brother, Moses, along with two other men. Word of her exploits had encouraged her family, and she became more confident with each trip to Maryland.

In late 1851, Tubman returned to Dorchester County for the first time since her escape, this time to find her husband John. When she arrived there, she learned that John had married another woman named Caroline. Tubman sent word that he should join her, but he insisted that he was happy where he was. Suppressing her anger, she found some enslaved people who wanted to escape and led them to Philadelphia.

Frederick Douglass worked for slavery's abolition alongside Tubman.

Because the Fugitive Slave Law had made the northern United States a more dangerous place for those escaping slavery to remain, many escapees began migrating to Southern Ontario. In December 1851, Tubman guided an unidentified group of 11 escapees, possibly including the Bowleys and several others she had helped rescue earlier, northward. There is evidence to suggest that Tubman and her group stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass. Douglass and Tubman admired one another greatly as they both struggled against slavery. Years later he contrasted his efforts with hers, writing:

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.

From 1851 to 1862, Tubman returned repeatedly to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, rescuing some 70 slaves in about 13 expeditions, including her other brothers, Henry, Ben, and Robert, their wives and some of their children. She also provided specific instructions to 50 to 60 additional enslaved people who escaped. Because of her efforts, she was nicknamed "Moses", alluding to the biblical prophet who led the Hebrews to freedom from Egypt. One of her last missions into Maryland was to retrieve her aging parents. Her father purchased her mother from Eliza Brodess in 1855, but even when they were both free, the area was hostile. In 1857, Tubman received word that her father was at risk of arrest for harboring a group of eight people escaping slavery. She led her parents north to St. Catharines, Canada, where a community of formerly enslaved people, including other relatives and friends of Tubman, had gathered.

Routes and methods

Tubman's dangerous work required ingenuity. She usually worked during winter, when long nights and cold weather minimized the chance of being seen. She would start the escapes on Saturday evenings, since newspapers would not print runaway notices until Monday morning. She used subterfuges to avoid detection. Tubman once disguised herself with a bonnet and carried two live chickens to give the appearance of running errands. Suddenly finding herself walking toward a former enslaver, she yanked the strings holding the birds' legs, and their agitation allowed her to avoid eye contact. Later she recognized a fellow train passenger as a former enslaver; she snatched a nearby newspaper and pretended to read. Tubman was known to be illiterate, and the man ignored her.

In an 1897 interview with historian Wilbur Siebert, Tubman named some people who helped her and places she stayed along the Underground Railroad. She stayed with Sam Green, a free black minister living in East New Market, Maryland; she also hid near her parents' home at Poplar Neck. She would travel from there northeast to Sandtown and Willow Grove, Delaware, and to the Camden area where free black agents, William and Nat Brinkley and Abraham Gibbs, guided her north past Dover, Smyrna, and Blackbird, where other agents would take her across the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal to New Castle and Wilmington. In Wilmington, Quaker Thomas Garrett would secure transportation to William Still's office or the homes of other Underground Railroad operators in the greater Philadelphia area. Still is credited with helping hundreds escape to safer places in New York, New England, and Southern Ontario.

Tubman's faith was another important resource as she ventured repeatedly into Maryland. The visions from her childhood head injury continued, and she saw them as divine premonitions. She spoke of "consulting with God", and trusted that He would keep her safe. Garrett once said of her, "I never met with any person of any color who had more confidence in the voice of God, as spoken direct to her soul." Her faith also provided immediate assistance. She used spirituals as coded messages, warning fellow travelers of danger or to signal a clear path. She sang versions of " Go Down Moses" and changed the lyrics to indicate that it was either safe or too dangerous to proceed. As she led escapees across the border, she would call out, "Glory to God and Jesus, too. One more soul is safe!"

She carried a revolver as protection from slave catchers and their dogs. Tubman also threatened to shoot anyone who tried to turn back since that would risk the safety of the remaining group, as well as anyone who helped them on the way. Tubman spoke of one man who insisted he was going to go back to the plantation. She pointed the gun at his head and said, "Go on or die." Several days later, the man who wavered crossed into Canada with the rest of the group.

By the late 1850s, Eastern Shore slaveholders were holding public meetings about the large number of escapes in the area; they cast suspicion on free blacks and white abolitionists. They did not know that "Minty", the petite, disabled woman who had run away years before, was responsible for freeing so many enslaved people. Though a popular legend persists about a reward of $40,000 (equivalent to $1,303,000 in 2022) for Tubman's capture, this is a manufactured figure: in 1867, in support of Tubman's claim for a military pension, an abolitionist named Sallie Holley wrote that $40,000 "was not too great a reward for Maryland slaveholders to offer for her". If it were real, such a high reward would have garnered national attention. A reward of $12,000 has also been claimed, though no documentation has been found for either figure.

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."

John Brown and Harpers Ferry

Tubman helped John Brown plan and recruit for the raid at Harpers Ferry.

In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, an insurgent who advocated the use of violence to destroy slavery in the United States. Although she was not previously involved in armed insurrection, she agreed with his course of direct action and supported his goals. Like Tubman, he spoke of being called by God, and trusted the divine to protect him from the wrath of slavers. She, meanwhile, claimed to have had a prophetic vision of meeting Brown before their encounter.

Thus, as he began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders, Brown was joined by "General Tubman", as he called her. Her knowledge of support networks and resources in the border states of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware was invaluable to Brown and his planners. Although other abolitionists like Douglass did not endorse his tactics, Brown dreamed of fighting to create a new state for those freed from slavery, and made preparations for military action. He believed that after he began the first battle, the enslaved would rise up and carry out a rebellion across the slave states. He asked Tubman to gather former slaves then living in Southern Ontario who might be willing to join his fighting force, which she did.

On May 8, 1858, Brown held a meeting in Chatham, Canada, where he unveiled his plan for a raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia. When word of the plan was leaked to the government, Brown put the scheme on hold and began raising funds for its eventual resumption. Tubman aided him in this effort and with more detailed plans for the assault.

Tubman was busy during this time, giving talks to abolitionist audiences and tending to her relatives. In early October 1859, as Brown and his men prepared to launch the attack, Tubman was ill in New Bedford, Massachusetts. It is not known whether she still intended to join Brown's raid or if she had become skeptical of the plan, but when the raid on Harpers Ferry took place on October 16, Tubman had recovered from her illness and was in New York City.

The raid failed; Brown was convicted of treason, murder, and inciting a rebellion, and he was hanged on December 2. His actions were seen by many abolitionists as a symbol of proud resistance, carried out by a noble martyr. Tubman herself was effusive with praise. She later told a friend: "[H]e done more in dying, than 100 men would in living."

Auburn and Margaret

In early 1859, Frances Adeline Seward, the wife of abolitionist Republican U.S. Senator William H. Seward, sold Tubman a seven-acre (2.8 ha) farm in Fleming, New York, for $1,200 (equivalent to $42,200 in 2022). The adjacent city of Auburn was a hotbed of antislavery activism, and Tubman took the opportunity to move her parents from Canada back to the U.S. Her farmstead became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. For years, she took in relatives and boarders, offering a safe place for black Americans seeking a better life in the north.

Shortly after acquiring the farm, Tubman went back to Maryland and returned with an eight-year-old light-skinned black girl named Margaret, who Tubman said was her niece. She also indicated the girl's parents were free blacks. According to Margaret's daughter Alice, Margaret later described her childhood home as prosperous and said that she left behind a twin brother. These descriptions conflict with what is known about the families of Tubman's siblings, which created uncertainty among historians about the relationship and Tubman's motivations. Alice called Tubman's actions a "kidnapping", saying, "she had taken the child from a sheltered good home to a place where there was nobody to care for her". After speculating in her 2004 biography of Tubman that Margaret might have been Tubman's own secret daughter, Kate Larson found evidence that Margaret was the daughter of Isaac and Mary Woolford, a free black couple who were neighbors of Tubman's parents in Maryland and who had twins named James and Margaret.

In November 1860, Tubman conducted her last rescue mission. Throughout the 1850s, Tubman had been unable to effect the escape of her sister Rachel, and Rachel's two children Ben and Angerine. Upon returning to Dorchester County, Tubman discovered that Rachel had died, and the children could be rescued only if she could pay a bribe of $30 (equivalent to $980 in 2022). She did not have the money, so the children remained enslaved. Their fates remain unknown. Never one to waste a trip, Tubman gathered another group, including the Ennalls family, ready and willing to take the risks of the journey north. It took them weeks to get away safely because of slave catchers forcing them to hide out longer than expected. The weather was unseasonably cold and they had little food. The Ennalls' infant child was quieted with paregoric while slave patrols rode by. They safely reached the home of David and Martha Wright in Auburn on December 28, 1860.

American Civil War

A woodcut of Tubman in her Civil War clothing

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Tubman had a vision that the war would soon lead to the abolition of slavery. More immediately, enslaved people near Union positions began began escaping in large numbers. General Benjamin Butler declared these escapees to be " contraband" - property seized by northern forces - and put them to work, initially without pay, at Fort Monroe in Virginia. The number of "contrabands" encamped at Fort Monroe and other Union positions rapidly increased. In January 1862, Tubman volunteered to support the Union cause and began helping refugees in the camps, particularly in Port Royal, South Carolina.

In South Carolina, Tubman met General David Hunter, a strong supporter of abolition. He declared all of the "contrabands" in the Port Royal district free, and began gathering formerly enslaved people for a regiment of black soldiers. U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was not yet prepared to enforce emancipation on the southern states and reprimanded Hunter for his actions. Tubman condemned Lincoln's response and his general unwillingness to consider ending slavery in the U.S., for both moral and practical reasons:

God won't let master Lincoln beat the South till he does the right thing. Master Lincoln, he's a great man, and I am a poor negro; but the negro can tell master Lincoln how to save the money and the young men. He can do it by setting the negro free.

Tubman served as a nurse in Port Royal, preparing remedies from local plants and aiding soldiers suffering from dysentery and infectious diseases. At first, she received government rations for her work, but to dispel a perception that she was getting special treatment, she gave up her right to these supplies and made money selling pies and root beer, which she made in the evenings.

Scouting and the Combahee River Raid

When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Tubman considered it a positive but incomplete step toward the goal of liberating all black people from slavery. She turned her own efforts towards more direct actions to defeat the Confederacy. In early 1863, Tubman used her knowledge of covert travel and subterfuge to lead a band of scouts through the land around Port Royal. 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.

Illustration of the Combahee River Raid from Harper's Weekly

Later that year, Tubman's intelligence gathering played a key role in the raid at Combahee Ferry. She guided three steamboats with black soldiers under Montgomery's command past mines on the Combahee River to assault several plantations. Once ashore, the Union troops set fire to the plantations, destroying infrastructure and seizing thousands of dollars worth of food and supplies. Forewarned of the raid by Tubman's spy network, enslaved people throughout the area heard steamboats' whistles and understood that they were being liberated. Tubman watched as those fleeing slavery stampeded toward the boats; she later described 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. Armed overseers tried to stop the mass escape, but their efforts were nearly useless in the tumult. As Confederate troops raced to the scene, the steamboats took off toward Beaufort with more than 750 formerly enslaved people.

Newspapers heralded Tubman's "patriotism, sagacity, energy, [and] ability" in the raid, and she was praised for her recruiting efforts - more than 100 of the newly liberated men joined the Union army. Reports about her involvement in the raid led to a revival of the "General Tubman" appellation previously given to her by John Brown. Although her contributions have sometimes been exaggerated, her role in the raid led to her being widely credited as the first woman to lead U.S. troops in an armed assault.

In July 1863, Tubman worked with Colonel Robert Gould Shaw at the assault on Fort Wagner, reportedly serving him his last meal. She later described the battle to historian Albert Bushnell Hart:

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.

For two more years, Tubman worked for the Union forces, tending to newly liberated people, scouting into Confederate territory, and nursing wounded soldiers in Virginia, a task she continued for several months after the Confederacy surrendered in April 1865.

Formal portrait of Tubman taken after the Civil War and circulated as a carte de visite

Tubman had received little pay for her Union military service. She was not a regular soldier and was only occasionally compensated for her work as a spy and scout; her work as a nurse was entirely unpaid. For over three years of service, she received a total of $200 (equivalent to $3,820 in 2022). Her unofficial status caused great difficulty in documenting her service, and the U.S. government was slow in recognizing its debt to her. Meanwhile, her humanitarian work for her family and the formerly enslaved kept her in a state of constant poverty.

When a promised appointment to an official military nursing position fell through in July 1865, Tubman decided to return to her home in New York. During a train ride to New York in October 1865, Tubman traveled on a half-fare ticket provided to her because of her service. A conductor told her to move from a regular passenger car into the less-desirable smoking car. When she refused, he cursed at her and grabbed her. She resisted, and he summoned additional men for help. They muscled her into the smoking car, injuring her in the process. As these events transpired, white passengers cursed Tubman and told the conductor to kick her off the train.

Tubman spent her remaining years in Auburn, tending to her family and other people in need. In addition to managing her farm, she took in boarders and worked various jobs to pay the bills and support her elderly parents. One of the people Tubman took in was a farmer named Nelson Davis. Born enslaved in North Carolina, he had served as a private in the 8th United States Colored Infantry Regiment from September 1863 to November 1865. He began working in Auburn as a bricklayer, and they soon fell in love. Though he was 22 years younger than she was, on March 18, 1869, they were married at the Central Presbyterian Church. They adopted a baby girl named Gertie in 1874.

Tubman in 1887 (far left), with her husband Davis (seated, with cane), their adopted daughter Gertie (beside Tubman), Lee Cheney, John "Pop" Alexander, Walter Green, "Blind Aunty" Sarah Parker, and her great-niece Dora Stewart at Tubman's home in Auburn, New York

Tubman's friends and supporters from the days of abolition, meanwhile, raised funds to support her. One admirer, Sarah Hopkins Bradford, wrote an authorized biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman. The 132-page volume was published in 1869 and brought Tubman some $1,200 in income (equivalent to $26,400 in 2022). Even with this assistance, paying off the mortgage on her farm in May 1873 exhausted Tubman's savings. That October, she fell prey to swindlers. Two black men claimed to know a former slave who had a trunk of gold coins smuggled out of South Carolina, which they would sell for cash at less than half the coins' value. She knew white people in the South had buried valuables when Union forces threatened the region, and black men were frequently assigned to digging duties, so the claim seemed plausible to her. She borrowed money from a wealthy friend and arranged to receive the gold late one night. Once the men had lured her into the woods, they knocked her out with chloroform and stole her purse. Tubman was found dazed and injured; the trunk was filled with rocks.

The crime brought new attention from local leaders to Tubman's precarious financial state and spurred renewed efforts to get compensation for her Civil War service. In 1874, Representatives Clinton D. MacDougall of New York and Gerry W. Hazelton of Wisconsin introduced a bill to pay Tubman a $2,000 (~$51,729 in 2022) lump sum "for services rendered by her to the Union Army as scout, nurse, and spy", but it was defeated in the Senate. In February 1880, Tubman's wood-framed house burned down, but with the help of her supporters it was quickly replaced with a new brick home.

Nelson Davis died of tuberculosis on October 14, 1888. The Dependent and Disability Pension Act of 1890 made Tubman eligible for a pension as his widow. After she documented her marriage and her husband's service record to the satisfaction of the Bureau of Pensions, in 1895 Tubman was granted a monthly widow's pension of $8 (equivalent to $281 in 2022), plus a lump sum of $500 to cover the five-year delay in approval. In December 1897, New York Congressman Sereno E. Payne introduced a bill to grant Tubman a soldier's monthly pension of $25 (~$879.00 in 2022). Although Congress received documents and letters to support Tubman's claims, some members objected to a woman being paid a full soldier's pension. In February 1899, Congress approved a compromise amount of $20 per (~$704.00 in 2022) month (the $8 from her widow's pension plus $12 for her service as a nurse), but did not acknowledge her as a scout and spy.

Suffragist activism

Tubman in 1911

In her later years, Tubman worked to promote the cause of women's suffrage. A white woman once asked Tubman whether she believed women ought to have the vote, and received the reply: "I suffered enough to believe it." Tubman began attending meetings of suffragist organizations, and was soon working alongside women such as Susan B. Anthony and Emily Howland.

Tubman traveled to New York, Boston and Washington, D.C. to speak in favor of women's voting rights. She described her actions during and after the Civil War, and used the sacrifices of countless women throughout modern history as evidence of women's equality to men. When the National Federation of Afro-American Women was founded in 1896, Tubman was the keynote speaker at its first meeting.

This wave of activism kindled a new wave of admiration for Tubman among the press in the United States. A publication called The Woman's Era launched a series of articles on "Eminent Women" with a profile of Tubman. An 1897 suffragist newspaper reported a series of receptions in Boston honoring Tubman and her lifetime of service to the nation. However, her endless contributions to others had left her in poverty, and she had to sell a cow to buy a train ticket to these celebrations.

Church, illness, and death

In the 1870s, Tubman became active in the Thompson Memorial African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church in Auburn. In 1895, she began discussions with AME Zion leaders and others to create a Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged that would care for "indigent colored people". Despite her financial limitations, in 1896 Tubman bid $1215 (~$42,739 in 2022) at auction for a 25-acre (10 ha) farm adjacent to the one she already owned, to use for the new facility. She designated one of the farm's buildings as its primary residence and named it "John Brown Hall" to honor her late abolitionist ally. However, raising funds for the project was difficult, and attempts to donate the property were complicated by the multiple mortgage loans used to pay for it. After Tubman almost lost the property due her financial difficulties, AME Zion agreed to take it over in 1903.

The home did not open for another five years, and Tubman was dismayed when the church ordered residents to pay a $100 entrance fee (equivalent to $3,260 in 2022). She said: "[T]hey make a rule that nobody should come in without they have a hundred dollars. Now I wanted to make a rule that nobody should come in unless they didn't have no money at all." She was frustrated by the new rule but was the guest of honor nonetheless when the home celebrated its opening on June 23, 1908.

As Tubman aged, her childhood head trauma continued to trouble her. Unable to sleep because of pain and "buzzing" in her head, in the late 1890s she asked a doctor at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to operate. In her words, he "sawed open my skull, and raised it up, and now it feels more comfortable". She reportedly received no anesthesia and instead bit down on a bullet, as she had seen Civil War soldiers do when their limbs were amputated.

By 1911, Tubman's body was so frail that she was admitted into the rest home named in her honor. A New York newspaper described her as "ill and penniless", prompting supporters to offer a new round of donations. Surrounded by friends and family members, she died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913. Just before she died, she quoted the Gospel of John to those in the room: "I go away to prepare a place for you." Tubman was buried with semi-military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

Tubman's great-niece, Eva Stewart Northrup, launching the SS Harriet Tubman

Widely known and well-respected while she was alive, Tubman became an American icon in the years after she died. By the 1980s, Tubman was one of American history's most famous figures. She inspired generations of African Americans struggling for equality and civil rights; she was praised by leaders across the political spectrum.

Parks, monuments and historical sites

National parks and national monuments related to Tubman in the United States are the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument and the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park, both in Maryland, and the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn. The Salem Chapel in St. Catharines, where Tubman worshipped, is a National Historic Site of Canada.

The city of Auburn has several historical sites related to Tubman, including her gravesite. Other state and local historical sites about Tubman include a state park and memorial garden in Maryland, and a museum in New Jersey.

Artistic portrayals

Tubman is the subject of many works of art. Musicians including Woody Guthrie, Wynton Marsalis, and Walter Robinson have written songs celebrating her. She is the subject of operas by Thea Musgrave, Nkeiru Okoye, and Hilda Paredes, as well as plays by Carolyn Gage and a collaboration of May Miller and Willis Richardson. Tubman is the focus of novels by Elizabeth Cobbs, Marcy Heidish, and Anne Parrish, and is a character in novels by Terry Bisson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and James McBride.

Since Tubman's life was first dramatized on television in a 1963 episode of the series The Great Adventure, she has been portrayed in TV productions such as The Good Lord Bird, , Underground, and A Woman Called Moses. Cynthia Erivo received an Academy Award nomination for portraying Tubman in the 2019 theatrical film .

Artists including Fern Cunningham, Jane DeDecker, Nina Cooke John, and Alison Saar have presented Tubman in sculptures. She has been drawn or painted by numerous artists, including Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas, William Johnson, Jacob Lawrence, and Faith Ringgold.

Other honors and commemorations

Official $20 bill prototype

In 1978, Tubman became the first African-American woman honored on a U.S. postage stamp; she appeared on a second stamp in 1995. Beginning in 2016, there have been plans to add a portrait of Tubman to the front of the twenty-dollar bill, moving the portrait of President Andrew Jackson, a slaveholder, to the back of the bill.

Dozens of schools, streets and highways, church groups, social organizations, and government agencies have been named after Tubman. In 1944, the United States Maritime Commission launched the SS Harriet Tubman, its first Liberty ship named for a black woman.

Historiography

Tubman hoped to become literate and write her own memoirs, but she never did. Instead, Sarah Hopkins Bradford combined Tubman's personal recollections, journalistic accounts, and letters from Tubman's friends and supporters to create Scenes from the Life of Harriet Tubman in 1868. Criticized by modern biographers for its artistic license and highly subjective point of view, the book nevertheless provides insight into Tubman's own view of her experiences. In 1886, Bradford released a re-written volume called Harriet, the Moses of her People. In both volumes Harriet Tubman is hailed as a latter-day Joan of Arc. The revision took a more moralistic and literary tone than the prior work, including changes of many event descriptions from first to third person. A final revision in 1901 added an appendix with more stories about Tubman's life.

The first full biography of Tubman to be published after Bradford's was Earl Conrad's Harriet Tubman (1943). Conrad experienced great difficulty in finding a publisher - the search took four years - and endured disdain and contempt for his efforts to construct a more objective, detailed account of Tubman's life for adults. Several highly dramatized versions of Tubman's life had been written for children, and many more came later, but Conrad wrote in an academic style. Though she was a popular historical figure, another book-length biography based on original scholarship did not appear for 60 years, when Jean Humez published a close reading of Tubman's life stories in 2003. Larson and Clinton both published their biographies soon after in 2004. Historian Milton Sernett's 2007 book Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory, and History discusses the major biographies of Tubman up to that time.

References

Clinton, Catherine (2004). Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom. New York: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 978-0-316-14492-6 - via Open Library.

"Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800-". Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

Franklin, Jonathan (March 13, 2023). "A Monument of Harriet Tubman Now Replaces a Statue of Christopher Columbus in Newark". . Archived from the original on June 15, 2023.

Gaige, Amity (August 23, 2013). "The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride". San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on July 25, 2019.

Gibson, Chantal N. & Silverman, Monique (2005). "Sur/Rendering Her Image: The Unknowable Harriet Tubman". Canadian Art Review. 30 (1): 25-38. JSTOR 42630711.

Hobson, Janell (2022). When God Lost Her Tongue: Historical Consciousness and the Black Feminist Imagination. Subversive Histories, Feminist Futures series. New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780429243554. ISBN 978-0-429-24355-4. S2CID 240990028.

Humez, Jean M. (Summer 1993). "In Search of Harriet Tubman's Spiritual Autobiography". NWSA Journal. 5 (2): 162-182. JSTOR 4316258.

Humez, Jean (2003). Harriet Tubman: The Life and Life Stories. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-19120-7 - via Open Library.

Kaufman, Rachel (May 13, 2018). "Pilot, Thinker, Soldier, Spy: The Epic Timeless Season Finale Twofer". Smithsonian Magazine. Archived from the original on October 17, 2020.

Larson, Kate Clifford (2004). Bound For the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 978-0-345-45627-4 - via Open Library.

Oertel, Kristen T. (2015). Harriet Tubman: Slavery, the Civil War, and Civil Rights in the Nineteenth-century America. Routledge Historical Americans series. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-94897-9.

Portelli, Alessandro (Fall 1988). "Fire on the Mountain". Review. Appalachian Journal. 16 (1): 87-90. JSTOR 40933404.

Roma, Catherine (2001). "Contemporary British Composers". In Pendle, Karin (ed.). Women and Music: A History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 227-251. ISBN 978-0-253-11503-4 - via Open Library.

Rosenberg, Amy S. (September 17, 2020). "The Harriet Tubman Museum in Cape May Marked Its Opening. Here's What's Inside, and Why It's in Cape May". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Archived from the original on September 21, 2020.

Sacks, Sam (May 17, 2019). "Fiction: Tales of History and Imagination". Books & Arts in Review. The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on July 25, 2019.

Vargas, Ángel (October 17, 2018). "La gesta de Harriet Tubman llega al Cervantino en forma de ópera" [The deeds of Harriet Tubman arrive at the Cervantino in the form of an opera]. (in Spanish). Archived from the original on April 17, 2021.

Further reading

External links

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, c. March 1822 - March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist. After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known collectively as the Underground Railroad.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Life after the Civil War : Harriet Tubman

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 1869 Tubman met Nelson Davis, a man who had looked for shelter in her home. He had been a slave in North Carolina and served as a soldier in the Civil War. Davis was a brick maker. Tubman and Davis married on March 18, 1869 at the Presbyterian Church in Auburn.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Harriet Tubman was born into slavery therefore no records of her birth were kept and the exact date of her birth is unknown. She believed she was born in 1825. She testified to this date in a pension application in 1890 when she claimed she was 67 and in 1892 when she claimed she was 67 years old. In both instances the year 1825 was consistent. However, she did not know her true age and there was no way to determine the actual year of her birth. To add to the confusion, her death certificate indicates she was born in 1815 and her gravestone in Auburn's Hill Cemetery, 1820.

Harriet Tubman was born Araminta Ross, in Dorchester County, Maryland. She was nicknamed "Minty" by her parents.
Harriet Tubman was born in Dorchester County, Maryland. Click on map to enlarge.
Harriet Tubman's parents and siblings

Harriet Green also known as "Rit" was Minty's mother. She was a cook at the big house. Minty's maternal grandmother came from Africa in a slave ship that conducted the transatlantic slave trade. Her name was Modesty and it is believed that she was an Ashanti from Ghana or Ivory Coast. She was eventually sold to Atthow Pattison. There is no information on the origin of Minty's other grandparents. Atthow Pattison stipulated in his will that Rit and her children be manumitted when they turned 45 years of age. Rit's father was a white man of unknown identity.

Minty's father was Ben Ross, a slave owned by Anthony Thompson. He was a skilled woodsman who oversaw other slaves cut and log timber for the growing shipbuilding industry in Maryland.

Ross and Green met sometime in 1803 after Joseph Brodess' death which temporarily merged Thompson's and Brodess' properties. In 24 years the couple had nine children: Linah (1808), Mariah Ritty (1811), Soph (1813), Robert (1816), Araminta "Minty" (Harriet), Ben (1823), Rachel (1825), Henry (1830), and Моses (1832). Minty was the fifth one born. She had four sisters and four brothers.

Ben Ross was manumitted at age 45 but continued to work for Thompson as a free man and supplemented his income by hiring out his labor.

The masters

Harriet "Rit", Minty's mother, was owned by Joseph and Mary Pattison Brodess. Mary Pattison inherited Rit from her father Atthow Pattison. When Joseph Brodess died in 1803, Mary was left in charge of Bucktown Farm and their toddler son, Edward.

Minty's father, Ben Ross, was the property of Anthony Thompson who owned the Madison Plantation. Thompson was a widow who had three sons.

Mary Brodess and Anthony Thompson married. Thompson managed Mary's property including her slaves. Mary Brodess died a few years later in 1809 and left her property, which included 200 acres of land and a number of slaves, to her son Edward who was only 8 years old at the time.

In 1822 when Edward was 21 years old, he got married and took over Bucktown, he brought the slaves he had inherited from his mother including Rit and her children, separating them from their father.

The Brodess plantation was small compared to others in the area. Slaves were so much more important to them as their income was closely tied to them. By 1825 his farm was struggling financially and started selling slaves; the first ones to go were Minty's older sisters Miriah and then Linah and Soph.

Harriet Tubman's Childhood

Tubman's childhood was cut short when she was hired out at age 5 to take care of an infant. This was her first job, of many to come, away from her mother. Minty was far too young to assume such a responsibility in addition to household work. She recalled being on duty at nights to make sure the baby did not cry, she had to continuously rock the baby's cradle or hold her in her arms. Every time a cry was heard her mistress, Miss Susan, would whip her around the neck. These were her first scars and they remained for the rest of her life. Minty was weak and malnourished so she was sent home.

At the plantation her mother would nurse her back to health and she would be hired to other households again and again. According to her recollections, she was always homesick. When Tubman was about seven years old she was hired out to collect muskrats from traps. The job required being constantly wet from the waist down. She had contracted measles and gone to work; as a result she was extremely weak and collapsed.

When she was about eight she was hired to another household, one day while her masters were having an argument, she took a lump of sugar which she had never tasted. Her mistress found out and afraid of the punishment she ran away. For three days he found shelter in a pigpen where she had to compete with pigs for scrapes of food.

Later in her life she described this period of her life a being severely neglected.

A blow in the head

By age 12 Minty was considered strong enough to work in the fields. She was hired by a man named Barrett. Tubman preferred the harsh physical work in the plantation rather than doing domestic work and being subjected to a white woman. At this time during the beginning of her adolescent years, Minty's Christian faith started to intensify.

One day when Tubman was in the grocery store she spotted a fugitive slave. His overseer was about to confront him as he tried to escape the store. Minty stood in the doorway blocking the overseer's way as to give the slave enough time to escape. The overseer had just picked up a heavy metal weight from the counter and aimed it at the slave but instead hit Minty in the head. Years later she remembered the episode:

"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 laid me on the seat of the loom, and I stayed there all day and the next".

It took months for Minty to recover from the head injury. Brodess tried to sell her but was unable to find a buyer. After this injury Tubman would fall asleep anywhere and it was impossible to wake her up. Her sleeping spells would come to her without warning. She also started having vivid dreams related to her religiosity. She would never fully recover from this injury. In her later life she would have surgery to alleviate the symptoms.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Harriet Tubman was born into slavery therefore no records of her birth were kept and the exact date of her birth is unknown. She believed she was born in 1825. She testified to this date in a pension application in 1890 when she claimed she was 67 and in 1892 when she claimed she was 67 years old.