Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman was an escaped enslaved woman who became a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, leading enslaved people to freedom before the Civil War, all while carrying a bounty on her head. But she was also a nurse, a Union spy and a women’s suffrage supporter. Tubman is one of the most recognized icons in American history and her legacy has inspired countless people from every race and background.
== Early life ==
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 struck her; she subsequently suffered seizures throughout her life. 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. About 1844 she married John Tubman, a free Black man.
== Escape to Philadelphia ==
Tubman first encountered the Underground Railroad—an extensive system of people and passages that helped fugitive slaves flee to the northern U.S. states and into Canada—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 fate as a sickly slave of low economic value.
Two of her brothers, Ben and Harry, accompanied her on Sept. 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. Using the Underground Railroad, Tubman traveled nearly 90 miles to Philadelphia. She crossed into the free state of Pennsylvania with 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.”
== Underground Railroad Conductor ==
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. She made approximately 13 trips to Maryland to assist family members and friends while serving as a “conductor,” or person responsible for leading fugitives between safe-havens.
In December 1850, Tubman received a warning that her niece, Kessiah, and her two young children would be sold. 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 Tubman's numerous trips. 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 Black people living in the Free States. Law enforcement officials in the North were compelled to aid in the capture of slaves, regardless of their 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. Evidence suggests that the party stopped at the home of abolitionist and formerly enslaved person 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.
== Later Life ==
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.
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 raised some funds to support her. Bradford, an admirer, penned her 1868 biography, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, with the proceeds going to Tubman and her family. Tubman continued to give freely despite her economic woes. In 1903, she donated a parcel of her land to the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in Auburn. The Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged opened on this site in 1908. 
== 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 (equivalent to $44,500 in 2023) 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 $3,390 in 2023). 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.
== Legacy ==
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. 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. 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. In 2024, the United States Mint issued three commemorative coins featuring Tubman; each coin depicts Tubman at a different stage of her life. 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.
Category:Activist
Category:Female
Category:African-American
Category:Widow