Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, c. March 1822[1] – March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist.[2][3] After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends,[4] 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.
For the musical group, see Harriet Tubman (band).
Harriet Tubman
March 10, 1913 (aged 90–91)
Fort Hill Cemetery,
Auburn, New York, U.S.
42°55′29″N 76°34′30″W / 42.9246°N 76.5750°W
- Minty
- Moses
Guiding enslaved people to freedom
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. Tubman (or "Moses", as she was called) travelled by night and in extreme secrecy, and later said she "never lost a passenger".[5] 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 the first woman to lead an armed military operation in the United States. 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 was admitted to a home for elderly African Americans, which she helped establish years earlier. Tubman is commonly viewed as an icon of courage and freedom.
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.[39] Later in the 1840s, Tubman paid a white attorney five dollars (equivalent to $160 in 2023) 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.[40][41]
Around 1844, she married John Tubman, a free black man.[42] 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.[43]
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,[42] and Clinton suggests that it coincided with Tubman's plans to escape from slavery.[44] She adopted her mother's name, possibly as part of a religious conversion, or to honor another relative.[42][44]
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,[111][112] for $1,200 (equivalent to $43,900 in 2023[45]).[113][c] 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.[118] 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.[76]
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.[118] 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.[118][119] 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.[120] Alice called Tubman's actions a "kidnapping",[119] saying, "she had taken the child from a sheltered good home to a place where there was nobody to care for her".[121] After speculating in her 2004 biography of Tubman that Margaret might have been Tubman's own secret daughter,[122] 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.[123][124]
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 $1,020 in 2023[45]). She did not have the money, so the children remained enslaved. Their fates remain unknown.[125] 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.[126] 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.[127] They safely reached the home of David and Martha Wright in Auburn on December 28, 1860.[128]
Historiography
Tubman hoped to become literate and write her own memoirs, but she never did.[245] 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.[246][f] Criticized by modern biographers for its artistic license and highly subjective point of view,[248] the book nevertheless provides insight into Tubman's own view of her experiences.[249] In 1886, Bradford released a re-written volume called Harriet, the Moses of her People.[250] In both volumes Harriet Tubman is hailed as a latter-day Joan of Arc.[251] The revision took a more moralistic and literary tone than the prior work, including changes of many event descriptions from first to third person.[252] A final revision in 1901 added an appendix with more stories about Tubman's life.[253]
The first full biography of Tubman to be published after Bradford's was Earl Conrad's Harriet Tubman (1943).[254] 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.[207] 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.[255] Though she was a popular historical figure, another book-length biography based on original scholarship did not appear for 60 years,[256] 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.[257]
(1869). Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman. Auburn, New York: W. J. Moses. OCLC 2199227. Also at
Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman public domain audiobook at LibriVox
