This is an article I did about Harriet Tubman, an inspiring woman! It seem’s appropriate to share as we’re nearly at ‘Black History Month’. Click below to see the article as it appeared in the magazine. A text only version is below also.
Magazine article – Harriet Tubman : Text only version
Born Araminta Ross, Harriet Tubman is one of the most remarkable women the world has ever known. An icon of African American history, her story is still relatively unknown outside the U.S.A.
Harriet Tubman was born in Maryland at some time between 1815 and 1822. As she was born into slavery, her actual date of birth was not recorded. She was routinely beaten and whipped by her owners and suffered a severe head injury as a child. Although she survived the injury, she was to suffer spells of dizziness and hallucination for the rest of her life. As a devout Christian she ascribed her ‘visions’ as messages from God.
As further result of this head injury, she suffered seizures and hypersomnia, falling into deep and unpredictable sleeps. Her owner, Mr Brodess hired her out on many occasions where she was forced to work through various illnesses in horrible conditions; but this mistreatment backfired, as Brodess was unable to sell her because of her injuries.
In 1840 her father won his manumission from slavery and was declared a free-man, although he still worked at his previous owner’s timber mill. While her mother should have been freed around the same time, their owners simply delayed the process as there was no legal recourse for black slaves to challenge them.
Around 1844, Araminta married a free black man named John Tubman, but there is little known about him. It is thought that she took her mother’s name, Harriet as part of this ceremony.
Although such blended marriages, between free people of colour and those enslaved were common, the children of such unions would be born into slavery. In 1849, another bout of illness saw her value drop, her owner, Brodess, tried desperately to sell her.
Harriet didn’t want her family to be split up and she prayed for him to change his mind. Initially she prayed for God to make him change his mind.
When he persisted in trying to sell her she changed her prayer; she was quoted as saying, “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, she felt responsible for his death and deeply ashamed. However, the fate that she had been fervently praying to prevent was only hastened by Brodess’ death.
As in so many cases, Brodess’ widow, Eliza decided that the estate was to be broken up and sold off. It was to be expected that Harriet’s family would be split up. Harriet made up her mind that she would have death or freedom; she ignored her husband’s attempts to dissuade her. On September 17th, 1849 Harriet and her brothers, Ben and Henry made a break for freedom. But soon afterwards her brothers had second thoughts. It’s thought that Ben may have become a father at that time, so her brothers’ decided to return, forcing Harriet to go with them.
Never one to give up, Harriet sent word to her mother through a coded song and escaped again. She used the support network, known as the ‘Underground Railroad’ and made it to freedom in Pennsylvania, a journey in excess of 100 miles that would have taken up to 3 weeks to complete. She moved from friendly farm to farm, travelling by night, following the North Star all the while trying to avoid bounty hunters.
When she finally made it, she said, “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.”
For most people, this would be more than enough adventure for one lifetime. They would be happy to live out their lives as free men and women. But this was not enough for Harriet Tubman.
Tubman found it difficult to enjoy her freedom when she thought about her family. The following year saw the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law passed. This legislation forced all states to assist in the capture and return of runaway slaves. Even states that had abolished slavery were obliged to comply. But despite the increased risk, when Harriet heard that her two children and her niece were to be sold she still decided to act.
In December 1850, again using the Underground Railroad, she managed to free her children and to reach relative safety in Philadelphia.
In 1851 she returned again, this time to free her two brothers. A third trip was organised to collect her husband John. However, he had re-married and insisted he would stay with his new wife. Tubman resisted the urge to confront him and make a scene; suppressing her anger she found some slaves that wanted to escape and led them to Philadelphia. Her husband John was killed 12 years later after a roadside argument with a white man named Robert Vincent.
As the Fugitive Slave law came into effect, Tubman had to help re-locate groups from Philadelphia to Southern Ontario, which was still a British colony where slavery had been abolished. But this did not stop Tubman’s frequent return trips to the South.
Harriet Tubman’s ever increasing success saw her develop her network of support and her reputation. She was given the code-name ‘Moses’ as she had freed so many slaves. This worked in her favour, as most slave owners assumed that Moses must be a man.
The average reward for capturing a runaway slave was around $100. Across the entire United States there were huge rewards for the capture of Moses. When Harriet Tubman was eventually exposed as the secretive Moses, the rewards were further increased with amounts varying from hundreds to thousands of dollars depending on the state in question. It is worth putting this money into perspective. A decent sized farm with a few acres could be bought outright for $300 – 400. In today’s money, it is estimated that $100 equates to around $10,000.
By that reckoning, the $40,000 reward quoted by one biographer would be equivalent to $4 Million today. However, many other historians dispute this figure; they claim that this $40,000 figure is a total of all of the separate rewards that had been offered. Regardless, it speaks volumes that a) so much money was offered; and b) nobody turned her in for the reward.
It is estimated that Tubman directly freed 300 slaves in 19 trips while providing support and advice to hundreds more. She constantly developed her techniques, her work requiring ingenuity. She usually travelled in winter; while the weather was colder, the nights were longer making it easier to cover the distances needed.
When she travelled she carried a newspaper with her. Most people knew that Tubman was illiterate, but if they thought she could read they were less suspicious.
On another occasion she wore a bonnet and carried two chickens; to most it appeared that she was merely on a local errand. When she saw a former master she pulled a string that was tied to the chickens leg, the flapping disgusted the slave owner who looked away from her.
She generally tried to arrange escapes for Friday nights, as advertisements wouldn’t run in newspapers until Monday morning, giving a valuable head start. She also carried a gun, not only for protection from slavers, but she is rumoured to have threatened those who wanted to turn back. She actually told a story of one such man that threatened the safety of the group who she told, “You go on – or die!” Several days later he was still with the group that entered Canada.
Despite the determination of slaveholders she was never caught. Neither were any of the fugitives she led. Later in life she said;
“I was a conductor on the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t – I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”
AND THERE’S MORE!
So far we have met Araminta Ross. A slave until she was in her late 20’s who escaped and became Harriet Tubman. Tubman became the legendary figure Moses as she directly led 300 slaves to freedom. She became a huge part of the abolitionist movement and worked towards ending slavery.
These remarkable achievements would usually be enough for most people to retire on, but not Tubman.
She joined forces with abolitionists and increased the support network and the numbers of conductors for the Underground Railroad. After the 1861 outbreak of the US Civil War she met with General David Hunter, a man with strong anti-slavery convictions. He was the first to gather escaped slaves to create a unit of black soldiers. The president, Abraham Lincoln, did not support full emancipation at that time and reprimanded Hunter for his actions. Tubman was known to have said, “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. “
When Lincoln did deliver emancipation and banned slavery, Tubman was quick to act. She became an armed scout and spy for the Union Army. She was put in charge of a scout patrol around Port Royal. The terrain of marshes and rivers in this part of South Carolina was similar to that she had regularly travelled in Maryland.
Her vast experience of subterfuge in avoiding slavers was put to good use in evading enemy soldiers. Her instincts for landmarks and mapping made her advice crucial when Col. James Montgomery set out to capture Jacksonville, Florida. She then became the first woman to lead a military action in the Civil War. She guided 3 steamboats along the Combahee River to support attacks on several plantations. The raid saw the liberation of 750 slaves – who promptly joined the Union army.
Newspapers nationally heralded Tubman’s “patriotism, sagacity, energy and ability”, while Tubman herself described the battle by saying; “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 it came to the crops, it was dead men we reaped.”
Tubman worked, fought and recruited for the Union army until the surrender of the Confederacy in 1865. After a few months of additional service, she returned home to her family, now settled in Auburn, New York.
On a train ride in New York, a conductor ordered her to move to a smoking car. When she refused and explained her Government service she was ignored. The conductor and two other passengers man-handled her, breaking her arm in the process. While this was happening other white passengers shouted for her to be thrown from the train.
It took until 1899 for Tubman to receive a pension for her service during the Civil war (1861-65). However, she lived in relative poverty until she died, often going without in order to help those that she perceived to be worse off than her.
She was still active later in life, campaigning for Women’s votes among other issues. In 1911 she moved into a care home that she had founded. Harriet Tubman died from pneumonia while surrounded by her family in 1913 and was given semi-military honours at her funeral.
In 1944, the US maritime commission launched the SS Harriet Tubman, the first ship named for a black woman and she is still making history today. In May 2016, the US Department of the Treasury announced that Harriet Tubman will be the new face on the US $20 bill. She will be the first African American to feature on their currency, but perhaps more fitting is the fact that she will be replacing Andrew Jackson; the seventh US President, a corrupt incompetent and former slave owner.
