Harriet Tubman was an African-American abolitionist who escaped slavery in the mid 19th century and is revered for her humanitarian efforts in leading many other slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad.
Born Araminta Ross around 1822 in Dorchester County, Maryland, Harriet Tubman was born into slavery as one of nine children.
Her living conditions were brutal as she, like all other slaves, was seen as property and forced into child labour. At an early age, Harriet was rented out to work for other families, separating her from her parents and siblings.
She endured frequent beatings and whippings, often for things over which she had no control. When she was just 5 or 6 years old, she was put to work as a nursemaid where her responsibility was to rock the cradle of a baby during the night and keep it from crying.
If the baby woke up and cried, Harriet was whipped as punishment. She was beaten daily and had permanent scars on her neck and back.
As she suffered these injustices during her childhood, resistance was building up within her. At the age of 12, she was ordered to restrain another slave in order for him to receive a whipping. Her response? An outright refusal.
Continually forced into gruelling, unrelenting work, Harriet attempted an escape around the age of 13 or 14. She ran into the woods without any food or supplies, and survived by hiding in animal burrows and drinking from puddles. Starvation eventually forced her to return after 5 days to her overseer, but the experience very likely ingrained within her the importance of preparation and resourcefulness for freedom to be sustainable.
Harriet’s father, Ben Ross, was a skilled timber foreman who had acquired a deep knowledge of the Chesapeake forests and waterways. He taught her navigation skills such as how to follow the North Star, as well as how to trap animals for food and identify edible plants. These skills would prove invaluable in her later years.
At around 1844, she married John Tubman, a free Black man, and changed her name from Araminta to Harriet, a name she took from her mother.
Although John Tubman was considered ‘free’, free Blacks faced constant threats of racial violence, kidnapping and being forced back into slavery. He also had no legal power to protect Harriet from sale or abuse. If her enslaver decided to sell her, there was nothing he could do.
In the following years, Harriet remained enslaved but the desire for freedom never left her. Instead it grew stronger and stronger. When her owner died in 1849, there were rumours of a planned sale that would send Harriet ‘down the river’ to the Deep South. This was a terrifying prospect that would make eventual freedom that much more difficult.
It was time to escape. Now or never.
Among the innumerable obstacles in her way, there was another particularly heart-wrenching one. Her husband John didn’t support her plan to escape. Perhaps he feared he’d lose whatever autonomy he had as a ‘free’ Black man if Harriet escaped. At one point, he even reportedly threatened to turn her in. So when Harriet made her escape, she left without him.
Harriet Tubman made her escape in October 1849 but never revealed exactly how and when she did it. It’s assumed she left at night under the cover of darkness. Later on in life, she was deliberately vague about the details, likely to protect those who assisted her.
It is, however, understood that she traveled 90 miles from Dorchester County, Maryland, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the city with the largest free Black population in the North at the time, and used the Underground Railroad network to avoid capture.
The Underground Railroad was a secret network of people, routes and safe houses that helped enslaved African Americans escape from slavery in the South to freedom in the North and Canada.
Code words included:
– Conductors: Guides who helped slaves escape;
– Passengers: People escaping slavery;
– Stations / depots: Safe houses for people to hide and rest;
– Stationmasters: People who owned safe houses;
– Tracks: Routes that people escaping slavery took.
People mostly traveled on foot and at night, following secret signs, directions hidden in songs and conductors directing them from one safe house to another. The goal was to reach a free state or Canada.
Harriet traveled north by reading the North Star and listened to owl calls to determine if people were nearby. She stayed close to woods, swamps and waterways to make it difficult for tracking dogs to catch her scent. She also dressed like a field worker and carried baskets to make it appear she was on an errand if someone spotted her.
While exact details are unknown, it’s estimated she stayed at 4 to 6 safe houses in her 90 mile journey north, which took about 2 to 3 weeks of nighttime travel on foot.
As she’d recall, “I had crossed the line of which I had so long been dreaming. I was free; but there was no one to welcome me… I was a stranger in a strange land.”
She went to the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society office where her arrival was registered by African-American abolitionist William Still; very likely a source of great comfort. But while she initially may have felt she had reached the end of a long journey, it turned out to be a stepping stone in what would later become stuff of legend.
Even though Pennsylvania was a ‘free’ state, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 allowed slaveholders to legally pursue and capture runaways. African-Americans faced restrictions on their ability to vote and were often victims of white mob violence. Many escapees used the state of Philadelphia as a temporary stop before going further north to New York, New England or Canada, where the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act didn’t apply.
Harriet worked for a short time in Philadelphia as a cook and maid but decided to move up to Ontario, Canada where she felt safer. Despite wanting to get away from Philadelphia, she felt she couldn’t rest knowing her family and others were still suffering under slavery, and believed it was her God-given mission to help others escape. In the coming years, she’d risk her life repeatedly to secure other people’s freedom.
In an act of incredible courage, she’d sneak back into Maryland, often disguised as a labourer, studying patrol patterns, memorizing bird migration routes and adapting constantly to sneak people out of the state.
She relied on secret messages and word-of-mouth to identify who could be trusted and who needed help. While her earliest missions focused on rescuing family members, she helped anyone who was ready and willing to make the escape, aware of the dangers it presented. One of her much-used phrases was, “You’ll be free or die.” She carried a loaded pistol and was ready to use it against slave catchers and those who jeopardised the success of the mission.
Harriet Tubman’s career as a conductor on the Underground Railroad lasted 11 years from 1850 to 1861. During that period she led over 13 escape missions, freeing more than 70 slaves from captivity. In addition to those she directly led, she provided instructions and support that helped around 60 more escape on their own.
When the Civil War began in 1861, Tubman saw it as a chance to help end slavery for good. Union leaders were aware of her reputation as an Underground Railroad conductor, and in 1863 she became the first woman in US history to lead a military raid. In the Combahee River Raid in South Carolina, she helped guide gunboats that destroyed various Confederate plantations, disrupted Confederate supply lines and freed more than 700 enslaved people.
Despite the instrumental impact of her contributions, she was paid a minimal amount and a white officer took credit for the Combahee River Raid in newspapers.
After the war, Harriet Tubman continued her advocacy, offering practical support to formerly enslaved people transitioning into free life, and opened her home, offering food and shelter to those in need. She opened a home for the elderly, particularly former slaves, and kept fighting for for civil rights and racial justice, seeing the suffragette movement as intertwined with the African-American freedom struggle.
Harriet Tubman passed away on the 10th March, 1913. Despite all her efforts to fight injustice throughout her life, her final years were spent in poverty. The US government refused to pay her her pension for her war efforts. Shockingly, the US government didn’t formally recognize Harriet Tubman’s military service with a pension until as late as 2003, 88 years after her death and 138 years after the Civil War ended. She was also selfless, donating proceeds from her biography and speeches to build schools for Black children.
Today, Harriet Tubman is remembered as a remarkable, intelligent, determined, courageous and selfless woman who risked her life over and over to free others from slavery.
