“Now I’ve been free, I know what a dreadful condition slavery is. I have seen hundreds of escaped slaves, but I never saw one who was willing to go back and be a slave.” Harriet Tubman
Early on June 1, 1863, Harriet Tubman helped Colonel James Montgomery plan a raid to free enslaved people from plantations along the Combahee River in South Carolina. That morning, three gunboats carrying several hundred male soldiers and Tubman set out on their mission.
The Civil War was a time when women were usually restricted to traditional roles like cooking and nursing. Tubman did jobs like that, but as a spy, she worked side-by-side with men in the Union Army. Her goal was not only to defeat the Confederacy but to free as many enslaved people as possible.
Tubman’s value to the Union Army proved to be worthwhile. Tubman had gathered key information from her scouts about the Confederate positions. She knew where they were hiding along the shore. She also discovered where they had placed torpedoes, or barrels filled with gunpowder, in the water.
As the early morning fog lifted on some of the South’s most important rice plantations, the Union expedition hit hard. The raiders set fire to buildings and destroyed bridges so they couldn’t be used by the Confederate Army. They also freed about 750 enslaved people—men, women, children, and babies—and the Union army did not lose one soldier in the attack.
Born Araminta Ross (and affectionately called "Minty") in March of 1822 to parents Harriet Green Ross and Benjamin Ross, Tubman was one of nine children. The Ross family were enslaved in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her father, Benjamin, was a freed slave, but status did not flow from the father but from the mother. It was an invention deliberately created to enslave all newborn children.
Edward Brodess, the family’s owner, rented out Tubman at his whim to provide childcare for nearby overseers in 1828 when she was only six years old. This work separated her from her mother and siblings for extended periods. Tubman's life would change forever at the age of 13 in 1835, while she was running errands at a local store, she witnessed another enslaved person’s attempted escape. She refused to assist the enslaver in capturing the fugitive. As the enslaver became desperate in their attempt to recapture the “property”, he threw a two-pound weight at them. Rather than hitting the intended target, he struck Tubman in the back of the head and fractured her skull.
After recovering from the injury, physical pain became a consistent part of Tubman’s life. She experienced chronic pain from headaches and uncontrollable bouts of seizures, which Tubman herself referred to as “sleeping spells." Historians have determined that Tubman had narcolepsy, which is a neurological disorder. Tubman’s place in disability history is often overlooked. It is important to note that narcolepsy was a prominent part of both her identity and story. Vivid visions of freedom came to her while experiencing these seizures.
Tubman was forced back to the fields immediately after her injury and Tubman recounted: “there I worked with the blood and sweat rolling down my face til I couldn’t see”. She became determined to find some sense of autonomy wherever she could, despite the confines of enslavement. She negotiated with her enslaver to select her work assignments. He agreed so long as she paid him a yearly fee so from then on, Tubman hired herself out on her terms.
In an unexpected turn of events, one assignment required her to work alongside her father in the timber fields. Not only did this allow her to spend time with him despite years of separation, but also to work alongside Black sailors who shared their knowledge of the surrounding areas with Tubman and assisted her in tapping into a network of those also seeking liberation.
She soon met her future husband, freedman John Tubman. The couple married in 1844 when Tubman was 22 years old. Upon their union, she changed her name from Araminta “Minty” Ross to Harriet Tubman, a tribute to her mother.
In 1849, Tubman determined to escape to freedom. Making use of her wealth of knowledge and networks gained over the years, Tubman set her sights on escaping to Philadelphia. The Abolitionist Movement, which was prominent in the city, meant she was sure to find allies and like-minded allies. With the help of abolitionists along the way, Tubman journeyed from the Brodess’ farm in Maryland to Pennsylvania. In Philadelphia, she made connections with abolitionists, namely William Still, a conductor on the Underground Railroad.
By 1850, after gaining her own freedom, Tubman decided to return to Maryland and successfully brought her family to freedom. With these successful journeys, she became a Conductor on the Underground Railroad. She succeeded in her second journey as well and a third in 1851 and was now well known for her courage and bravery, but also was a target for fugitive slave hunters.
In 1850, Congressional passage of the Fugitive Slave Act changed the calculus for Conductors like Tubman. The Act stipulated that it was illegal for any citizen to assist an escaped slave and demanded that if an escaped slave was sighted, he or she should be apprehended and turned into the authorities for deportation back to the ‘rightful’ owner down south.
United States Marshalls who refused to return a runaway slave would pay a hefty penalty of $1,000. Many freedom seekers opted to flee to Canada instead of the northern US as a result. Tubman then conducted eleven trips from Maryland to St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada between 1850 and 1860.
Tubman was fearless but wanted by slave catchers. Many called for her capture and offered bounties upwards of $40,000, which would be approximately $1,573,056.41 in today’s dollars. Between 1850 to 1860, Tubman brought approximately 70 individuals to freedom. Tubman spoke proudly of her accomplishments and famously stated, “I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger”.
In 1857, she met abolitionist John Brown. Brown was outspoken in his support of antislavery and, though unpopular among white southerners, his efforts were largely supported by those in the North. Tubman and Brown formed a close friendship, with Brown dubbing her “General Tubman”. The pair worked together, including on Brown’s plans for the raid on Harpers Ferry, (now West) Virginia; Tubman provided her geographical expertise and recruited formerly enslaved people to assist in the raid. Brown failed in his attempted raid and was hanged in Virginia.
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, she joined the Union Army as a volunteer nurse. In 1863, Tubman took on the role of a scout and organized a group of spies. She recruited enslaved people interested in assisting the Union. That is when she helped Montgomery in his successful raid in South Carolina. Tubman is now recognized as the first woman in US history to both plan and lead a military raid. In June 2021, the United States Army inducted her into the Military Intelligence Corps. A fitting tribute and honor.
After the war, Tubman became a strong advocate for women’s rights and voting rights for Black women. She worked alongside various upstate-NY-based suffragists, such as Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The interests of abolitionists were aligned closely with those of suffragists, with both movements concerned with autonomy and freedom.
Tubman continued to dedicate her final 25 years of her life to philanthropic efforts. In 1913, at the age of 91, Harriet Tubman died of pneumonia in the Home for the Aged & Indigent Negroes which she had helped to start. In her final words, Tubman called upon her faith and referred to John 14:3 in the Bible. She stated, “I go away to prepare a place for you, that where I am you also may be”. She was laid to rest in the Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.
As of 2024, the United States Mint launched the 2024 Harriet Tubman Commemorative Coin Program. The program is timely as it honors the two-hundredth anniversary of Harriet Tubman’s birth. Tubman’s place in American History is cemented in her commitment and efforts toward freeing the enslaved, helping the poor and indigent, and speaking truth to power. She is in every way, a testament to the truths that we aspire to as a nation…one where everyone is born equal and free.
Frederick Douglass may have paid her one of the greatest tributes for her work. They had worked together often in the cause of abolition, and he admired her greatly. He said of her:
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.
Finally, here is the trailer from the 2020 film “Harriet”…it is worth watching: