Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman was an American abolitionist who escaped slavery and then returned to the South repeatedly to free others, becoming the most famous "conductor" of [[the-underground-railroad|the Underground Railroad]] and later one of the first women to lead an armed military operation in American history. She guided roughly seventy people to freedom through the Underground Railroad — a secret network of safe houses and routes leading from slave states to free states and Canada — and never lost a single person, operating under conditions where capture meant death or re-enslavement. She later served as a spy and scout for the Union Army during [[the-civil-war|the Civil War]] — the first woman to plan and lead an armed military operation in American history, when she helped direct the Combahee River Raid that freed over seven hundred enslaved people in a single night. She was born Araminta Ross around 1822, on a plantation in Dorchester County, Maryland, and died on March 10, 1913, in Auburn, New York, at roughly ninety-one. She was, by any measure, one of the most courageous Americans who ever lived, and the courage was sustained across a working life that lasted more than seventy years. A bounty of up to forty thousand dollars, an immense sum at the time, equivalent to over a million dollars today, was placed on her capture, and she was never caught.
The Escape
She was born into slavery and suffered extreme violence from childhood. As a teenager, she was struck in the head by a two-pound metal weight thrown by an overseer — the blow fractured her skull and caused seizures and episodes of sudden unconsciousness for the rest of her life. These episodes, likely temporal lobe epilepsy, produced vivid visions that Tubman interpreted as messages from God — a belief that gave her an unshakeable conviction in her purpose. She escaped in 1849, walking north to freedom alone, roughly 90 miles from Maryland to Pennsylvania, traveling at night and following the North Star, sleeping in barns and hidden in safe houses along the way. She later recalled: "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". She had left behind her entire family. She later said: "There was one of two things I had a right to — liberty or death. If I could not have one, I would have the other".
The Underground Railroad
Between 1850 and 1860, she made approximately thirteen trips back into slave territory to rescue family members and others, beginning with her niece Kessiah and Kessiah's two children, earning the nickname "Moses" among enslaved people. She traveled at night, used safe houses, and carried a pistol. It was not for defense but to ensure no one turned back, since a captured fugitive could reveal the entire route. She reportedly told wavering passengers: "You'll be free or die". Her operational security was extraordinary. She departed on Saturdays because newspapers didn't print runaway notices on Sundays. She used disguises and coded spirituals as signals. Slaveholders put a bounty of up to forty thousand dollars on her capture — she was never caught. She rescued her own parents, in their seventies, by stealing a wagon and driving them north herself, and built a network of allies, both Black and white, who maintained the chain of safe houses across Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, and into Ontario.
The War
During the [[the-civil-war|Civil War]], Tubman served the Union Army and built intelligence networks behind Confederate lines, working as a cook, nurse, spy, and scout in South Carolina, the only woman in such a role. In June 1863, she guided the Combahee River Raid, freeing over seven hundred enslaved people — the largest liberation operation of the war, making her the first woman to plan and lead an armed assault in American military history. She was paid only two hundred dollars in three and a half years of service, a fraction of what a male soldier would have earned, and spent decades after the war fighting the federal government for back pay and a pension, finally winning a widow's pension of twenty dollars a month in 1899 — and only as the widow of her second husband, never directly for her own service.
The Legacy
After the war, she settled in Auburn, New York, where she established a home for elderly Black Americans, a property she purchased from Senator William Seward at below-market terms, and continued working for civil rights until her death. She worked with suffragists including Susan B. Anthony. Her last words were reportedly: "I go to prepare a place for you". [[frederick-douglass|Frederick Douglass]] wrote to her: "The midnight sky and the silent stars have been the witnesses of your devotion to freedom and of your heroism." In 2016, the U.S. Treasury announced plans to place Tubman's portrait on the twenty-dollar bill — a project repeatedly delayed and, as of this writing, still incomplete. The fact that her face on currency is even controversial says more about what America still cannot quite face than it says about Tubman. She was a Black woman who organized armed military raids against slaveholders, and the country has not yet decided whether that is the kind of American it wants to celebrate on its money. She herself would have been unsurprised by the delay.
Used as a teaching source at school.ai-ministries.com.