Known as the “Moses of her people,” Harriet Tubman was a slave who escaped, and helped others gain their freedom as a “conductor" of the Underground Railroad. Tubman also served as a scout, spy, guerrilla soldier, and nurse for the Union Army during the Civil War. She is considered the first Black woman to serve in the military. Although the exact date of her birth is unknown, Harriet Tubman is believed to be born in Dorchester County, Maryland under the name Araminta Ross in 1822 on January 29th. Her mother, Harriet Green, was an enslaved woman owned by Mary Pattinson Brodess. Her father, Ben Ross, was an enslaved man owned by Anthony Thompson. They were brought together when Mary and Anthony got married. Ben and Harriet had nine children. She was raised by parents who struggled against great odds to keep their family together. Araminta inherited the status of enslaved person from her mother.
By age five, Tubman’s owners rented her out to neighbors as a domestic servant. When she was young, her enslaver’s son sold three of Araminta’s sisters to distant plantations, breaking up her family. Araminta suffered violence at the hands of her enslavers and other White people in her community. Her body was scarred from beatings. Early signs of her resistance to slavery and its abuses came at age twelve when she intervened to keep her master from beating an enslaved man who tried to escape. She was hit in the head with a two-pound weight, leaving her bleeding and and unconscious. She was returned to her enslaver's house and laid on the seat of a loom, where she remained without medical care for two days. Because of this attack, Araminta suffered from seizures, severe headaches, and narcolepsy for the rest of her life. She would be working in the fields and suddenly fall asleep.
Araminta married John Tubman, a local free Black man, in 1844. The marriage did not change her legal status and she remained enslaved. Around the time of her marriage, she took the name Harriet, probably in honor of her mother. She was now referred to as Harriet Tubman. In 1849, Tubman became ill again, which diminished her value to slave traders. Also during that year she learned that her enslaver was planning to sell her. She decided to take her own freedom rather than submit. John did not join her and eventually remarried. Tubman and her two brothers decided to escape the plantation and head to Pennsylvania.
Tubman had to travel by night, guided by the North Star and trying to avoid slave catchers eager to collect rewards for fugitive slaves. Her brothers became frightened and turned back. Harriet continued on her own, reaching the free state of Pennsylvania aided by abolitionists who belonged to the Underground Railroad network. In Philadelphia, she found a job and started a new life. “I had crossed the line. I was free; but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land,” she would later say. The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act allowed fugitive and freed workers in the north to be captured and enslaved. This made Harriet’s role as an Underground Railroad conductor much harder and forced her to lead enslaved people further north to Canada. Tubman was well known for risking her life as a “conductor” in the Railroad. The Railroad was established in the late eighteenth century by Black and White abolitionists.
From 1850 to 1860, Tubman would return to Maryland to rescue scores of family and friends. Once such trip was to help her niece Kessiah and her family escape to Philadelphia. First, she came up with a plan with Kessiah’s husband, a free man. Then she guided them, after he bought his family at the auction. She made her last rescue trip to Maryland in December of 1860, bringing seven people to Canada. Tubman used the skills she learned while observing the stars and working in the fields and woods to guide people to freedom. She also gave instructions to slaves who eventually found their way to freedom.
She later claimed to have never lost a passenger on the Underground Railroad. Harriet was militant in her approach to guiding people on the Underground Railroad. She carried a gun and threatened to kill any person who wanted to turn back and endanger the group. She used a tonic to put babies into a deep sleep, so their cries would not draw attention during nighttime travels. Harriet Tubman is estimated to have saved about 70 to 80 people, including her elderly parents. Her fame spread throughout the country, and she began to speak at abolitionist events. At the height of her fame, governments in the South offered rewards totaling $40,000 for her capture. Militant abolitionist John Brown admired her greatly. He called her “General Tubman”, often consulting with her.
Harriet and John both believed that extreme acts were necessary to end slavery in the United States. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Tubman had a vision that the war would soon lead to the abolition of slavery. The former enslaved woman would served as a valuable confidant for the Union during the War. Tubman decided to help the Union Army because she wanted freedom for all of the people who were forced into slavery, not just the few she could help on the Underground Railroad. She convinced many other brave African Americans to join her as spies—even at the risk of being hanged if they were caught. Through the Underground Railroad, Tubman learned the towns and transportation routes characterizing the South. This information made her important to Union military commanders during the Civil War. The Civil War was a time when women were usually restricted to traditional roles like cooking and nursing.
She was given the jobs of cook and nurse because of her race and sex, but Harriet was soon performing more militaristic duties. As a spy she worked side-by-side with men. In early 1862, Tubman joined Northern abolitionists in support of Union activities at Port Royal, South Carolina. Throughout the Civil War she provided badly needed nursing care to Black soldiers and hundreds of newly liberated slaves who crowded Union camps. Tubman’s military service expanded to include spying and scouting behind Confederate lines. In early 1862, Tubman joined Northern abolitionists in support of Union activities at Port Royal, South Carolina. Throughout the Civil War she provided badly needed nursing care to Black soldiers and hundreds of newly liberated slaves who crowded Union camps. Tubman had proven herself invaluable at gathering clandestine information, forming allies and avoiding capture.
Tubman would disguised herself as an elderly woman would wander unobserved through rebel territory. She had gathered key information from her scouts about the Confederate positions. In one of her most dramatic and dangerous roles, Tubman partnered with Colonel James Montgomery, an abolitionist who commanded the 2nd South Carolina Volunteers, a Black regiment. Together, the two planned a raid along the Combahee River in South Carolina. They were to rescue enslaved people, recruit freed men into the Union Army and obliterate some of the wealthiest rice plantations in the region. Early on the morning of June 1, 1863, three gunboats carrying several hundred male soldiers along with Tubman set out on their mission.
Tubman had gathered key information from her scouts about the Confederate positions. Her race and sex made it easy for her to slip behind Confederate lines to gather information. She knew where they were hiding along the shore. She also found out where they had placed torpedoes, or barrels filled with gunpowder, in the water. Harriet Tubman and Montgomery, led two gunboats, the Sentinel and Harriet A. Weed, out of the St. Helena Sound towards the Combahee River. Tubman guided the ships towards strategic points near the shore where fleeing slaves were waiting. The raiders set fire to buildings, burned several large plantations, destroyed ammunition depots and storage houses and destroyed bridges so they couldn’t be used by the Confederate Army.
As the escapees ran to the shore, Black troops in rowboats transported them to the ships, but chaos ensued in the process. Tubman, who didn’t speak the region’s Gullah dialect, reportedly went on deck and sang a popular song from the abolitionist movement that calmed the group down. This raid rescued more than 700 enslaved people working on nearby plantations, while dodging bullets and artillery shells from slave owners and Confederate soldiers rushing to the scene. The success of the raid, increased Tubman’s fame, and she went on to work on similar missions with the famed Massachusetts 54th Infantry. She became the first Black woman to lead an armed expedition in the war. This military campaign freed over 700 slaves, and introduced her to her second husband, Nelson Davis, a private in the 8th United States Colored Infantry Regiment from September 1863 to November 1865.
Tubman and Davis married in 1869 and settled in Auburn, New York. After the war and the end of slavery, Tubman continued to feel responsible for others. She sought support from her abolitionist friends like Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Despite her contributions to the war effort, Tubman received little compensation, likely earning less than $200 during the war itself. Compounding the issue was Tubman’s clandestine work as a spy, making it difficult for the federal government to formally recognize her work. For years, Tubman repeatedly requested an official military pension, but was denied. However, she did receive a widow’s pension as the wife of Nelson Davis, and, later, a Civil War nurse’s pension, during the 1890s, earning $20 per month.
Harriet Tubman remained active in the cause of equality up until the end of her life. After the war she worked for women’s rights and women’s suffrage. She was involved in the suffrage movement, fighting not only for the rights of women, but also for minorities, the disabled, and the aged. Tubman along with other notable Black female leaders, founded the first national organization of Black women, the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), where she met and supported Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Tubman continued to appear at local and national suffrage conventions until the early 1900s. In 1896, on the land adjacent to her home, Harriet’s open-door policy flowered into the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged and Indigent Colored People, in Auburn, New York. he head injury she suffered in her youth continued to plague her and she endured brain surgery to help relieve her symptoms. But her health continued to deteriorate and eventually forced her to move into her namesake rest home in 1911. Pneumonia took Harriet Tubman’s life on March 10, 1913, but her legacy lives on.