Tubman claimed that Margaret was the daughter of a moderately comfortable family of freed Black people, leaving many to wonder why she would have uprooted the child from a stable home. The Combahee Ferry Raid was one of her greatest achievements. Shortly after war broke out in , Tubman joined a group of other abolitionists who headed south to assist refuge enslaved people who has escaped to safety behind Union lines.
Working in a series of camps in Union-held portions of South Carolina, Tubman quickly learned the lay of the land and offered her services to the army as a spy, leading a group of scouts who mapped out much of the region. After guiding Union boats along the mine-filled waters and coming ashore, Tubman and her group successfully rescued more than enslaved people working on nearby plantations, while dodging bullets and artillery shells from slave owners and Confederate soldiers rushing to the scene.
It took years for the U. For years, Tubman repeatedly requested an official military pension, but was denied. Two decades after the wars end, a U. Sent to a dry-goods store for supplies, she encountered a slave who had left the fields without permission.
When Tubman refused, the overseer threw a two-pound weight that struck her in the head. Tubman endured seizures, severe headaches and narcoleptic episodes for the rest of her life.
She also experienced intense dream states, which she classified as religious experiences. The line between freedom and slavery was hazy for Tubman and her family. Nonetheless, Ben had few options but to continue working as a timber estimator and foreman for his former owners.
Although similar manumission stipulations applied to Rit and her children, the individuals who owned the family chose not to free them. Despite his free status, Ben had little power to challenge their decision. In , Harriet married a free Black man named John Tubman. At the time around half of the African American people on the eastern shore of Maryland were free, and it was not unusual for a family to include both free and enslaved people.
Little is known about John or his marriage to Harriet, including whether and how long they lived together. John declined to make the voyage on the Underground Railroad with Harriet, preferring to stay in Maryland with a new wife.
In , the couple adopted a baby girl named Gertie. Between and , Tubman made 19 trips from the South to the North following the network known as the Underground Railroad. Tubman first encountered the Underground Railroad when she used it to escape slavery herself in Following a bout of illness and the death of her owner, Tubman decided to escape slavery in Maryland for Philadelphia.
She feared that her family would be further severed and was concerned for her own fate as a sickly slave of low economic value. Two of her brothers, Ben and Harry, accompanied her on September 17, Tubman had no plans to remain in bondage. Seeing her brothers safely home, she soon set off alone for Pennsylvania. Making use of the Underground Railroad, Tubman traveled nearly 90 miles to Philadelphia.
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. I had no bed, no place to lie down on at all, and they laid me on the seat of the loom, and I stayed there all day and the next. She also started having vivid dreams and hallucinations which she often claimed were religious visions she was a staunch Christian.
Her infirmity made her unattractive to potential slave buyers and renters. The marriage was not good, and the knowledge that two of her brothers—Ben and Henry—were about to be sold provoked Harriet to plan an escape.
The brothers, however, changed their minds and went back. With the help of the Underground Railroad , Harriet persevered and traveled 90 miles north to Pennsylvania and freedom.
The Fugitive Slave Act allowed fugitive and freed workers in the north to be captured and enslaved. She often drugged babies and young children to prevent slave catchers from hearing their cries. Over the next ten years, Harriet befriended other abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass , Thomas Garrett and Martha Coffin Wright, and established her own Underground Railroad network.
When the Civil War broke out in , Harriet found new ways to fight slavery. She was recruited to assist fugitive enslave people at Fort Monroe and worked as a nurse, cook and laundress. Harriet used her knowledge of herbal medicines to help treat sick soldiers and fugitive enslaved people. In , Harriet became head of an espionage and scout network for the Union Army.
She provided crucial intelligence to Union commanders about Confederate Army supply routes and troops and helped liberate enslaved people to form Black Union regiments. Though just over five feet tall, she was a force to be reckoned with, although it took over three decades for the government to recognize her military contributions and award her financially. Harriet Tubman was one of the most courageous and determined freedom fighters in U. She rose from a childhood of brutal abuse by slaveholders to emancipate herself, and she risked her life repeatedly to liberate others.
She taught them courage and endurance. It is in this role as a conductor for the Underground Railroad that she is best known, and her legacy is awe-inspiring. She liberated about 70 people on more than a dozen dangerous missions to slave-holding states in the decade prior to the Civil War, and she assisted many others with her knowledge of safe spaces and escape routes. Her bravery and activism did not end there, however.
She was active in the abolitionist movement and served the Union Army in various capacities during the Civil War. She lived a life committed to freedom and dignity for all people. Tubman was born under the name Araminta Ross sometime around the exact date is unknown ; her mother nicknamed her Minty. She lived on a plantation in rural Maryland, was hired out to work several grueling jobs, and was subjected to cruel treatment as a child and young adult.
She eventually traveled 90 miles on the Underground Railroad to Pennsylvania, a free state, under her new identity. Tubman helped John Brown plan his raid of a Harpers Ferry arsenal, one of the major events that led to the Civil War.
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