Delmarva Heritage Series, by Dr. William H. Wroten, Jr.
Harriet Tubman - A Shore Moses
Salisbury Times - July 29, 1960
One day, about the time of the outbreak of the Civil War, a
Negro slave, a run-away from a plantation near Huntsville, Ala., reported to the
Yankee soldiers that found him:
"I's hoping and praying all the time I meets up with that Harriet
Tubman woman. She the colored woman what takes slaves to Canada. She always
travels the underground railroad, they calls it, travels at night and hides out
in the day. She sure sneaks them out the South, and I think she's a brave
woman."
Thus it was that word of Harriet Tubman, the "Moses of Her People",
had spread throughout the lands of slavery.
There were many women among the free Negroes of the North who aided in the
abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad. Two rather unique women-two
of the most remarkable in American history-came into prominence in the decades
just before the Civil War. Each of these women in her own way did valiant
service for the anti-slavery cause.
One was Sojourner Truth, who although born a slave in New York, became
well-known for her wit, as she went about the country speaking in support of the
abolitionist cause. But the most heroic figure in the Underground Railroad
movement was Harriet Tubman. She was once introduced to Wendell Phillips (a
famous abolitionist) by John Brown as "one of the best and bravest persons
on this continent." Harriet Tubman had earned this tribute because of her
unexcelled bravery in the underground movement.
Harriet Tubman was born about 1821 in the Bucktown District of Dorchester
County. She was the daughter of Benjamin Ross and Harriet Greene, both of whom
were slaves. She was first named Araminta, but early in life took on the name of
Harriet.
In her early life Harriet was given an opportunity of working as a household
slave-one of the best jobs that a plantation slave could receive. But for
various reasons this arrangement did not work out and when on one occasion she
was caught taking some sugar from the table (it seems that Harriet was always
hungry) in the master's house, she was sent to work as a field hand. Thus,
from her early teens she worked in the fields cultivating tobacco, corn, and
hay, cutting, loading, and unloading wood, and even driving the ox-cart to
market in Cambridge type of work evidently developed her great strength and
remarkable powers of endurance which were important assets to her and her work
in later life.
Because Harriett Tubman, even during her life time, became somewhat of a
legend it is often difficult to separate from the many stories the true account
of her life. This is especially true of her early life -before she won her
freedom about 1849. Such a situation should be kept in mind when reading about
her life on the Eastern Shore as a young slave girl. Her story has been told in
a biography and also as a biographical novel.
Sometime in childhood or her teens she received an injury to her head, which
must have caused pressure on her brain, for she was subject to sleeping spells.
Throughout the rest of her long life she was subject without warning to these
spells.
A biographical novelist tells the following story: It seems that at one time
Harriet was farmed out to work where a slave-Barrett's Jim-had twice that
year run away only to be captured. But everyone knew that the "North
Star" had such a hold on Jim that he would make his break again someday.
It was Jim who told Harriet about the work of the Underground Railroad. While
Harriet was at the farm, Jim tried again to escape and she stood in the way of
the overseer when he tried to catch the slave. The overseer picked up a weight
from a nearby scale and threw it at Jim, but instead he hit Harriet in the
forehead.
Later on Harriet talked her master into letting her "hire out her own
time" as the saying goes. Through this practice she was able to save a
little money, enough to buy a pair of cattle. Then she talked the man who was
hiring her into letting her have a little piece of land to farm as her own. She
would farm this section before and after going to work each day, and when the
crops were ready she would take them to the market in Cambridge.
It was during this period of her life that she met and married John Tubman.
There are several versions of this affair. One is that she was forced by her
master to marry this man who was most unfaithful to her. Another is that she met
and married him on her own; that Tubman was a free Negro, lazy, and lived off
his wife. Soon Harriet's savings were gone trying to keep him in tobacco, food
and clothing. Although much later she married a man named Nelson Davis, it is
interesting to note that she has been known through the years as Harriet Tubman.
A few years after her marriage to Tubman, about 1849, her master died and
Harriet became worried that, like her sisters before her, she would be
"sold South". Now, she decided, was the time to follow the "North
Star" to freedom. For sometime she had been noticing a Quaker woman in the
Bucktown region, and she had been told that a Quaker could secure a ticket on
the Underground Railroad. So, when word reached her that she was to be sold she
made her contacts; she headed for the Choptank, on to Camden and Middletown,
Del., and finally to the home of the Quaker Thomas Garrett of Wilmington.
Garrett had one of the most important "stations" on the Underground
Railroad, and he gave Harriet all the help possible; especially seeing to it
that she was taken on to Philadelphia.
Harriet was able to find work in Philadelphia, for she was willing and able
to do such things as washing, scrubbing floors and walls and beating carpets.
After a summer as a cook at a resort hotel at Cape May, N.J., Harriet decided to
become a conductor on the Underground Railroad. But in between these journeys
she continued to work as a cook in order to earn the money to aid the slaves she
was to free.
Harriet Tubman's adventures on the Underground Railroad are as interesting
and exciting as those of well known cowboys, mountainmen, Indian scouts, and
military spies; it is a case of truth being stranger than fiction. Although she
could neither read nor write her shrewdness in planning hazardous enterprises
and skill in avoiding arrest were phenomenal. In 1857 she returned to Dorchester
County and let her own parents (who were very old at this time) to freedom, and
settled them on a little farm in auburn, N.Y. which she had purchased from
William H. Seward, secretary of state for Abraham Lincoln.
She made about 19 trips into this region of Delmarva. All in all she helped
about 300 slaves escape to freedom. "She seemed absolutely fearless and was
willing to endure any hardship. To a remarkable degree she was guided in her
work by visions and sustained by her faith in God." John Brown, whom she
met in Canada and who often referred to her as "General Tubman",
confided in and relied on her for aid in his plan to free the slaves of
Virginia.
Harriet, on her journeys, was somewhat like a military commander in time of
danger. There was one rule which she herself made and enforced: There was to be
no turning back or surrender. There were times when she had to put her pistol in
the backs of the weaker ones and say, "Move on or die! Dead men tell no
tales." Is it any wonder that the aggrieved slave-owners offered rewards as
high as $40,000 to the man who brought her in dead or alive.
In 1868 Frederick Douglass, a fellow Marylanders, wrote to her: "The
difference between us is very marked. 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. I have had the applause of the
crowd and the satisfaction that comes of being approved by the multitude, while
the most that you have done has been witnessed by a few trembling, scarred and
foot-sore bondmen and women, whom you have led out of the house of bondage, and
whose heartfelt 'God Bless you' has been your only reward."
During the Civil war she worked with the Union Army in South Carolina. At
times she was a cook, a laundress, and nurse, but she also served behind the
Confederate lines as a scout, spy, or soldier, helping to feed and clothe the
Negroes, and even bringing some to freedom.
After the war her work continued as she was concerned with the establishment
of schools for freed men in North Carolina. She worked for the temperance
movement, women's rights, and in her own home at Auburn she supported several
children and penniless old people. The Harriet Tubman Home for indigent aged
Negroes continued to exist for a number of years after her death.
Today, visitors to Auburn can see both the old Tubman Home and the tablet
erected in her memory.
Born a slave in Maryland about 1821
Died in Auburn, N.Y., March 10, 1913
Called the "Moses" of her people,
During the Civil War, with rare
Courage, she led over three hundred
Negroes up from slavery to freedom
And rendered invaluable service
As nurse and spy
With implicit trust in God
She braved every danger and
Overcame every obstacle, Withal
She possessed extraordinary
Foresight and judgment so that
She truthfully said-
"On my Underground Railroad
I never ran my train off the track
And I never lost a passenger."
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