Online Encyclopedia Search Tool

Your Online Encyclopedia

 

Online Encylopedia and Dictionary Research Site

Online Encyclopedia Free Search Online Encyclopedia Search    Online Encyclopedia Browse    welcome to our free dictionary for your research of every kind

Online Encyclopedia



Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman (1820 in Dorchester County, Maryland - March 10, 1913 in Auburn, New York), also known as Black Moses, was an African-American freedom fighter. An escaped slave, she worked as a guerrilla, farmhand, lumberjack, laundress and cook, refugee organizer, raid leader and Intelligence commander, nurse and healer, revival speaker, feminist and fundraiser, all as part of the struggle for liberation against slavery and racism.

Contents

Early Life

She was born into slavery in Maryland. Born Araminta Ross, she later took the name Harriet after her mother. Around 1844 she married John Tubman, a free man. She endured years of inhumane treatment from her various owners, including an incident where an overseer hurled a two-pound weight in her direction, striking her in the head. As a result of the blow, she suffered intermittent bouts of narcolepsy the rest of her life.

Escape and Abolitionist Career

On hearing that the slaves of the plantation were to be sold, she took her emancipation into her own hands, and escaped northward, leaving behind her husband. On her way she was assisted by sympathetic Quakers, members of the Abolitionist movement who were instrumental in maintaining the Underground Railroad. She herself was later to become famous as "Moses", one of the most successful guides of the Underground Railroad; she made many trips South to help other slaves escape. She was never captured and, in her own words, "never lost a passenger" despite the combined bounty for her which totalled $40,000. During the American Civil War, in addition to working as a cook and a nurse, she served as a spy for the North, and again was never captured.

Methods

The reason for her success in her adventures was partly due to her cunning, daring and ruthlessness in following well developed plans for her expeditions. For instance, when Tubman scouted an area, she sometimes took the precaution of carrying two chickens with her. Whenever she felt that the people in the area were getting suspicious of her, she would release the chickens and chase them to recapture them. This would amuse the whites who would assume the ineffectual chicken chaser could not be the cunning slave stealer.

One time at a train station, she found that slave-catchers were watching the trains heading north in hopes of capturing her and her charges. Without hesitation, she had her group board a southbound train, successfully gambling that the retreat into enemy territory would never be anticipated by her pursuers and later resumed her planned route at a safer location.

In addition, she had a strict policy that while she would respect a slave foregoing the risk of accompanying her to freedom when offered, anyone who joined her and then wanted to go back en route would be shot dead to prevent the dissenter from betraying the group.


Post American Civil War Life

Harriet Tubman continued as an activist for African-American and women's rights. With Sarah Bradford acting as her biographer and transcribing her stories, she was able to have the story of her life published in 1869 as Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman. This was of considerable help to her sad financial state - she was not awarded a government pension for her military service until some 30 years after the fact. That same year she married Nelson Davis , another Civil War veteran.

Eventually, she settled in the home for needy blacks that she herself had helped to found in Auburn, New York. It is not clear if it was built on the land in upstate New York sold to her by William E. Seward . Note that this abolitionist supporter is not the famous William H. Seward, former secretary of state of the United States of America. She died there at the age of 93. She told stories of her adventures until the end of her days.

Quotes

  • "I never lost a passenger."
  • "I can't die but once."
  • John Brown was to refer to her as "General Tubman" and called her "one of the bravest persons on this continent."
  • "Excepting John Brown... I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people." -- Frederick Douglass
  • "I never met any person of any color who had more confidence in the voice of God." -- Thomas Garrett

See also: List of African-American abolitionists, Slave narrative

External link

  • Full text of Jailbreak Out Of History, a re-biography of Harriet Tubman http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/books/jailbreak.html , by Butch Lee
  • Full text of Harriet, The Moses of Her People http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/9999 , from Project Gutenberg
  • Harriet Tubman timeline http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/0history/hwny-tubman.html
  • Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/bradford/menu.html fulltext





Last updated: 02-07-2005 18:22:28
Last updated: 02-25-2005 21:10:13