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Harriet Harriet Tubman Harriet Tubman Harriet Ross Tubman was born a slave in Dorchester County Maryland, in 1820 (or 1821 depending on the source. ) There were no records kept about the date of birth of children born into slavery, so there are many guesses that have been listed. She was born with the name Arabia Ross, but her mother s name, Harriet, became her name as she got older. Before the age of five she was put to work in the house on a plantation, but when she got older she was hired out as a field laborer. When she turned about 11 years old she began to wear Bandanas, as was the custom on plantations, and people started to call her Harriet. 1 When she was a teenager (age 15 or 13 depending on sources), Harriet tried to help a runaway slave avoid punishment. She was hit with a lead weight by an overseer unintentionally, sending her into a coma.
She did come out of the coma, but her recovery was not complete, for she suffered blackouts from the blow for the rest of her life. The disease we would might say resulted from the blow is narcolepsy. She would sleep and appear to be lazy which, got her in trouble on more than one occasion. 2 She escaped Slavery by running to Philadelphia in 1849, after hearing that she would be sold, since the owners of her plantation had died. Harriet at the time, had a husband who was a free man named John Tubman. They were married in 1844 and she was allowed to sleep in his cabin at night. Harriet had mentioned the idea of escaping and John told Harriet that he had no interest in leaving his home in the south.
He even threatened Harriet that if she did try and run away, he would tell her master. After Harriet escaped he married another woman. When she came back for her husband, she was confronted by him and he told her he was not leaving. Not at all moved by his reaction, Harriet proceeded to rescue other slaves from the south on that trip.
Harriet had planned to escape with her two brothers, since they had heard they might be sold to a southern chain gang. The way that salves communicated to each other was in code. they would not met and say that they were running away. Harriet let he people know that she was running away, by singing to them before she left. Her biography written originally in 1886, gives a quote of many songs she sane, including the one she sang before leaving her plantation.
When dat ar ole chariot comes, I m gwine to like you, I m bound for the promised land, Free s, I m gwine to like you. 3 They started off with her late one night, but went back home after losing courage. Harriet s escape was based on a great deal of chance and luck. She was fortunate to get a ride with a couple who happened to be abolitionists and were willing to help her travel north. Harriet arrived in Philadelphia and met William Still, a free Pennsylvanian black man, and a station master for the underground railroad. (The code name for the route used to help slaves escape to the north. ) Harriet found a job here where she was able to support herself and rescue other slaves via the underground railroad. 4 The first people Harriet helped escape from the south was her sister, Ann Bowl and her two children from Baltimore, Maryland to Pennsylvania. She sent them a message to board a boat to Bodkin s point and from there she guided them to Pennsylvania. 5 She help over 300 slaves escape from the south, on 19 trips, bringing along a loaded revolver to give those who were afraid of being caught, giving them some courage by threatening them with it. She would not go back and she did not lose any of her passengers while she worked on the underground railroad.
When she returned to the south, after her attempt to rescue her husband, she was presented with a large number of passengers, on the underground railroad to guide north. It was after the fugitive slave law had been passed (after 1850), but despite the circumstances she did refuse them. She used a sedative on a baby, to make the chances of the baby being heard less, and safely got them all to Frederick Douglass house in Pennsylvania. There they waited until money could be found to transport them to St. Catherine s, an area in Canada where white and black people lived peacefully together. 6 Harriet got jobs in the north to pay for her next rip down south to rescue people out of slavery.
When the times got rough, because of fugitive slave laws, she and her fellow escapees, would live in Canada. Though the times got rough, even these dangerous times did not stop her from returning to the south to rescue more people. Religion among slaves, became important part of their culture was used as a part of codes, especially when talking about the underground railroad. Harriet received the name as the Moses of her people because she took so many to the north and to Canada (called the promised land). Harriet herself, had a large amount of faith. Whenever a dangerous or difficult situation came upon her, she would pray to the lord and wait for his help.
She expected deliverance when she prayed, unless the lord ordered otherwise, and in that case she was perfectly willing to accept the Divine decree. 7 She would pray in situations talking about how the lord had been with her before and he would always pull her through on every journey. Harriet was also a prophet and it supposedly her father had made predictions too. Harriet had a dream three years before the Emancipation proclamation, that her people had been set free. She awoke and told her friend Thomas Gerrit, who said it would never happen in their day. Three years later when asked why she wasn t celebrating about Lincoln s emancipation, she responded that she had done her celebrating three years and ago, and she had celebrated enough back then. 8 The money that would be rewarded for her return reached about $ 40, 000 at one point by plantation owners, in areas where many slaves had disappeared, while the state of Maryland offered 12, 000, dollars for her return. 9 One of her famous escapes is when she rescued her brothers. This long story I keep in quotes is from an online source.
The following exert is from the online web page quoting parts of an article from ebony magazine. The article is called Free For Christmas, by Leone Bennett, Jr. , and it is a historical reconstruction of Harriet Tubman's raid during Christmas, 1854. The article is based the on the known facts written in the best-documented account of this raid in Wade in the Water: Great Moments in Black History, copywrite 1979, Johnson Publishing Co. , Inc. By Christmas, 1854, Tubman had already returned to Maryland five times or more lead thirty or forty slaves to freedom. She returned during the Christmas of 1854 for her three brothers who were in danger of being sold.
Word of this danger came to her through a premonition. Tubman had been working in the North in order to save money for a slave strike when she became troubled in spirit about her brothers. In order to alert her brothers of her return to save them, Tubman persuaded a friend to write a letter in code to Jacob Jackson. Jackson was a friend of Tubman who was a free black living near the plantation where her brothers worked. He was suspected of being involved with slave rescues, so his mail was being monitored.
The letters signature was of his adopted son and it contained many normal paragraphs. A paragraph within the letter read: Read my letter to the old folks, and give my love to them, and tell my brothers to be always watching unto prayer, and when the good old ship of Zion comes along, to be ready to step on board. (Cited from Ebony, December 1984, p. 54) The letter caused confusion among the inspectors because Jacksons parents were dead and he had no brothers. The matter was discussed between the inspectors and a decision was made to ask Jackson what the letter meant. Jackson immediately recognized its meaning and then threw it down, refusing it by telling them that it couldnt be for him and that it made no sense. Tubman's premonition was right; her brothers were to be sold South.
Jackson immediately informed them that Harriet was on her way. Harriet arrived in Dorchester County, Maryland on Christmas Eve, 1854. In the thick woods she assembled with a group of slaves which included two of her brothers, Benjamin and Robert, two slaves from a nearby plantation, John Chase and Peter Jackson, and a woman slave, Jane Kane. Her brother Henry was nowhere to be found. Harriet's rule was that time was freedom, and she waited for no one, this caused her to leave the scene without Henry. The first stop was the cabin where her parents lived, which was forty miles north.
Although it was a treacherous hike through forests, hills, rivers, and creeks, Harriet led the group to the cabin without any problems, arriving late Christmas Eve. Since Tubman had not seen her mother in five years, she opted to lead them past the cabin and establish camp at the fodder house. This was a good idea considering that her mother was susceptible to emotional outbursts. She sent two non-family members, John Chase and Peter Jackson, to awaken her father who brought them food. He tied a handkerchief around his eyes because he knew he would be asked if he had seen them after their escape was discovered. Meanwhile, Henry was attempting to follow the path that Harriet had left him.
His wife had gone into labor at the time he was planning to meet Tubman, so he had to go get the granny. Henry, determined to reach freedom, left after the baby was born. He assured his wife that he would return for her and his children. Henry successfully reached the fodder house early on Christmas morning. In the morning, Harriet and her brothers looked through the window at their mother. Tubman later told her biographer that they could see their mother through the little window sitting by the fire with her head on her hand.
She was rocking back and forth like she did when she was wondering what had happened to her children. (Cited from Ebony, December 1984, p. 56) The hardest part of their journey was still ahead of them. The trip consisted of going northward and eastward to the Delaware line and once there northward to Wilmington, Delaware. They traveled by night and hid during the day. Tubman would hide the group and then go on ahead to scout the area for food or assistance and occasionally a change in route was needed. In Wilmington, they were aided by Thomas Garrett, a famous Underground Railroad conductor. He wrote a letter to J.
Miller McKim of the Philadelphia Vigilance committee that he had sent Harriet Tubman with six men and one woman to Anne Agnews on the night of December 28, and they were to be forwarded across the country to the city. Tubman and her passengers were received and examined by William Still, the courageous black leader of the Underground Railroad. He considered Tubman to be a great leader of her time and one of the most brave women ever to live. According to Still, she was a woman who did not know fear and no human being could ever be compared to her.
She was without equal. (Cited from Ebony, December 1984, p. 58) From Philadelphia, the group traveled to New York City, Troy, Syracuse, and Rochester, New York. They walked most of the way, but boats, wagons, and eventually railroads were also used. This part of the journey was not as dangerous as the first few hundred miles, but it was still hazardous. The group rejoiced as they crossed Suspension Bridge into Canada, where they were finally free. 10 During the Civil War she served as a spy for the Union army as well as a nurse for three years in the Carolinas and Florida.
Her scouting and spying was easy to do disguised as a crazy old woman and with a bandana tied around her head and missing teeth, she was able to sneak around without drawing attention to herself. Harriet Tubman was also a leader of a black corps, in the Second Carolina Volunteers under Colonel James Montgomery. This group was led by Harriet in raids and attacks to get information about the rebels. The Colonel James Montgomery was able to use this information to make successful raids. Harriet even lead a raid up the Combahee River in 1863. Though according to some research she was never paid or she did not receive a pension until 30 years later.
The payment was about 200 dollars, thousands less than what the government owed her. During this time, she had to raise money by selling pies, gingerbread, chickens, and root beer. 11 She was known to have associated with John Brown, the abolitionist, he called Harriet Tubman General Tubman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Seward, whose house is also in Auburn, New York, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Wendell Phillips, and Lydia Maria Child. William Seward was good friends with Harriet. When Harriet came to Auburn, New York she purchased land from him, for her and her parents to live on.
As she became older, she took in people who had no place to go, making her home an old folks / nursing home. The biography written by Sarah Bradford, was a direct attempt at raising money for Harriet to keep the land and keep helping the people living with her. The government would not pay her anything, even with pleas and case set forth from William Seward, former secretary of State and other supportive individuals. There are also items on display at Harriet Tubman home that William Seward and his family have given to Harriet. Harriet has supposedly been given a silver medal awarded to her by the Queen Victoria in 1897. It was not until 1857, after she had gone to the south for her parents, that she retired to her home in Auburn.
She married a man named Nelson Davis and they lived together until his death in 1908. There she resided, poor, but she still helped people by opening her home to them. Her last years were spent running her home to shelter and feed the old and needy. She died of what was thought to be pneumonia. She died in 1913 in her house in Auburn, New York which is now owned and cared for by her descendants, and the Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. 12 After her death, Harriet Tubman was buried in Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn [grave], with military honors.
She has since received man honors, including the naming of the Liberty Ship Harriet Tubman, christened in 1944 [photo] by Eleanor Roosevelt. On June 14, 1914 a large bronze plaque was placed at the Cayuga County Courthouse, and a civic holiday declared in her honor. Freedom Park, a tribute to the memory of Harriet Tubman, opened in the summer of 1994 at 17 North Street in Auburn. In 1995, Harriet Tubman was honored by the federal government with a commemorative postage stamp bearing her name and likeness. 13 Her name deserves to be handed down to posterity, side by side with the names of Joanne Date, Grace Darling, and Florence Nightingale, for not one of these women, noble and brave as they were, has shown more courage, and power of endurance, in facing danger and death to relieve human suffering, than this poor black woman.
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Research essay sample on Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad
