Harriet Tubman

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Harriet Tubman : biography

c. 1820 – March 10, 1913

The raid failed; Brown was convicted of treason and hanged in December. His actions were seen by abolitionists as a symbol of proud resistance, carried out by a noble martyr.Clinton, pp. 134–135. Tubman herself was effusive with praise. She later told a friend: "[H]e done more in dying, than 100 men would in living."Quoted in Larson, p. 177.

"Moses"

After reaching Philadelphia, Tubman began thinking of her family. "I was a stranger in a strange land," she said later. "[M]y father, my mother, my brothers, and sisters, and friends were [in Maryland]. But I was free, and they should be free."Quoted in Bradford (1971), p. 20. Emphasis in the original. She began to work odd jobs and save money.Larson, p. 88. At the same time, the U.S. Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which forced law enforcement officials (even in states that had outlawed slavery) to aid in the capture of fugitive slaves, and imposed heavy punishments on those who abetted escape. The law increased risks for escaped slaves, and more began to try to get to Canada, which had abolished slavery.Clinton, p. 60. Racial tensions increased in Philadelphia, as waves of poor Irish immigrants competed with free blacks for work.Clinton, pp. 49–53.

In December 1850, Tubman received a warning that her niece Kessiah was going to be sold (along with her two children, six-year-old James Alfred, and baby Araminta) in Cambridge. Tubman returned to the land of her enslavement. She went to Baltimore, where her brother-in-law Tom Tubman hid her until the time of the sale. Kessiah’s husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife. Then, while he pretended to make arrangements to pay, Kessiah and their children escaped to a nearby safe house. When night fell, Bowley sailed the family on a log canoe 60 miles (100 kilometers) to Baltimore. They met up with Tubman, who brought the family safely to Philadelphia.Larson, pp. 89–90.

The following spring, she headed back into Maryland to help guide away other family members. On her second trip, she brought back her brother Moses, and two other unidentified men.Larson, p. 90. It is likely that Tubman was by this time working with abolitionist Thomas Garrett, a Quaker working in Wilmington, Delaware.Clinton, p. 82. Word of her exploits had encouraged her family, and biographers agree that she became more confident with each trip to Maryland.Clinton, p. 80. As she led more individuals out of slavery, she was named "Moses" by abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, an allusion to the prophet in the Book of Exodus who led the Hebrews to freedom from Egypt.Clinton, p. 85.

During an interview with author Wilbur Siebert in 1897, Tubman revealed some of the names of helpers and places she used along the Underground Railroad. She stayed with Sam Green, a free black minister living in East New Market, Maryland; she also hid near her parents’ home at Poplar Neck in Caroline County, Maryland. From there, she would travel northeast to Sandtown and Willow Grove, Delaware, and onto the Camden area where free black agents, William and Nat Brinkley and Abraham Gibbs, guided her north past Dover, Smyrna, and Blackbird, where other agents would take her across the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal to New Castle and Wilmington. In Wilmington, Quaker Thomas Garrett would secure transportation to William Still’s office or the homes of other Underground Railroad operators in the greater Philadelphia area. Still, a famous black agent, is credited with aiding hundreds of freedom seekers escape to safer places farther north in New York, New England, and Canada.Larson, p. 134-135.

In the fall of 1851, Tubman returned to Dorchester County for the first time since her escape, this time to find her husband, John. She once again saved money from various jobs, purchased a suit for him, and made her way south. John, meanwhile, had married another woman named Caroline. Tubman sent word that he should join her, but he insisted that he was happy where he was. Tubman at first prepared to storm their house and make a scene, but then decided he was not worth the trouble. Suppressing her anger, she found some slaves who wanted to escape and led them to Philadelphia.Larson, pp. 90–91. John and Caroline raised a family together, until he was killed 16 years later in a roadside argument with a white man named Robert Vincent.Larson, p. 239.