As a short black woman with missing teeth and no distinctive features, Harriet wore a bandana on her head and moved unnoticed through rebel territory.
Working as a scout and spy for Col. In , Harriet moved to Virginia to care for wounded black soldiers as the matron of the Colored Hospital at Fortress Monroe. In the s, Harriet began to appear at anti-slavery meetings and to speak on women's rights. After the war she settled with various family members in her house in Auburn, New York; John Tubman had remarried shortly after Harriet's escape and died in Harriet took in boarders to help support herself and her family.
In , Harriet married Nelson Davis, a former slave, who had served in the Union Army and whom she had met while guiding black soldiers in South Carolina. Tubman spent her last years busy helping others and the cause of her people. She worked to raise money for freedman's schools and to improve the plight of destitute children.
She cared for her aging parents. In , she was a delegate to the National Association of Colored Women's first annual convention. Eventually, her health failed and she lived in the Home until her death on March 10, Before her death, Harriet proudly recalled, "I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger" 3 New York History Net She was buried with full military honors.
Tubman became the most famous and successful "conductors" of the Underground Railroad, which provided assistance, shelter and food to runaway slaves during their flight north to freedom. She helped make the system work, providing the hope of freedom for southern slaves.
Thousands of slaves gained their freedom through the Underground Railroad. Harriet dedicated her entire life to social reforms directed toward improving the quality of life for African-Americans. She did whatever needed to be done: helped slaves to freedom; scouted and spied for the Union Army; raised funds for schools that served former slaves; found housing for the elderly; opened a home for the indigent; and was a spokesperson for African-Americans' and women's rights.
Foremost, throughout her life, she risked her life countless times to assist others and further the cause of freedom. With her life's accomplishments, Harriet Tubman was a shining example of what a human being is capable of, despite slavery, racism and oppression. Harriet Tubman was a key figure in the slaves' fight for freedom. As a second-generation slave, the cruelty viewed and suffered by Harriet in her early years solidified her desire for the freedom of her people.
She compared the institution of African-American slavery to the slavery suffered by Moses and his people in Egypt and devoted her life to delivering her people out of their bondage and into their Promised Land of freedom.
Harriet successfully delivered over three hundred people to freedom. Additionally, she felt that achieving freedom and equality for African-Americans was closely linked to women's rights. Therefore, Harriet was involved in the early histories of the civil rights and women's suffrage movements in the United States. Harriet Tubman spent her entire life working to correct the injustices done against her people.
She worked to bring slaves to freedom and to advance the rights of all African-Americans. Through her travels Harriet developed a wide network of friends whom she enlisted for her numerous social causes. Harriet always asked for help when necessary, from people who had the resources she needed. Some were well-known philanthropists like William Seward and Gerritt Smith and others were poor individuals, but most contributed to the full extent of their abilities.
This was grass-roots philanthropy. Specifically, the Underground Railroad was the prominent philanthropic organization Tubman risked her life and well-being to assist. The most severe injury occurred when Tubman was an adolescent. 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.
Part 2: Part 3: Resource Bank Contents. Harriet Tubman is perhaps the most well-known of all the Underground Railroad's "conductors. And, as she once proudly pointed out to Frederick Douglass, in all of her journeys she "never lost a single passenger. At age five or six, she began to work as a house servant. Seven years later she was sent to work in the fields. While she was still in her early teens, she suffered an injury that would follow her for the rest of her life.
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.
She married former enslaved man and Civil War veteran Nelson Davis in her husband John had died and they adopted a little girl named Gertie a few years later. Harriet had an open-door policy for anyone in need. She supported her philanthropy efforts by selling her home-grown produce, raising pigs and accepting donations and loans from friends. The head injury she suffered in her youth continued to plague her and she endured brain surgery to help relieve her symptoms. But her health continued to deteriorate and eventually forced her to move into her namesake rest home in Schools and museums bear her name and her story has been revisited in books, movies and documentaries.
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