Harriet Tubman was an amazing woman who became a legend in her own time, helping hundreds of slaves escape to freedom.

Harriet Ross Tubman was born in Dorchester County, Maryland, in 1820 or 1821. Her parents were Harriet Greene and Benjamin Ross. Their slave owner called Harriet "Araminta," but she preferred to use her mother's name, Harriet. She was put to work in the fields at an early age and was often beaten by the overseer; upon one occasion when she was a young teenager she was hit in the head with a rock thrown by the slave owner because she tried to interfere with the overseer's attack on another slave. The injury she sustained caused her to experience seizures or blackouts from time to time, for the rest of her life.

At the age of 24 she married a free man, John Tubman. Her marital situation did not cause her to be made free, and she remained a slave. In 1848 or 1849, the slave owner died and Harriet decided it was time to make an escape, before she could be sold. She tried to convince her husband and two of her brothers to escape North with her, but they changed their minds; her husband went so far as to say he would report her to the authorities if she tried. She would not be deterred, however, and she made her escape alone.

A Quaker woman hid her for a day or so (Quakers were generally known to be abolitionists, opposed to slavery on moral grounds) and informed her about the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad was a network of safe houses and hiding places, with sympathetic people (many of them Quakers) who risked their own safety to help escaping slaves. The slaves used the North Star and the constellations as guides to travel north secretly at night. Sometimes people acting as "conductors" on the Underground Railroad would hide the escaping slaves (including Tubman) under loads of produce or hay in the backs of wagons, transporting them to the next safe stopping place. When Tubman reached freedom in Pennsylvania, she was quoted as saying, "I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person now that I was free…I felt like I was in heaven." Abolitionists in Pennsylvania helped her in finding a place to stay, and a job in a hotel.

Freedom for herself was not enough for Tubman, however; she wished to help others achieve freedom too. She became the most famous and successful "conductor" for the Underground Railroad during the next ten years. During these years, she made nineteen trips South to help others escape. She personally assisted more than three hundred people escape, including her own family. She "conducted" her parents to freedom in 1857, using the same method of traveling by night and hiding by day that she had used to get to the North herself. She said that in all her trips she never lost a "passenger." She had some close calls, but avoided capture by being smart and well-prepared, (for example, providing sedatives to quiet crying babies) and by being tough enough to prevent anyone from chickening out in the middle of a journey, which could have jeopardized their companions who continued onward. Tubman became a wanted criminal in the slavery states of the South, and a huge (at that time) $40,000 reward was posted for her capture. In the North, Tubman told her story at anti-slavery meetings.

During the Civil War, Tubman worked for the Union Army as a spy, nurse, cook, and scout (she had knowledge of the countryside because of her trips South with the Underground Railroad). She even led one or more daring military raids to free slaves. She assisted homeless former slaves in finding work and places to live.

In 1868 her husband, John, died, and Tubman married an African American Civil War veteran, Nelson Davis. Also after the war, Tubman told her story to Sarah Bradford, who wrote her biography. Tubman received many honors for her work with the Union Army. She did not receive a pension from the Army until thirty years after the end of the Civil War, and what she received was very small. Still, she used part of the money to establish a home for aged and needy African American people in Auburn, New York. Harriet Tubman died in Auburn in 1913, at the age of 93, after a lifetime of helping others.

Many schools, libraries, and other institutions throughout the United States have been named after Harriet Tubman. This heroic woman lives on as an inspiration to all Americans.

by
Susan Robinson

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