1849
But it is only 5 years later, in 1849, that she acts…
-Several events came together to motivate Harriet Tubman to act. She heard that two of her brothers were about to be sold down the river, to the Deep South. She was afraid of being sold along with the other slaves as well so she decided to run away and take her own liberty. She went into an Underground Railroad that was already functioning well on the eastern shore. She followed the North Star at night and went all the way to Pennsylvania which was a free state. There she found work as a domestic and saved her money to help the rest of her family escape.
-Moses and the Underground Railroad
1850-1860
During 10 years, between 1850 and 1860…
-She made 19 trips into the South and escorted over 300 slaves to freedom. And she once proudly pointed out that in all of her journeys she "never lost a single passenger." Harriet is perhaps the most well-known of all the Underground Railroad's "conductors", and was called the Moses of her people because she was compared to the prophet Moses, who led the Jewish’s out of slavery to the promised land.
She had clever techniques that helped make her plans successful. For example, she left on Saturday nights, because runaway notices couldn't be placed in newspapers until Monday morning. When she heard the slave hunter’s dogs coming Harriet led her people in the water so the dogs couldn’t smell them. Once, she heard a man reading her wanted poster. He read her description that persist that she was illiterate. By reflex she took out a book and pretended to read. It was enough to fool him.
She used to carrying a drug to use on babies if they cried, because it might put the fugitives in danger. Tubman even carried a gun which she used incase she incountered slave hunters but also to threaten the fugitives if they became too tired or decided to turn back, telling them, "Dead negro’s tell no tales." meaning “you’ll be free or die”.
1851
-The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 said that slaves that escapted to a free state was to be captured and returned. This ment for Harriet that she wasn’t free any more, she was a fugitive slave and was to be found and returned. The reward for finding her rose up to 40’000 $, but she was never captured. For her safety as many others, she went to live in Canada. Tubman brought many of her charges to St. Catharines, Ontario, where they settled into a growing community of freedom seekers. Her dangerous missions won the admiration of black and white abolitionists throughout the North who provided her with funds to continue her activities. But she did get other support from many of the leading figures of New England.
1854
-She returned to Maryland and escorted her sister and her sister's two children to freedom. She made a dangerous trip back to the South soon after to rescue her brother and two other men. She found other slaves seeking freedom and escorted them to the North.
1857
-The spring of 1857 was the time when Harriet set out on her most daring rescue to free her elderly father, Ben Ross. Tubman bought a train ticket for herself and traveled in daylight which was dangerous considering the reward for her head. But the plan was successful.
1858
In 1858…
-In Canada, she met a famed and radical abolitionist John Brown. He had heard a lot about Harriet. When John Brown was organizing for a rebellion that he believed would end slavery, he consulted with Tubman, then in Canada. When he came to St. Catherine, he met her and was impressed by her intelligence and behavior and referred to her by "General Tubman”. Brown called Harriet, "one of the best and bravest persons on this continent."
She supported his plans at Harper's Ferry, helped raise funds in Canada, helped recruit soldiers and she intended to be there to help him take the armory to supply guns to slaves who they believed would rise up in rebellion against their enslavement.
But she became ill, and was not at Harper's Ferry when John Brown's attack failed and his supporters were killed or arrested. She was unhappy of the death of her friends in the invasion, but continued to hold John Brown as a hero.
-In Troy, New York, She had set her mind to set free a fugitive who had been captured and was being held at the office of the United States Commissioner. The slave, a man named Charles Nalle, did escape thanks to Tubman's efforts. He later bought his freedom from his master, a man who also happened to be his younger, half-brother.
1860
Harriet Tubman's career in the Railroad was ending by December 1860, as the Southern states began to secede to form the Confederacy, and the government of Abraham Lincoln prepared for war. She made her last rescue trip to Maryland, bringing seven people to Canada.
-Civil War nurse and soldier
1861
Tubman returned to the U.S. after living in Canada in 1861. The Civil War had begun and was recruiting all men as soldiers and any women who wanted to join as cooks and nurses. Tubman enlisted into the Union army as a "contraband" nurse. Contrabands were blacks who the Union army helped to escape from the Southern compounds. Often they were half starved and sick from exposure. Harriet nursed the sick and brought back health but her work did not stop there. She also tried to find them work. The army sent her to other hospitals in Florida. She treated her patients with medicine from roots and miraculously never caught any of the deadly diseases the injured soldiers would carry.
1863
During the summer of 1863, Tubman worked under the command of Colonel James Montgomery as a scout. She put together a group of spies who kept the colonel informed about slaves who might want to join the Union army. After she and her scouts had done the groundwork, she helped organize the Combahee River Raid.
The purpose of the raid was to harass whites and rescue freed slaves. Disrupting Southern supply lines by destroying bridges and railroads, the mission freed more than 750 slaves. Just about all the freed slaves joined the army.
Harriet Tubman is credited not only with significant leadership responsibilities for the mission itself, but with singing to calm the slaves and keep the situation in hand. Tubman came under Confederate fire on this mission.
Tubman believed that she was in the employ of the U.S. Army. When she received her first paycheck, she spent it to build a place where freed black women could earn a living doing laundry for the soldiers. But then she wasn't paid normally again, and wasn't given the military portion she believed she was entitled to. She was paid only a total of $200 in three years of service.
More Years of Activism and Reform
1869
-Right after the war, Harriet Tubman worked to establish schools for freedmen in South Carolina. She never learned to read and write but she thought it was important for the future of freedom
In 1869 Harriet married again. Her second husband, Nelson Davis, had been a Union Army soldier, and was more than twenty years younger than her. They lived together and shared a calm, peaceful 19 year marriage until he died.
-Sarah Bradford wrote “Scenes in the life of Harriet Tubman”. The book rose over $1.200 for her to live on.
1908
-In 1908, she bought a property that served as her home for the aged and poor people. There she worked, and herself was cared for in the period before her death in 1913.
1913
- Before she died on March 10, 1913, she gave her home for the elderly to the Church. Tubman was buried with military rites in Fort Hill Cemetery, not long away from the home. A year after her death, Auburn declared a one-day memorial to its anti-slavery hero.
