1/27/2024 0 Comments Black man railroad storyShe provided crucial intelligence to Union commanders about Confederate Army supply routes and troops and helped liberate enslaved people to form Black Union regiments. In 1863, Harriet became head of an espionage and scout network for the Union Army. Harriet used her knowledge of herbal medicines to help treat sick soldiers and fugitive enslaved people. She was recruited to assist fugitive enslaved people at Fort Monroe and worked as a nurse, cook and laundress. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Harriet found new ways to fight slavery. She claimed, “I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.” Harriet Tubman's Civil War Service Nevertheless, it’s believed Harriet personally led at least 70 enslaved people to freedom, including her elderly parents, and instructed dozens of others on how to escape on their own. It’s widely reported she emancipated 300 enslaved people however, those numbers may have been estimated and exaggerated by her biographer Sarah Bradford, since Harriet herself claimed the numbers were much lower. Over the next 10 years, Harriet befriended other abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, Thomas Garrett and Martha Coffin Wright, and established her own Underground Railroad network. She often drugged babies and young children to prevent slave catchers from hearing their cries. She carried a gun for both her own protection and to “encourage” her charges who might be having second thoughts. This made Harriet’s role as an Underground Railroad conductor much harder and forced her to lead enslaved people further north to Canada, traveling at night, usually in the spring or fall when the days were shorter. The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act allowed fugitive and freed workers in the north to be captured and enslaved. At one point, she tried to bring her husband John north, but he’d remarried and chose to stay in Maryland with his new wife. She soon returned to the south to lead her niece and her niece’s children to Philadelphia via the Underground Railroad. Tubman found work as a housekeeper in Philadelphia, but she wasn’t satisfied living free on her own-she wanted freedom for her loved ones and friends, too. With the help of the Underground Railroad, Harriet persevered and traveled 90 miles north to Pennsylvania and freedom. The brothers, however, changed their minds and went back. On September 17, 1849, Harriet, Ben and Henry escaped their Maryland plantation. The marriage was not good, and the knowledge that two of her brothers-Ben and Henry-were about to be sold provoked Harriet to plan an escape. But Rit’s new owner refused to recognize the will and kept Rit, Harriet and the rest of her children in bondage.Īround 1844, Harriet married John Tubman, a free Black man, and changed her last name from Ross to Tubman. In 1840, Harriet’s father was set free and Harriet learned that Rit’s owner’s last will had set Rit and her children, including Harriet, free. Her infirmity made her unattractive to potential slave buyers and renters. She also started having vivid dreams and hallucinations which she often claimed were religious visions (she was a staunch Christian). Harriet’s good deed left her with headaches and narcolepsy the rest of her life, causing her to fall into a deep sleep at random. I had no bed, no place to lie down on at all, and they laid me on the seat of the loom, and I stayed there all day and the next.” She later said about the incident, “The weight broke my skull … They carried me to the house all bleeding and fainting. Harriet stepped between the enslaved person and the overseer-the weight struck her head. Harriet’s desire for justice became apparent at age 12 when she spotted an overseer about to throw a heavy weight at a fugitive.
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