Harriet Tubman Biography

About four years after Frederick Douglass was born and about forty miles south along Maryland’s Eastern Shore, a girl was born who would become equally influential in the African American defiance of slavery. As fate would have it, both would operate separately but in parallel as central figures in the fight for abolition and the ensuing tribulations thereafter. Where Douglass would take on a very public persona and use the written and spoken word with impressive éclat, she would work in the shadows and remain illiterate her entire life. Instead of erudition, she relied on her prodigious gifts of courage, determination, and intuition.

She was born a slave in Dorchester County, Maryland in 1822. Her parents, Ben and Harriet Ross, named her Araminta and called her “Minty.” As a young slave, she endured harsh physical and emotional abuse under a number of masters. On one occasion, she suffered broken ribs and possibly lacerated organs, injuries that persisted her entire life. In her adolescence, she was badly injured when hit in the head by a heavy metal weight. Despite receiving no medical care she somehow recovered, but the trauma plagued her for the rest of her life, causing seizures, headaches, visions, and loss of consciousness.

Eventually, she recovered enough to allow her master to hire her out to a large plantation with multiple operations from farming to lumbering. A rejuvenated Minty exhibited extraordinary physical prowess, doing “all the work of a man.” Minty must have been well respected for her grit among her mostly male counterparts. Many of these laborers were paid free men with perspectives and relationships most slaves could never acquire or foster. Minty was keenly aware of the prospective value these laborers harbored.

Minty married John Tubman. She took the Tubman surname and changed her given name to Harriet in honor of her mother, thus becoming Harriet Tubman.

In 1849, Tubman escaped with her brothers, Ben and Henry. Her husband, John, did not condone the idea so she left him behind. To Tubman’s disappointment fear led the brothers to turn back during the escape, forcing Tubman to do the same. 

Soon after the aborted escape mission, Tubman tried again. This time she went alone. The information she had gathered from the free black laborers now served her well. She traveled mostly at night by the guidance of the North Star, stopping at one safe house while getting directions to the next. The journey covered 150 miles through Maryland, across to Delaware, and into Pennsylvania. Crossing the Pennsylvania state line, Tubman later recalled, “I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.”

There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.”

Over the next eleven years, she returned to the Eastern Shore of Maryland thirteen times to rescue 70 slaves, including many family members and friends. She also instructed approximately 50 more slaves who undertook their own successful escapes. 

Tubman continued to connect with prominent abolitionists including Senator William H. Seward, future Secretary of State to President Lincoln. She had stopped at Seward’s house along the Underground Railroad. In early 1859, Seward sold Tubman a home on the outskirts of Auburn, New York on favorable terms. He sold Tubman the land at great risk to himself since women generally did not own property, slaves were not citizens, and the Fugitive Slave Act required all citizens, including those in free states, to cooperate in the capture of fugitives. Tubman would go on to generously use the property as a sanctuary for family, friends, and others in want of basic needs and medical attention.

Prior to the opening shots of the Civil War at Fort Sumter, Tubman had a prophetic vision that the nation would plunge into a war that would result in the freedom of slaves. She was called to serve as a nurse in South Carolina, but she was interested in being more directly involved in the fight. 

Her reputation earned her meetings with the military brain trust and she was quickly pressed into service as a scout. On June 2, 1863, Tubman became the first woman to plan and lead an armed assault during the Civil War. The raid resulted in substantial gains, including the freeing of approximately 750 slaves, nearly all of which later joined Union black regiments.

Woodcut image portraying Harriet Tubman during the American Civil War

Tubman subsequently resumed her volunteer nursing for injured and ailing soldiers. Sadly, she never received a regular salary for her exemplary, multi-faceted service. It was not until more than three decades after the Civil War that the U.S. government issued her a pension.

In her later years, Tubman was committed to women’s suffrage, working with Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, and others. She returned to Auburn where she worked on another humanitarian cause. Tubman purchased 25 acres of land and a number of other buildings adjacent to her residence with the intention of establishing the Tubman Home for the Aged and Indigent Negroes. Unfortunately, the project stretched her financial capacity beyond its limits. Rather than relinquishing her dream, however, she deeded the property to the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church under the provision the church open and operate as the home she had envisioned.

At this stage, Tubman was in her mid-70s and the head injury she had suffered in her teens continued to debilitate her. Her increasingly frail health was further exacerbated by other injuries she suffered aboard a train in racist-fueled violence against her. Three years after the rest home named in her honor had opened, Tubman herself became a resident.

Some years earlier, Tubman solicited the endorsement of Frederick Douglass in advance of the publication of her authorized biography. For decades these two giants had dedicated their lives to a common cause but always at a distance. The two had met briefly by happenstance when Douglass hosted eleven runaway slaves in his home in Rochester, New York. Tubman was shepherding the group along the Underground Railroad en route to Canada. Both had also been independently recruited to participate in John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, but both fatefully sidestepped the event. Both had also worked with William Lloyd Garrison and Lucretia Mott but never collaborated with each other. 

Despite similar madness that drove their parallel ambitions, their methods were like night and day. It is as if Tubman was the yin to Douglass’ yang. Douglass obliged Tubman in her request for commendation. In the letter, Douglass addressed Tubman, 

“The difference between us is very marked. … I have had the applause of the crowd and the satisfaction that comes of being approved by the multitude, while the most that you have done has been witnessed by a few trembling, scarred, and foot-sore bondmen and women, whom you have led out of the house of bondage, and whose heartfelt, “God bless you,” has been your only reward.”

The statement summarizes the essence of Tubman’s extraordinary selflessness. Harriet Tubman died on March 10, 1913 of pneumonia. She had lived ninety-one remarkable years. She was buried with semi-military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, New York.