Harriet Tubmanstood just 5 feet ( 1.5 meters ) improbable ; never learn to read or write ; and spent her childhood and young maturity as another person ’s property . She tolerate most of her life from brute concern and capture as the result of a beating . She never made much money in her life , and lived humbly , eating food that she originate in garden .
But despite all that , Harriet Tubman became one of the most famous civilian and admired African - Americans in U.S. history . After get out from thrall in 1849 , she became a music director on theUnderground Railroad , bravely guess back into the hard worker state of Maryland 13 times during the 1850s to help legion other runaway enslaved citizenry discover their way north to exemption . During the Civil War , Tubman move around south again to Fort Monroe to crop as a undercover agent , sentry , nurse and cook for the Union Army . After the conflict , she established the first nursing home for elderly African - Americans [ source : Larson ] .
Tubman has grown into such an American icon that her legend sometimes obscures the person behind it . In this article , we ’ll face at the facts of her aliveness and misconception about it , as well as how she became such an enduring symbolisation of exemption .
Early Life and Escape From Slavery
Tubman’s Family & Birth
Harriet Ross Tubman was born into slavery around 1822 in Dorchester County Maryland on the Eastern Shore . The fifth of nine children of two enslave parents , Benjamin Ross or Ben Ross and Harriet " Rit " Green . Her female parent was owned by Mary Pattison Brodess and Tubman ’s sire by Anthony Thompson . Her parent give her the name Araminta , and called her " Minty " for short [ source : Allen ] .
As with most enslaved people , Tubman ’s existence was harsh and full of ferociousness . As her 1860s biographerSarah Hopkins Bradford wrote , " Tubman was put to work at an early age as a field hired hand , accompany the cows and cargo and unloading wood — proletariat so laborious that she developed brawniness that made her as muscular as some male laborer , despite her lack of height . Her owners eventually commute her into a house maid , and she last whippings from her mistress if her dusting and mantrap - wash was hold inadequate . "
Harriet Tubman as a Teenager
As a teenager , she suffered a fractured skull when an superintendent hit her with an iron weight stand for for another hard worker , and the injury caused her to sufferheadachesand gaining control for the rest of her life [ informant : Larson ] .
In 1844,Araminta Rossmarried a free African - American namedJohn Tubman . Though the marriage would n’t last , she kept his cognomen and set out using her female parent ’s first name as her own , and became Harriet Tubman [ source : Allen ] . Though her John was not an enslaved gentleman , because she was the law at the fourth dimension dictated that any children born to them would be enslave people as well .
In March 1849 , Tubman ’s legal owner Edward Brodess died , leave behind behind an estate deeply in debt . Tubman , who ’d already take care three of her sisters auctioned off , feared being sent off to an even crueler household . When her husband John refuse to go along , she and her brothers Ben and Henry scarper away together . After a few weeks , the two young men recede their cheek and wedge her to return with them . But Tubman turn away to give up . or else , she slipped off again , this time alone .
She travel by nighttime , using the north star to guide her , and sought resort during the day with Quaker menage who were so opposed to slavery that they were willing to break Maryland law and help oneself fugitives [ informant : Allen ] . She made her mode through Delaware , and eventually crossed into innocent Pennsylvania . " There was such a glory over everything , " she later recalled . " The sun came like gold through the trees and over the fields , and I felt like I was in heaven " [ source : Bradford ] .
Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad
But Tubman ’s joy at get away slavery was muted , because her family had remained behind in servitude . " I was free , and they should be free , " she afterward call back intellection . She was determined to help them bunk , too [ reservoir : Bradford ] .
After settling in Philadelphia , she worked as a hotel Captain Cook and economize her salary to subsidize her secret career as a conductor on the Underground Railroad , a undercover abolitionist internet that had existed since the 1820s . It was a highly severe mission , since " striver stealer , " as the southerly states called them , faced the hazard of being publicly branded and put away — and in Tubman ’s case , enslave once more . And in 1850 , Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act , which made such efforts a federal criminal offense [ source : Allen ] .
That did n’t bar Tubman . That same twelvemonth , she slipped back into Maryland and aid her niece and her two minor escape . Over the next decade , she take over that mission a dozen more time , cautiously limit her cause to farms that she knew on Maryland ’s Eastern Shore [ source : Larson ] .
Tubman followed elaborate procedures to keep stealth . She wore camouflage , communicate with would - be escapee through third parties , and arranged for them to meet her mi away from their cabin , to reduce the chances that they would lead pursuers to her . And if all else miscarry , she carried a handgun . She warned her escapees that if they tried to turn back , she would shoot them to preclude them from betraying her and the residual [ sources : Allen , Quinn ] .
As word go around of Tubman ’s successful missions , she became a sought - after speaker at emancipationist movement fundraising meetings . She also became a target of moneymaking slave catchers . But their nonstarter to collar her only added to her legend [ source : Allen ] . Her admirers naming her " General Tubman " for her desperate human activity .
In 1860 , Tubman pulled off an even more daring effort , by thwartingfederal marshalsin Troy , New York , who were attempting to send off a seize hard worker named Charles Nalle back to Virginia . Tubman disguise herself as an elderly cleaning woman and slip into a government construction . When Nalle and his captors stepped out into the street , Tubman shouted a signaling from an upper - fib window , and a mob ofabolitionistsconverged on them and seized Nalle , who was inspirit aside to a hold off riverboat [ source : Winkler ] .
Secret Agent for the Union
After the Civil War broke out in 1861 , Massachusetts Gov. John A. Andrew , a fervent abolitionist , contacted his ally Tubman and told her that the Union forces needed her aid . He arranged deportation for Tubman to travel to Hilton Head , South Carolina , where she went to work for Maj . Gen. David Hunter . Ostensibly , her military mission was to aid provide solid food and clothing to scat enslaved hoi polloi who were constellate to the Union Army ’s refugee camp , but that seems to have been a cover story for her existent work in gathering intelligence . With a budget of $ 100 in " secret armed service money , " she recruited a humble team of take to the woods enslaved mass who were experienced riverboat pilots and knew every in of the South Carolina coastline , and put them to work as scouts for the Union forces [ seed : Winkler , Quinn ] .
After President Abraham Lincoln authorized the recruiting and deployment of African - American military personnel in the summer of 1862 , Tubman and her spy provided intelligence for the novel unit of measurement . In January 1863 , her team ’s spying helped Union forces evade Confederate guard and stage a nine - daylight covert operation to attach ask supplies . As historianH. Donald Winkler describes it , Tubman ’s scouts " evolved into a kind of special - forces operation for the disgraceful regiments , " pinch into opposition soil to gather information on their troop movements and fortifications .
In June 1863 , grant to Winkler , Tubman accompanied Union Col . James Montgomery and his force up the Combahee River in the southern low rural area of South Carolina and helped lead a crucial raid . Tubman and her scout sailed upriver and stealthily move ashore to talk to the enslaved who ’d placed mines in the water for Confederate forces , so they could map out the emplacement , and situate the storehouses where the opposition kept their supply . Then she helped guide the Union craft around the venomous mines . The resulting raid not only come to a devastating blow to the Confederate forces , but also leave in exemption for 700 enslaved masses — many of whom subsequently were recruit by Tubman to serve in the Union force .
A Humble Philanthropist and Advocate for the Elderly
After theCivil War endedin a Union triumph in 1865 , Tubman left her position and place out for the town of Auburn , New York , where she and her house had settled on property that the state ’s former governor , William H. Seward , had sold her on generous terms . But on the way , she got a rough reminder that the battle to achieve exemption for African - Americans was just begin .
accord to Tubman biographersJames A. McGowan and William C. Kashatus , Tubman was solicit by a train conductor , who refused to honor her soldier ’s mountain pass for a train just the ticket . They have into an argument , and he and several passengers threw her into the luggage car , give way her subdivision and three ribs . She was ineffective to work for calendar month , and the fair sex who ’d helped to defeat the Confederacy was compelled to take handouts from neighbour and local grocer to run her family and elderly parents [ source : NPS ] .
But Tubman was too tough to despair . Once she healed , she began growing vegetable and raising chickens , form as a domestic and took in boarders . She fell in beloved with one of her node , a former enslaved human race and Union Army veteran namedNelson Davis , who was 22 years her junior , and the two married in 1869 . In 1874 , the couple adopted a baby girl namedGertie .
But Davis ' ominous health and some other setbacks meant that Tubman continued to struggle to make ends meet for the next several decades [ origin : McGowan and Kashatus ] . While the Union regime would n’t give her a pension for her wartime service as a spy , after Davis ’s destruction in 1888 , she was able to amass a widow woman ’s stipend , and eventually got a pension for having worked as anursein the latter part of the war [ root : Larson ] .
Despite her own humble circumstances , Tubman was determined to keep helping others as well . In 1896 , she scraped together enough money to buy a 2nd plot of res publica alongside her Auburn property , where she come out a home for elderly African - Americans . Seven eld later on , as Tubman age , she turn the property over the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church , of which she was a member , with the reason that the church building would continue to pass the household . Tubman continued to subsist next threshold until her own health begin to slump , at which item she became one of the residents at the family she had founded . She passed by there in 1913 , at the age of 90 [ sources : NPS , Larson ] .
After Her Death
After Tubman was bury with military purity in Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn , New York , her celebrity continued to grow . The city of Auburn commemorate her legacy with a brass on the courthouse . During World War II , after a successful state of war bond drive by the National Council of Negro Women , a Liberty ship was christened the SS Harriet Tubman in her honour [ generator : Larson ] . She became the subject of numerous biographies and children ’s books , and the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged was recognise as aNational Historic Landmarkand added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974 . Four age by and by , she became the first African - American woman to come out on a U.S. stamp stamp [ informant : Larson ] .
Harriet Tubman FAQ
Lots More Information
Before I took on this assignment , I know about Harriet Tubman mostly only in the context of the Underground Railroad . It was uplift to learn about her brave study as a Union spy during the Civil War , and about her tireless travail afterward to help oneself the inadequate and the elderly . To me , her story really represent the dead on target greatness of America — the ordinary masses who , throughout American chronicle , have taken it upon themselves to fight against injustice and work for the goodness of us all .
