Harriet Tubman

          Harriet Tubman was born into slavery in Maryland and escaped to Philadelphia in 1849.  That was one year before the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act required escaped slaves to be returned to their Southern owners. As she prepared to leave her own bondage, Tubman sang, “When that old chariot comes,/ I’m going to leave you./ I’m bound for the promised land,…On the other side of the Jordan,/ I’m bound for the promised land.” She never forgot how sweet freedom was, nor her friends still in slavery. She became a guide, leading slaves through the darkness of forests, risking her own life even though she had papers to prove herself a FPOC—Free Person Of Color. She would leave her evacuees to secure food and signaled them with spiritual songs.  “Hail, O hail, ye happy spirits,/Death no more shall make you fear /Grief nor sorrow, pain nor anguish, /Shall no more distress you there.” Indeed she packed a revolver and considered that death might come at any moment.”For I have reasoned this out in my mind; two things I had a right to, liberty, or death.  If I cannot have the one I will take the other.  No man will take me alive…and when the time came for me to go, the Lord would take me.”  Often the hidden slaves would drug their children with opium to make them sleep as they carried them, listening to Tubman singing softly, “Jesus, Jesus will go with you,/ He will lead you to his throne,/ He who died has gone before you”  But her favorite song of all was, “Oh, go down, Moses,/ Way down to Egypt land;/Tell old Pharaoh, /Let my people go.” She led 13 missions using safe houses and barns of anti-slavery activists that became known as the Underground Railroad. 70 people were freed including her family.  They sang upon arriving to Pennsylvania, “Glory to God and Jesus too./ One more soul got safe./ Oh, go and carry the news./ One more soul got safe!” Many of the former slaves she rescued were taken to Canada after 1850 to avoid the Fugitive Slave Act. 

            Why was Tubman so tied to Christian song? As a child, born as Araminta ‘Minty’ Ross, she was accidentally hit in the head by a heavy piece of iron that an overseer had intended to discipline another slave.  She experienced dizziness and hypersomnia and had many dreams that she ascribed to “premonitions of God”. She was a devout Methodist. How did she get used to being in forests at night? Her dad was a forest manager and she was hired out to a trapper as a child to check muskrat traps. How did she get the idea that she could resist?  Her mother, Rit, hid her son, Moses, from their owner for a month when the owner wanted to sell the boy to a Georgia plantation owner.  When they came to the shack to get Moses, Rit angrily stated that they might get Moses, but the first man to enter her house would get his head split in two. Moses was left unsold.  Later, Minty was hired as a nursemaid to a neighbor who beat her if the infant cried.  Once she was whipped 5 times before breakfast.  Minty learned to wear extra clothing to protect her back. And how did she became an FPOC?  Her father was manumitted at age 45 and a few years later hired a lawyer to look into Rit’s legal status.  The lawyer discovered that Rit and children were supposed to be freed as well, but the heir, Edward Brodess, had ignored his father’s wishes. She married a FPOC named Tubman in 1844 and changed her name to Harriet. But she was still a slave(common practice in Maryland). “In 1849, Tubman became ill again, which diminished her value as a slave. Edward Brodess tried to sell her, but could not find a buyer. Angry at him for trying to sell her and for continuing to enslave her relatives, Tubman began to pray for her owner, asking God to make him change his ways. She said later: "I prayed all night long for my master till the first of March; and all the time he was bringing people to look at me, and trying to sell me." When it appeared as though a sale was being concluded, "I changed my prayer", she said. "First of March I began to pray, 'Oh Lord, if you ain't never going to change that man's heart, kill him, Lord, and take him out of the way.'" A week later, Brodess died, and Tubman expressed regret for her earlier sentiments.” (Wikipedia)  But in fact, new heirs only increased the likehood of being sold.  She tried once, unsuccessfully, to escape with her brothers. But a lone try, soon afterward was successful using safe houses and her knowledge of the forests. 

When the Civil War broke out, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. The army was quick to recognize her skills in unknown timber and posing as a slave on errand. She led an armed raid on Combahee Ferry, which liberated more than 700 slaves. Maryland’s citizens and Confederates were stunned to learn after the war that this disabled runaway, barely 5 feet tall was behind such feats.  But Tubman credited God and trusted that He would keep her safe.  "I never met with any person of any color who had more confidence in the voice of God, as spoken directly to her soul." --Thomas Garrett