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Today we're going to learn about the famous abolitionist, Harriet Tubman.
Born into slavery, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom as a young woman.
Once free herself, she became determined to free her family and anyone else that she could.
She returned many times to the South, guiding hundreds to freedom along the secret network
called the Underground Railroad.
In fact, she led so many out of slavery that Harriet became known as the "Moses of her people."
She also served in the Union Army during the Civil War as a cook, nurse, scout, and spy.
Harriet Tubman was born sometime around 1820 - even she may not have known exactly when
- and named Araminta Ross.
Both of her parents were slaves, living and working on a large plantation in Maryland.
The couple had nine children, three of which were sold and sent away while Harriet was
young.
Even as a small child, Harriet had to work hard.
When she was only five or six years old, she was sent to a plantation house to help take
care of a baby.
If the baby woke up and cried, Harriet was whipped.
As she grew older, she worked in the fields and forests, plowing and driving oxen.
She always looked for ways to resist, once running away for five days, and other times
wearing thick layers of clothing to soften the beatings.
When she was about twelve years old, Harriet was accidentally hit in the head with a heavy
iron weight after refusing to help punish another slave who had gone to the store without
permission.
The blow knocked her unconscious and left a deep scar.
She also suffered seizures, headaches, and other problems from it for the rest of her
life.
In 1844, she married a free black man, John Tubman.
It was around this time that Araminta Ross changed her name - to Harriet, for her mother,
and Tubman, her husband's last name.
In 1849 Harriet heard that she was going to be sold, and decided to escape.
Her husband refused to leave, so she went with two of her brothers.
Her brothers changed their minds and turned back, but Harriet pushed on towards Philadelphia
and freedom.
She traveled by night to avoid slave catchers, following the North Star, and guided along
the Underground Railroad.
After traveling nearly 90 miles on foot, she reached Pennsylvania.
She said, "When I found I had crossed that line, 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."
Safe in Philadelphia, Harriet began to think of her family.
She wanted them to be free, too.
Beginning in 1850, Harriet Tubman returned to Maryland over and over again to lead enslaved
family members and friends to freedom.
In 1851, she went back for her husband, but he had married another woman, and did not
want to go with her.
Harriet had to be clever to avoid being caught.
She usually went to rescue slaves during the winter, when the nights were long and dark
and people stayed inside.
When she had a group of slaves ready to escape, they were careful not to leave until Saturday night.
The newspaper could not publish runaway notices until Monday morning, giving them a better
head start.
Once, when she was about to be recognized by a former owner, Harriet grabbed a newspaper
and pretended to read it.
Since everyone knew that she couldn't read, he ignored her.
On one of her last missions, Harriet rescued her parents.
Although they had both been freed, they were in danger of being arrested for helping slaves
escape.
Harriet led them to Canada where they were reunited with other friends and family members
that she had led to freedom.
Because of her quick thinking, Harriet was never captured, and neither were the people
she was helping to escape.
"I was conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years," Harriet said, "and I can
say what most conductors can't say — I never ran my train off the track and I never lost
a passenger."
As the Civil war neared, Harriet stopped going to the south to rescue slaves.
Instead, she helped soldiers and escaped slaves as a nurse, and later as the leader of a band
of scouts and a spy.
In 1863 Harriet Tubman became the first woman to lead an armed assault in the Civil War,
in a riverboat raid that freed more than 750 slaves.
After the Confederacy surrendered in 1865, Harriet returned home to a property she had
purchased in New York.
In 1869, Harriet was married for the second time, to a Civil War veteran named Nelson
Charles Davis.
Together they adopted a baby girl and lived together as a family until Davis died in 1888.
Despite all her accomplishments, Harriet was poor.
Friends came together to help support her.
One woman, Sarah Hopkins Bradford, wrote two biographies of Harriet Tubman's life in an
attempt to raise some money for her.
Eventually Harriet was awarded a government pension for her service during the Civil War
as a nurse.
In her later years, she began to promote women's suffrage.
She was once asked if she thought women should have the right to vote, and she replied "I've
suffered enough to believe it."
Harriet Tubman died of pneumonia in 1913, around the age of ninety.
She was buried with semi-military honors at the Fort Hill Cemetary in Auburn, New York.
Today, Harriet Tubman is remembered as an American icon.
She has been commemorated with statues, many schools have been named in her honor, and
she was the first African-American woman honored on a postage stamp.
In 2013, President Barack Obama approved the creation of the Harriet Tubman Underground
Railroad National Monument in Maryland.
I hope you enjoyed learning about Harriet Tubman today.
Goodbye till next time!