January 29, 2024 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Harriet Tubman is one of the giants of American history—a fearless visionary who led scores of her fellow slaves to freedom. Here to tell the story is Kate Clifford Larson, author of Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman: Portrait of an American Hero.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American People.
And to search for the Our American Stories podcast, go
to the iHeartRadio app or the Apple podcasts. Harriet Tubman
is one of the giants of American history, a fearless
visionary who led scores of her fellow slaves to freedom.
(00:34):
Here to tell the story is Kate Clifford Larson, author
of Bound for the Promised Land, Harriet Tubman, Portrait of
an American Hero. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I have my MBA. I was working for an investment
bank in the late nineteen eighties, and I decided that
I just wasn't happy doing that and my passion was
really history. So I went to Simmons University here in Boston,
and my daughter was seven years old at the time
and in second grade, and she came home with a
(01:09):
little biography of Harriet Tubman. They start in second grade
with all those, you know, American hero biographies. And while
I knew who Harriet Tubman was, and I knew the
contours of her life, that she was an enslaved person
and escaped and was a conductor on the underground railroad.
Reading the little book with my daughter just spark something
(01:31):
in me, and I wanted to know more. And my
daughter was so thrilled about the story of Harriet Tubman.
So there was just something. There was something about Harriet,
I'll just say it, something about her. So here I
am in this graduate program and I thought, well, I'm
going to read an adult biography of Harriet Tubman. Well,
(01:51):
in the nineteen nineties, the only adult biographies were a
couple that were written in the nineteenth century and one
written in nineteen forty three. Professors at Simmons were stunned.
They were like, this can't be possible. She's so famous,
how is it that there's no modern adult biography. And
that set me on my path to discovering Harriet Tubman's life.
(02:13):
And fortunately I live in New England, and all the
abolitionists that Tubman ended up connecting with once she escaped slavery,
they lived here. They wrote letters all the time, they
kept diaries and journals, and they published interviews with Harriet
Tubman when they got to know her. So there was
(02:33):
a treasure trove of information here that I could use
to research her life. And I went on to the
University of New Hampshire to work on my doctoral dissertation
on Tubman, and it was there that I really became
even more intrigued by the complexity of her life and
(02:54):
how this five foot tall, formally enslaved woman was able
to accomplish so much. And she was not literate in
the traditional sense, she couldn't read or write, and yet
she did amazing things. And I discovered so much about
her that had never been uncovered before, and part of
(03:17):
that was my journey to the eastern shore of Maryland,
where she was born and raised as an enslaved child
and young adult. We discovered that she was born in
late February early March eighteen twenty two. There was a
record of a midwife payment on March fifteenth to help
Tubman's mother writ give birth. Her parents, Ben and rit Ross,
(03:41):
were enslaved by different enslavers, but they were able to
live together on one plantation. They had nine children. Tubman
was the fifth of nine. She had four brothers and
four sisters, and they called her Minty when she was born.
Her mother's and Edward Brotus, came of age after Tubman
(04:03):
was born, and he had been raised in a household
with a stepfather who was very wealthy. He was one
of the most wealthy slaveholders in Dorchester County on the
Eastern Shore at the time. So Edward moved from a
grand house and a thousand acre plantation to this little
tiny farm in Bucktown. But what he was rich in
was enslaved people. So little Minty's there with her mother
(04:28):
and siblings, and it was a difficult transition to be
taken away from their father Ben and brought to this
area in Bucktown. And Edward was not a very smart guy,
and he was spoiled, and he didn't really know how
to run a farm. So he started leasing out his
enslaved people to area farmers, and you know, he would
(04:48):
get paid for it. And he started leasing Little Minty
when she was six years old to neighbors. And Tumbman
later is quoted as saying that Edward Brotus wasn't physically
cruel to them, emotionally cruel, certainly, but it was these
temporary masters that they were hired out to that were
incredibly cruel. And she bore the scars of whippings that
(05:11):
she received at the age of six until the day
she died at the age of ninety one on her
back and her neck. So it was a horrific childhood,
taken away from her mother and her siblings. She talked
about crying at night, missing them so much. I mean,
it's just a horrible experience for a child and for
(05:31):
a mother who had to watch her children taken away
from her and she couldn't take care of them, she
couldn't protect them. So when Tubman was taken away from
her mother when she was a small child, it was
so painful, and she would tell audiences about, you know,
missing her mother so much, and she just wanted to
(05:52):
curl up into her mother's bed, but her mother didn't
have a bed. She said that her mother slept on straw.
And she also talked about the horror of three of
her sisters being sold away and that she would have
nightmares about the horsemen coming and taking them away and
her parents screaming and yelling. Just horrible, horrible scenes you
(06:13):
can imagine of losing your sisters, and she never knew
what happened to them again, and two of them left
behind little children too. Tummans' childhood was pretty tough and
she survived, and that's because her parents struggled to make
(06:34):
sure that she was protected and that she was educated,
and she did that. They did that by relying on
a community of free and enslaved black people in the
area that could watch out for her when her parents
couldn't be there. They taught her how to survive in
(06:54):
those fields and in the woods, and to navigate the
water in the marshes, and how to learn how to
watch people without being noticed, sort of, to read the
moods of white enslavers, to protect herself.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
And you're listening to Kate Clifford Larsen tell the story
of Harriet Tubbin. There is and was something about Harriet. Indeed,
when we come back more of the story of Harriet
Tubbin here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here the
(07:33):
host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show,
we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories
from our big cities and small towns. But we truly
can't do the show without you. Our stories are free
to listen to, but they're not free to make. If
you love what you hear, go to Alamericanstories dot com
and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot.
(07:56):
Go to Alamerican stories dot Com and give and we
continue with our American stories and with Kate Clifford Larsen,
author of Bound for the Promised Land, Harriet Tubben Portrait
(08:17):
of an American Hero. Go to Amazon or your local
bookstore or wherever you get your books. Let's return to Kate.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
When she was about thirteen years old, she was leased
again to another farmer in the Bucktown area, and she
tells this story several times in different interviews and in
front of audiences that would come in the North to
listen to her after she escaped slavery. She says she
was a young teenager, and she describes her hair as
(08:50):
like a large afro, very bushy, and it was also
greasy because she would wipe her hands in her hair
after she ate. It's a late fall and she was
ordered to break flax in the barnyard area, and so
she's beating the flax and little bits of the flax
are flying up in the air along with the dust
(09:12):
and the dirt from the barnyard, and it settled in
her hair. At that moment, the plantation cook came to
her and asked her to go to the Bucktown store
with her to get things for the kitchen, and Minty,
who was thirteen years old, did not want to go
because her hair was messy and she was embarrassed, which
(09:33):
is so interesting when you think about it, because every
thirteen year old girl could understand that and identify that
this is the human being. Harriet Tubman, she was a
teenager once too, and worried about her hair. So the
coke was insistent. So Minty grabbed a shawl from a
peg in the kitchen and wrapped her hair and her
(09:54):
head with this shawl, and they went to the store,
and when they approached there was an altar cake happening
at the store. A young enslaved man had fled his
work assignment in the field and the overseer or the
plantation manager had chased him to the store, and the
young man had run into the back of the store.
(10:15):
There was a back door in a front door, and
as Minty entered the store, he came running out of
the store. So Minty stepped aside to let him flee,
and as she stepped back into the doorway, the overseer
had grabbed a two pound weight from one of the
scales on the store counter and he heaved it through
(10:39):
it intending to hit the young man, but because Minty
had stepped back in the door, it slammed right into
her head. She described how she collapsed unconscious on the
floor and that weight had cracked her skull. She credited
her hair and that scarf is saving her life. That
(10:59):
day they carried her back to the plantation and they
laid her out on the seat of a loom, which
is like a long piano bench, and she laid there
for a day and a half in and out of consciousness.
The plantation owner came into the kitchen and ordered her
back into the fields. So she went back out profoundly injured,
(11:22):
but she describes in these speeches about the blood and
the sweat streaming down her face until she collapsed unconscious again.
So she was returned to her enslaver, Edward Brotus, and
her mother, who spent several months nursing her back to health,
and she emerged with epileptic seizures as a result of
(11:44):
that head injury, and the seizures also brought on strong
visionary activity and hallucinations. She would have seizures and have
these dreams of flying above the earth, hearing angels singing
and God speak to her. She was hired out to
more people, including a family that lived near where her
(12:06):
father was still living and working, and that was fortuitous
for her because she got to be with him again.
This family, the Stuart family that she was leased to,
they were one of the wealthiest in the county, and
she worked in the house and then in their fields,
and she became so strong. She started working on their
docks as a steve ador, loading and unloading their boats,
(12:29):
and she was the marvel of people. They just couldn't
believe this tiny, five foot tall person could pick up
these barrels and do the work of a man. She
also learned amazing things while on those docks. She met
and talked with black mariners called blackjacks, and they were
a vital part of the black world in the Chesapeake,
(12:53):
in the Atlantic, in states up and down the Eastern seaboard,
because they could carry messages, knew where the safe places
were where there was danger, they helped people escape on
their boats, so she learned that information from them. At
the same time, she was also learning how to navigate
by understanding the constellations and being able to read the
(13:16):
night sky. So she's developing these literacies that aren't the
written word, but they are literacies to read. The fields
and the forest, the water, the night sky, the clouds,
the sun. All of that became her classroom and her lessons.
She eventually was able to hire herself by paying Brodus
(13:37):
sixty dollars a year, and then she charged for her
labor and earned enough money to buy two head of oxen,
which increased her opportunities. She was an entrepreneur and she
met a free black man by the name of John Tubman,
who was freeborn of free parents. Half the black population
(13:57):
on the eastern shua was free, and so they married
in eighteen forty four, and she changed her name from
Minty to Harriet, so she became Harriet Tubman, and at
one point in the late eighteen forties, Edward Brotis decided
to sell her because he was tired of her being
sick all the time, and so Tubman later told an
(14:19):
interviewer that she prayed to God to convert Edward Brodis
to a Christian. Now Edward Brodis was he belonged to
the Episcopal Church or the Baptist Church down the road.
But in her mind, real Christians did not enslave people,
so she prayed to God to convert him so that
he wouldn't sell her, that he would set her free,
but he didn't, and then she prayed, if you can't
(14:42):
convert him, kill him, Lord, kill him. And then he
died and she thought, oh, no, that was wrong of me.
I never should have done that. She felt tremendous guilt
because then it set in motion that many of her
siblings were going to be sold to pay the debts
of the estate. So Tubman knew she was going to
(15:02):
be sold, and for most Upper South enslaved people, that
was a death sentence to be sold to the Deep South.
The average life expectancy for an enslaved person from the
Chesapeake sold to Mississippi or Louisiana or Alabama was about
seven years. So she and her two brothers, Ben and
Henry decided to flee instead, but they got confused about
(15:25):
which way to go. They were afraid, so they came
back after two or three weeks after hiding out. But
Tubman just knew that she had to have liberty or death.
That was it, liberty or death. So she struck out
on her own and she contacted a local Quaker woman
who had indicated to her at some earlier time that
(15:46):
she would help Tubman if she wanted to escape, So
Tubman went to her. The woman said, please just sweep
the front yard so it looks like I've hired you,
and wait till my husband comes home, and he will
take you to the next stop. He came home, and
he put her in a secret compartment in his wagon,
and he took her to the next house where like
(16:07):
minded people lived, and they helped Tubman find her way
all the way to Philadelphia. And when she got there,
she says in an interview that she felt like she
was in heaven and that the sun shone brightly like gold,
and it was just an amazing feeling. But then all
(16:27):
of a sudden, it wasn't so amazing because everybody she
loved was still in Maryland and still enslaved. So she
decided right then and there she was going to go
back and rescue them. And I know that practically every
enslaved person who fled had those same feelings, but practically
all of them did not go back because it was
(16:47):
so dangerous. But she did.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
And what a remarkable piece of storytelling. By Kate Clifford Larson,
author of Bound for the Promise Land Harriet Tubman, Portrait
of an American Hero. And my goodness, that prayer. What
a paralyzing thing to have happened, and the consequences, and
what a story about what Quakers did all over this country,
(17:11):
White Quakers, by the way, doing this for enslaved black
people and risking their lives doing it. A remarkable story.
The story of Harriet Tubbin continues here on our American stories,
(18:08):
and we continue with our American stories. Harriet Tubman escaped
into the Free State of Pennsylvania in eighteen forty nine,
but her victory was swallowed up by her realization that
everyone she loved was still in Maryland and still enslaved.
Let's return to Kate Clifford Larson, author of Bound for
(18:28):
the Premise Land Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
So she decided right then and there she was going
to go back and rescue them. And I know that
practically every enslaved person who fled had those same feelings,
but practically all of them did not go back because
it was so dangerous. But she did, and over ten
years she returned thirteen times and rescued about sixty or
(18:54):
seventy of her family and friends and gave instructions to
about seventy more who found their way to freedom on
their own following her underground railroad. This is what that
famous network was called of people and places, roads and pathways,
the underground railroad to freedom. So she escaped in the
(19:18):
late fall of eighteen forty nine. She settles in Philadelphia,
and she starts planning and scheming how she's going to
rescue her family, and the first person she rescues is
her niece, Keziah Jolly Bowley and Caziah's two little children,
James Alfred and little baby Araminta. And Kaziah was scheduled
to be sold on the auction block in front of
(19:39):
the Cambridge, Dorchester County Courthouse, and Tubman heard through the
grapevine that this is going to happen, because they would
post notices in newspapers for a month ahead of time
that there was going to be a sale and who
would be sold and things like that. So she learned
through the grape vine and Caaseiah was married to a
free black man named John, who was a ship carpenter
(20:00):
two was connected to the black maritime world. So the
auction starts and John bid on his wife and children.
He didn't have any money, but nobody knew that he
just bid on his children. He was a free man,
he could bid on whoever he wanted. So he bid,
and the auctioneer closed the auction, and instead of asking
(20:20):
for payment, the auctioneer went to lunch, and so Aziah
and the two children and John fled to a house nearby,
we don't know which house nearby, and later that evening
he put them in a boat and sailed them the
nine miles to Baltimore, where Tubman met them on the waterfront,
(20:41):
and from there she got them to Philadelphia and then
to Canada. And I often thought, g you know, was
the auctioneer ian on it? He didn't ask for payment
like he would have asked everybody else for payment right away,
So what was that all about? Maker certainly could provide
a lot of money, and running a network did cost
(21:03):
a lot of money, and for Tubman, her rescue missions
would cost anywhere from thirty to one hundred dollars. So
she had to earn that money by working herself, fundraising
with Quakers, with other abolitionists, and she was pretty good
at it raising the money. Sometimes she didn't have enough money.
She tells a terrible story about her sister Rachel. She
(21:26):
kept returning to the Eastern Shore to rescue her sister Rachel,
and Rachel had two little children, and every time Tubman
tried to rescue her, Rachel wouldn't leave because Eliza Brotis
had separated her from her children, and she would not
leave her children behind. And the last rescue mission that
Tubman attempted was in eighteen sixty. She arrived in Dorchester
(21:47):
County and discovered her sister had died and she needed
thirty dollars to bribe someone so she could get the
two little children. And she didn't have the thirty dollars,
so the children stayed enslaved. So money mattered to pay bribes,
to buy tickets, food, you know, transportation. It was necessary.
It wasn't just free. Thomas Garrett was one of those.
(22:09):
He was a famous underground railroad agent in Wilmington, Delaware.
A Quaker man, he was an underground railroad agent for
forty years. He's credited with helping twenty five hundred three
thousand people. And so she became very close to Thomas
Garrett and she would arrive in his home or his
office and she would say, I had a dream that
(22:30):
you had twenty five dollars for me, and sure enough
he'd have the twenty five dollars for her. Thomas Garrett
admired Tubman's faith. It spoke to him because he was
a deeply faithful Quaker, and he wrote in a letter
that he had never met anyone of any color that
(22:52):
had more confidence in the in the voice of God
than Harriet Tubman. And then other underground railroad agents in
New York City they wrote about how she would come
to their office and ask for money, and they'd say, well,
we don't have any money today, So she would sit
there and wait until people came in and they would
give her money. The abolitionists in Boston like William Lloyd Garrison,
(23:15):
you know, one of the greatest abolitionists of all time,
who published a newspaper for thirty forty years called The Liberator.
He was a radical man, and he loved Harriet Tubman,
and so did his wife, and their children and grandchildren
love Tubman. And even though he was in some ways
not a religious man, but he had this profound faith.
(23:36):
He knew the Bible was he had memorized the Bible,
so he understood the words of the Bible, and he
recognized that Tubman lived the Bible. She lived a true
life directed by God, and she had a moral center
that he didn't find in many people. Her faith was
(24:00):
it was an integral part of her life. It was
just so much of her being. And after her head
injury and she recovered, her spirituality just blossomed and that
faith of hers fortified her in profound ways to survive.
And she had this confidence that God was protecting her
(24:24):
and guiding her. He may not have worked as quickly
as she hoped, but she always had confidence that He
would stand by her and help her, and she talks
about it in many of her lectures and interviews. When
she fled the first time, you know, or she escaped
success successfully, she met white women in Philadelphia, and that
(24:48):
was one of the visions that she had seen ahead
of time that when she crossed the line into Pennsylvania
there were white women waiting to embrace her. She talks
about some of her rescue since there was one where
she was leading several men they were escaping, and she
suddenly had this feeling that God was protecting her and
(25:09):
told her to go a different direction. They had to
cross a stream, and of course they could not swim.
Most people in the nineteenth century could not swim, and
the men were afraid to follow her, and she said
she prayed to God to protect her, and she walked
across the stream, water up to her neck, but she
did not drown, and then the men followed her. So
(25:31):
she was always looking to her faith and her confidence
that God was going to protect her. And I don't
think any of us can argue with that, whether you
believe or not, because she was protected. She never lost
a passenger, as she frequently said, and she survived to
be ninety one years old through extraordinary circumstances that most
(25:51):
of us never would have survived. Tubman tells this story
about being on a train and overhearing two men discussing
a reward poster and wondering if she was the woman
in the poster that was enslaved person that had run away,
and she had a newspaper in her hand, and they
(26:12):
decided it couldn't be her that was described in the
poster because obviously Tubman could read because she had a
newspaper in her hand, and she said something to the
effect that she didn't know if it was upside down
or not. She just was praying that it was the
right side up, and they wouldn't take a close look.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
And you're listening to Kate Clifford Larson tell the story
of Harriet Tubman in this particular part of the story,
the story of her faith. And by the way, Thomas
Garrett is worthy of many books. I've read a couple,
but now I want to reread them because, my goodness,
a single man, a Quaker working in the underground railroad
responsible for twenty five hundred slaves being liberated. And what
(26:55):
a testament to faith and the power of faith. And
what Garrett said was never knew anyone with more confidence
in the voice of God than Harriet Tubman. Garrett knew
the Bible, Harriet lived it. When we come back more
of this remarkable story with Kate Clifford Larsen telling the
story of Harriet Tubman here on our American story and
(27:37):
we continue with our American stories in the story of
Harriet Tubman. Let's return to Kate Clifford Larsen with more
of this remarkable story.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Tubman carried a pistol and actually one of her family
descendants still owns the pistol, and she used it mostly
as protect from slave catchers who roamed all over the
place in the South, because you know, there were young
men in particular, the rewards were high, you know, four
hundred dollars they could buy a farm and support their family,
(28:12):
So young men would do that before they'd become farmers
or do something else. So they were everywhere, and so
she carried a revolver for that purpose, and she did
say in an interview that she also had it just
in case one of the freedom seekers that she was
helping escape decided to turn back because it was scary,
and some were worried that if they got caught there
(28:34):
they would be in more trouble. So she apparently did
point it at one man in particular who was tired
and afraid and he wanted to go back, and she
pointed the pistol at his head and said die here
or come along. I don't know if she would actually
have done it, I don't know, but she probably would
(28:56):
have now that I really think about it, because she
she wasn't going to risk everything and everybody for one person,
and people were betrayed all the time on the underground
railroad by loved ones by supposed helpers. She had to
be very careful who she trusted, who she allowed to
join her groups going north, because she couldn't afford to
(29:17):
be betrayed. So she had a lot of support in
the North. And it is interesting for those of you
who have seen the Forrest Gump story, the movie where
he meets all the famous people of the time period.
This is Tubman. She meets the wealthiest, the most important,
the most politically savvy people in the country. She meets
(29:41):
them and they are overwhelmed by her. And she did
meet John Brown, the famous John Brown who led the
raid at Harper's Ferry in eighteen fifty nine. She had
settled most of her freedom seekers that she rescued in
Canada where they were safer, and she had a little
house there she was renting in the eighteen fifties, and
(30:02):
they met at her house. He had been told he
had to meet her, that she could help him with
his plans for his raid. So he goes to her
little house in Saint Catharine's in Ontario, Canada, and she
meets him, and he comes in and he calls her
General Tubman, which is such a term of respect for
a white man. To call a little, petite black woman
(30:24):
a general is just stunning. And she loved him. She
thought he was the most amazing white man ever because
he was willing to die for her, and she worked
to help recruit people that would join him on his raid.
She was supposed to join him, supposedly, but she did not.
Some people think that she was sick. I kind of
(30:47):
think that she was savvy enough to know that maybe
this isn't going to work. I need to protect myself.
But she said that his dying was sort of the
best thing that happened because it moved us closer to
ending slavery. The Civil War started not too long after that,
and she thought he was a martyr for the cause,
(31:09):
and she was devoted to his memory for the rest
of her life. The Civil War, she decided that she
wanted to continue her battle against slavery on the battlefield,
and Governor Andrew of Massachusetts had met her, another powerful
politician who just was stunned by her brilliance, and he
(31:32):
made arrangements to send her to South Carolina to be
a spy, and she did. She went down there, and
she had a group of eight male scouts that worked
with her and in the past few years some documents
have been discovered at the Massachusetts Historical Society in John
Andrews's papers where he directs her down to the South
(31:56):
and getting arrangements for her to take a train and
someone's going to accompany her. And also a letter written
to Andrew by one of his aides who was observing
what was going on in South Carolina in Hilton Head
and he was visiting with David Hunter. And as he's
approaching the tent, what does he see but David Hunter,
(32:18):
General Hunter standing at attention with a picture of water
in his hands, and there is Harriet Tubman sitting down
and he's serving her water. Just I mean, think of
the time period, a general serving and as the letter
writer said, it was as if he was her servant.
(32:38):
She helped lead a raid during the Civil War Colonel
James Montgomery and one hundred and fifty of his men
up the Combee River where they raided plantations and liberated
seven hundred and fifty some odd people, and that was
written up in newspapers around the country, and the lead
of the newspaper the article titles were the Black she Moses,
(33:00):
and she was credited with doing the raid. It's still
incredible that time period they were given credit to a
black woman. So after the Civil War, she moved home
to Auburn, New York, where she had purchased a beautiful
seven acre farm from William Henry Seward's wife. Seward was
(33:21):
Lincoln Secretary of State. And her house was filled with
family members and other people who had no place to stay.
And they had moved from Canada to live in this
home in Auburn, and the first couple of years it
was really difficult. They had little money. There were a
lot of people in the house, and so they starved
(33:41):
a lot, and Tubman talks about bartering with people so
she could get food, and they broke down the fences
on the farm so they would have wood to heat
their home during the winter. Auburn, New York is really
cold and snowy in the wintertime, so they struggled. Local
people did help Tubman and her family a lot, and
they had jobs that they periodically, they had different jobs
(34:05):
that they could earn money. But it was a difficult
time for her. And then it was a sort of
a thing. After the Civil War, some formerly enslaved people
and aboligious were writing memoirs, and someone thought of the
idea of having Tubman write hers, or have someone write
it for her. So they brought on a woman by
the name of Sarah Bradford who lived nearby in Geneva,
(34:27):
New York. She was a sometimes author Victorian author, and
so she was tasked with writing this book. That book sold,
and that money was used to help support Tubman and
to pay off her mortgage that she had to the
Seward family for her home. And then the biography was
reprinted in eighteen eighty six to raise money for Tubman
(34:50):
again and that was retitled Harriet the Moses of Her People,
and then it was reissued in eighteen ninety six, and
then in nineteen oh one it was issued again, but
it hadn't an appendix that has even more stories in it.
So those out there who are interested in some of
that original primary sources about Tubman should look at the
(35:11):
nineteen oh one version because it has some great stories
in it as well. So when Sarah Bradford was working
on the biography for Tubman in eighteen sixty eight, she
got in touch with people that had known Tubman before
the Civil War, and one of them was the famous
Frederick Douglas, who actually was born and raised on the
(35:34):
eastern shore of Maryland, not too far from where Tubman
was born and raised, and he became this great orator
and abolitionist. So Sarah Bradford asked him to write a
letter so she could insert it in this little biography
of Tubman, and so this is part of what he wrote.
(35:55):
The difference between us is very marked. Most that I
have done in efford and the service of our cause
has been in public, and I have received much encouragement
at every step of the way. You, on the other hand,
have labored in a private way. I have wrought in
the day, you in the night. I have had the
applause of the crowd and the satisfaction that comes of
(36:17):
being approved by the multitude. While the most that you
have done has been witnessed by a few trembling, scared
and footsore bondmen and women whom you have led out
of the house of bondage, and whose heart felt God
bless you has been your only reward. The midnight sky
and the silent stars have been the witnesses of your
(36:38):
devotion to freedom and of your heroism. It's just remarkable
that she moved people. There was something about Harriet that
just moved people, and since then people have never forgotten her.
And when she died in nineteen thirteen at the age
(36:58):
of ninety one in Auburn, the people in the house
that were with her when she passed were singing Swing Low,
Sweet Chariot, and she did tell them that she was
preparing a place for them, that she would be there
waiting for them.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
And a terrific job on the production by Greg Hangler
and a special thanks to Kate Clifford Larson and her
book Bound for the Promised Land Harriet Tubman, Portrait of
an American Hero. And go to all the places you
go to get your books. The local bookstore is always best.
Amazon again, wherever you get your books, Bound for the
(37:37):
Promised Land Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero. And
it's so appropriate that Swinglow, Sweet Chariot would be that
last song associated with her to end her life and
begin her new one in heaven. And what words Frederick
Douglas wrote, My goodness, I was tearing up just listening
to it. So powerful and so true that the amos
(38:00):
get the credit. But she was doing things while she
was just doing things for the Lord, the story of
Harriet Tupman. Here on our American stories,
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American People.
And to search for the Our American Stories podcast, go
to the iHeartRadio app or the Apple podcasts. Harriet Tubman
is one of the giants of American history, a fearless
visionary who led scores of her fellow slaves to freedom.
(00:34):
Here to tell the story is Kate Clifford Larson, author
of Bound for the Promised Land, Harriet Tubman, Portrait of
an American Hero. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I have my MBA. I was working for an investment
bank in the late nineteen eighties, and I decided that
I just wasn't happy doing that and my passion was
really history. So I went to Simmons University here in Boston,
and my daughter was seven years old at the time
and in second grade, and she came home with a
(01:09):
little biography of Harriet Tubman. They start in second grade
with all those, you know, American hero biographies. And while
I knew who Harriet Tubman was, and I knew the
contours of her life, that she was an enslaved person
and escaped and was a conductor on the underground railroad.
Reading the little book with my daughter just spark something
(01:31):
in me, and I wanted to know more. And my
daughter was so thrilled about the story of Harriet Tubman.
So there was just something. There was something about Harriet,
I'll just say it, something about her. So here I
am in this graduate program and I thought, well, I'm
going to read an adult biography of Harriet Tubman. Well,
(01:51):
in the nineteen nineties, the only adult biographies were a
couple that were written in the nineteenth century and one
written in nineteen forty three. Professors at Simmons were stunned.
They were like, this can't be possible. She's so famous,
how is it that there's no modern adult biography. And
that set me on my path to discovering Harriet Tubman's life.
(02:13):
And fortunately I live in New England, and all the
abolitionists that Tubman ended up connecting with once she escaped slavery,
they lived here. They wrote letters all the time, they
kept diaries and journals, and they published interviews with Harriet
Tubman when they got to know her. So there was
(02:33):
a treasure trove of information here that I could use
to research her life. And I went on to the
University of New Hampshire to work on my doctoral dissertation
on Tubman, and it was there that I really became
even more intrigued by the complexity of her life and
(02:54):
how this five foot tall, formally enslaved woman was able
to accomplish so much. And she was not literate in
the traditional sense, she couldn't read or write, and yet
she did amazing things. And I discovered so much about
her that had never been uncovered before, and part of
(03:17):
that was my journey to the eastern shore of Maryland,
where she was born and raised as an enslaved child
and young adult. We discovered that she was born in
late February early March eighteen twenty two. There was a
record of a midwife payment on March fifteenth to help
Tubman's mother writ give birth. Her parents, Ben and rit Ross,
(03:41):
were enslaved by different enslavers, but they were able to
live together on one plantation. They had nine children. Tubman
was the fifth of nine. She had four brothers and
four sisters, and they called her Minty when she was born.
Her mother's and Edward Brotus, came of age after Tubman
(04:03):
was born, and he had been raised in a household
with a stepfather who was very wealthy. He was one
of the most wealthy slaveholders in Dorchester County on the
Eastern Shore at the time. So Edward moved from a
grand house and a thousand acre plantation to this little
tiny farm in Bucktown. But what he was rich in
was enslaved people. So little Minty's there with her mother
(04:28):
and siblings, and it was a difficult transition to be
taken away from their father Ben and brought to this
area in Bucktown. And Edward was not a very smart guy,
and he was spoiled, and he didn't really know how
to run a farm. So he started leasing out his
enslaved people to area farmers, and you know, he would
(04:48):
get paid for it. And he started leasing Little Minty
when she was six years old to neighbors. And Tumbman
later is quoted as saying that Edward Brotus wasn't physically
cruel to them, emotionally cruel, certainly, but it was these
temporary masters that they were hired out to that were
incredibly cruel. And she bore the scars of whippings that
(05:11):
she received at the age of six until the day
she died at the age of ninety one on her
back and her neck. So it was a horrific childhood,
taken away from her mother and her siblings. She talked
about crying at night, missing them so much. I mean,
it's just a horrible experience for a child and for
(05:31):
a mother who had to watch her children taken away
from her and she couldn't take care of them, she
couldn't protect them. So when Tubman was taken away from
her mother when she was a small child, it was
so painful, and she would tell audiences about, you know,
missing her mother so much, and she just wanted to
(05:52):
curl up into her mother's bed, but her mother didn't
have a bed. She said that her mother slept on straw.
And she also talked about the horror of three of
her sisters being sold away and that she would have
nightmares about the horsemen coming and taking them away and
her parents screaming and yelling. Just horrible, horrible scenes you
(06:13):
can imagine of losing your sisters, and she never knew
what happened to them again, and two of them left
behind little children too. Tummans' childhood was pretty tough and
she survived, and that's because her parents struggled to make
(06:34):
sure that she was protected and that she was educated,
and she did that. They did that by relying on
a community of free and enslaved black people in the
area that could watch out for her when her parents
couldn't be there. They taught her how to survive in
(06:54):
those fields and in the woods, and to navigate the
water in the marshes, and how to learn how to
watch people without being noticed, sort of, to read the
moods of white enslavers, to protect herself.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
And you're listening to Kate Clifford Larsen tell the story
of Harriet Tubbin. There is and was something about Harriet. Indeed,
when we come back more of the story of Harriet
Tubbin here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here the
(07:33):
host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show,
we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories
from our big cities and small towns. But we truly
can't do the show without you. Our stories are free
to listen to, but they're not free to make. If
you love what you hear, go to Alamericanstories dot com
and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot.
(07:56):
Go to Alamerican stories dot Com and give and we
continue with our American stories and with Kate Clifford Larsen,
author of Bound for the Promised Land, Harriet Tubben Portrait
(08:17):
of an American Hero. Go to Amazon or your local
bookstore or wherever you get your books. Let's return to Kate.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
When she was about thirteen years old, she was leased
again to another farmer in the Bucktown area, and she
tells this story several times in different interviews and in
front of audiences that would come in the North to
listen to her after she escaped slavery. She says she
was a young teenager, and she describes her hair as
(08:50):
like a large afro, very bushy, and it was also
greasy because she would wipe her hands in her hair
after she ate. It's a late fall and she was
ordered to break flax in the barnyard area, and so
she's beating the flax and little bits of the flax
are flying up in the air along with the dust
(09:12):
and the dirt from the barnyard, and it settled in
her hair. At that moment, the plantation cook came to
her and asked her to go to the Bucktown store
with her to get things for the kitchen, and Minty,
who was thirteen years old, did not want to go
because her hair was messy and she was embarrassed, which
(09:33):
is so interesting when you think about it, because every
thirteen year old girl could understand that and identify that
this is the human being. Harriet Tubman, she was a
teenager once too, and worried about her hair. So the
coke was insistent. So Minty grabbed a shawl from a
peg in the kitchen and wrapped her hair and her
(09:54):
head with this shawl, and they went to the store,
and when they approached there was an altar cake happening
at the store. A young enslaved man had fled his
work assignment in the field and the overseer or the
plantation manager had chased him to the store, and the
young man had run into the back of the store.
(10:15):
There was a back door in a front door, and
as Minty entered the store, he came running out of
the store. So Minty stepped aside to let him flee,
and as she stepped back into the doorway, the overseer
had grabbed a two pound weight from one of the
scales on the store counter and he heaved it through
(10:39):
it intending to hit the young man, but because Minty
had stepped back in the door, it slammed right into
her head. She described how she collapsed unconscious on the
floor and that weight had cracked her skull. She credited
her hair and that scarf is saving her life. That
(10:59):
day they carried her back to the plantation and they
laid her out on the seat of a loom, which
is like a long piano bench, and she laid there
for a day and a half in and out of consciousness.
The plantation owner came into the kitchen and ordered her
back into the fields. So she went back out profoundly injured,
(11:22):
but she describes in these speeches about the blood and
the sweat streaming down her face until she collapsed unconscious again.
So she was returned to her enslaver, Edward Brotus, and
her mother, who spent several months nursing her back to health,
and she emerged with epileptic seizures as a result of
(11:44):
that head injury, and the seizures also brought on strong
visionary activity and hallucinations. She would have seizures and have
these dreams of flying above the earth, hearing angels singing
and God speak to her. She was hired out to
more people, including a family that lived near where her
(12:06):
father was still living and working, and that was fortuitous
for her because she got to be with him again.
This family, the Stuart family that she was leased to,
they were one of the wealthiest in the county, and
she worked in the house and then in their fields,
and she became so strong. She started working on their
docks as a steve ador, loading and unloading their boats,
(12:29):
and she was the marvel of people. They just couldn't
believe this tiny, five foot tall person could pick up
these barrels and do the work of a man. She
also learned amazing things while on those docks. She met
and talked with black mariners called blackjacks, and they were
a vital part of the black world in the Chesapeake,
(12:53):
in the Atlantic, in states up and down the Eastern seaboard,
because they could carry messages, knew where the safe places
were where there was danger, they helped people escape on
their boats, so she learned that information from them. At
the same time, she was also learning how to navigate
by understanding the constellations and being able to read the
(13:16):
night sky. So she's developing these literacies that aren't the
written word, but they are literacies to read. The fields
and the forest, the water, the night sky, the clouds,
the sun. All of that became her classroom and her lessons.
She eventually was able to hire herself by paying Brodus
(13:37):
sixty dollars a year, and then she charged for her
labor and earned enough money to buy two head of oxen,
which increased her opportunities. She was an entrepreneur and she
met a free black man by the name of John Tubman,
who was freeborn of free parents. Half the black population
(13:57):
on the eastern shua was free, and so they married
in eighteen forty four, and she changed her name from
Minty to Harriet, so she became Harriet Tubman, and at
one point in the late eighteen forties, Edward Brotis decided
to sell her because he was tired of her being
sick all the time, and so Tubman later told an
(14:19):
interviewer that she prayed to God to convert Edward Brodis
to a Christian. Now Edward Brodis was he belonged to
the Episcopal Church or the Baptist Church down the road.
But in her mind, real Christians did not enslave people,
so she prayed to God to convert him so that
he wouldn't sell her, that he would set her free,
but he didn't, and then she prayed, if you can't
(14:42):
convert him, kill him, Lord, kill him. And then he
died and she thought, oh, no, that was wrong of me.
I never should have done that. She felt tremendous guilt
because then it set in motion that many of her
siblings were going to be sold to pay the debts
of the estate. So Tubman knew she was going to
(15:02):
be sold, and for most Upper South enslaved people, that
was a death sentence to be sold to the Deep South.
The average life expectancy for an enslaved person from the
Chesapeake sold to Mississippi or Louisiana or Alabama was about
seven years. So she and her two brothers, Ben and
Henry decided to flee instead, but they got confused about
(15:25):
which way to go. They were afraid, so they came
back after two or three weeks after hiding out. But
Tubman just knew that she had to have liberty or death.
That was it, liberty or death. So she struck out
on her own and she contacted a local Quaker woman
who had indicated to her at some earlier time that
(15:46):
she would help Tubman if she wanted to escape, So
Tubman went to her. The woman said, please just sweep
the front yard so it looks like I've hired you,
and wait till my husband comes home, and he will
take you to the next stop. He came home, and
he put her in a secret compartment in his wagon,
and he took her to the next house where like
(16:07):
minded people lived, and they helped Tubman find her way
all the way to Philadelphia. And when she got there,
she says in an interview that she felt like she
was in heaven and that the sun shone brightly like gold,
and it was just an amazing feeling. But then all
(16:27):
of a sudden, it wasn't so amazing because everybody she
loved was still in Maryland and still enslaved. So she
decided right then and there she was going to go
back and rescue them. And I know that practically every
enslaved person who fled had those same feelings, but practically
all of them did not go back because it was
(16:47):
so dangerous. But she did.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
And what a remarkable piece of storytelling. By Kate Clifford Larson,
author of Bound for the Promise Land Harriet Tubman, Portrait
of an American Hero. And my goodness, that prayer. What
a paralyzing thing to have happened, and the consequences, and
what a story about what Quakers did all over this country,
(17:11):
White Quakers, by the way, doing this for enslaved black
people and risking their lives doing it. A remarkable story.
The story of Harriet Tubbin continues here on our American stories,
(18:08):
and we continue with our American stories. Harriet Tubman escaped
into the Free State of Pennsylvania in eighteen forty nine,
but her victory was swallowed up by her realization that
everyone she loved was still in Maryland and still enslaved.
Let's return to Kate Clifford Larson, author of Bound for
(18:28):
the Premise Land Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
So she decided right then and there she was going
to go back and rescue them. And I know that
practically every enslaved person who fled had those same feelings,
but practically all of them did not go back because
it was so dangerous. But she did, and over ten
years she returned thirteen times and rescued about sixty or
(18:54):
seventy of her family and friends and gave instructions to
about seventy more who found their way to freedom on
their own following her underground railroad. This is what that
famous network was called of people and places, roads and pathways,
the underground railroad to freedom. So she escaped in the
(19:18):
late fall of eighteen forty nine. She settles in Philadelphia,
and she starts planning and scheming how she's going to
rescue her family, and the first person she rescues is
her niece, Keziah Jolly Bowley and Caziah's two little children,
James Alfred and little baby Araminta. And Kaziah was scheduled
to be sold on the auction block in front of
(19:39):
the Cambridge, Dorchester County Courthouse, and Tubman heard through the
grapevine that this is going to happen, because they would
post notices in newspapers for a month ahead of time
that there was going to be a sale and who
would be sold and things like that. So she learned
through the grape vine and Caaseiah was married to a
free black man named John, who was a ship carpenter
(20:00):
two was connected to the black maritime world. So the
auction starts and John bid on his wife and children.
He didn't have any money, but nobody knew that he
just bid on his children. He was a free man,
he could bid on whoever he wanted. So he bid,
and the auctioneer closed the auction, and instead of asking
(20:20):
for payment, the auctioneer went to lunch, and so Aziah
and the two children and John fled to a house nearby,
we don't know which house nearby, and later that evening
he put them in a boat and sailed them the
nine miles to Baltimore, where Tubman met them on the waterfront,
(20:41):
and from there she got them to Philadelphia and then
to Canada. And I often thought, g you know, was
the auctioneer ian on it? He didn't ask for payment
like he would have asked everybody else for payment right away,
So what was that all about? Maker certainly could provide
a lot of money, and running a network did cost
(21:03):
a lot of money, and for Tubman, her rescue missions
would cost anywhere from thirty to one hundred dollars. So
she had to earn that money by working herself, fundraising
with Quakers, with other abolitionists, and she was pretty good
at it raising the money. Sometimes she didn't have enough money.
She tells a terrible story about her sister Rachel. She
(21:26):
kept returning to the Eastern Shore to rescue her sister Rachel,
and Rachel had two little children, and every time Tubman
tried to rescue her, Rachel wouldn't leave because Eliza Brotis
had separated her from her children, and she would not
leave her children behind. And the last rescue mission that
Tubman attempted was in eighteen sixty. She arrived in Dorchester
(21:47):
County and discovered her sister had died and she needed
thirty dollars to bribe someone so she could get the
two little children. And she didn't have the thirty dollars,
so the children stayed enslaved. So money mattered to pay bribes,
to buy tickets, food, you know, transportation. It was necessary.
It wasn't just free. Thomas Garrett was one of those.
(22:09):
He was a famous underground railroad agent in Wilmington, Delaware.
A Quaker man, he was an underground railroad agent for
forty years. He's credited with helping twenty five hundred three
thousand people. And so she became very close to Thomas
Garrett and she would arrive in his home or his
office and she would say, I had a dream that
(22:30):
you had twenty five dollars for me, and sure enough
he'd have the twenty five dollars for her. Thomas Garrett
admired Tubman's faith. It spoke to him because he was
a deeply faithful Quaker, and he wrote in a letter
that he had never met anyone of any color that
(22:52):
had more confidence in the in the voice of God
than Harriet Tubman. And then other underground railroad agents in
New York City they wrote about how she would come
to their office and ask for money, and they'd say, well,
we don't have any money today, So she would sit
there and wait until people came in and they would
give her money. The abolitionists in Boston like William Lloyd Garrison,
(23:15):
you know, one of the greatest abolitionists of all time,
who published a newspaper for thirty forty years called The Liberator.
He was a radical man, and he loved Harriet Tubman,
and so did his wife, and their children and grandchildren
love Tubman. And even though he was in some ways
not a religious man, but he had this profound faith.
(23:36):
He knew the Bible was he had memorized the Bible,
so he understood the words of the Bible, and he
recognized that Tubman lived the Bible. She lived a true
life directed by God, and she had a moral center
that he didn't find in many people. Her faith was
(24:00):
it was an integral part of her life. It was
just so much of her being. And after her head
injury and she recovered, her spirituality just blossomed and that
faith of hers fortified her in profound ways to survive.
And she had this confidence that God was protecting her
(24:24):
and guiding her. He may not have worked as quickly
as she hoped, but she always had confidence that He
would stand by her and help her, and she talks
about it in many of her lectures and interviews. When
she fled the first time, you know, or she escaped
success successfully, she met white women in Philadelphia, and that
(24:48):
was one of the visions that she had seen ahead
of time that when she crossed the line into Pennsylvania
there were white women waiting to embrace her. She talks
about some of her rescue since there was one where
she was leading several men they were escaping, and she
suddenly had this feeling that God was protecting her and
(25:09):
told her to go a different direction. They had to
cross a stream, and of course they could not swim.
Most people in the nineteenth century could not swim, and
the men were afraid to follow her, and she said
she prayed to God to protect her, and she walked
across the stream, water up to her neck, but she
did not drown, and then the men followed her. So
(25:31):
she was always looking to her faith and her confidence
that God was going to protect her. And I don't
think any of us can argue with that, whether you
believe or not, because she was protected. She never lost
a passenger, as she frequently said, and she survived to
be ninety one years old through extraordinary circumstances that most
(25:51):
of us never would have survived. Tubman tells this story
about being on a train and overhearing two men discussing
a reward poster and wondering if she was the woman
in the poster that was enslaved person that had run away,
and she had a newspaper in her hand, and they
(26:12):
decided it couldn't be her that was described in the
poster because obviously Tubman could read because she had a
newspaper in her hand, and she said something to the
effect that she didn't know if it was upside down
or not. She just was praying that it was the
right side up, and they wouldn't take a close look.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
And you're listening to Kate Clifford Larson tell the story
of Harriet Tubman in this particular part of the story,
the story of her faith. And by the way, Thomas
Garrett is worthy of many books. I've read a couple,
but now I want to reread them because, my goodness,
a single man, a Quaker working in the underground railroad
responsible for twenty five hundred slaves being liberated. And what
(26:55):
a testament to faith and the power of faith. And
what Garrett said was never knew anyone with more confidence
in the voice of God than Harriet Tubman. Garrett knew
the Bible, Harriet lived it. When we come back more
of this remarkable story with Kate Clifford Larsen telling the
story of Harriet Tubman here on our American story and
(27:37):
we continue with our American stories in the story of
Harriet Tubman. Let's return to Kate Clifford Larsen with more
of this remarkable story.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Tubman carried a pistol and actually one of her family
descendants still owns the pistol, and she used it mostly
as protect from slave catchers who roamed all over the
place in the South, because you know, there were young
men in particular, the rewards were high, you know, four
hundred dollars they could buy a farm and support their family,
(28:12):
So young men would do that before they'd become farmers
or do something else. So they were everywhere, and so
she carried a revolver for that purpose, and she did
say in an interview that she also had it just
in case one of the freedom seekers that she was
helping escape decided to turn back because it was scary,
and some were worried that if they got caught there
(28:34):
they would be in more trouble. So she apparently did
point it at one man in particular who was tired
and afraid and he wanted to go back, and she
pointed the pistol at his head and said die here
or come along. I don't know if she would actually
have done it, I don't know, but she probably would
(28:56):
have now that I really think about it, because she
she wasn't going to risk everything and everybody for one person,
and people were betrayed all the time on the underground
railroad by loved ones by supposed helpers. She had to
be very careful who she trusted, who she allowed to
join her groups going north, because she couldn't afford to
(29:17):
be betrayed. So she had a lot of support in
the North. And it is interesting for those of you
who have seen the Forrest Gump story, the movie where
he meets all the famous people of the time period.
This is Tubman. She meets the wealthiest, the most important,
the most politically savvy people in the country. She meets
(29:41):
them and they are overwhelmed by her. And she did
meet John Brown, the famous John Brown who led the
raid at Harper's Ferry in eighteen fifty nine. She had
settled most of her freedom seekers that she rescued in
Canada where they were safer, and she had a little
house there she was renting in the eighteen fifties, and
(30:02):
they met at her house. He had been told he
had to meet her, that she could help him with
his plans for his raid. So he goes to her
little house in Saint Catharine's in Ontario, Canada, and she
meets him, and he comes in and he calls her
General Tubman, which is such a term of respect for
a white man. To call a little, petite black woman
(30:24):
a general is just stunning. And she loved him. She
thought he was the most amazing white man ever because
he was willing to die for her, and she worked
to help recruit people that would join him on his raid.
She was supposed to join him, supposedly, but she did not.
Some people think that she was sick. I kind of
(30:47):
think that she was savvy enough to know that maybe
this isn't going to work. I need to protect myself.
But she said that his dying was sort of the
best thing that happened because it moved us closer to
ending slavery. The Civil War started not too long after that,
and she thought he was a martyr for the cause,
(31:09):
and she was devoted to his memory for the rest
of her life. The Civil War, she decided that she
wanted to continue her battle against slavery on the battlefield,
and Governor Andrew of Massachusetts had met her, another powerful
politician who just was stunned by her brilliance, and he
(31:32):
made arrangements to send her to South Carolina to be
a spy, and she did. She went down there, and
she had a group of eight male scouts that worked
with her and in the past few years some documents
have been discovered at the Massachusetts Historical Society in John
Andrews's papers where he directs her down to the South
(31:56):
and getting arrangements for her to take a train and
someone's going to accompany her. And also a letter written
to Andrew by one of his aides who was observing
what was going on in South Carolina in Hilton Head
and he was visiting with David Hunter. And as he's
approaching the tent, what does he see but David Hunter,
(32:18):
General Hunter standing at attention with a picture of water
in his hands, and there is Harriet Tubman sitting down
and he's serving her water. Just I mean, think of
the time period, a general serving and as the letter
writer said, it was as if he was her servant.
(32:38):
She helped lead a raid during the Civil War Colonel
James Montgomery and one hundred and fifty of his men
up the Combee River where they raided plantations and liberated
seven hundred and fifty some odd people, and that was
written up in newspapers around the country, and the lead
of the newspaper the article titles were the Black she Moses,
(33:00):
and she was credited with doing the raid. It's still
incredible that time period they were given credit to a
black woman. So after the Civil War, she moved home
to Auburn, New York, where she had purchased a beautiful
seven acre farm from William Henry Seward's wife. Seward was
(33:21):
Lincoln Secretary of State. And her house was filled with
family members and other people who had no place to stay.
And they had moved from Canada to live in this
home in Auburn, and the first couple of years it
was really difficult. They had little money. There were a
lot of people in the house, and so they starved
(33:41):
a lot, and Tubman talks about bartering with people so
she could get food, and they broke down the fences
on the farm so they would have wood to heat
their home during the winter. Auburn, New York is really
cold and snowy in the wintertime, so they struggled. Local
people did help Tubman and her family a lot, and
they had jobs that they periodically, they had different jobs
(34:05):
that they could earn money. But it was a difficult
time for her. And then it was a sort of
a thing. After the Civil War, some formerly enslaved people
and aboligious were writing memoirs, and someone thought of the
idea of having Tubman write hers, or have someone write
it for her. So they brought on a woman by
the name of Sarah Bradford who lived nearby in Geneva,
(34:27):
New York. She was a sometimes author Victorian author, and
so she was tasked with writing this book. That book sold,
and that money was used to help support Tubman and
to pay off her mortgage that she had to the
Seward family for her home. And then the biography was
reprinted in eighteen eighty six to raise money for Tubman
(34:50):
again and that was retitled Harriet the Moses of Her People,
and then it was reissued in eighteen ninety six, and
then in nineteen oh one it was issued again, but
it hadn't an appendix that has even more stories in it.
So those out there who are interested in some of
that original primary sources about Tubman should look at the
(35:11):
nineteen oh one version because it has some great stories
in it as well. So when Sarah Bradford was working
on the biography for Tubman in eighteen sixty eight, she
got in touch with people that had known Tubman before
the Civil War, and one of them was the famous
Frederick Douglas, who actually was born and raised on the
(35:34):
eastern shore of Maryland, not too far from where Tubman
was born and raised, and he became this great orator
and abolitionist. So Sarah Bradford asked him to write a
letter so she could insert it in this little biography
of Tubman, and so this is part of what he wrote.
(35:55):
The difference between us is very marked. Most that I
have done in efford and the service of our cause
has been in public, and I have received much encouragement
at every step of the way. You, on the other hand,
have labored in a private way. I have wrought in
the day, you in the night. I have had the
applause of the crowd and the satisfaction that comes of
(36:17):
being approved by the multitude. While the most that you
have done has been witnessed by a few trembling, scared
and footsore bondmen and women whom you have led out
of the house of bondage, and whose heart felt God
bless you has been your only reward. The midnight sky
and the silent stars have been the witnesses of your
(36:38):
devotion to freedom and of your heroism. It's just remarkable
that she moved people. There was something about Harriet that
just moved people, and since then people have never forgotten her.
And when she died in nineteen thirteen at the age
(36:58):
of ninety one in Auburn, the people in the house
that were with her when she passed were singing Swing Low,
Sweet Chariot, and she did tell them that she was
preparing a place for them, that she would be there
waiting for them.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
And a terrific job on the production by Greg Hangler
and a special thanks to Kate Clifford Larson and her
book Bound for the Promised Land Harriet Tubman, Portrait of
an American Hero. And go to all the places you
go to get your books. The local bookstore is always best.
Amazon again, wherever you get your books, Bound for the
(37:37):
Promised Land Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero. And
it's so appropriate that Swinglow, Sweet Chariot would be that
last song associated with her to end her life and
begin her new one in heaven. And what words Frederick
Douglas wrote, My goodness, I was tearing up just listening
to it. So powerful and so true that the amos
(38:00):
get the credit. But she was doing things while she
was just doing things for the Lord, the story of
Harriet Tupman. Here on our American stories,
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