April 21, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Harriet Tubman is one of the giants of American history—a pistol-packing, fearless, and inspiring visionary who led scores of her fellow slaves to freedom. Here to tell her story is Kate Clifford Larson, author of Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero.
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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.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
I have my MBA.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
I was working for an investment bank in the late
nineteen eighties, and.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I decided that I.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
Just wasn't happy doing that and my passion was really history.
So I went to Simmon University here in Boston, and
my daughter was seven years old at the time and
in second grade, and she came home with a little
biography of Harriet Tubman. They start in second grade with
all those, you know, American hero biographies. And while I
(01:17):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
On the underground railroad.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
Reading the little book with my daughter just spark something
in me and I wanted to know more.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
And my daughter was.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
So thrilled about the story of Harriet Tubman.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
So there was just something.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
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, 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
(02:03):
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. And fortunately I live
in New England, and all the abolitionists that Tubman ended
up connecting with once she escaped slavery, they lived here.
(02:24):
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 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
(02:46):
was there that I really became even more intrigued by
the complexity of her life and 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
(03:07):
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 that was my journey to
the eastern shore of Maryland where she was born and
raised as an enslaved child and young adult.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
We discovered that she.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
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 Ritt Ross, were enslaved by different enslavers, but
they were able to live together on one plantation. They
(03:47):
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 slam Edward
Brotus came of age after Tubman was born, and he
had been raised in a household with a stepfather who
was very wealthy. He was one of the most wealthy
(04:09):
slaveholders in Dorchester County on the Eastern Shore at the time.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
So Edward moved from a.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
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
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,
(04:38):
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.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Know, he would get paid for it.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
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
(05:09):
scars of whippings that 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
(05:30):
a child and for a mother who had to watch
her children taken away from her and she couldn't.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Take care of them, she couldn't protect them.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
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 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
(06:02):
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 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,
(06:31):
and that's because her parents struggled to make 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 those fields and
(06:55):
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. Leehabib here the host
(07:33):
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 Alamerican Stories 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 4 (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.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Her hands in her hair after she ate.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
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 and the dirt
from the barnyard.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
And it settled in her hair.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
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 is so
interesting when you think about it, because every thirteen year
old girl could understand that and identify that this is
(09:40):
the human being. Harriet Tubman, she was a teenager once too,
and worried about her hair.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
So the coke was insistent.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
So Minty grabbed a shawl from a peg in the
kitchen and wrapped her hair in her head with this shawl,
and they went to the store, and when they approached
there was an alter cation 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
(10:10):
him to the store, and the young man had run
into the back of the store. There was a back
door on 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
(10:33):
weight from one of the scales on the store counter
and he heaved it through 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
(10:54):
her skull.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
She credited her.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
Hair and that scarf is saving her life. That 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
(11:43):
that head injury, and the seizures also brought on strong
visionary activity and hallucinations.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
She would have seizures and.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
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
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,
(12:17):
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.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
She started working on their docks as a steve.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
Adoor, loading and unloading their boats, 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.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
While on those docks.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
She met and talked with black mariners called blackjacks, and
they were a vital part of the black world in
the Chesapeake, 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
(13:04):
people escape on their boats, so she learned that information
from them.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
At the same time, she was also learning how.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
To navigate by understanding the constellations and being able to
read the night sky. So she's developing these literacies that
aren't the written word, but they are literacies to read.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
The fields and the.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
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 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
(13:49):
met a free black man by the name of John Tubman,
who was freeborn of free parents. Half the black population
on the eastern Shurea 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
(14:12):
to sell her because he was tired of her being
sick all the time, and so Tubman later told an
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,
(14:33):
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
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
(14:53):
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
be sold, and for most Upper South enslave people.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
That was a death sentence to be sold to the
Deep South. The average life.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
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 which way to go.
They were afraid, so they came back after two or
three weeks after hiding out.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
But Tubman just knew that she had to have liberty
or death. That was it, liberty or death.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
So she struck out on her own and she contacted
a local Quaker woman who had indicated to her at
some earlier time that 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,
(15:57):
and he will take you to the next stop. Came home,
and he put her in a secret compartment in his wagon,
and he took her to the next house where like
minded people lived, and they helped Tubman.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Find her way all the way to Philadelphia.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
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 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
(16:36):
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.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Go back because it was so dangerous. But she did.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
And what a remarkable piece of storytelling.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
By Kate Clifford Larson, author of Bound for the Promised
Land Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
And my goodness, that prayer.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
What a paralyzing thing to have happened, and the consequences,
and what a story about what Quakers did all over
this country, White Quakers, by the way, doing this for
enslaved black people and risking their lives doing it.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
A remarkable story.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
The story of Harriet Tubbin continues here on our American stories,
and we continue with our American stories. Harriet Tubman escaped
(18:12):
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
the Premise Land Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero.
Speaker 4 (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 grapevine and Caaseiah was married to a free
black man named John, who was a ship carpenter who
(20:00):
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.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
He was a free man. He could bid on whoever
he wanted.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
So he bid and the auctioneer closed the auction, and
instead of asking for payment, the auctioneer went to lunch,
and Souzaiah 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
(20:36):
sailed them the ninety miles to Baltimore, where Tubman met
them on the waterfront, and from there she got them
to Philadelphia and then to Canada. And I often thought, gee,
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?
(20:59):
The certainly could provide a lot of money, and running
a network did cost 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
(21:20):
didn't have enough money.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
She tells a terrible.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
Story about her sister Rachel. She 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 Brodis had separated her from
her children, and she would not leave her children behind.
And the last rescue mission that Tubman attempted was in
(21:44):
eighteen sixty. She arrived in Dorchester 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.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
It was necessary. It wasn't just free. Thomas Garrett was
one of those.
Speaker 4 (22:09):
He was a famous underground railroad agent in Wilmington, Delaware,
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 you had
(22:30):
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 had more confidence.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
In the voice of God than Harriet Tubman.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
And then other underground railroad agents knew 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, you know,
one of the greatest abolitionists of all time, who published
(23:18):
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. He knew
the Bible was he had memorized the Bible, so he
(23:39):
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 it was
(24:00):
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
(24:21):
had this confidence that God was protecting her and guiding her.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
He may not have.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
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 successfully, she met white women in Philadelphia,
(24:48):
and that 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 me 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 told her to go a different direction.
(25:11):
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 she was always looking to her faith and her
(25:34):
confidence that God was going to protect her.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
And I don't think any of us can argue with.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
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.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
That most of us never would have survived.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
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 an
enslaved person that had run away, and she had a
newspaper in her hand, and they decided it couldn't be
her that was described in the poster because obviously Tubman
(26:18):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Story, the story of her faith.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
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 a testament to faith and the
power of faith. And what Garrett said was he never
(27:00):
knew anyone with more confidence in the voice of God
than Harriet Tubman.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Garrett knew the Bible, Harriet lived it.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
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 we continue with our American
(27:39):
stories in the story of Harriet Tubman. Let's return to
Kate Clifford Larsen with more of this remarkable story.
Speaker 4 (27:49):
Tubman carried a pistol and actually one of her family
descendants still owns the pistol, and she used it mostly
as protection 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.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
This is Tubman.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
She meets the wealthiest, the most important, the most politically
savvy people in the country. She meets 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
(29:55):
were safer, and she had a little house there she
was renting in the late eighteen fifties, and 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 Catherine's in Ontario, Canada, and she meets him,
and he comes in and he calls her general Tubman,
(30:18):
which is such a term of respect for a white
man to call a little, petite black woman 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
(30:39):
was supposed to join him, supposedly, but she did not.
Some people think that she was sick. I kind of
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
(31:02):
ending slavery. The Civil War started not too long after that,
and she thought he was a martyr for the cause,
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,
(31:23):
and Governor Andrew of Massachusetts had met her, another powerful
politician who just was stunned by her brilliance, and he
made arrangements to send her to South Carolina to be
a spy.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
And she did. She went down there, and she had.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
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 and getting
arrangements for her to take a train and someone's going
to accompany her. And also a letter written to Andrew
(32:04):
by one of his aides who was observing what was
going on in South Carolina and Hilton Head and he
was visiting with David Hunter. And as he's approaching the tent,
what does he see but David Hunter, General Hunter standing
at attention with a picture of water in his hands,
and there's Harriet Tubman sitting down and he's serving her water.
(32:28):
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. 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
(32:50):
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, and she was credited with.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
Doing the raid.
Speaker 4 (33:02):
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 Lincoln Secretary of State, and her house was
(33:24):
filled with family members and other people who had no
place to stay.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
And they had moved.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
From Canada to live in this home in Auburn, and
the first couple of years it was really difficult.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
They had little money.
Speaker 4 (33:38):
There were a lot of people in the house, and
so they starved 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.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
Home during the winter.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
Auburn, New York is really cold and snowy in the wintertime,
so they struggled. Local people did help Tubman in her
family a lot, and they had jobs that they periodically.
They had different jobs 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,
(34:13):
some formerly enslaved people and aboliicious 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, New York. She was a sometimes
author Victorian author, and so she was tasked with writing
(34:34):
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.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
Family for her home. And then the.
Speaker 4 (34:45):
Biography was reprinted in eighteen eighty six to raise money
for Tubman 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
re issued again, but it had an appendix that has.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
Even more stories in it.
Speaker 4 (35:05):
So those out there who are interested in some of
that original primary sources about Tubman should look at the
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
(35:28):
the Civil War, and one of them was the famous
Frederick Douglas, who actually was born and raised on the
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.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
Of what he wrote.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
The difference between us is very marked. Most that I
have done and suff and the service of our cause
has been in public, and I have received much encouragement
at every step of the way.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
You, on the other hand, have labored in a private way.
I have wrought in the day, you in the night.
Speaker 4 (36:13):
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, 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.
(36:34):
The midnight sky and the silent stars have been the
witnesses of your 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
(36:57):
thirteen at the age 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.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
Would be there waiting for them.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
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 Tubbin, 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 fame
(38:00):
miss 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.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
I have my MBA.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
I was working for an investment bank in the late
nineteen eighties, and.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I decided that I.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
Just wasn't happy doing that and my passion was really history.
So I went to Simmon University here in Boston, and
my daughter was seven years old at the time and
in second grade, and she came home with a little
biography of Harriet Tubman. They start in second grade with
all those, you know, American hero biographies. And while I
(01:17):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
On the underground railroad.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
Reading the little book with my daughter just spark something
in me and I wanted to know more.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
And my daughter was.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
So thrilled about the story of Harriet Tubman.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
So there was just something.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
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, 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
(02:03):
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. And fortunately I live
in New England, and all the abolitionists that Tubman ended
up connecting with once she escaped slavery, they lived here.
(02:24):
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 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
(02:46):
was there that I really became even more intrigued by
the complexity of her life and 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
(03:07):
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 that was my journey to
the eastern shore of Maryland where she was born and
raised as an enslaved child and young adult.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
We discovered that she.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
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 Ritt Ross, were enslaved by different enslavers, but
they were able to live together on one plantation. They
(03:47):
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 slam Edward
Brotus came of age after Tubman was born, and he
had been raised in a household with a stepfather who
was very wealthy. He was one of the most wealthy
(04:09):
slaveholders in Dorchester County on the Eastern Shore at the time.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
So Edward moved from a.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
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
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,
(04:38):
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.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Know, he would get paid for it.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
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
(05:09):
scars of whippings that 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
(05:30):
a child and for a mother who had to watch
her children taken away from her and she couldn't.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Take care of them, she couldn't protect them.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
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 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
(06:02):
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 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,
(06:31):
and that's because her parents struggled to make 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 those fields and
(06:55):
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. Leehabib here the host
(07:33):
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 Alamerican Stories 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 4 (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.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Her hands in her hair after she ate.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
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 and the dirt
from the barnyard.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
And it settled in her hair.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
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 is so
interesting when you think about it, because every thirteen year
old girl could understand that and identify that this is
(09:40):
the human being. Harriet Tubman, she was a teenager once too,
and worried about her hair.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
So the coke was insistent.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
So Minty grabbed a shawl from a peg in the
kitchen and wrapped her hair in her head with this shawl,
and they went to the store, and when they approached
there was an alter cation 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
(10:10):
him to the store, and the young man had run
into the back of the store. There was a back
door on 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
(10:33):
weight from one of the scales on the store counter
and he heaved it through 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
(10:54):
her skull.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
She credited her.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
Hair and that scarf is saving her life. That 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
(11:43):
that head injury, and the seizures also brought on strong
visionary activity and hallucinations.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
She would have seizures and.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
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
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,
(12:17):
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.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
She started working on their docks as a steve.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
Adoor, loading and unloading their boats, 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.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
While on those docks.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
She met and talked with black mariners called blackjacks, and
they were a vital part of the black world in
the Chesapeake, 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
(13:04):
people escape on their boats, so she learned that information
from them.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
At the same time, she was also learning how.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
To navigate by understanding the constellations and being able to
read the night sky. So she's developing these literacies that
aren't the written word, but they are literacies to read.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
The fields and the.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
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 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
(13:49):
met a free black man by the name of John Tubman,
who was freeborn of free parents. Half the black population
on the eastern Shurea 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
(14:12):
to sell her because he was tired of her being
sick all the time, and so Tubman later told an
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,
(14:33):
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
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
(14:53):
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
be sold, and for most Upper South enslave people.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
That was a death sentence to be sold to the
Deep South. The average life.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
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 which way to go.
They were afraid, so they came back after two or
three weeks after hiding out.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
But Tubman just knew that she had to have liberty
or death. That was it, liberty or death.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
So she struck out on her own and she contacted
a local Quaker woman who had indicated to her at
some earlier time that 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,
(15:57):
and he will take you to the next stop. Came home,
and he put her in a secret compartment in his wagon,
and he took her to the next house where like
minded people lived, and they helped Tubman.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Find her way all the way to Philadelphia.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
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 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
(16:36):
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.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Go back because it was so dangerous. But she did.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
And what a remarkable piece of storytelling.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
By Kate Clifford Larson, author of Bound for the Promised
Land Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
And my goodness, that prayer.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
What a paralyzing thing to have happened, and the consequences,
and what a story about what Quakers did all over
this country, White Quakers, by the way, doing this for
enslaved black people and risking their lives doing it.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
A remarkable story.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
The story of Harriet Tubbin continues here on our American stories,
and we continue with our American stories. Harriet Tubman escaped
(18:12):
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
the Premise Land Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero.
Speaker 4 (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 grapevine and Caaseiah was married to a free
black man named John, who was a ship carpenter who
(20:00):
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.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
He was a free man. He could bid on whoever
he wanted.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
So he bid and the auctioneer closed the auction, and
instead of asking for payment, the auctioneer went to lunch,
and Souzaiah 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
(20:36):
sailed them the ninety miles to Baltimore, where Tubman met
them on the waterfront, and from there she got them
to Philadelphia and then to Canada. And I often thought, gee,
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?
(20:59):
The certainly could provide a lot of money, and running
a network did cost 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
(21:20):
didn't have enough money.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
She tells a terrible.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
Story about her sister Rachel. She 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 Brodis had separated her from
her children, and she would not leave her children behind.
And the last rescue mission that Tubman attempted was in
(21:44):
eighteen sixty. She arrived in Dorchester 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.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
It was necessary. It wasn't just free. Thomas Garrett was
one of those.
Speaker 4 (22:09):
He was a famous underground railroad agent in Wilmington, Delaware,
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 you had
(22:30):
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 had more confidence.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
In the voice of God than Harriet Tubman.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
And then other underground railroad agents knew 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, you know,
one of the greatest abolitionists of all time, who published
(23:18):
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. He knew
the Bible was he had memorized the Bible, so he
(23:39):
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 it was
(24:00):
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
(24:21):
had this confidence that God was protecting her and guiding her.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
He may not have.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
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 successfully, she met white women in Philadelphia,
(24:48):
and that 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 me 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 told her to go a different direction.
(25:11):
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 she was always looking to her faith and her
(25:34):
confidence that God was going to protect her.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
And I don't think any of us can argue with.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
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.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
That most of us never would have survived.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
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 an
enslaved person that had run away, and she had a
newspaper in her hand, and they decided it couldn't be
her that was described in the poster because obviously Tubman
(26:18):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Story, the story of her faith.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
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 a testament to faith and the
power of faith. And what Garrett said was he never
(27:00):
knew anyone with more confidence in the voice of God
than Harriet Tubman.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Garrett knew the Bible, Harriet lived it.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
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 we continue with our American
(27:39):
stories in the story of Harriet Tubman. Let's return to
Kate Clifford Larsen with more of this remarkable story.
Speaker 4 (27:49):
Tubman carried a pistol and actually one of her family
descendants still owns the pistol, and she used it mostly
as protection 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.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
This is Tubman.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
She meets the wealthiest, the most important, the most politically
savvy people in the country. She meets 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
(29:55):
were safer, and she had a little house there she
was renting in the late eighteen fifties, and 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 Catherine's in Ontario, Canada, and she meets him,
and he comes in and he calls her general Tubman,
(30:18):
which is such a term of respect for a white
man to call a little, petite black woman 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
(30:39):
was supposed to join him, supposedly, but she did not.
Some people think that she was sick. I kind of
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
(31:02):
ending slavery. The Civil War started not too long after that,
and she thought he was a martyr for the cause,
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,
(31:23):
and Governor Andrew of Massachusetts had met her, another powerful
politician who just was stunned by her brilliance, and he
made arrangements to send her to South Carolina to be
a spy.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
And she did. She went down there, and she had.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
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 and getting
arrangements for her to take a train and someone's going
to accompany her. And also a letter written to Andrew
(32:04):
by one of his aides who was observing what was
going on in South Carolina and Hilton Head and he
was visiting with David Hunter. And as he's approaching the tent,
what does he see but David Hunter, General Hunter standing
at attention with a picture of water in his hands,
and there's Harriet Tubman sitting down and he's serving her water.
(32:28):
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. 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
(32:50):
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, and she was credited with.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
Doing the raid.
Speaker 4 (33:02):
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 Lincoln Secretary of State, and her house was
(33:24):
filled with family members and other people who had no
place to stay.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
And they had moved.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
From Canada to live in this home in Auburn, and
the first couple of years it was really difficult.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
They had little money.
Speaker 4 (33:38):
There were a lot of people in the house, and
so they starved 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.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
Home during the winter.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
Auburn, New York is really cold and snowy in the wintertime,
so they struggled. Local people did help Tubman in her
family a lot, and they had jobs that they periodically.
They had different jobs 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,
(34:13):
some formerly enslaved people and aboliicious 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, New York. She was a sometimes
author Victorian author, and so she was tasked with writing
(34:34):
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.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
Family for her home. And then the.
Speaker 4 (34:45):
Biography was reprinted in eighteen eighty six to raise money
for Tubman 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
re issued again, but it had an appendix that has.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
Even more stories in it.
Speaker 4 (35:05):
So those out there who are interested in some of
that original primary sources about Tubman should look at the
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
(35:28):
the Civil War, and one of them was the famous
Frederick Douglas, who actually was born and raised on the
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.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
Of what he wrote.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
The difference between us is very marked. Most that I
have done and suff and the service of our cause
has been in public, and I have received much encouragement
at every step of the way.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
You, on the other hand, have labored in a private way.
I have wrought in the day, you in the night.
Speaker 4 (36:13):
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, 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.
(36:34):
The midnight sky and the silent stars have been the
witnesses of your 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
(36:57):
thirteen at the age 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.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
Would be there waiting for them.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
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 Tubbin, 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 fame
(38:00):
miss 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.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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