March 13, 2023 • 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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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 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
(00:30):
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. Let's take a listen. I have my MBA.
I was working for an investment bank in the late
(00:51):
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 little biography of Harriet Tubman.
They you know, they start in second grade with all
(01:12):
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 sparked something in me
and I wanted to know more. And my daughter was
(01:34):
so thrilled about the story of Harriet Tubman. So there
was just something. There was something about Harriet. I'll just say,
it's something about her. So I hear 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
(01:54):
were written in the nineteenth century and one written in
nineteen forty three, and my 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.
And fortunately I live in New England and all the
(02:18):
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
a treasure trove of information here that I could use
to research her life, and I went on to the
(02:39):
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
how this five foot tall, formerly enslaved woman was able
(03:01):
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
that was my journey to the eastern shore of Maryland,
where she was born and raised as an enslaved child
(03:22):
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 Writ Ross,
were enslaved by different enslavers, but they were able to
(03:44):
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 labor Edward Brodus, came of age after Tubman
was born and he had been raised in a household
(04:05):
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 Mintie'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 Tubman
later is quoted as saying that Edward Brodus wasn't physically
cruel to them, emotionally cruel certainly, but it was these
temporary masters that they were hired out too 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
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can imagine of losing your sisters, and she never knew
what happened to them again, and two of them left
behind little children too. Tubman's 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. And you're listening
to Kate Clifford Larson tell the story of Harriet Tubbin.
(07:17):
There is and was something about Harriet. Indeed, when we
come back more of the story of Harriet Tubbin here
on Our American Story lehabeb here the host of our
American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring
(07:37):
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 our American Stories dot com and
click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot.
Go to our American Stories dot Com and give and
(08:09):
we continue with our American stories and with Kate Clifford Larson,
author of Bound for the Promised Land, Harriet Tubbin, Portrait
of an American Hero. Go to Amazon or your local
bookstore or wherever you get your books. Let's return to Kate.
(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):
a like a large afro, very bushey, and it was
also greasy because she would wipe her hands in her
hair after she ate. It's the 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 or flying up in the air along with the
(09:12):
dust 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 would understand that and identify that
this is the human being. Harriet Tubman, she was a
teenager once too, and worried about her hair, so they
cook was insistent, so Minty grabbed a shawl from a
peg in the kitchen and wrapped her hair in her
(09:54):
head with this shawl, and they went to the store,
and when they approached there was an altar ca and
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 the 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
(10:38):
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 foundly 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 Brodus, 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 Stewart 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 stevedore, loading and unloading their boats, and
(12:30):
she was the marvel of people. They just couldn't believed
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, in
(12:53):
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 their 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 Brotus sixty
(13:37):
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
on the Eastern Shore was free, and so they married
(14:02):
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 Brodas decided
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 to
(14:24):
a Christian. Now Edward 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 convert him, kill him, Lord,
kill him. And then he died and she thought, oh, no,
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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 be sold, and for most Upper
South enslave people, that was a death sentence to be
sold to the Deep South. The average life expectancy for
(15:11):
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 fraid, so they came back after two or three
weeks after hiding out. But Tubman just knew that she
(15:33):
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 she would help Tubman
if she wanted to escape, So Tubman went to her.
The woman said, please just sweep the front yard so
(15:54):
it looks like I've hired you, and wait till my
husband comes home, and he will take you to the
next stop. And 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 find her way all the way to Philadelphia.
And when she got there, she says in an interview
(16:17):
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
there she was going to go back and rescue them.
(16:38):
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 what a remarkable piece of storytelling. By Kate Clifford Lawson,
author of Bound for the Promised Land, Harriet Tubman, Portrait
(17:00):
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,
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,
(18:01):
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.
(18:24):
Let's return to Kate Clifford Larson, author of Bound for
the Premise Land Harriet Tubman Portrait of an American Hero.
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
(18:47):
it was so dangerous. But she did, and over ten
years she returned thirteen times and rescued about sixty or
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,
(19:11):
the underground railroad to freedom. So she escaped in the
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 Caziah. Jolly Bowley and Kazia's two little children,
(19:31):
James Alfred and little baby Araminta, and Caziah was scheduled
to be sold on the auction block in front of
the Cambridge, Dorchester County Courthouse, and Tubman heard through the
grape vine that this was 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
(19:51):
who would be sold and things like that. So she
learned through the grape vine. And Caziah was married to
a free black man named John who was a ship carpenter,
so he 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 freeman,
(20:12):
he could bid on wherever he wanted. So he bid
and the auctioneer closed the auction, and instead of asking
for payment, the auctioneer went to lunch, and so Zaiah
and the two children and John fled to a house nearby,
we don't know which house nearby, and later that evening
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he put them in a boat and 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 she was the auctioneer
in 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. The quay certainly could provide
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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 didn't have enough
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money she tells a terrible 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 Brodus had separated her from her children, and she
would not leave her children behind. And the last rescue
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mission that Tubman attempted was in 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, transportation. It was necessary.
(22:05):
It wasn't just free. Thomas Garrett was one of those.
He was a famous underground railroad agent at Wilmington, Delaware Quakerman.
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
(22:25):
would arrive in his home or his office and she
would say I had a dream that 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,
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and he wrote in a letter that he had never
met anyone of any color that had more confidence in
the voice of God than Harriet Tubman. Then 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
(23:09):
in and they would give her money. The abolitionist in Boston,
like William Lloyd Garrison, 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 loved Tubman. And even though
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he was in some ways not a religious man, but
he had this profound faith. He knew the Bible, 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
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had a moral center that she didn't find in many people.
Her faith was 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
(24:13):
and that faith of hers fortified her in profound ways
to survive. And she had this confidence that God was
protecting her 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
(24:35):
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, 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
(24:58):
about some of her rescue 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. They had to cross
a stream and of course, they could not swim. Most
people in the nineteenth century could not swim, and the
(25:19):
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 confidence that
God was going to protect her. And I don't think
any of us can argue with that, whether you believe
(25:39):
or not, because she was protected. You know, she never
lost a passenger, as she frequently said, and she survived
to be ninety one years old through extraordinary circumstances that
most of us never would have survived. Tubman tells this
story about being on a train and overhearing two men
(26:01):
discussing a reward poster and wondering if she was the
woman in the poster that was an enslave 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 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
(26:22):
upside down or not. She just was praying that it
was the right side up and they wouldn't take a
close look. 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,
(26:44):
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 ever knew anyone with more
confidence in the voice of God than Harriet Tubman. Garrett
(27:05):
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
(27:37):
and we continue with our American stories and the story
of Harriet Tubman. Let's return to Kate Clifford Larson with
more of this remarkable story. Tubman carried a pistol and
actually one of her family descendants still owns the pistol,
(27:57):
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. So the young men
would do that before they'd become farmers or do something else.
So they were everywhere, and so she carried a revolver
(28:19):
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 get caught there, they would be in
more trouble. So she apparently did point it at one
(28:40):
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 had done it, I
don't know, but she probably would have now that I
really think about it, because she wasn't going to risk
(29:00):
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 be betrayed. So she had
a lot of support in the North. And it is
(29:23):
interesting for those of you who have seen the Farrest
Gump story, the movie where he meets all the famous
people of the time period. This is tough, and 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
(29:47):
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 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.
(30:08):
So he goes to her little house in Saint Catharines
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 to black woman, a general is just stunning,
and she loved him. She thought he was the most
(30:30):
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 think that she
was savvy enough to know that maybe this isn't going
(30:51):
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, and she
was devoted to his memory for the rest of her life.
(31:15):
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 made arrangements to
send her to South Carolina to be a spy, and
(31:38):
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 Andrew's papers where
he directs her down to the South and getting arrangements
for her to take a train and someone's going to
(31:59):
accompany her. And also a letter written to Andrew by
one of his aides who was observing what was going
on in South Carolina and Hilton Head, and he was
visiting with General David Hunter. And as he's approaching the tent,
what does he see but David Hunter, General Hunter standing
(32:20):
at attention with a picture of water in his hands,
and there's 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. She helped lead a raid
during the Civil War Colonel James Montgomery and a hundred
(32:43):
and fifty of his men up the Combie 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, and she was credited
with doing the raid it's still incredible that time period
(33:04):
they were giving 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 filled with family members and other
(33:27):
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 a lot, and
Tubman talks about bartering with people so she could get food,
and they broke down the fences on the farm so
(33:49):
they would have wood to heat their home during the winter.
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
(34:10):
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, 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 family for her home.
And then the biography was reprinted in eighteen eighty six
to raise money for Tubman again and that was retitled
Harry at the Moses of Her People, and then it
(34:54):
was reissued in eighteen ninety six, and then in nineteen
oh one it was he issued again, but it had
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 nineteen
oh one version because it has some great stories in
it as well. So when Sarah Bradford was working on
(35:21):
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 eastern shore
of Maryland, not too far from where Tubman was born
and raised, and he became this great orator and abolitionist.
(35:41):
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. The
difference between us is very marked. Most that I have
done and it and the service of our cause has
been in public, and I have received much encouragement at
(36:04):
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
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
(36:27):
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
devotion to freedom and of your heroism. It's just remarkable
that she moved people. There was something about Harriet that
(36:50):
just moved people, and since then people have never forgotten her.
And when she died in nineteen 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 would be there
(37:12):
waiting for them. And a terrific job on the production
by Greg Hengler 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
(37:32):
is always best. Amazon again, wherever you get your books,
Bound for the Promised Land Harriet Tubbin, Portrait of an
American Hero. And it's so appropriate that swing Low, 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
(37:55):
tearing up just listening to it. So powerful and so
true that the amos 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 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
(00:30):
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. Let's take a listen. I have my MBA.
I was working for an investment bank in the late
(00:51):
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 little biography of Harriet Tubman.
They you know, they start in second grade with all
(01:12):
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 sparked something in me
and I wanted to know more. And my daughter was
(01:34):
so thrilled about the story of Harriet Tubman. So there
was just something. There was something about Harriet. I'll just say,
it's something about her. So I hear 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
(01:54):
were written in the nineteenth century and one written in
nineteen forty three, and my 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.
And fortunately I live in New England and all the
(02:18):
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
a treasure trove of information here that I could use
to research her life, and I went on to the
(02:39):
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
how this five foot tall, formerly enslaved woman was able
(03:01):
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
that was my journey to the eastern shore of Maryland,
where she was born and raised as an enslaved child
(03:22):
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 Writ Ross,
were enslaved by different enslavers, but they were able to
(03:44):
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 labor Edward Brodus, came of age after Tubman
was born and he had been raised in a household
(04:05):
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 Mintie'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 Tubman
later is quoted as saying that Edward Brodus wasn't physically
cruel to them, emotionally cruel certainly, but it was these
temporary masters that they were hired out too 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. Tubman's 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. And you're listening
to Kate Clifford Larson tell the story of Harriet Tubbin.
(07:17):
There is and was something about Harriet. Indeed, when we
come back more of the story of Harriet Tubbin here
on Our American Story lehabeb here the host of our
American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring
(07:37):
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 our American Stories dot com and
click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot.
Go to our American Stories dot Com and give and
(08:09):
we continue with our American stories and with Kate Clifford Larson,
author of Bound for the Promised Land, Harriet Tubbin, Portrait
of an American Hero. Go to Amazon or your local
bookstore or wherever you get your books. Let's return to Kate.
(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):
a like a large afro, very bushey, and it was
also greasy because she would wipe her hands in her
hair after she ate. It's the 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 or flying up in the air along with the
(09:12):
dust 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 would understand that and identify that
this is the human being. Harriet Tubman, she was a
teenager once too, and worried about her hair, so they
cook was insistent, so Minty grabbed a shawl from a
peg in the kitchen and wrapped her hair in her
(09:54):
head with this shawl, and they went to the store,
and when they approached there was an altar ca and
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 the 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
(10:38):
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 foundly 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 Brodus, 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 Stewart 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 stevedore, loading and unloading their boats, and
(12:30):
she was the marvel of people. They just couldn't believed
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, in
(12:53):
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 their 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 Brotus sixty
(13:37):
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
on the Eastern Shore was free, and so they married
(14:02):
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 Brodas decided
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 to
(14:24):
a Christian. Now Edward 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 convert him, kill him, Lord,
kill him. And then he died and she thought, oh, no,
(14:48):
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 be sold, and for most Upper
South enslave people, that was a death sentence to be
sold to the Deep South. The average life expectancy for
(15:11):
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 fraid, so they came back after two or three
weeks after hiding out. But Tubman just knew that she
(15:33):
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 she would help Tubman
if she wanted to escape, So Tubman went to her.
The woman said, please just sweep the front yard so
(15:54):
it looks like I've hired you, and wait till my
husband comes home, and he will take you to the
next stop. And 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 find her way all the way to Philadelphia.
And when she got there, she says in an interview
(16:17):
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
there she was going to go back and rescue them.
(16:38):
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 what a remarkable piece of storytelling. By Kate Clifford Lawson,
author of Bound for the Promised Land, Harriet Tubman, Portrait
(17:00):
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,
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,
(18:01):
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.
(18:24):
Let's return to Kate Clifford Larson, author of Bound for
the Premise Land Harriet Tubman Portrait of an American Hero.
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
(18:47):
it was so dangerous. But she did, and over ten
years she returned thirteen times and rescued about sixty or
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,
(19:11):
the underground railroad to freedom. So she escaped in the
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 Caziah. Jolly Bowley and Kazia's two little children,
(19:31):
James Alfred and little baby Araminta, and Caziah was scheduled
to be sold on the auction block in front of
the Cambridge, Dorchester County Courthouse, and Tubman heard through the
grape vine that this was 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
(19:51):
who would be sold and things like that. So she
learned through the grape vine. And Caziah was married to
a free black man named John who was a ship carpenter,
so he 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 freeman,
(20:12):
he could bid on wherever he wanted. So he bid
and the auctioneer closed the auction, and instead of asking
for payment, the auctioneer went to lunch, and so Zaiah
and the two children and John fled to a house nearby,
we don't know which house nearby, and later that evening
(20:34):
he put them in a boat and 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 she was the auctioneer
in 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. The quay certainly could provide
(21:01):
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 didn't have enough
(21:21):
money she tells a terrible 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 Brodus had separated her from her children, and she
would not leave her children behind. And the last rescue
(21:42):
mission that Tubman attempted was in 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, transportation. It was necessary.
(22:05):
It wasn't just free. Thomas Garrett was one of those.
He was a famous underground railroad agent at Wilmington, Delaware Quakerman.
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
(22:25):
would arrive in his home or his office and she
would say I had a dream that 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,
(22:47):
and he wrote in a letter that he had never
met anyone of any color that had more confidence in
the voice of God than Harriet Tubman. Then 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
(23:09):
in and they would give her money. The abolitionist in Boston,
like William Lloyd Garrison, 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 loved Tubman. And even though
(23:31):
he was in some ways not a religious man, but
he had this profound faith. He knew the Bible, 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
(23:51):
had a moral center that she didn't find in many people.
Her faith was 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
(24:13):
and that faith of hers fortified her in profound ways
to survive. And she had this confidence that God was
protecting her 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
(24:35):
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, 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
(24:58):
about some of her rescue 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. They had to cross
a stream and of course, they could not swim. Most
people in the nineteenth century could not swim, and the
(25:19):
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 confidence that
God was going to protect her. And I don't think
any of us can argue with that, whether you believe
(25:39):
or not, because she was protected. You know, she never
lost a passenger, as she frequently said, and she survived
to be ninety one years old through extraordinary circumstances that
most of us never would have survived. Tubman tells this
story about being on a train and overhearing two men
(26:01):
discussing a reward poster and wondering if she was the
woman in the poster that was an enslave 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 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
(26:22):
upside down or not. She just was praying that it
was the right side up and they wouldn't take a
close look. 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,
(26:44):
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 ever knew anyone with more
confidence in the voice of God than Harriet Tubman. Garrett
(27:05):
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
(27:37):
and we continue with our American stories and the story
of Harriet Tubman. Let's return to Kate Clifford Larson with
more of this remarkable story. Tubman carried a pistol and
actually one of her family descendants still owns the pistol,
(27:57):
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. So the young men
would do that before they'd become farmers or do something else.
So they were everywhere, and so she carried a revolver
(28:19):
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 get caught there, they would be in
more trouble. So she apparently did point it at one
(28:40):
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 had done it, I
don't know, but she probably would have now that I
really think about it, because she wasn't going to risk
(29:00):
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 be betrayed. So she had
a lot of support in the North. And it is
(29:23):
interesting for those of you who have seen the Farrest
Gump story, the movie where he meets all the famous
people of the time period. This is tough, and 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
(29:47):
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 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.
(30:08):
So he goes to her little house in Saint Catharines
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 to black woman, a general is just stunning,
and she loved him. She thought he was the most
(30:30):
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 think that she
was savvy enough to know that maybe this isn't going
(30:51):
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, and she
was devoted to his memory for the rest of her life.
(31:15):
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 made arrangements to
send her to South Carolina to be a spy, and
(31:38):
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 Andrew's papers where
he directs her down to the South and getting arrangements
for her to take a train and someone's going to
(31:59):
accompany her. And also a letter written to Andrew by
one of his aides who was observing what was going
on in South Carolina and Hilton Head, and he was
visiting with General David Hunter. And as he's approaching the tent,
what does he see but David Hunter, General Hunter standing
(32:20):
at attention with a picture of water in his hands,
and there's 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. She helped lead a raid
during the Civil War Colonel James Montgomery and a hundred
(32:43):
and fifty of his men up the Combie 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, and she was credited
with doing the raid it's still incredible that time period
(33:04):
they were giving 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 filled with family members and other
(33:27):
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 a lot, and
Tubman talks about bartering with people so she could get food,
and they broke down the fences on the farm so
(33:49):
they would have wood to heat their home during the winter.
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
(34:10):
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, 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 family for her home.
And then the biography was reprinted in eighteen eighty six
to raise money for Tubman again and that was retitled
Harry at the Moses of Her People, and then it
(34:54):
was reissued in eighteen ninety six, and then in nineteen
oh one it was he issued again, but it had
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 nineteen
oh one version because it has some great stories in
it as well. So when Sarah Bradford was working on
(35:21):
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 eastern shore
of Maryland, not too far from where Tubman was born
and raised, and he became this great orator and abolitionist.
(35:41):
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. The
difference between us is very marked. Most that I have
done and it and the service of our cause has
been in public, and I have received much encouragement at
(36:04):
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
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
(36:27):
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
devotion to freedom and of your heroism. It's just remarkable
that she moved people. There was something about Harriet that
(36:50):
just moved people, and since then people have never forgotten her.
And when she died in nineteen 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 would be there
(37:12):
waiting for them. And a terrific job on the production
by Greg Hengler 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
(37:32):
is always best. Amazon again, wherever you get your books,
Bound for the Promised Land Harriet Tubbin, Portrait of an
American Hero. And it's so appropriate that swing Low, 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
(37:55):
tearing up just listening to it. So powerful and so
true that the amos 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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