Replies

This is so awesome, JustAmy. Emancipation was great news. I was just reading about Harriet Tubman last night. She is one of my favorite figures in American history. I just love her story; not one person was lost on the Underground Railroad. They all escaped to freedom.

Harriet Tubman was only about five feet tall, but she was smart and she was strong -- and she carried a large rifle. She used the rifle not only to intimidate pro-slavery people they might meet, but also to keep any of the slaves from backing out. She threatened any who seemed like they were about to leave, telling them that "dead Negroes tell no tales." A slave who returned from one of these trips could betray too many secrets: who had helped, what paths the flight had taken, how messages were passed.

When Harriet Tubman had first arrived in Philadelphia, she was, under the law of the time, a free woman. But the next year, with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, her status changed: she became, instead, a fugitive slave, and all citizens were obligated under the law to aid in her recapture and return. So she had to operate as quietly as possible, but nevertheless she was soon known throughout abolitionist circles and the freedmen's communities.

...Her trips were largely financed by her own funds, earned as a cook and laundress. But she did get other support from many of the leading figures of New England, and many key abolitionists. Harriet Tubman knew, and received support from, Susan B. Anthony, William H. Seward, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Mann and the Alcotts, including educator Bronson Alcott and writer Louisa May Alcott. Many of these supporters -- like Susan B. Anthony -- gave Tubman use of their homes as stations on the underground railroad. Tubman also had crucial support from abolitionists William Still of Philadelphia and Thomas Garratt of Wilmington, Delaware.

...Harriet Tubman's trips to the South as "Moses" -- as she'd come to be known for leading her people to freedom -- ended as the Southern states began to secede to form the Confederacy, and the government of Abraham Lincoln prepared for war.