by Anne Schraff
In 1870, Harriet Tubman’s parents, though in their nineties, still walked about a mile every Sunday to attend services at the Central Church. Then they went to a class meeting at the Methodist Church, and finally a third service at another church before heading home. Harriet Tubman usually sang at these services.
The Rosses died in 1871, both nearly one hundred years old. Tubman’s faithful friend William Seward, a former governor of New York, died in 1872. He had helped her bring her parents to Canada and to buy the house in Auburn, New York. Seward added greatly to Tubman’s peace of mind at times when she needed help the most. Once he told her that she had worked for others long enough and now he wanted her to ask him for something that would benefit her alone. But Tubman could not think of anything she wanted just for herself.7 When Seward died, Tubman was deeply moved and wanted to show her respect. She traveled alone to Washington for his funeral. It was a great occasion, with Seward’s flower-bedecked casket surrounded by many famous people as well as family and friends. Quietly, almost unnoticed, the small, sturdy figure of a black woman moved to the casket, paused, and placed a wreath of field flowers at the great man’s feet. It was all Harriet Tubman had to give to her dead friend and ally. Then she slipped away, her debt of gratitude for his compassion toward her people paid.
Tubman’s dream of building a home for poor, helpless blacks continued, but she lacked the funds. Her main source of income continued to be peddling the produce from her garden.
In 1898, Tubman was about seventy-eight years old. (In a letter written for her, she said she was about seventy-five, but she did not know for sure.) Once again, driven by the desire to help people, she pleaded with the government to pay her what she was owed for the years she had served during the Civil War. She had worked for the government in many capacities, from nurse to scout, and she expected to be compensated.
Harriet Tubman’s struggle to get her rightful compensation from the government continued for a long time. Back in 1868, Charles P. Wood, a prominent New Yorker who sympathized with Tubman’s situation, had first mounted a campaign to get the money due her. He compiled a large dossier of letters from Civil War officers Tubman had served under, affirming her valuable service.8
V. K. Barnes, the surgeon general, affirmed that Tubman had been a nurse and matron at the colored hospital in Macon, Georgia, that served contraband. Brigadier General Rufus Saxton wrote a letter verifying her service as nurse and spy, saying that she had been on many raids behind enemy lines, adding that she displayed “remarkable courage, zeal and fidelity.”9
Included in the dossier were passes that Tubman had received, giving her permission to go behind military lines during the war. One authorized her to receive bourbon whisky for medicinal purposes. Others approved free passage for her on military transports as she carried out her duties. There was no doubt, based on the mass of evidence, that Tubman had been in the employ of the United States government, during important work.
William Seward had placed a letter in the 1869 packet as well, saying that Tubman had been “nursing our soldiers during nearly all the war.”10
In spite of all this evidence and years of appeal, Tubman received no compensation for her own service during the Civil War.11 The only pension that Tubman did receive was $8 a month as the widow of a Civil War soldier. Nelson Davis had served from September 1863 to November 1865 and as his widow, Tubman was entitled to a pension. After the most prominent citizens of Auburn signed a petition and sent it to the representative from Tubman’s district, an Act of Congress increased her widow’s pension from $8 to $20 a month.12
In 1897, a Senate Committee recommended that she also be given $25 a month for her own service to the government. But this did not happen.
In the late 1890s, Tubman was a delegate to the first convention of the National Federation of Afro American women (later called the National Association of Colored Women). She also had a reception in her honor at the New England Women Suffrage Association.13 Between her husband’s pension, and the proceeds of occasional parties given by her friends to raise money for her, Tubman managed to eke out an existence as well as extend help to poor neighbors and destitute strangers. Even into her early eighties, Tubman continued to work with vigor for the causes she believed in and the welfare of the needy.
Chapter 10
I CAN HEAR THE ANGELS SINGING
Queen Victoria of England, having heard of Harriet Tubman’s exploits, sent her a silk shawl and a silver medal in 1897. Queen Victoria invited Tubman to come to London and be honored at a reception, but Tubman never considered going. She could not afford or even fathom taking a trip so far from home. But she did prize the honor that had come from a distant land.
Tubman’s dream of a poor people’s shelter in Auburn came closer to reality when she was able to buy twenty-five acres adjoining her home. But, though she now owned a large enough property for her dream, she never raised the necessary funds to proceed.
In 1903, Tubman finally faced the fact that she could not build a home for elderly and homeless black people. She then deeded her property to the A.M.E. Zion Church, where she had worshiped for so many years. In 1908, the church built the Harriet Tubman Home for Aged and Indigent Colored People on the twenty-five acres.
Harriet Tubman’s face had grown furrowed, and her rheumatism was making it increasingly difficult for her to get around. Her mind and memory remained as sharp as ever, though, and she enjoyed taking care of her own house. Until she reached the age of ninety, she lived in her home and received visitors as usual, regaling all who came with vivid stories of her experiences. There was always a steady stream of visitors.
In 1911, the Empire State Federation of Women held a linen shower for Tubman, collecting many good items, which Tubman shared with others.1 This women’s club also voted to send Tubman $25 a month for the rest of her life. But Tubman’s life was running out.
On May 19, 1911, Tubman was no longer able to live alone and take care of herself, so she moved into the home she had helped found for others. For about three months she had been an invalid in her own house, struggling to survive without help, in spite of her growing infirmities. She realized it was time to face facts and get help. Edward Brooks, general superintendent of the home and an A.M.E. Zion clergyman, said, “It is the desire of the Home management to give her every attention and comfort possible in these last days.”2
Tubman’s friends came to visit her at the home, and one day she told some members of the A.M.E. Zion Church that she felt her death was near. Her deep religious faith, which had never wavered at any time in her long life, made the nearness of death joyful rather than fearful. “I can hear the bells a’ringing,” she told her visitors. “I can hear the angels singing. I can see the hosts a’marching.”3
In March 1913, Tubman fell ill with pneumonia. Her friends gathered at her bedside to sing hymns and offer comfort. On March 10, 1913, Harriet Tubman died. She was about ninety-three years old.
The Empire State Federation of Women, which had taken such great interest in Tubman, paid for her funeral and later for a headstone to be placed at her grave.4 Most of the people of Auburn attended Tubman’s funeral, and a military band played taps as she was laid to rest. At last, there was recognition of the important role she had played in the Union’s victory over the Confederacy and the resulting emancipation of Tubman’s people. She was honored as all fallen comrades were honored.
On June 14, 1914, one year after Harriet Tubman’s death, the Auburn local post of the Grand Army of the Republic led the city in a memorial celebration of her life. Most of the townspeople flew American flags in her honor while the mayor, Charles W. Brister, recalled her as “one who suffered for the cause of freedom.”5 The main speaker was the famed African-American leader and educator Booker T. Washington, who paid tribute to Tubman as one who “brought the two races together.”6
In 1982, Charles L. Blockson, the African-American author and illustrator of several books on black history, describe
d his own emotional visit to Tubman’s grave in Auburn, New York. Of the grove of trees where she is buried, Blockson wrote, “The trees seem to comfort her and shield her from unwanted notice.” Blockson was moved to tears as he touched the gravestone and recalled Tubman’s “nineteen mosquito plagued and frostbitten journeys leading others to freedom.”7
Tubman’s obituary in the Afro American Ledger on March 15, 1913, referred to her as the “Queen of the Underground” and said that in many ways she had proved herself to be one of the “foremost women in her times.”8
Tributes to Tubman came from black and white alike. Abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson called Harriet Tubman “the greatest heroine of the age.”9 William Still, the famous black leader of the Underground Railroad who had worked so often with Tubman, lauded her “adventurous spirit” that was “wholly without fear.”10 Twentieth-century black author Benjamin Quarles wrote that of all the blacks who worked the Underground Railroad, all names “pale before that of Harriet Tubman.”11
Author Samuel Hopkins said of Tubman that “no fear of the lash, the bloodhound, or the fiery stake” could stop her from helping her people to freedom.12
Harriet Tubman was largely unsung during her incredible life. She was revered by a small group of white abolitionists and known by many poor slaves who loved her and were inspired by her but had no means to publicize her life. William Seward said of Tubman, “A nobler, higher spirit, or a truer, seldom dwells in human form.”13
Perhaps the most powerful tribute of all came from another former slave who, like Tubman, had fled from the whip and the chains. Frederick Douglass took notice of the fact that Tubman, unlike himself and other eloquent fighters against slavery, labored mostly in secrecy. She never received the widespread public praise that was given to Douglass. Douglass said that her deeds of courage and compassion were seen firsthand only by a “few trembling, scarred, foot-sore bondmen and women,” and he pointed out that “the midnight sky and silent stars have been the witnesses of your devotion to freedom and of your heroism.”14
After Tubman’s death, African Americans in Boston founded the Harriet Tubman Home to serve the needs of destitute black women. Schoolteacher Pauline E. Hopkins wrote in Colored American Magazine that few people on earth were so motivated by the cause that possessed Tubman throughout her life “to lay our time, talents and opportunities for God’s glory and the good of our fellow men.”15
In the years since Harriet Tubman’s death, honors and recognition have come in many forms. Famed black baritone Paul Robeson, when singing the spiritual “Go Down Moses,” always talked of Tubman’s special use of this hymn. Folksinger Woodie Guthrie composed “The Ballad of Harriet Tubman,” and composers Robert De Cormier and Donald McKay wrote a cantata based on her life, which they titled “They Called Her Moses.”
Tubman has been an important subject for many African American artists. Aaron Douglass made Tubman the subject of a mural, and Charles White painted a portrait of her in Chinese ink and wash titled General Moses. Jacob Lawrence created thirty tempera paintings on a Tubman theme. Artist Hughie Lee Smith tried to learn as much as possible about Tubman before painting her. As a result of this research, he said he came “to love this woman.”16
During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt praised the U.S. Maritime Commission for choosing the name Harriet Tubman for a liberty ship. This was especially appropriate given the expedition Tubman took up the Combahee River on a gunboat during the Civil War. In 1974, the Department of the Interior gave Tubman’s home in Auburn the status of National Historic Landmark.
In 1978, a first-class Harriet Tubman postage stamp was introduced, the first in the Black Heritage USA series.
Anyone studying the life of the courageous and unassuming Harriet Tubman would have to agree with a young teacher, Charlotte L. Forten, who met Tubman at Beaufort, South Carolina, during the Civil War. “She is a wonderful woman—a real heroine,” Forten said.17
After decades of neglecting her legacy, more and more people are recognizing Harriet Tubman’s contribution. In Dick Russell’s book Black Genius and the American Experience, he quotes legendary jazz musician Wynton Marsalis. The trumpeter was asked which human being best exemplified heroism in American history. Marsalis was born in 1961 and represents a newer generation that is coming to appreciate Tubman. He said, “She’s a real democratic figure. She kept goin’ back. If she’d ever got caught, mannnnn! She was a woman, which was even harder. I think Robeson and Du Bois got tired. Harriet Tubman didn’t get tired.”18
CHRONOLOGY
1820?—Harriet Tubman is born in Dorchester County, Maryland.
1835—Sustains a severe head injury when struck by a lead weight.
1844—Marries John Tubman.
1849—Escapes slavery and moves to Pennsylvania.
1850—Begins work with the Underground Railroad; Fugitive Slave Law is passed.
1851—Rescues sister and her family from Maryland; helps her brother John Ross escape.
1854—Helps three of her brothers escape to Canada.
1857—Rescues parents and brings them to Canada; acquires house in Auburn, New York.
1858—Meets with John Brown.
1861—Civil War begins and Tubman begins her work as a nurse, spy, and scout.
1863—Witnesses Fort Wagner battle (Charleston, South Carolina) and serves as nurse for the wounded; Emancipation Proclamation is issued.
1864—Meets with Sojourner Truth.
1865—Works for U.S. Sanitary Commission at Fort Monroe, Virginia.
1869—Publication of biography Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People, by Sarah Bradford; Tubman marries Nelson Davis.
1888—Death of Nelson Davis.
1896—Serves as delegate to first convention of National Federation of Afro American Women.
1908—Harriet Tubman Home for Aged and Indigent Colored People opens.
1913—Dies on March 10, 1913.
CHAPTER NOTES
Chapter 1. The Next Time Moses Comes
1. Sarah Bradford, Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1981; first published in 1869), p. 40.
2. Ibid., p. 41.
3. Ibid.
4. Charles L. Blockson, The Underground Railroad (New York: Prentice Hall, 1987), p. 105.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., p. 99.
7. Bradford, p. 48.
8. Afro American Encyclopedia (Miami, Florida: Educational Book Publishing, 1974), vol. 9, p. 2652.
9. Bradford, p. 53.
10. Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 521.
Chapter 2. Like a Weed
1. African American Biography (Detroit: Gale Research, Inc., 1993), vol. 4, p. 731.
2. Dick Russell, Black Genius and the American Experience (New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, Inc., 1998), p. 409.
3. Sarah Bradford, Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1981; first published in 1869), p. 69.
4. Benjamin Quarles, “Harriet Tubman,” in Leon Litwick and August Meier, eds., Black Leaders of the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1982), p. 44.
5. African American Biography, p. 731.
6. Quarles, p. 52.
7. Charles L. Blockson, The Underground Railroad (New York: Prentice Hall, 1987), p. 118.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Lerone Bennett, Wade in the Water: Great Moments in Black History (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 1979), p. 86.
12. African American Biography, p. 731.
13. Bradford, p. 23.
14. Bennett, p. 86.
Chapter 3. Liberty or Death
1. John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1974), p. 184.
2. Sarah Bradford, Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1981; first published in 1869), p
. 129.
3. Ibid., p. 24.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., pp. 25-26.
6. Afro American Encyclopedia (Miami, Florida: Educational Book Publishing, Inc., 1974), vol. 9, p. 2651.
7. Charles L. Blockson, The Underground Railroad (New York: Prentice Hall, 1987), p. 119.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Bradford, p. 29.
12. African American Biography (Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research, Inc., 1993), vol. 4., p. 732.
13. Afro American Encyclopedia, p. 2651.
Chapter 4. The Conductor
1. Sarah Bradford, Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1981; first published in 1869), p. 31.
2. Afro American Encyclopedia (Miami, Florida: Educational Book Publishing, 1974), vol. 9, p. 2651.
3. Lerone Bennett, Wade in the Water: Great Moments in Black History (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, Inc., 1979), p. 85
4. Afro American Encyclopedia, p. 2651.
5. Benjamin Quarles, “Harriet Tubman,” in Leon Litwick and August Meier, eds., Black Leaders of the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1981), pp. 44-45.
6. Charles L. Blockson, The Underground Railroad (New York: Prentice Hall, 1987), p. 119.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
Chapter 5. Let My People Go
1. Charles L. Blockson, The Underground Railroad (New York: Prentice Hall, 1987), p. 98.
2. William Still, The Underground Railroad (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, Inc., 1970), pp. 305-307.
