Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman (March 1822 – March 10, 1913), registered at birth as Araminta Ross, was a freedom fighter for enslaved black people in USA. After escaping slavery, she carried out thirteen rescue missions in which she freed nearly 300 slaves, using the anti-slavery network known as the Underground Railroad. Later, she helped John Brown after his seizure of the Harpers Ferry arsenal, and after the war she fought for women's suffrage.

He was born into slavery in Dorchester County, Maryland. During her childhood she was beaten and beaten with whips by several of her owners. As a teenager, she suffered a severe head injury when one of her & # 34; owners of her & # 34; She accidentally hit her with a heavy object that she had thrown at another slave. As a result of the injury, she suffered strokes, headaches, visions and episodes of hypersomnia throughout her life. A devout Christian, she attributed visions of her and dreams of her to divine premonitions. ^{[citation needed]}

In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia. Afterwards, he immediately returned to Maryland to rescue his family. Little by little, he led his various relatives out of the state, sometimes personally leading dozens of slaves to freedom. Traveling at night and in extreme secrecy, Tubman (or "Moses," as she was called) "never lost a passenger." Various rewards were offered over the years for the capture of escaped slaves, but it was never known that Harriet was the one helping them. When the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850, she helped many slaves flee to Canada.

Harriet's mother Rit fought to keep the family together, but slavery prevented this. Edgard Brodess sold three of his sisters (Linah, Mariah Ritty and Soph), separating them from the family forever. When a Georgia merchant proposed to the Brodesses to buy the youngest of Rit's children (Moses), she hid him for a month helped by other slaves and free blacks in the community, and even confronted her perpetrator directly over the sale. Finally, when Brodess and the Georgia merchant went to the slave quarters to take the child, Rit directly threatened to "open their heads." Brodess retracted his idea and abandoned the sale. Tubman's biographers agree that this episode directly influenced her, making her believe in her possibilities of rebelling against the slavery.

Childhood

As her mother was assigned as a servant to the master's household, as a child Harriet had to care for a younger brother and a baby. At the age of six, she was employed as a nanny by a woman named "Miss Susan.". Tubman was tasked with watching a baby while it slept. If the child woke up crying, she was whipped. She said that she was once flogged up to five times before breakfast. The scars caused by her would leave her marked for life.

On one occasion, threatened after stealing a sugar cube, Tubman hid in a nearby pigsty for five days. There she fed on the food they threw to the animals. After being discovered, she returned to Miss Susan's house where she received a severe beating. To protect herself from the whipping, she often dressed in several layers of clothing. On another occasion, she bit a white man on the knee who was attacking her. hitting, after which the man did not approach him again.

Tubman also worked in the house of a landowner named James Cook, where she was assigned to guard the rat traps in a nearby swamp. Because she was forced to work in very cold waters, she became seriously ill and was returned home, where her mother took care of her until she recovered. She was later forced to work on various farms, and as she grew older she was assigned to increasingly arduous and arduous field jobs such as plowing or hauling logs.

Head injury

One day, as a teenager, Tubman went to a fabric warehouse to pick up supplies. There he found a slave, & # 34; property & # 34; from another family, who had abandoned his land without permission. His supervisor, furious, ordered Tubman to help her capture the young man but she refused. The slave ran away and the supervisor, to prevent her escape, threw a one-kilogram weight at him from the warehouse. However, he missed the throw and accidentally hit Tubman. She always believed that her hair (tied up like a basket) had saved her life. Bleeding and semi-conscious, she returned to her owner's house and sat on the loom, remaining there for two days without receiving medical assistance. She was immediately sent back to work the land. Her boss said it was worthless and returned it to Brodess, who tried to sell it without success. It was at this time that He began to suffer dizziness and, at times, faint, episodes that alarmed his family. Larson suggests that she suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy as a result of the impact.

Tubman received the head injury at a time in her life when she was becoming a deeply religious person. As she was illiterate, she had acquired her knowledge of the Bible thanks to the stories her mother told her as a child. She rejected white interpretations of the scriptures regarding the obedience of slaves and found her guidance in the teachings of the Old Testament. Following her head injury, Tubman began experiencing visions and dreams, which she considered signs of God's presence. This religious perspective profoundly influenced her entire life.

Family and marriage

In 1840, Tubman's father, Ben, was freed from slavery at the age of 44, as stipulated in the will of his former 'owner'. He continued working as a foreman for the Thompson family, who had been his "owners." Years later, Tubman hired a white lawyer whom he paid five dollars to investigate the mother's legal status. of the. The lawyer discovered that his & # 34; owner & # 34; He had given instructions that Rit, like her husband, be released at the age of 45. This meant that a similar ruling would apply to Rit's children and therefore all of her descendants born to her after she turned 45 would be legally free. However, the Pattison and Brodess families had ignored this clause when they inherited the slaves.

In or around 1844, Harriet married a free black man named John Tubman. Although not much is known about him or their life together, the union was complicated due to her slave status. This meant that any child born of the marriage would become a slave. Marriages between enslaved and free people were common on Maryland's Eastern Shore, where half the black population was free. Larson indicates that the couple could have considered purchasing Tubman's freedom.

Tubman changed her name from Araminta to Harriet as soon as she married, although the exact date is unknown. Larson suggests the possibility that the change took place immediately after the wedding, and Clinton agrees that Tubman was planning to escape slavery. He adopted his mother's name as part of his religious conversion or in honor of a missing sister

Escape from slavery

In 1849, Tubman became ill again, so her value as a slave decreased again. Edward Brodess tried to sell it for this reason but could not find a buyer. Angered by Brodess's decision, Tubman began to pray, begging God to change his mind. "I prayed every night to my Lord," she would later say, "Until the beginning of March he was bringing people and trying to sell me." When it seemed that the sale could be made, he changed tactics. "I changed my prayers," she said. "In early March I began to pray, Oh Lord, if you can't change that man's heart, kill him." A week later, Brodess died, and Tubman repented her feelings. Ironically, Brodess' death increased the Tubman refused to wait for the Brodess family to sell her and decided to flee, despite of the efforts her husband made to dissuade her. “I could do two things,” she would explain, “freedom or death; If she couldn't have one, she would have the other.

Tubman escaped with her brothers Ben and Henry on September 17, 1849. Tubman had been sold to Dr. Anthony Thompson, who owned an extensive plantation called Poplar Neck in nearby Carolina County, where her brothers also worked.. Since the slaves were already sold to another owner, Eliza Brodess probably did not notice her absence for a few days. However, two weeks later he published an advertisement in the Democrat, offering one hundred dollars for each slave returned. Despite having managed to escape, Tubman's brothers had second thoughts; Ben had recently become a father, and They decided to return, forcing Tubman to return with them. Shortly after, Tubman escaped for the second time, this time without her siblings. The night before her escape, Tubman tried to say goodbye to her mother. He located Mary, a trusted companion, and sang her a song with a farewell encoded in it: "I'll meet you in the morning," he intoned, "I'll head to the promised land."

The route used by Tubman to escape is not exactly known, what is known is that Tubman used the network known as the underground railroad. This informal but well-organized system was made up of free blacks, white abolitionists, and Christian activists. Many of its members belonged to the Religious Society of Friends, often called Quakers. The Preston area near Poplar Neck in Caroline County, Maryland had a large Quaker community, and was probably the first place Harriet stopped. during his escape. From there he likely took a route quite common in slave escapes: northwest across the Choptank River and Delaware and then north into Pennsylvania. A journey of nearly ninety miles (145 kilometers). which, done on foot, could last between five days and three weeks.

The dangerous journey forced Tubman to travel at night, guided by the North Star, to avoid slave catchers. Underground Railroad guides used various facilities to hide escapees, such as the well-known “Safe Houses.”, which belonged to white abolitionists. At one of her first stops, the lady of the house ordered Tubman to sweep the grass so that it would appear that she worked for the family. When night fell, the family hid her in a car and drove her to the next house. Given Tubman's familiarity with the forests and swamps of the region, it is possible that she hid in these areas during the day. Tubman did not He spoke of the route he had used to escape until the last years of his life, so that other slaves could use them.

When he arrived in Pennsylvania he felt a mixture of relief and excitement. Years later, recalling her experience, she said: "When I found out she had crossed the border, I looked at my hands to see if she was still the same person. The sun with its golden rays crossed the trees and fell on the fields and I felt that she was in Heaven.

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As soon as she arrived in the city of Philadelphia, Tubman began to miss her family. "She was a stranger in a strange land," he would say. My parents and siblings were in Maryland. But I was free and I wanted them to be free too." He began to work and save money. At the same time, the United States Congress passed the "Fugitive Slave Act", which required official agencies (including the of those states in which slavery did not exist) to help in the capture of escaped slaves, and imposed heavy punishments on those who escaped. The law increased the risks for escaped slaves, so many left for Canada. Meanwhile, racial tension increased in the city of Philadelphia.

In December 1850, Tubman was informed that her niece Kessiah was going to be sold (along with her two children, six-year-old James Alfred and the newborn Araminta) in Cambridge, Maryland. Horrified by the possibility that her family would be torn apart, Ella Tubman did something few slaves used to do: she voluntarily returned to the land of her slavery. She went to Baltimore where her brother-in-law, Tom Tubman, hid her until the time of her sale. Kessiah's husband, a free black man named John Bowley, placed a bid for his wife. Later, when he was preparing the payment, Kessiah and her children hid in a nearby “Safe House.” When night came, Bowley embarked his family in a canoe and they sailed sixty miles to Baltimore, from where Tubman took the family to Philadelphia.

The following spring he returned to Maryland to guide other members of his family to freedom. On this second trip she helped her brother Moses and two unidentified men escape. At this time Tubman was working with abolitionist Thomas Garrett in Wilmington, Delaware; and she became known as Moses (Moses, in English), in allusion to the prophet who guided the Hebrews towards freedom.

During an interview with author Wilbur Sievert in 1897, Tubman revealed some of the names of collaborators and locations used by the Underground Railroad. He was staying at the home of Sam Green, a free black minister from New Market, Maryland; He was also hiding near his parents' home in Poplar Neck in Carolina County. From there she traveled northwest to Sandtown and Willow Grove, Delaware, and to the Camden area where William and Nat Brinkley, and Abraham Gibbs guided her north to Dover, Smyrna, and Blackbird, where other guides helped her cross. the Chesapeake-Delaware Canal to New Castle and Wilmington. In Wilmington, Thomas Garrett provided transportation to William Still's office or to the homes of other members of the Underground Railroad in the Philadelphia area. Still, a famous black collaborator, was responsible for helping the escapees on their way to other safer areas, such as New York, New England and Canada. In late 1851, Tubman returned to Dorchester County for the first time since her escape; her with the intention of finding her husband John. She had saved money, with which she bought a jacket for him and traveled south. Meanwhile, John had married another woman named Caroline. Tubman tried to convince him to join her, but he insisted that he was happy there. Containing her anger, she helped other slaves escape and guided them to Philadelphia. John and Caroline raised a family together until he was murdered sixteen years later in an argument with a white man named Robert Vincent.

Due to existing legislation, the northern United States had become an increasingly dangerous area for escaped slaves, which is why many began to emigrate to Canada. In December 1851, Tubman guided a group of eleven fugitives to that country - possibly including the Bowleys family. There is evidence to affirm that on their trip the group stayed in the house of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass. In his biography Douglas writes: “On one occasion I had eleven fugitives at the same time under my roof, who remained with me until I gathered enough enough money to send them to Canada. It was the largest group I sheltered and I had difficulty providing them with food and lodging…” Due to the number of people and the date, it is possible that it was Tubman's group.

Douglass and Tubman had great mutual admiration and fought together against slavery. When the first biography of Tubman was written in 1868, Douglass drafted a letter in his honor.

Travel and strategies

For eleven years Tubman returned again and again to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, rescuing around seventy slaves, including her three other brothers (Henry, Ben, and Robert), their wives, and some of their children. He also provided precise instructions to facilitate the escape of between fifty and sixty slaves who escaped to the north. His dangerous work required great doses of ingenuity and he usually worked during the winter months to reduce the chances of the group being discovered. An admirer of Tubman said: "She always returned in the winter, when the nights were long and dark and people stayed in their houses." Once she contacted slaves willing to escape, she left town on Saturday afternoon, knowing that the newspapers would not print news until Monday morning.

Because her trips back to the land of slavery posed serious risk, Harriet used various techniques to avoid discovery. She often disguised herself with a hat and carried two live chickens to give the impression of being a traveling saleswoman. On one occasion walking through Dorchester County she met one of her former owners, to avoid being seen by him, she pulled on the legs of the animals she was transporting and their agitation prevented eye contact between the two. On another occasion She met another former owner on a train, so she picked up a nearby newspaper and, although she was illiterate, she began to pretend to read it; The man ignored her.

His religious faith was an important motivation for venturing to Maryland again and again. The visions of her that she had since adolescence due to her injury to her head were interpreted by her as divine premonitions. She spoke of "consulting God" and trusting him to keep her safe. Thomas Garrett once said, "I have never known a person of any color who had greater confidence in the voice of God; It was as if she were speaking directly to her soul.” In addition, she used spiritual songs to send coded messages, warning of the existence of dangers or to indicate that the path was clear.

Tubman carried a revolver and was not afraid of having to use it. On one occasion he told the story of escaping with a group of slaves, and when morale was low due to the difficulty of adversity, one of the men insisted on returning to the plantation. He pointed the gun at her and told her: "Continue or I will kill you." Days later the man was in the group that reached Canada. Tubman also carried the gun to defend herself from the slave catchers and their dogs.

Slave catchers in the region probably never realized that “Minty,” the tiny slave who had escaped years before and never returned, was responsible for the escape of many of the slaves in her community. In the late 1850s, suspicions arose that a northern white abolitionist was helping slaves escape. They even considered the possibility that John Brown had personally traveled to the Eastern Shore to convince slaves to escape before his failed raid on Harper's Ferry in October 1859. Although it is said that he reached offering a reward of $40,000 for Tubman's capture, this is nothing more than a popular belief derived from the article written in 1868 by abolitionist Salley Holley in support of Tubman, for obtaining a pension after the Civil War. Said reward is notoriously disproportionate, considering that the federal government had offered a $25,000 reward for the capture of any conspirators linked to Lincoln's assassination. There is no reference to such a reward in newspapers of the time, and Catherine Clinton suggests that $40,000 could be the sum total of all rewards offered in the region. Despite the efforts of slave catchers, Tubman was never captured.. Years later she declared: "I was an Underground Railroad guide for eight years, and I can say something that not all guides can do, and that is that I did not lose any passengers."

One of his last missions was to recover his parents. His father, Ben, had bought his mother for $20 in 1855. But, although they were both free, the area was hostile territory for them. Two years later, Tubman received news that his father had covered up a group of eight escaped slaves, and that he was at risk of arrest. So he traveled to the Eastern Shore and guided them north to the Canadian city of St. Catharines, Ontario, where a community of escaped slaves had settled, including Tubman's brothers and other relatives and friends.

John Brown and Harpers Ferry

In April 1832, Tubman was introduced to abolitionist John Brown, an insurgent who supported violence as a way to eradicate slavery in the United States. Although she never supported violence against whites, Harriet supported his strategy of action and his goals. Like Tubman, John felt called by the voice of God, and trusted that the Divine would save him from the wrath of the hunters. slaves.

So when he began to recruit followers to attack the defenders of slavery, Brown asked "General Tubman" (as he called her) to help him, since his knowledge of the infrastructure and resources existing on the borders of the States of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware were of great value to Brown and his plans. Although other abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison did not share his tactics, Brown dreamed that the fight would serve to create a new state made up of free slaves. After the first battle he believed that the slaves would win, and asked Tubman to convince the slaves established in Canada to join him.

In May 1858, Brown gave a speech in Ontario, where he revealed his plans to raid Harpers Ferry. When the raid took place on October 16, 1859, Tubman was not present. Some historians believe that she was in New York, sick with fever as a result of her head injury. Others propose that she was helping more slaves escape to Canada, and Kate Clifford Larson suggests that she could be in Maryland, recruiting followers for Brown or attempting to rescue more of her family.

Brown's plan failed and he was arrested, accused of treason and hanged in December. His actions became a symbol of pride and resistance for abolitionists, and he was elevated to the rank of martyr. Tubman would later say about Brown: "he did more by dying than a hundred men lived."

Auburn and Margaret

In early 1859, abolitionist Senator William H. Seward sold Tubman a small piece of land in Auburn for $1,200. The city was a center of anti-slavery activism, and Tubman saw the possibility of bringing her parents back. from the harsh winters of Canada. Due to the laws of that time, returning to the United States implied the risk of being sent back to the southern states, so his brothers expressed certain reservations. For years, he welcomed his relatives and friends, offering a safe place for black Americans seeking a better life in the North.

Shortly after settling in Auburn, Harriet went to Maryland again to return to her “niece,” an eight-year-old girl named Margaret. The circumstances under which the expedition took place remain a mystery. There is considerable confusion about the identity of Margaret's parents, although Tubman indicated that they were free blacks. The girl left a twin brother in Maryland. Years later, Margaret's daughter described Tubman's actions as selfish, since "she had taken a girl from a happy home and taken her to a place where no one cared about her." " Alice described that act as if it were a kidnapping.

However, both Clinton and Larson propose the possibility that Margaret was Tubman's daughter. Larson indicates that the two had a strong resemblance, and argues that Tubman, knowing the pain it means for a child to be separated from his mother, would never cause that damage to a family. Clinton presents evidence of the strong physical resemblance of both, which Alice was unaware of. Both historians agree that there is no concrete evidence to fully affirm the maternal-filial relationship, so the mystery has remained to this day.

In November 1860, Tubman led her last mission. During the 1850s the escape of her beloved sister Rachel and her two children (Ben and Angerine) had not been possible. Upon returning to Dorchester County he discovered that Rachel had died and that her two children could only be released upon payment of $30 each. She lacked the money so the children had to remain slaves. So that the trip would not be in vain, Tubman gathered another group, including the children, and began the journey north. The journey took them weeks, as harassment from slave catchers forced them to continually hide. Furthermore, the weather was especially cold and they did not have enough food. But finally on December 28 they reached the home of Martha and David Wright in Auburn.

Civil War

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Tubman saw the Union victory as a key step toward the abolition of slavery. General Benjamin Butler, for example, helped fugitive slaves arriving at Fort Monroe in Virginia, Butler had declared these fugitives "contraband" -property confiscated by northern forces-and he employed them, initially without pay, at the fort.

Tubman also hoped to offer her own experience and knowledge to the Union cause, and soon joined a group of abolitionists from Boston and Philadelphia heading to the Hilton Head district of South Carolina. He became a regular figure in the camps, particularly in Port Royal, South Carolina, where he initially performed nursing duties and assisted fugitives.

Tubman met General David Hunter, a strong supporter of abolition who declared all "contrabands" of the Port Royal district and began to group them to form a regiment of black soldiers. However, President Abraham Lincoln disapproved of Hunter's initiatives. Tubman then condemned Lincoln's reaction and his unwillingness to end slavery in United States: "God will not allow Mr. Lincoln to defeat the South until he does the right thing," he said.

Mr. Lincoln is a great man, and I'm a poor black man; but Black man can tell Lincoln how to save money and young lives. He can make it free the blacks. Suppose a nasty snake is on the ground. She bites you. Your frightened people send you to the doctor to heal your wound and don't die; but the snake keeps surrounding your leg and while the doctor is healing you, she bites you back. The doctor cures that bite, but while the snake does it, it bites you again and will keep doing it until you kill it. That's what Mr. Lincoln should know.

Tubman served as a nurse at Port Royal, preparing remedies from local plants to prevent soldiers from suffering from dysentery. The fact that she cared for men sick with smallpox and never contracted the disease generated comments that she was blessed by God. Initially she received food from the government for her work, but the newly freed slaves thought she was receiving favored treatment so To avoid friction, he gave up these provisions and began selling beer and cakes (which he made during the night) to earn money.

Exploration and assault on the Combahee River

When Lincoln finally issued the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863, Tubman considered it an important step in achieving the goal of freeing every man, woman and child from slavery. She felt renewed in her spirit to overcome the Confederate states, and soon found himself guiding a group of explorers through the Port Royal region. The swamps and rivers of South Carolina were very similar to those on the Eastern Shore of Maryland; Therefore, her knowledge was of great value. Her group worked under the orders of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, reconnoitring the terrain and its inhabitants. Later she would work with Colonel James Montgomery, in the capture of Jacksonville..

In the final year of the War, Tubman became the first woman to lead an armed assault. When Montgomery's troops proceeded to assault Combahee River, Tubman acted as an advisor and accompanied the troops. On the morning of June 2, 1863, Tubman guided three steamships through Confederate waters (which were filled with mines) to dry land. Once ashore, Union troops opened fire, destroying infrastructure and seizing thousands of dollars in food and supplies. When the ships' whistles sounded, the slaves in the area understood that they were being freed and ran towards the ships. Although their owners armed with guns and whips tried to stop the escape, their efforts were useless.

More than seven hundred slaves were rescued in the Combahee River operation. Newspapers recorded Tubman's patriotism, sagacity, energy and skill. He later worked with Colonel Robert Gould Shaw in the assault on Fort Wagner. She described the battle saying: "First we saw the lightning, which was the guns; and then we heard the thunder that was the cannons; and then we heard the rain fall, which were drops of blood falling; and when we went to harvest the fields, what we harvested were dead men.

For two years he worked for Union troops, caring for newly freed slaves, conducting exploratory raids into Confederate territory, and occasionally caring for wounded soldiers in Virginia. He also periodically made visits to Auburn to visit his family. and take care of her parents. The Confederacy surrendered in April 1865, after which Tubman returned home.

Despite his years of service, he never received a regular salary and for years he was denied any type of compensation. His unofficial status and the unequal pay received by black soldiers made the process of Recognition of her pension by the government was extremely slow, and she did not receive a pension for her service in the Civil War until 1899. Her constant humanitarian work with both her family and other slaves kept her in a constant situation of poverty, and the procedures to obtain a government pension only caused him greater expenses.

When he returned to Auburn after the end of the War he was able to see how little white opinions about black people had changed. During the train ride to New York, the conductor ordered him to go to the smoking car. She refused, exposing her service to her government, but her official, after insulting her, began to use physical force against her to force her to leave. Due to Harriet's resistance, the conductor requested the help of two other passengers, going so far as to break her arm, before throwing her into the smoking car. During her altercation, other white passengers kept insulting her and yelling at the driver to get her off the train.

Life after the Civil War

Tubman spent the last years of her life in Auburn caring for her family and other people in need. He worked various jobs to help his elderly parents and took in boarders to pay various bills. One of the people he housed in his home was a Civil War veteran named Nelson Davis, who began working in Auburn as a bricklayer. They soon fell in love and even though she was twenty-two years older, they were married on March 18, 1869 at the Central Presbyterian Church. From that moment they would spend twenty years together, and in 1874 they would adopt a girl named Gertie.

Her friends and followers since the days of abolition raised funds to support her. An admirer, Sarah H. Bradford, wrote a biography titled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, a 132-page volume published in 1869, which earned Tubman $1,200. Criticized by modern biographers for its artistic license and subjective point of view, the book nevertheless remains an important source of information about Tubman's life. In 1886, Bradford released another volume called Harriet, the Moses of her People, which presented a less caustic view of slavery and the southern states. This book was also published to improve Tubman's financial situation.

In 1883 Tubman was the victim of a gold transfer scam. Two men, named Stevenson and John Thomas, claimed to have in their possession a stash of gold smuggled from South Carolina, offering him this treasure, whose value—they maintained—was $5,000, in exchange for $2,000 in cash. They insisted that they knew a relative of Tubman's, and she put them up in her house for many days. Tubman knew that many whites had buried their valuables when Union troops entered the southern regions and that the men of color were frequently entrusted to carry out such work. So the story was believable, which along with a combination of her negative financial situation and his trusting nature made her go ahead with the plan. She borrowed the money from a friend named Anthony Shimer, and agreed with the two men to give it to him once. evening. But one of them tricked her and took her to the forest where they attacked her and put her to sleep with chloroform, stealing her money, after being tied and gagged. When she was found by her family, she was dazed and hurt. New York City responded with outrage at the incident, showing compassion for Tubman's financial situation. The incident refreshed popular memory of Harriet's past service. and Gerry W. Hazelton, Wisconsin's representative in Congress, introduced a bill to pay Tubman two thousand dollars in payment for her services to the Union as a scout, nurse, and spy. The bill was rejected..

Suffragette activism

During her last years she worked to promote the suffrage cause (reclaiming women's right to vote). A white woman once asked Tubman if she believed women should be able to vote, to which she responded, "I've suffered enough to believe it." Tubman began attending suffrage events and soon began working with Susan. B. Anthony and Emily Howland. She traveled to New York, Boston and Washington to give speeches in support of women's voting rights. In them she described her own actions during the Civil War and used the sacrifices made by women in modern history as evidence of equality between men and women. When the National Federation of African American Women was founded in 1886, Tubman gave the keynote address.

This activism led to a new wave of admiration among the United States press, and a publication called The Woman's Era published a series of articles about eminent women among whom was Tubman. In 1897 a suffrage newspaper held a series of celebrations in Boston in Tubman's honor, but she was bankrupt again so she had to sell a cow to buy the ticket. train and go to the events.

African Methodist Episcopal Church Zion, illness and death

At the turn of the century, Tubman became deeply involved in the Auburn African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. In 1903, he donated one of his properties to the church under the condition that a residence for elderly and destitute people of color be built on the land. The home did not open its doors until five years later, and when the church did He asked each resident for one hundred dollars as a condition of entry. This frustrated Tubman but she was still the guest of honor when the residence opened on June 23, 1908.

During her old age the problems derived from the injury of her adolescence continued to affect her. In the late 1890s she underwent brain surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Unable to sleep due to pain and a continuous tinnitus, she was the one who asked the doctor for brain surgery. She was operated on without anesthesia as she preferred to bite a bullet as she had observed Civil War soldiers do during amputations.

In 1911 her condition was very delicate and she was admitted to the residence that had been built in her honor. After a New York newspaper described her serious health and economic condition, a significant number of spontaneous donations occurred. Surrounded by her friends and family, Harriet Tubman died in her nineties of pneumonia on March 10, 1913..

Legacy

Harriet Tubman was widely known and respected during her lifetime, and became an icon of her country in the years after her death. A survey conducted at the end of the 20th century placed her in third place as one of the most famous people in American history after Betsy Ross and Paul Revere. He has inspired generations of African Americans to fight for equality and civil rights; her being praised by politicians of all ideologies.

Upon her death she was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn. The city honored her with a plaque at the courthouse, which was criticized because of the dialect phrase used ("I never ran my train off de track"), apparently chosen for its authenticity, did not convey the importance of her figure as an American patriot and defender of humanitarian causes. The ceremony became an important tribute to her memory, and Booker T. Washington delivered the keynote speech. Harriet Tubman's house was abandoned in 1920, later restored by the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Nowadays converted into a museum and dissemination center, it receives a large number of visitors.

Bradford's biographies were followed by Earl Conrad's book Harriet Tubman: Negro Soldier and Abolitionist. Conrad had serious problems finding a publisher, the search lasted four years, and he had to endure severe rejections in his effort to achieve a more objective and adult vision. Many versions of Tubman's life have been made for children, many of them. They are later than Conrad's, but Conrad's has been the most used to convey the figure of Tubman to American students. It was finally published in 1942. Despite its popularity, another biography was not published until 2003., that year Jean Humez did it and a year later Kate Larson and Catherine Clinton did it.

However, Tubman was honored in many other ways throughout the nation since the late 19th century. Dozens of students were named Harriet in her honor, and both Harriet Tubman's home in Auburn and the Tubman Museum in Cambridge became monuments to her and her life. In 1944 the United States Maritime Commission launched the SS Harriet Tubman. In 1978, the United States Postal Service put on sale a series of stamps in honor of African-American figures including Harriet. In addition, the Episcopal Church of the United States he includes her among his saints in his prayer book; and March 10 is the day dedicated to Tubman and Sojourner Truth in the Lutheran Calendar of Saints.

Her life inspired the 1985 opera 'Harriet, the Woman Called Moses'. by Scottish-American composer Thea Musgrave.

In 2016 the Treasury Department announced that Tubman would be the first woman whose face would appear on a US dollar bill; specifically in the $20 one, replacing former President Andrew Jackson.

In 2019, New York Mayor Bill De Blasio announced that a statue would be erected in his honor in the city.

In 2019, a film was made in her honor, titled "Harriet, in search of freedom".