It’s ironic – yet appropriate – that abolitionist Harriet Tubman bumped anti-abolitionist and slave-owner Andrew Jackson off the front of the $20 bill.
In fairness, Jackson was a significant president, a frontier populist, but his legacy is marred by his despicable treatment of Native Americans of the Southeast.
Tubman’s legacy, on the other hand, remains virtually untarnished – one of moral courage, a true inspiration across so many decades.
The following are some interesting facts about fearless Tubman:
- In 1822 or thereabouts, Araminta Ross (later Tubman) was born a slave to slave parents in Dorchester County, Md. She was one of nine children. Her mother and father were “owned” by different slave owners in the same county.
- Like all slaves, she was treated terribly by “owners” who considered her nothing but property to be worked. She recalled being lashed as punishment, even once before she was allowed to eat breakfast.
- A life-altering tragedy occurred when she went to a dry-goods store for supplies. There, she met a male slave who had left the fields without permission. The man’s overseer demanded Tubman help restrain the runaway. When she refused, the man threw a 2-pound metal weight at the man but missed, hitting Tubman on the head. The rest of her life she suffered seizures, fits of narcolepsy, painful headaches and would sometimes see visions and hear voices, which she often interpreted as God speaking to her.
- In 1840, in her mid-20s, Ross and two of her brothers escaped and made their way to Philadelphia – Pennsylvania being a slave-free state at the time. She knew her time was running out, that she was about to be sold away from her family because she was considered a “sickly slave of low economic value.” Reward posters were printed for the runaways. The brothers decided to return “home.” Ross saw them back safely, then escaped a second time. This is what she later said about her freedom in Pennsylvania: ““When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.”
- In 1850, the vile Fugitive Slave Law was passed. It required law enforcement to send back any escaped slaves, even those living in free states. Slave catchers appeared everywhere, hoping for the rewards given for captured and returned slaves. That cruel law profoundly complicated Ross’s life because by then she had decided to dedicate herself to helping slaves escape. The new “promised land” became slave-free Canada.
- Ross married John Tubman, which is how she got her new last name. In 11 years, Tubman, working in extreme danger, guided about 300 slaves to freedom as a “conductor” on what was dubbed the “Underground Railroad,” a long series of hideaway houses where the runaways could stop to rest on their dangerous journey North. Tubman rescued family members, relatives but also total strangers. She became known as “Moses” because she led so many in bondage to the “Promised Land.”
- To partly understand the terror of runaway slaves, all one has to do is read some of the many reward posters posted far and wide. They chillingly show in matter-of-fact words the utterly heartless attitudes of the “owners” wanting their “property” back. Runaways caught and returned would often receive hideous punishments, such as up to 150 lashes with whips, brandings on the face, the cutting off of an ear and even, in some cases until the late 1780s, amputation of limbs.
- In a decision some consider morally questionable on her part, Tubman helped recruit participants for abolitionist John Brown’s infamous armed raid at Harper’s Ferry.
- During the Civil War, Tubman worked as an armed scout, a spy, a cook and a nurse. She even led an armed expedition in what’s known as the Combahee River Raid, liberating 700 slaves being kept captive in South Carolina. Later, she married a Civil War veteran named Nelson Davis, and they adopted a baby girl they named Gertie.
- In her later years, Tubman lived, frequently impoverished, in Auburn, N.Y., although her many friends often helped her get through the toughest times. She underwent a grueling surgery, without anesthetic, in an effort to stop the debilitating pains stemming from the head injury she suffered as an adolescent. It did help alleviate some of the pain. She died of pneumonia in 1913 and was buried with full military honors in Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.
- The following is a famed quote from Tubman: “I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say: I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”
