![]() Sometimes she wore disguises, such as men’s clothing. These songs were a kind of code to signal her presence or to provide instructions. When nearing a hiding place where fugitives were waiting, Tubman would sing a special song. Sunday was usually a slave’s only day off, so slave owners might not miss absent slaves until Monday morning. She usually made her trips in the fall and winter, when the nights were long and people tended to stay indoors. These and other members of the Underground Railroad were critical to Tubman’s success over the years.Īnother secret to her success was her methods. Still, an African American, was an important leader of the antislavery movement in Philadelphia. Garrett was a white stationmaster in Wilmington, Delaware, who helped more than 2,500 slaves escape from the South. She also relied on “agents” such as Thomas Garrett and William Still. Some of these houses had tunnels and secret closets where fugitives could hide. She followed routes, known as “liberty lines,” and made use of Underground Railroad safe houses. Tubman could not have made these trips without the help of the Underground Railroad. She took most of them to Canada, where they could not be seized by slave catchers and returned to their owners. Eventually she would rescue most of her family, including her elderly parents. A few months later, she brought back a second brother, along with ten other people. The following spring, she made another trip, this time to get one of her brothers. No one knows exactly how she did it, but Harriet managed to slip into Maryland and bring all of them north. Kizzy had two children, and Tubman was determined to rescue all three of them. She had learned that one of her sister’s daughters, a niece named Kizzy, was going to be sold south. For the rest of her journey, Tubman went from one “station” to the next at night and hid during the day.īy the fall of 1850, Tubman decided to act. He hid Tubman in his wagon, drove her out of town, and dropped her off When the woman’s husband came home that evening, This puzzled Tubman until she realized that playing the part of a black servant would help avoid suspicion. When she arrived, a woman opened the door, handed her a broom, and told her to sweep the yard. Tubman walked through the night to get there. This woman told her how to find the nearest safe house. Tubman’s first stop was the home of a sympathetic white woman who lived nearby. It was a journey she would take many times later, when she had become the most famous “conductor” on the Underground Railroad. But she probably took a route heading northeast to Delaware and then to Pennsylvania. Not wanting to endanger those who helped her, Tubman never revealed the details of her escape. ” These men and women-and sometimes children-put their lives at risk to help slaves escape to freedom. The safe houses were known as “stations” and the people who ran them as “stationmasters. Network of safe houses and escape routes leading to the North. They were part of the Underground Railroad, the name people gave to a She had no idea where to go, but fortunately there were people to help her. Tubman left at night, under cover of darkness. ![]() She would need that strength on her flight north. But her experiences also gave her strength and taught her how to survive. For the rest of her life, she would periodically and unexpectedly fall into a deep sleep. She once suffered a near-fatal injury when an overseer struck her in the head with a lead weight. She had been whipped repeatedly and forced to labor in the fields. Like most slaves, Tubman had led a hard life. “There was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death if I could not have one, I would have the other. “I had reasoned this out in my mind,” she later recalled. If she were caught, she would be severely punished and perhaps killed. She also knew that women rarely managed to escape on their own. She would have to leave her family behind, including her husband, who refused to go. When she heard that she would be sold to a new owner farther south, she decided to flee. She had been born into slavery in eastern Maryland, sometime around 1820. ![]() In the fall of 1849, Harriet Tubman decided to escape her life as a slave. People began to call her Moses for her role in guiding people to freedom in the North. No one did more to help enslaved African Americans escape slavery than Harriet Tubman. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |