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HARRIET TUBMAN EXPERIENCED A RUDEintroduction to her life in the North after the CivilWar when in 1865 a conductor attempted to re-move her from her seat on a train as she rode fromPhiladelphia to New York City. She was travelingwith a soldier's pass, and the conductor assumedher papers were either forged or stolen. Display-ing characteristic grit, she refused to budge. AfterTubman called the conductor a racist scoundrel, hestarted to choke her. Two other men jumped in,and during the scuffle her arm was broken. No onecame to her aid. Eventually, the conductor and hiscohorts pushed her into the baggage car. Afterarriving at her homestead in Auburn, New York, herarm in a sling and her ribs bruised, she and herfriends considered suing the railway company, butonce she'd recovered they abandoned the idea.

Born into slavery around 1820, Tubman certainlydeserved a rest. During her teenage years in Mary-land, her OWller hired her out to work on a nearbyfarm. When the overseer there once threw a.Jieavyweight at another person, it accidentat1i.-p~.:;Tub-man in the head; as a result, she would suffer fromnarcolepsy and recurrent seizures for the rest of herlife. She escaped from slavery in 1849 but returned

tor 50 years

after Emancipation,

Harriet Tubman

fought other battles

Ik:,

by Marc Ferris

Harriet Tubman, 90 years old, in

Auburn, New York, 1911. She spent herlast years in the home for the aged (top)

that she herself had founded.

SUMMER 2004 AMERICAN LEGACY 63

IN HER LATER

YEARS SHE FOUGHTSouth more than a dozen times to leadothers to freedom by the UndergroundRailroad, undertaking daring rescues, ofwhich she later boasted, "I never run mytrain off the track. ..never lost a pas-senger." Folklore has it that she brought300 people up North, but she herself es-timated that the number was closer to 60.

Almost every American is familiar withTubman's role as the "Mrican-AmericanMoses." Less well known, however, isthe rest of her story. Tubman lived for 50years after the adoption of the Emanci-pation Proclamation, and until her deathin 1913, she fought for women's rights; shejoined the temperance movement anddonated 25 acres to her local A.M.E. Zionchurch to establish a nursing home. Allthe while, she supported her extendedfamily along with scores of poor and sickpeople who showed up at her door, manyof them strangers.

FOR WOMEN'S

RIGHTS AND JOINED

THE TEMPERANCE

MOVEMENT.

F oR "PASSENGERS" AND "CON-

ductors" aboard the Underground

Railroad, the corridor between Al-bany and Niagara served as the expresstrack to Canada. In 1857 Tubman broughther parents, Benjamin and Harriet, from

Maryland (both were free), along theroute, settling them in St. Catharines,Ontario. While crisscrossing the region,she met several prominent citizens, in-cluding William H. Seward, a formerNew York governor and U.S. senatorand President Abraham Lincoln's sec-retary of state, who in 1859 sold Tubmana seven-acre farm for $1,200. The trans-action was illegal at the time, since theSupreme Court's Dred Scott decision of1857 ruled that slaves, runaway or other-wise, were not citizens, and thus had noright to own property.

A~er the Civil War, Tubman movedher family, including her infirm par-ents, six other relatives, and a boarder,to Auburn. Privation marked their first

winter there. Not only did Tubman needtime to recover from her fight with theconductor, but the family had so littlemoney they had to burn their fence forfirewood. When word circulated aboutTubman's problems, her wealthy friends,including Seward and other abolitionistssuch as William Lloyd Garrison and Lu-cretia Mott, offered her money. Thoughproud, she had no choice but to accept.

Known universally as Aunt Harriet,Tubman vexed her benefactors by con-stantly putting the needs of others beforeher own. In 1867 and 1868, for example,she organized Freedmen's Fairs, whichcollected clothing and hundreds of dol-lars for two schools in South Carolina,even though she had to support herselfby bartering crops and taking in boarders.

Based on her three years of serviceto the Union Army in the Civil War, dur-ing which time she had worked as anurse and helped lead a raid againsta Rebel position in South Carolina,Tubman unsuccessfully applied for backpayand, later, a pension from the federal

government.In 1868 her friends hired the author

Sarah Bradford to write her biography.

T"bman (f.r left) poses with fBmil, members incl"ding her hflsbBnd, Nelson DBvis (seBted, with hat), and residents of her home, around 1887.

IN 1896 SHE

CLASPED HANDS

WITH SUSAN B.

ANTHONY AT A

SUFFRAGIST MEETING

IN ROCHESTER.

Donors underwrote the printing costs,and Bradford gave all the royalties toTubman. Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tub-man appeared the next year, solidifyingher public image as an UndergroundRailway conductor and Civil War spy.The volume went through several edi-tions and income from it helped Tubmanpayoff debts on her home by 1873.

The year Bradford's book appeared,Tubman married Nelson Davis, one ofher boarders. (Her estranged first hus-band, John Tubman, had been killed bya white man in a dispute in Marylandin 1867.) Davis, 20 years her junior, suf-fered from tuberculosis. When he wasstrong enough to ply his trade as a brick-maker, he contributed to the householdincome and turned part of the propertyinto a brickyard. The Tubmans, who alsooperated a pig farm, struggled to survive,though Harriet continued to open theirhome to the sick and the poor.

York, and Boston. Tubman, wrote herbiographer Sarah Bradford, "generallyattended every meeting of women, onwhatever subject, if possible to do so."An 1888 newspaper account paraphrasedher remarks to a crowd in Auburn: Dur-ing the Civil War, "Loving women wereon the scene to administer to the in-jured, to bind up their wounds and tendthem through weary months of sufferingin the army hospitals. If those deeds didnot place woman as man's equal, whatdo? The speaker said that her prayerscarried her through and they would even-tually place woman at the ballot box withman, as his equal."

When in 1896 a group of college-educated church women formed the Na-tional Association of Colored Women tofIght for civil rights, Tubman appeared atthe inaugural convention as a featuredguest. Later that year, she clasped handswith Susan B. Anthony on the podium ata suffragist meeting in Rochester andaddressed the group. Tubman, wrote onenewspaper reporter, impressed the au-dience "with the venerable dignity ofher appearance" and possessed an "hon-esty and true benevolence of purposewhich commanded respect."

By this time Tubman's main goal wasto establish a home for the aged. She hadbeen running an informal shelter forthe infIrm, but as she advanced in years,she yearned to provide her charges witha more professional and permanent in-stitution. In 1894, while helping with achurch clothing drive, Tubman dictateda letter to an acquaintance stating thatshe was "very well for a woman of her ad-vanced years and is as busy as ever goingabout doing good to every body[;] herhome is fIlled with 'odds and ends' ofsociety and to every one outcast she givesfood and shelter. She is still trying toestablish a home for old colored womenbut as yet has succeeded very slightly incollecting funds for that purpose-yetshe is not discouraged but is workingalways with that object still in view."

In 1895 she incorporated her residence

T HE 1880S BROUGHT TUBMAN

one setback after another. Her

father had passed away in 1871 andher mother died in 1880. Shortly there-after, her wood-frame house burneddown, along with her prized collection ofletters from prominent abolitionists andUnion Army officers. A sturdy brick struc-ture, which still stands, replaced it. In1884 her husband's health deteriorated.

In 1886 Bradford revised Tubman'sbiography, renamed Harriet, The Moses ofHer People. The reissue generated renewedinterest in the ex-slave's life and provideda modest income. A magazine writernamed Rosa Belle Holt visited Auburnaround this time. "Modest and quiet indemeanor," she wrote about Tubman inthe magazine The Chatauquan; "a strangerwould never guess what depths there arein her nature." Tubman's resolve wouldagain be tested in 1887, when she peti-tioned Congress to release her Civil WarfIle and reopen her pension claim.

Her second husband, who had foughtin the Civil War, died in 1888. Two yearslater Congress passed the Dependent

66 AMERICAN LEGACY SUMMER 2004

This brick house replaced Tubman's firsfresidence, destroyed ;11 a fire.

Pension Act, which granted widows ofveterans a monthly stipend. Mter over-coming numerous bureaucratic obsta-cles, in 1895 Tubman received her widow'spension of $8 per month as well as a lumpsum of $500 to cover the more than 60months that had passed since she firstapplied. But she continued to fight forrecompense for her own service to theUnion cause. "you wouldn't think that af-ter I served the flag so faithfully I shouldcome to want under its folds," she tolda local newspaper reporter. Her U.S. rep-resentative, Sereno E. Payne, introduceda bill to Congress and lobbied on her be-half, finally winniD.g her a $12 monthlypension inl899 for her work as a nurse.

Through~11t w years in Auburn,Tubman supported the drive to securewomen the right to vote, appearing at suf-frage rallies i.n. Washington, D.C., New

TUBMAN'S

LIFE AFTER THE

CIVIL WAR IS

ful imaginations were fIred by the taleswe had heard of her adventures and westood in great awe of her."

Compared with her daring exploitsbelow the Mason-Dixon Line, Tubmanlived what might almost be considereda humdrum life in New York. This par-tially accounts for the neglect of herlater years. Mter almost a century ofbeing relegated mostly to the realm ofjuvenile literature, however, Tubman'sentire life is now beginning to receiverecognition. The Syracuse UniversityDepartment of Anthropology has con-ducted archeological studies at herproperty in Auburn, and the NationalPark Service plans to deliver a reportto Congress this fall containing recom-mendations for how best to honor Tub-man's memory. These include addingthe Auburn parcel and her birthplacein Dorchester County, Maryland, to theNational Park system. Three new biogra-phies, Bound for the Promised Land: HarrietTubman, Portrait of an American Hero byKate Clifford Larson, Harriet Tubman: TheRoad to Freedom by Catherine Clinton,and Harriet Tubman: The Life and Life Storiesby Jean M. Humez, have recently been

published.

FINALLY BEGINNING

TO RECEIVE REAL

RECOGNITION.

others to take care of the future. All I askfor is united effort, for 'united we stand:divided we fall.' "

Tubman's health began to fail soonafter the dedication. By 1910 she wasconfmed to a wheelchair and had to enterthe home she'd founded in feeble phys-ical health, though still strong mentally.She died in 1913 at around the age of 93.

Throughout her decline, Tubman con-tinued to be celebrated in upstate NewYork. "No one of our fellow citizens oflate years has conferred greater distinc-tion upon us than has she," said John F.Jaeckel, the president of the AuburnCommon Council, at her packed funeral."I may say that I have known 'AuntHarriet' during my whole lifetime. Theboys of my time always regarded her asa sort of supernatural being; our youth-

as the Harriet Tubman Home and, to seethe project through, bought the 25-acrefarm that adjoined hers at auction thenext year, receiving contributions of $350and a $1,000 mortgage. She deeded theproperty to the A.M.E. Zion Church in1903, but was disappointed with one ofits leaders' fIrst decisions. "When I givethe home over to Zion Church what yousuppose they done?" she told a reporterfrom The Sun, a Harlem newspaper. "Why,they make a rule that nobody shouldcome in without they have a hundreddollars. Now I wanted to make a rulethat nobody should come in unless theydidn't have no money at all."

Despite her bouts with seizures andnarcolepsy, at the age of 85 she still foundthe strength to travel to Boston to attenda meeting of the Christian TemperanceUnion in 1905, a group dedicated to rid-ding the country of the evils of alcohol,among other reforms.

In 1908 a huge crowd turned out forthe dedication of the Harriet TubmanHome for Aged and InfIrm Negroes.Speaking to the assemblage, she saidthat "I did not take up this work formy own benefIt. ..but for those of myrace who need help. The work is nowwell started and I know God will raise up

~ N HER FINAL YEARS, TUBMANarguably accomplished as much asduring the dark days of slavery, and

she never held hatred in her heart, "evenfor her worst oppressorsl'l wrote herfriend Franklin B. Sanborn. A month be-fore Tubman's death, another acquain-tante, Mary Talbert, visited her and saidthat the retired "conductor'l exhorted herto "'Tell the women to stand togetherfor God will never forsake us.' II As Tal-

bert took her hand to say good-bye, Tub-man "smiled that peaceful smile of hersand said, 'I am at peace with God and allmankind.' 11 .;..

Located on 26 acres of land, th~ Harriet Tubman Home is open to visitors year-round.

Marc Ferris is a freelance writer living in Dobbs

Ferry, New York. For information about visiting

the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn, New York,

call 315-252-2081 or e-mail HTHome@localnet.com.

68 AMERICAN LEGACY SUMMER 2004