Free for Christmas: Harriet Tubman leads slave escape and gives the greatest gift of the holiday season - Short Story

Ebony, Dec, 2002 by Lerone Bennett, Jr.

This Christmas classic is reprinted as a reminder of the close connection between the spirit of Christmas and the spirit of Black liberation. Reprinted by permission from Great Moments in Black History by Lerone Bennett Jr., copyright 1979.

SHE came out of the night, silently, stealthily, mysteriously. Nobody knows how she came or when she came. But suddenly, inexplicably, she was there, on the edge of the slave quarters, singing a song old as the night and deep as the hopes of man.

   Jesus, Jesus will go with you,
   He will lead you to his throne;
   He who died has gone before you,
   Trod the wine-press all alone.

Of all those who heard the song, of all those who blessed and cursed the singer, only a handful knew that the song was a code, saying that the woman known as "the Woman," the woman known as "the General," the woman known as "Moses" was in the Cambridge, Md., area, and doing business at the same old stand.

The words of the song rose, fell, and died away. And the men and women to whom the words were addressed, the men and women who knew, listened in the silence, knowing that it was time to fish or cut bait, and that the odds were with the fish. What made the odds tolerable, or at least debatable, was the woman singing the song, Harriet Ross Tubman. She had escaped from slavery in this very area and had returned five times to lead out some 300 slaves. Now, in the Christmas season, in 1854, she was back, calling for recruits.

As dawn neared, Harriet Tubman quickened her pace. She was in a hurry. Three of her brothers were in danger of being sold, and she had come South to move their cases to a higher court.

How did she know her brothers were in danger?

The word had come to her in one of her famous premonitions. She had been working in the North, saving her money for a slave strike, when, as she said later, she "became much troubled in spirit about her brothers." Acting upon this premonition, Tubman, who could neither read nor write, used a strategy that had served her well in the past. She persuaded a friend to write a coded letter to Jacob Jackson, a literate free Black who lived near the plantation where her three brothers worked. Since the authorities were monitoring the mail of Jacob Jackson, who was suspected of being involved in other slave rescues, it was necessary to use extreme caution. The letter sent to Jackson bore the signature of his adopted son, who lived in the North. The letter contained several innocuous paragraphs and the following message:

"Read my letter to the old folks, and give my love to them, and tell my brothers to be always watching unto prayer, and when the good old ship of Zion comes along, to be ready to step on board."

This was a blunder, for Jackson's parents were dead, and he had no brothers, two facts that aroused the suspicions of the inspectors who examined the mail of free Blacks. The matter was discussed pro and con by the authorities, who finally summoned Jackson and asked him what the letter meant. Jackson recognized immediately that the letter meant that Harriet Tubman was coming and that he should alert her brothers, who, as she suspected, were in danger of being sold South. But nothing in his demeanor betrayed him as he read the letter slowly and then threw it down, saying, "That letter can't be meant for me no how. I can't make head or tail of it." After compounding the confusion of the inspectors, Jackson informed Tubman's brothers that she was on the way and that they should be ready at the signal to start for the North.

While all this was going on, Tubman was completing her preparations in the North. The trip required a certain amount of money for food, transportation, and bribes for greedy Whites. There were other urgencies: a pair of stout shoes for days and nights of walking, paregoric for babies and others who couldn't be talked into silence, and a well-oiled revolver for various and sundry purposes. When these items were assembled in December 1854, Tubman disappeared from her Northern haunts and reappeared in the thickly wooded forests surrounding the plantations of Dorchester County, Md., where she rendezvoused with a group of slaves on Christmas Eve, 1854.

The group included two of her brothers, Benjamin, 28, and Robert, 35, and two slaves from nearby plantations, John Chase, 20, and Peter Jackson.

There was one woman, Jane Kane, 22, who said her master, Rash Jones, was "the worst man in the country."

Tubman ran her eyes over the group, noticing for the 20th time that there was one absentee, her brother Henry. Where was he? What could have held him up? She looked to the left and right, and then gave the word: forward. One can imagine the hurt in her heart. But it was a rule: Time was freedom, and she waited for no one. The first stop, she announced, would be the cabin of her parents, 40 miles to the north in Caroline County.

The Eastern Shore, with its forests and hills and rivers and creeks, was home base for Tubman, and she quickly and expertly led the group to the cabin of her elderly parents. It was late Christmas Eve when they arrived, and she bypassed the cabin and established a command post in the fodder house. This was a tactical decision, which speaks volumes for the iron discipline Tubman demanded of herself and others. She had not seen her mother for five years, but her mother was given to emotional outbursts of screaming and crying, outbursts that could alert the enemy and endanger the plan. Rather than risk this, Tubman denied herself and her brothers what they desired most, the pleasure of speaking to their mother and comforting her on Christmas Day. Without a trace of sentiment, she sent two nonfamily members, John Chase and Peter Jackson, to awaken her father, who dressed hurriedly and brought food to the fodder house. Before entering the fodder house, Old Ben, as he was called, tied a handkerchief around his eyes. He was sure to be asked after the escape had he seen his children. And he wanted to be able to say with honesty in his voice that he had not seen them.