19th century AD

Ebony, March, 2005 by Lerone Bennett, Jr.

But there was a shadow in Tubman's Eden. She realized suddenly that she couldn't be free alone and that she couldn't be completely free until her people were flee. "I was free," she said, "but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land, and my home after all was down in the old cabin quarter, with the old folks, and my brothers and sisters. But to this solemn resolution I came; I was free, and they should be free also; I would make a home for them in the North, and the Lord helping me, I would bring them all here ..."

So resolving, Harriet Tubman committed herself to a no-holds-barred war against the slave system. In Philadelphia and other Northern cities, she worked day and night as a domestic. When she had enough money to finance a slave escape, she returned to the South and led out groups of slaves.

Tubman approached her task with military thoroughness and dispatch. After contacting the slaves through coded letters to sympathetic free Blacks, she accumulated the tools of her trade: a revolver and fresh ammunition, fake passes for slaves of varying description, and paregoric to drug babies. With these and other "tools' hidden on her person, she slipped across the Mason-Dixon line and made her way to selected plantations where slaves were informed of her presence by code songs, prayers, or some other stratagem. Selected slaves were then apprised of the rendezvous area and the time of departure. General Tubman, as she was called, was very strict about time. She waited for no one--not even a brother-who was delayed on one trip by the imminent arrival of a new baby in his family.

Once the slaves were assembled, Harriet sized them up, searching them closely with her eyes. Satisfied, she placed the group under strict military discipline. During the trip, she was in absolute and total control and no one could question her orders. Once a slave committed himself to a Tubman escape, he was committed to freedom or death. On several occasions, slaves collapsed and said they were tired, sick, scared. Harriet always cocked her revolver and said: "You go on or die. Dead niggers tell no tales." Faced with a determined Harriet Tubman, slaves always found new strength and determination. During 10 years of guerrilla action, the great commando leader never lost a slave through capture or return.

She almost always began her escapes on Saturday night. Since it was impossible to advertise for runaway slaves on Sunday, this gave her a twenty-four-hour start on pursuers. She also made a practice of escaping in the carriages of masters, covering the slaves with vegetables or baggage and driving all night Saturday and all day Sunday before abandoning the appropriated vehicle. Tubman tried to keep her groups together, but she sometimes dispersed them, sending twos or threes through hostile towns. On occasions, she dressed men in women's clothes and vice versa.

The great slave rebel was helped enormously in her extraordinary career by a natural talent for acting. Indeed, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the antislavery preacher, believed she was one of the greatest actresses and comediennes of the age. "One of her most masterly accomplishments," he said, "was the impression of a decrepit old woman."