Harriet Tubman: The Work of Freedom

Harriet Tubman: The Work of Freedom 100 Lives That Shaped the World · Episode 7 ## Chapter 1: Freedom Along the Combahee In the darkness of early June 1863, three Union steamships slipped through the waters of the Combahee River in South Carolina. This was not a standard military patrol, but a carefully planned raid targeting the heart of the region's plantation economy. At the center of this operation was Harriet Tubman, a Black woman who had spent years mastering the art of survival, navigation, and resistance. Working alongside Colonel James Montgomery and the Second South Carolina Volunteer Infantry—a regiment of Black soldiers, many of whom had recently escaped bondage—Tubman helped direct an assault that would dismantle the local slaveholding infrastructure and liberate hundreds of people. The success of the Combahee River raid relied entirely on intelligence. Months before the steamers set sail, Tubman built a network of local informants. She gained the trust of enslaved people who knew the waterways, the locations of Confederate outposts, and the placement of underwater mines, then known as torpedoes. This was dangerous, meticulous work that required deep collaboration. Tubman could not read or write, yet her memory, spatial awareness, and ability to read human character allowed her to organize complex data into an actionable military plan. She bridged the gap between the Union command and the local population, turning raw information into a weapon of liberation. As the steamships bypassed the hidden hazards and neared the shore, the sound of their whistles signaled a profound transformation. Hundreds of enslaved men, women, and children realized that the moment of their deliverance had arrived. They abandoned the fields and ran toward the riverbank, carrying whatever they could salvage. Reports from the period describe chaotic, triumphant scenes of families wading through the mud to reach the safety of the gunboats. More than seven hundred and fifty people successfully claimed their freedom that day, with many of the liberated men immediately enlisting in the Union army to continue the fight. This dramatic event was not an isolated incident of wartime fortune. Instead, it represented the peak of a strategy Tubman had refined over decades. The Combahee operation answered a fundamental question that defined her entire life: how could one individual turn hard-won knowledge, faith, and networks into collective action? From her early years on the Eastern Shore of Maryland to her dangerous journeys on the Underground Railroad, Tubman understood that freedom was never a solitary achievement. It required trust, shared intelligence, and organized resistance. By examining the Combahee raid, we see Tubman not as a passive symbol or a lone, mythic figure, but as a brilliant strategist, scout, and collaborator. She risked her life repeatedly, using her deep spiritual conviction and practical skills to coordinate with allies across racial and social divides. The raid demonstrated that when collective action was fueled by precise intelligence and shared purpose, the institutions of oppression could be dismantled from within. This operation serves as the entry point to understanding a life dedicated to the relentless pursuit of human dignity. Her journey did not begin on these South Carolina rivers, but in the marshlands of Maryland, where she first learned to read the land and trust her instincts. To understand how she arrived at the Combahee, we must look back to her origins. ## Chapter 2: A Family Held in Slavery Around 1822, in the marshy lowlands of Dorchester County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Araminta Ross was born into a world defined by the harsh boundaries of chattel slavery. Known as Minty to her family, she was one of nine children born to Harriet Green, called Rit, and Benjamin Ross. Her parents worked under different enslavers, a common arrangement that fractured daily life and illustrated the legal instability of enslaved families. Ben Ross was a skilled timber estimator owned by Anthony Thompson, while Rit and her children were owned by Edward Brodess. This separation meant that from her earliest days, Minty experienced the precarious nature of family ties under a system that treated human beings as property, where parental protection was constantly undermined by the legal rights of owners. The Eastern Shore economy relied on grain farming, domestic service, and timber…

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