# 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 harvesting. To maximize profits, enslavers frequently rented out their laborers, treating them as temporary capital. When Minty was only about six years old, Brodess began hiring her out to local families. These temporary employers often showed little concern for the welfare of a young child. Minty was put to work weaving, keeping watch over infants—where she was whipped for letting them cry—and wading into freezing marshes to tend muskrat traps. These early experiences exposed her to severe neglect, disease, and physical abuse, but they also forced her to develop a practical, intimate understanding of the local landscape, from the behavior of tidal waterways to the dense cover of the pine forests.

The most painful reality of Minty’s childhood was the constant threat of permanent separation. Because Maryland’s agricultural economy was shifting away from tobacco, enslavers frequently sold people to the Deep South, where the cotton boom demanded brutal labor. Minty watched this threat become reality when her older sisters, Linah, Mariah Ritty, and Soph, were sold away, never to return. The grief of these losses deeply affected the family. When a trader later attempted to buy her youngest brother, Moses, Rit hid the boy and confronted the enslaver, threatening resistance. Her mother's successful defense of her child left a profound impression on young Minty, demonstrating that even within the confines of enslavement, bold, collective action could sometimes halt the machinery of forced separation.

Despite these disruptions, the enslaved and free Black communities of Dorchester County maintained strong, supportive networks. Enslaved laborers working in timber fields and shipyards interacted regularly with free Black mariners, who navigated the Chesapeake Bay. Through these connections, vital information about local geography, regional news, and safe travel routes traveled quietly along the waterways. The community also found strength in shared spiritual traditions, blending Christian teachings of deliverance with ancestral resilience. This rich network of communication and mutual aid provided Minty with her first lessons in solidarity, showing her that survival depended on the trusted bonds of a community that refused to let the system of slavery erase their humanity.

## Chapter 3: Injury, Faith, and Knowledge of the Land

In her early teens, around the mid-1830s, Araminta Ross suffered a severe physical trauma that altered the course of her life. While at a local dry goods store, she stepped into the path of an angry overseer who was pursuing an escaping young man. The overseer flung a heavy iron weight, intending to strike the fugitive, but it struck Araminta directly in the head. The impact fractured her skull, leaving her unconscious for weeks and causing lifelong physical challenges. For the rest of her life, she experienced intense headaches, chronic pain, and sudden, uncontrollable episodes of sleep. While modern writers often suggest these sleeping spells resembled narcolepsy, historical records cannot provide a certain medical diagnosis. This injury was a brutal reminder of the constant, unpredictable violence of the plantation system, yet her recovery marked the beginning of a profound internal transformation.

During her long recovery and the years that followed, Araminta experienced vivid dreams, auditory perceptions, and powerful spiritual visions. She interpreted these occurrences not as a medical impairment, but as direct communications from the divine. Her deep Christian faith, nurtured by the stories of the Hebrew Bible and the spiritual traditions of the enslaved community, became her anchor. She came to believe that a higher power was actively guiding her and protecting her from harm. This intense spiritual conviction was not a passive comfort; it gave her an extraordinary sense of purpose and a belief in her own agency. Rather than breaking her spirit, the aftermath of her injury solidified a quiet, resolute confidence that she was meant to survive and assist others.

Her preparation for the future also came from the demanding physical labor she performed on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. As she grew stronger, her enslavers hired her out to work in the local timber fields. Laboring outdoors alongside adult men, including her father, Ben Ross, she performed heavy tasks like driving oxen and hauling lumber. This grueling work was difficult and exploitative, but it provided her with an invaluable education in survival. She learned to navigate the dense, swampy forests of Dorchester County without a map, using the stars, the moss on the trees, and the flow of the waterways to find her direction. She became intimately familiar with the Choptank River basin, understanding how to move silently through wetlands and thickets.

Furthermore, working in the timber yards brought her into contact with Black mariners, known as canal boatmen, who transported wood along the Chesapeake Bay. These mobile workers formed a vital, clandestine communication network. They carried news of the wider world, shared strategies for survival, and passed messages between separated families. By listening to these workers, Araminta learned how information traveled across distances and how to read the shifting political landscape. Her deep faith, her precise geographical knowledge, and her connection to these working-class networks were not romantic accidents. They were hard-won tools of survival that she actively cultivated, preparing her to turn personal endurance into a powerful, collective force for liberation.

## Chapter 4: Taking Freedom in 1849

In March 1849, the death of Edward Brodess, the Dorchester County enslaver who claimed ownership of Araminta Ross, brought immediate crisis. Brodess died deeply in debt, leaving his widow, Eliza, to manage an unstable estate. To satisfy creditors, the widow began arranging the sale of the estate's enslaved laborers. For Araminta and her family, this meant the imminent threat of being sold to the Deep South, a fate that often meant permanent separation and grueling labor in cotton or sugar fields. The danger of this domestic slave trade was no longer a distant fear but an urgent reality.

Faced with this threat, Araminta resolved to escape. In September 1849, she set out with two of her brothers, Ben and Henry. The decision to flee was fraught with terror, as advertisements offering rewards for their capture quickly circulated in local newspapers, including a notice by Eliza Brodess offering one hundred dollars for each runaway. Overwhelmed by the immense risks of pursuit, hounds, and severe punishment, her brothers decided to turn back. Araminta had no choice but to return with them to the plantation, but her determination remained unshaken.

Shortly after this failed attempt, she chose to seek her freedom alone. It was around this period of transition that she began using the name Harriet Tubman, adopting her mother’s first name, Harriet, and retaining the surname of her husband, John Tubman, a free Black man who chose not to accompany her. Traveling under the cover of darkness, she slipped away into the Maryland woods in the fall of 1849.

Tubman’s journey relied on her deep understanding of the Eastern Shore landscape and her faith. She navigated by the North Star and utilized the complex, informal network of safe houses, secret routes, and sympathetic individuals later known as the Underground Railroad. This network consisted of free and enslaved Black people, as well as white abolitionists and Quakers, who provided food, shelter, and directions. Because secrecy was essential for survival, the precise details of her route and the identities of those who assisted her were kept hidden and remain unrecorded.

When she finally crossed the Mason-Dixon line into the free state of Pennsylvania, she reached Philadelphia. Later accounts describe her feeling a sense of wonder and relief upon crossing the threshold of freedom, though she also experienced a profound sense of isolation. She was free, but her family remained enslaved in Maryland, prompting her to remark that there was no one to welcome her.

In Philadelphia, Tubman found work as a domestic laborer, saving her earnings to support herself and plan future endeavors. Her self-liberation was not the end of her journey, but the beginning of a larger mission. Rather than settling into a quiet life of safety, she began collaborating with members of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee, an organization dedicated to assisting freedom seekers. By turning her personal survival into a collaborative effort, Tubman prepared to use her knowledge and networks to help others achieve the freedom she had just secured.

## Chapter 5: Returning for Family and Friends

In late 1849, finding herself free in Philadelphia did not bring complete peace. The joy of self-liberation was immediately tempered by the painful reality of family separation. True freedom, for her, could not be enjoyed in isolation. This conviction drove her back into the dangers of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, initiating a decade of systematic, perilous return missions. She realized that her own liberty was incomplete while her loved ones remained in bondage.

Her efforts faced an immediate and formidable obstacle in the autumn of 1850. The United States Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, a draconian federal law that penalized citizens who assisted escaping individuals and mandated that law enforcement in free states assist in recapturing them. Northern cities were no longer safe havens, as slave catchers patrolled free states with federal backing. Consequently, she had to extend her escape routes much further north, guiding people across the Canadian border to St. Catharines, Ontario, where British law guaranteed their absolute freedom.

Over the course of approximately ten years, she made about thirteen distinct trips back to Maryland. Historical research, particularly modern scholarship, indicates she personally guided roughly seventy people—primarily her siblings, parents, and close friends—out of bondage. In addition to those she escorted directly, she provided precise directions and logistical support to dozens of other freedom seekers. These documented figures counter later, well-meaning nineteenth-century exaggerations that claimed she rescued hundreds of individuals. The true numbers reflect a highly focused, deeply personal campaign to rescue her immediate community, executed with extraordinary precision and limited resources.

Success on these journeys required secrecy and planning, which also means that many operational details were never recorded. Later accounts describe night travel, disguises, songs, schedules, and weapons, but not every familiar detail can be tied securely to a particular mission. The sound conclusion is narrower and still remarkable: Tubman repeatedly entered a slave state, adapted to danger, and helped groups move through a network whose survival depended on leaving little evidence.

These missions demanded immense physical stamina, emotional resilience, and financial resources. She funded her trips through her own grueling domestic labor in northern hotels and clubs, as well as through crucial donations from allied abolitionist networks. Each return was a calculated risk that carried the constant threat of execution or re-enslavement. By transforming her personal liberty into a tool for collective rescue, she demonstrated that freedom was not merely an individual status to be enjoyed, but a shared responsibility to be actively extended to others.

## Chapter 6: Freedom Was a Network

Popular memory often pictures Harriet Tubman as a solitary figure moving silently through the southern woods, or envisions the Underground Railroad as a literal system of subterranean tracks, secret tunnels, and trains. The reality was far more complex, dangerous, and deeply collective. Tubman did not operate in a vacuum. Her successes relied on a vast, sophisticated web of courageous individuals, shared intelligence, and community organizing. Freedom was not a solo journey; it was a collaborative network of ordinary people performing extraordinary acts of resistance.

In the Chesapeake Bay region, Black mariners played a vital role in communication. Enslaved and free Black watermen worked docks, piloted timber boats, and navigated the Eastern Shore's waterways. Their mobility connected communities and carried news about routes, work, sales, patrols, and opportunities. Tubman's own labor in timber country placed her within this mobile Black world. Evidence rarely identifies every helper on a secret journey, so the network should be understood as essential without assigning undocumented acts to unnamed individuals.

Once away from the plantations, freedom seekers depended heavily on free Black communities. In towns and cities across Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, free Black families risked their own liberty to provide food, shelter, and clean clothing. Following the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, these acts of hospitality became federal crimes, yet these communities persisted. African Methodist Episcopal churches and other local congregations served as vital organizational hubs, offering sanctuary and raising funds. These safe places were not always hidden basements; often, they were ordinary homes in bustling neighborhoods where freedom seekers could blend in with the local population.

This network also bridged racial, religious, and economic divides. Tubman collaborated closely with prominent abolitionists who organized resources. In Wilmington, Delaware, Quaker abolitionist Thomas Garrett coordinated safe passage, provided financial assistance, and supplied shoes, despite facing devastating lawsuits. In Philadelphia, William Still and the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society offered crucial administrative support, documenting the stories of those who arrived. Still’s meticulous records, kept at great personal risk, now serve as primary evidence of the network's scale, proving that the effort was highly organized rather than spontaneous.

Crucially, the decisions of the freedom seekers themselves shaped every journey. Tubman did not rescue passive victims; she guided active participants who made the agonizing choice to leave behind everything they knew. Family members played indispensable roles, acting as lookouts, preparing provisions, and sending coded signals. The entire network succeeded because of this mutual trust and constant vigilance. If a traveler hesitated or a lookout signaled danger, plans were instantly altered. Freedom seekers often escaped on Saturday nights, exploiting the delay in printing runaway notices until Monday.

By understanding the Underground Railroad as a human network rather than a literal railroad or a one-woman show, Tubman’s true genius becomes clear. Her strength lay not just in her physical endurance, but in her ability to navigate, trust, and mobilize this diverse coalition. She turned individual acts of resistance into a powerful, organized, and lasting movement for collective liberation.

## Chapter 7: Abolition on the Edge of War

By the late 1850s, the struggle against slavery had intensified, and Harriet Tubman expanded her efforts from secret rescue missions to public advocacy and political alliance. Her primary base was St. Catharines, Canada West, a growing community of self-liberated people just across the Niagara River from New York. Here, safe from the reach of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850—which compelled Northern citizens to assist in recapturing escapees—Tubman rented a home, supported her aging parents, and helped newly arrived refugees find shelter, clothing, and employment. She frequented the Salem Chapel Church, which served as a spiritual hub for this abolitionist community.

To sustain this community and fund her ongoing rescue trips, Tubman traveled throughout the northeastern United States and spoke at anti-slavery gatherings. Publicity created both support and legal danger, so parts of her activity were deliberately discreet. Through these meetings, she built ties with reformers in Boston, Philadelphia, and Auburn, New York. In 1859 she purchased property near Auburn from Senator William Seward, creating a home base for relatives as war approached.

By 1858, this network brought her into contact with the radical abolitionist John Brown, who was planning armed action against slavery. Later testimony links Tubman to discussion and recruitment among Black communities in Canada, and Brown expressed respect for her experience. The evidence does not show that she planned the details of the Harpers Ferry raid, and she was not present when it began in October 1859. Accounts differ about why, so illness or disagreement should not be stated as a settled explanation.

The failure of Brown’s raid and his subsequent execution accelerated the national political crisis. As the United States drifted toward civil war, Tubman remained active on the front lines of the abolitionist struggle. In April 1860, while traveling through Troy, New York, she participated in the dramatic physical rescue of Charles Nalle, a fugitive slave arrested by federal marshals. Tubman joined a crowd of local citizens, physically wrestling Nalle from custody, enduring blows from officers, and securing his escape to safety.

This bold action demonstrated how Tubman successfully turned her hard-won survival skills, deep faith, and extensive networks into collective resistance. She was no longer just a guide operating in the shadows of the Eastern Shore; she had become a prominent figure in a national movement. As the election of 1860 and the secession of Southern states brought the country to the edge of open warfare, Tubman stood prepared to offer her specialized skills to the Union cause, ready to transform her underground network into an active instrument of military liberation.

## Chapter 8: Nurse, Scout, Spy, and Raid Leader

When the American Civil War broke out, Tubman entered a new phase of action against slavery. In 1862, she traveled to the Union-occupied Sea Islands of South Carolina around Port Royal, where thousands of people who had left slavery were building lives amid military uncertainty. Tubman worked in nursing, relief, and support among soldiers and refugees. Later accounts associate her with plant-based remedies, but the evidence does not permit exact claims about particular treatments or outcomes. Her work belonged to a wider Black struggle against disease, displacement, hunger, and the Confederacy.

However, her contributions quickly expanded beyond medical care. Tubman understood that the key to military success in the treacherous Southern lowcountry lay in local intelligence. Appointed to lead a secret service operation, she organized a sophisticated network of nine Black scouts, pilots, and informants. These individuals possessed intimate knowledge of the coastal waterways, hidden paths, and Confederate troop movements. Because local enslaved people trusted Tubman, they shared vital information about where Confederate forces had placed underwater mines, known then as torpedoes, and where rebel outposts were positioned. Tubman synthesized this data, creating reliable maps for Union commanders who were otherwise blind in the unfamiliar terrain.

This intelligence work culminated in the historic Combahee River raid on June 2, 1863. Tubman collaborated closely with Colonel James Montgomery, commander of the Second South Carolina Colored Infantry, a regiment composed of Black soldiers. Armed with the precise navigational data gathered by Tubman’s scouts, three Union gunboats—the *John Adams*, the *Sentinel*, and the *Harriet A. Weed*—slipped quietly up the Combahee River under the cover of darkness. The vessels successfully bypassed the hidden Confederate mines that would have destroyed them.

The raid was a spectacular success. Union forces destroyed valuable Confederate storehouses, crops, and plantations, disrupting the local war economy. As the steam whistles blew, hundreds of enslaved people realized that liberation had arrived. They rushed to the riverbanks, carrying what few possessions they could hold, and scrambled aboard the gunboats. Tubman, singing spirituals to calm the panicked crowds, helped guide more than seven hundred and fifty people to safety and freedom. Many of these liberated men subsequently enlisted in the Union Army.

The Combahee River operation was the first military expedition in United States history planned and led in part by a woman, proving her to be an invaluable military asset. It stood as a powerful testament to Tubman's strategic brilliance. By transforming personal trust, spiritual conviction, and local Black knowledge networks into a coordinated military action, she demonstrated how collective resistance could dismantle oppression on a massive scale. Her wartime service proved that the fight for freedom required not just physical courage, but the organized power of an entire community working in unison.

## Chapter 9: The Long Fight After Emancipation

When the Civil War ended, Harriet Tubman returned to Auburn, New York, where she had purchased land in 1859. This brick home became the anchor for her next long campaign, which shifted from physical liberation to sustaining the lives of those who had survived the transition to freedom. In Auburn, she built a sanctuary for her elderly parents, extended family, and other displaced people who sought refuge in the North. In 1869, she married Nelson Davis, a veteran of the United States Colored Troops who was much younger than she. Together, they built a stable domestic life, adopting a baby girl named Gertie in 1874. Yet, financial security remained elusive. Despite her extensive wartime service as a scout, spy, and nurse, the federal government denied her a regular pension for decades. She relied on the support of local allies, the proceeds from an authorized biography written by Sarah Bradford, and her own agricultural labor, selling vegetables door-to-door to survive. It was only after Davis died that she received a small widow's pension, and later a modest increase recognizing her own military service near the end of her life.

Tubman’s personal poverty did not limit her commitment to mutual aid. She transformed her Auburn property into a bustling center of care, welcoming elderly, sick, and impoverished Black Americans who had no other safety net in a segregated society. To formalize this work, she purchased adjacent property in 1896. Lacking the funds to operate the facility herself, she partnered with the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, deeding the property to them. The Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged officially opened in 1908, representing her belief that freedom was incomplete without community care and dignity in old age. Ironically, as her own health declined, she spent her final years as a resident in the very home she had worked so hard to establish.

During these decades, Tubman participated in the women's suffrage movement. She traveled to meetings in Boston, New York, and Washington, speaking alongside reformers like Susan B. Anthony. Tubman argued that women, particularly Black women, had earned the right to vote through their labor, survival, and sacrifices during the war. However, she had to navigate a movement increasingly compromised by racial exclusion, as many white suffragists sidelined Black allies to appease white Southern voters. In response, Tubman aligned with the National Association of Colored Women, working to ensure that the struggle for the vote addressed both gender and racial oppression.

Through these diverse efforts, Tubman demonstrated that the fight for freedom did not end with the Emancipation Proclamation. By leveraging her reputation, her deep spiritual faith, and her extensive networks of Black and white reformers, she continued to build institutions of collective survival. Her post-war life proved that the networks of her youth were the foundation for a lifelong strategy of community empowerment.

## Chapter 10: Memory Beyond the Moses Story

After her death in 1913, the public memory of Harriet Tubman began to shift from the lived reality of a complex political organizer to a simplified legend. Early biographies, written during her lifetime by Sarah Bradford to raise funds for Tubman's support, laid the groundwork for this transformation. While Bradford's texts preserved invaluable details, they also introduced exaggerations that painted her as an exceptional, solitary figure. Over time, popular retellings inflated the number of people she personally guided to freedom from the documented estimate of about seventy individuals during thirteen missions to a symbolic but inaccurate count of three hundred. This inflation, though meant to honor her, unintentionally obscured the precise, calculated nature of her work. It minimized the agency of the freedom seekers who made their own perilous decisions to escape, and glossed over the highly organized logistics—such as forging travel passes and utilizing disguises—that made her rescue missions successful.

Visual images also shaped her legacy. For generations, the dominant image of Tubman was an elderly woman seated in a shawl, representing a tired, saintly figure of the past. The discovery of an 1860s photograph, found in an album belonging to activist Emily Howland, offered a powerful counter-narrative. Showing a young, resilient, and stylishly dressed Tubman, this portrait restored her image as an active, formidable operative in the prime of her life. It reminded modern viewers of the physical and intellectual energy required for her work, not only on the Underground Railroad but also during the Civil War. As a scout and spy, she famously helped command the Combahee River Raid, liberating over seven hundred enslaved people. This photograph challenged the public to see her not just as a passive monument, but as a dynamic strategist.

Today, public monuments, national parks, and currency designs reflect a deeper understanding of her significance. Modern memorials, such as the national historical parks in Maryland and New York, move away from the image of a lone, mythic savior. Instead, they emphasize her place within a broader struggle, depicting her as a leader who operated within a sophisticated network of Black mariners, safe house keepers, family members, and abolitionists like William Still. Proposed currency designs also signify a national recognition of her impact. This shift in memory honors the collaborative nature of the Underground Railroad.

Tubman’s enduring significance lies in how she answered the challenges of her era. She did not act in isolation. Her personal courage was a catalyst, but her success depended on collective action. She transformed her knowledge of the landscape, her spiritual faith, and her trusted networks into a strategy for liberation. By working with others, she proved that individual bravery achieves its greatest power when joined with a committed community. Her life demonstrates that freedom is not a solitary path, but a shared labor of resistance, planning, and mutual care. This is the true legacy of Harriet Tubman: a testament to what can be achieved when personal conviction is channeled into collective struggle.