WEBVTT - Who Was Harriet Tubman? 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:07.840 Welcome to Brainstey, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey Brainstaff Lauren 0:00:07.880 --> 0:00:13.880 Volgebaum here. Harriet Tubman stood just five feet tall that's 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:16.840 one and a half meters. She never made much money 0:00:16.880 --> 0:00:20.360 in her lifetime and lived humbly, eating mostly food that 0:00:20.400 --> 0:00:24.119 she grew in her own garden, but she's one of 0:00:24.120 --> 0:00:28.440 the most famous civilians admired black Americans in United States history. 0:00:29.400 --> 0:00:32.720 After escaping from enslavement in eighteen forty nine, she became 0:00:32.760 --> 0:00:36.400 a conductor on the underground railroad, venturing back into Maryland, 0:00:36.600 --> 0:00:40.000 a state where enslavement was legal, thirteen times during the 0:00:40.080 --> 0:00:43.440 eighteen fifties, to help numerous other freedom seekers find their 0:00:43.440 --> 0:00:47.560 way north. During the Civil War, Tubman traveled south again 0:00:47.680 --> 0:00:50.479 to work as a spy, scout, nurse, and cook for 0:00:50.520 --> 0:00:54.680 the Union Army. After the conflict, she established the first 0:00:54.760 --> 0:00:59.959 nursing home for elderly black Americans. Tubman has grown into 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:03.480 such an American icon that her legend sometimes obscures the 0:01:03.480 --> 0:01:07.360 real person behind it. So today let's look at the 0:01:07.360 --> 0:01:10.640 facts of her life and some misconceptions about it, as 0:01:10.640 --> 0:01:13.880 well as how she became such an enduring symbol of freedom. 0:01:16.240 --> 0:01:20.160 Harriet Ross Tudman was born enslaved around eighteen twenty two 0:01:20.440 --> 0:01:24.720 in Dorchester County on the Maryland Eastern Shore. Her parents 0:01:24.840 --> 0:01:28.760 named her air Minta or Minty for short. She was 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:31.679 the fifth of nine children of Harriet or Writt Green 0:01:31.800 --> 0:01:34.480 Ross and her husband Ben Ross, who had met when 0:01:34.480 --> 0:01:37.000 they're in slaver's households, had merged in eighteen oh three 0:01:37.280 --> 0:01:41.640 in a marriage of their own. Tudman's youth was harsh 0:01:41.680 --> 0:01:44.640 and brutal. At an early age, she was set to 0:01:44.680 --> 0:01:48.200 work as a field hand. Her father had learned timber inspection, 0:01:48.520 --> 0:01:52.160 and their enslavers often sent him away to work. As 0:01:52.200 --> 0:01:54.800 the estate was small, Tudman and her siblings and mother 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:58.600 were often hired out, meaning that sometimes Tudman had to 0:01:58.640 --> 0:02:01.760 act as a parent to her siblings, and sometimes she 0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:04.800 wound up among strangers who whipped her for failing to 0:02:04.840 --> 0:02:09.600 do work. She had never been taught. As a teenager 0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:12.960 running errands, she once refused to help an overseer who 0:02:13.000 --> 0:02:16.920 was tracking an escaped man. When the enslaver threw an 0:02:16.960 --> 0:02:19.160 iron weight to attempt to stop the man who was 0:02:19.200 --> 0:02:24.200 seeking freedom, it caught her instead, fracturing her skull. The 0:02:24.280 --> 0:02:28.480 injury went essentially untreated beyond her mother's modest means and 0:02:28.520 --> 0:02:32.880 caused headaches and seizures for the rest of Tubman's life. 0:02:33.400 --> 0:02:35.679 Around the age of twenty two, she married a free 0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:39.160 black man by the name of John Tubman. Though the 0:02:39.200 --> 0:02:42.240 marriage wouldn't last, she kept his surname and began using 0:02:42.240 --> 0:02:45.680 her mother's first name as her own, becoming Harriet Tubman. 0:02:48.240 --> 0:02:51.880 In March of eighteen forty nine, Tubman's enslaver died, leaving 0:02:51.919 --> 0:02:56.280 behind an estate deeply in debt. Tubman had already seen 0:02:56.320 --> 0:02:58.959 three of her sisters auctioned off feared being sent to 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:02.920 an even crueler house. When her husband, John refused to 0:03:02.919 --> 0:03:06.600 go along, she and her brothers Ben and Henry escaped together. 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:09.720 After a few weeks, the two young men lost their 0:03:09.720 --> 0:03:13.360 nerve and returned, but Tumman refused to give up. She 0:03:13.560 --> 0:03:18.839 slipped off again, this time alone. She traveled by night, 0:03:19.080 --> 0:03:21.560 using the North Star to guide her, and sought refuge 0:03:21.600 --> 0:03:24.400 during the day with abolitionist Quaker families who were willing 0:03:24.400 --> 0:03:28.200 to break Maryland law to help escapees. She made her 0:03:28.240 --> 0:03:32.600 way through Delaware and eventually crossed into Free Pennsylvania. She 0:03:32.680 --> 0:03:36.920 later recalled, there was such a glory over everything. The 0:03:37.000 --> 0:03:39.880 sun came like gold through the trees and over the fields, 0:03:40.040 --> 0:03:44.480 and I felt like I was in heaven. But Tubman's 0:03:44.560 --> 0:03:49.720 joy was muted because her family remained behind. After settling 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:52.440 in Philadelphia, she worked as a hotel cook and saved 0:03:52.440 --> 0:03:55.680 her earnings to subsidize her secret career as a conductor 0:03:55.800 --> 0:03:59.640 on the underground Railroad, a clandestine abolitionist network that it 0:03:59.680 --> 0:04:03.080 exists did since the eighteen twenties. It was a highly 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:07.480 dangerous mission. Anyone caught helping enslaved people break free faced 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:11.160 the risk of being publicly branded and jailed, and, in 0:04:11.200 --> 0:04:17.560 Tumman's case, enslaved once more. A Tumman followed elaborate procedures 0:04:17.600 --> 0:04:22.159 to maintain stealth. She wore disguises, communicated with freedom seekers 0:04:22.200 --> 0:04:24.800 through third parties, and arranged for them to meet her 0:04:24.839 --> 0:04:27.440 miles away from their homes to reduce the chance that 0:04:27.480 --> 0:04:31.799 they would lead pursuers to her if all else failed, 0:04:32.160 --> 0:04:36.159 She carried a pistol. She warned her underground passengers that 0:04:36.200 --> 0:04:38.320 if they tried to turn back, she would shoot them 0:04:38.360 --> 0:04:40.680 to prevent them from betraying her and the rest of 0:04:40.680 --> 0:04:45.560 the group. A newspaper ad in eighteen forty nine offered 0:04:45.600 --> 0:04:48.520 fifty dollars for Tummen's capture in Maryland and one hundred 0:04:48.560 --> 0:04:51.760 dollars for her capture outside the state, the equivalent of 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:57.080 thousands of dollars today. In eighteen fifty, Congress passed the 0:04:57.120 --> 0:05:00.520 so called Fugitive Slave Act, which made such a efforts 0:05:00.560 --> 0:05:03.880 a federal crime. It also made anyone who escaped to 0:05:03.920 --> 0:05:07.839 freedom subject to capture and re enslavement if they were caught. 0:05:08.960 --> 0:05:12.840 That didn't stop Tubman. That same year, she slipped back 0:05:12.839 --> 0:05:16.000 into Maryland and helped her niece spend her two children escape. 0:05:17.160 --> 0:05:19.719 Over the next decade, she repeated that mission a dozen 0:05:19.760 --> 0:05:23.159 more times, cautiously confining her efforts to farms that she 0:05:23.240 --> 0:05:27.560 knew on Maryland's eastern shore. As word got around of 0:05:27.600 --> 0:05:31.240 Tubman's successful missions, she became a sought after speaker at 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:35.800 abolitionist fundraiser meetings. She also became a target of mercenaries 0:05:35.920 --> 0:05:40.080 who earned money catching people who had managed to escape. 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:42.880 Their failure to apprehend her only added to her legend. 0:05:43.320 --> 0:05:49.400 Her admirers nicknamed her General Tubman. In eighteen sixty, she 0:05:49.480 --> 0:05:52.440 pulled off an even more daring feat by thwarting federal 0:05:52.440 --> 0:05:56.279 marshals in Troy, New York. They were attempting to deport 0:05:56.320 --> 0:05:59.960 a freedom seeker back to Virginia. Tubman disguised herself as 0:06:00.080 --> 0:06:03.560 an elderly woman and slipped into a government building. When 0:06:03.600 --> 0:06:05.960 the prisoner and his captors stepped out into the street, 0:06:06.360 --> 0:06:09.080 Tubman shouted a signal from an upper story window, and 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:12.320 a mob of abolitionists converged on them and seized the prisoner, 0:06:12.480 --> 0:06:17.960 who they spirited away to a waiting riverboat. Numbers reported 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:21.720 contemporarily seemed to have been inflated, but according to research 0:06:21.760 --> 0:06:25.880 by historian Caate Clifford Larsen, Tubman led about seventy people 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:29.359 to freedom and provided instructions that enabled another seventy or 0:06:29.360 --> 0:06:33.160 so to flee on their own. Tubman claimed, I never 0:06:33.279 --> 0:06:35.520 ran my train off the track, and I never lost 0:06:35.520 --> 0:06:40.839 a passenger. After the Civil War broke out in eighteen 0:06:40.880 --> 0:06:45.720 sixty one, Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew, a fervent abolitionist, 0:06:45.839 --> 0:06:48.640 contacted Tubman, a friend of his, and told her that 0:06:48.680 --> 0:06:53.080 the Union forces needed her help. He arranged transportation for 0:06:53.120 --> 0:06:56.120 Tubman to travel to Hilton Head, South Carolina, where she 0:06:56.200 --> 0:07:00.880 went to work for Major General David Hunter. Ostensibly, her 0:07:00.880 --> 0:07:03.360 mission was to help provide food and clothing to the 0:07:03.480 --> 0:07:07.159 escaped enslaved people who were flocking to the Union Army's camps, 0:07:07.480 --> 0:07:09.880 but that seems to have been a cover story for 0:07:09.920 --> 0:07:13.720 her real work in gathering intelligence. With a budget of 0:07:13.760 --> 0:07:17.040 one hundred dollars in secret Service money, she recruited a 0:07:17.080 --> 0:07:19.840 small team of escaped people to scout for the Union forces, 0:07:20.000 --> 0:07:23.320 who were experienced riverboat pilots and knew every inch of 0:07:23.360 --> 0:07:28.520 the South Carolina coast line. After President Abraham Lincoln authorized 0:07:28.600 --> 0:07:31.160 the recruiting and deployment of Black troops in the summer 0:07:31.200 --> 0:07:35.000 of eighteen sixty two, Tubman and her spies provided intelligence 0:07:35.040 --> 0:07:39.000 for the new units. In January of eighteen sixty three, 0:07:39.280 --> 0:07:42.800 her team's efforts helped Union forces evade Confederate guards and 0:07:42.880 --> 0:07:46.800 stage a nine day covert operation to seize needed supplies. 0:07:49.080 --> 0:07:51.880 Her team operated as a kind of special forces a, 0:07:52.000 --> 0:07:55.360 sneaking into enemy territory to gather information on their troop 0:07:55.400 --> 0:08:00.640 movements and fortifications. In June of eighteen sixty three, accompanied 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:03.320 a Union colonel and his forces into the southern low 0:08:03.360 --> 0:08:06.960 country of South Carolina and helped lead a crucial raid. 0:08:07.640 --> 0:08:10.720 Tubman and her scouts sailed up river and stealthily went 0:08:10.720 --> 0:08:12.960 ashore to talk to the enslaved people who had placed 0:08:13.040 --> 0:08:15.960 mines in the water for Confederate forces, so that they 0:08:15.960 --> 0:08:20.480 could map the locations and locate the enemy's storehouses. Then 0:08:20.520 --> 0:08:23.360 she helped guide the Union crafts around the deadly mines. 0:08:24.520 --> 0:08:27.280 The resulting raid not only struck a devastating blow to 0:08:27.280 --> 0:08:31.120 Confederate forces, but also resulted in freedom for seven hundred 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:34.280 enslaved people, many of whom Tubman recruited to serve for 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:39.360 the Union. After the Civil War ended in the Union's 0:08:39.400 --> 0:08:42.920 victory in eighteen sixty five, Tubman left her position and 0:08:42.960 --> 0:08:45.319 set out for the town of Auburn, New York, where 0:08:45.360 --> 0:08:47.760 she and her family settled on property that the state's 0:08:47.760 --> 0:08:52.240 former governor had sold her on generous terms. But on 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:54.800 the way she got a rough reminder that the struggle 0:08:54.920 --> 0:08:59.880 for true freedom wasn't over. On a literal train north, 0:09:00.320 --> 0:09:03.640 a train conductor refused to honor Tubman's soldiers pass as 0:09:03.679 --> 0:09:06.640 a train ticket. They got into an argument, and he 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:10.400 and several passengers threw her into the baggage car, breaking 0:09:10.440 --> 0:09:14.280 her arm and three ribs. She was unable to work 0:09:14.320 --> 0:09:18.120 for months. This woman, who had helped defeat the Confederacy, 0:09:18.280 --> 0:09:21.520 was compelled to accept handouts from neighbors and local grocers 0:09:21.600 --> 0:09:27.040 just to feed her family and elderly parents. Once she healed, 0:09:27.040 --> 0:09:30.920 she began growing vegetables and raising chickens. She did domestic 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:34.000 work and took in borders. She fell in love with 0:09:34.040 --> 0:09:36.880 one of her guests, a former enslaved man and Union 0:09:36.960 --> 0:09:39.440 veteran by the name of Nelson Davis, and the two 0:09:39.480 --> 0:09:43.360 married in eighteen sixty nine. In eighteen seventy four, the 0:09:43.400 --> 0:09:48.880 couple adopted a baby girl named Gerdy, but Davis's ill 0:09:48.960 --> 0:09:52.160 health and other setbacks meant that Tubman and her family 0:09:52.240 --> 0:09:55.960 continued to struggle to make ends meet. The federal government 0:09:56.000 --> 0:09:58.520 wouldn't give her a pension for her wartime service as 0:09:58.520 --> 0:10:02.000 a spy, but after Davis's death in eighteen eighty eight, 0:10:02.160 --> 0:10:05.520 she was able to collect a widow's stipend and eventually 0:10:05.600 --> 0:10:07.760 received a pension for having worked as a nurse in 0:10:07.800 --> 0:10:11.719 the latter part of the war, and she was determined 0:10:11.760 --> 0:10:15.400 to keep helping others. In eighteen ninety six, she scraped 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:17.559 together enough money to buy a second plot of land 0:10:17.600 --> 0:10:20.840 alongside her Auburn property, where she started a home for 0:10:20.920 --> 0:10:26.240 elderly black Americans. Seven years later, as Tumman aged, she 0:10:26.280 --> 0:10:29.959 turned the property over to the African Methodist aposcople Zion Church, 0:10:30.160 --> 0:10:32.640 which she was a member of, with the understanding that 0:10:32.679 --> 0:10:36.440 they would continue to run the home. Tumman lived next 0:10:36.440 --> 0:10:39.320 door until her own health began to decline, at which 0:10:39.360 --> 0:10:41.319 point she became one of the residents at the home 0:10:41.400 --> 0:10:45.480 she had founded. She passed away there in nineteen thirteen 0:10:45.840 --> 0:10:51.560 at the age of ninety years, but her influence did 0:10:51.559 --> 0:10:56.080 not end there. Tumman's friends included many prominent figures like 0:10:56.160 --> 0:11:00.960 Frederick Douglas, Lucretia Coffin Mott, Martha coffin Wright, Harriet Beecher Stowe, 0:11:01.280 --> 0:11:05.440 Thomas Garrett, and Susan B. Anthony. She was buried with 0:11:05.480 --> 0:11:09.400 military honors in Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn. The city 0:11:09.400 --> 0:11:13.280 commemorated her legacy with a plaque on the courthouse. During 0:11:13.320 --> 0:11:16.160 World War II. After a successful war bond drive by 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:19.560 an African American women's group, a liberty ship was christened 0:11:19.679 --> 0:11:23.600 the S. S. Harriet Tubman in her honor. She became 0:11:23.640 --> 0:11:27.200 the subject of numerous biographies and children's books, and the 0:11:27.280 --> 0:11:29.880 Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged was recognized as a 0:11:29.960 --> 0:11:33.040 National Historic Landmark and added to the National Register of 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:37.120 Historic Places in nineteen seventy four. Four years later, she 0:11:37.160 --> 0:11:39.560 became the first black woman to appear on a US 0:11:39.640 --> 0:11:45.280 postage stamp. A tag team of lawmakers have been trying 0:11:45.320 --> 0:11:48.120 to have her image replace President Andrew Jackson's on the 0:11:48.120 --> 0:11:51.360 twenty dollar bill for over a decade now, though they 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:55.120 haven't yet been successful, as she did appear on a 0:11:55.120 --> 0:12:00.440 limited edition uncirculated silver dollar in twenty twenty four. Spend 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:02.360 it as a dollar, but it's worth a good bit 0:12:02.400 --> 0:12:06.040 more than that on the collector's market. The US meant 0:12:06.080 --> 0:12:09.440 paid proceeds from it to the National Underground Railroad Freedom 0:12:09.480 --> 0:12:13.520 Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, and to the Harriet Tubman Home 0:12:13.720 --> 0:12:21.000 in Auburn, New York. Today's episode is based on the 0:12:21.040 --> 0:12:24.600 article Harriet Tubman's life and impact on the Underground Railroad 0:12:24.640 --> 0:12:27.200 on how Stuffworks dot Com, written by Patrick J. Higer. 0:12:27.800 --> 0:12:30.280 Brainstuff is production by Heart Radio in partnership with how 0:12:30.280 --> 0:12:33.280 Stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. But 0:12:33.360 --> 0:12:36.520 four more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, 0:12:36.640 --> 0:12:39.520 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.