Anne Schraff - The Life of Harriet Tubman. Moses of the Underground Railroad

Harriet Tubmans Tale of Courage

I grew up like a neglected weedignorant of liberty, having no experience of it. Now I've been free, I know what a dreadful condition slavery is. Harriet Tubman ran away from slavery in 1849, walking more than one hundred miles to freedom in the North. For the next sixteen years, Tubman risked her newfound freedomand her lifeto help about three hundred other slaves escape.

Sorting myth from truth in this remarkable tale of courage and heroism, author Anne Schraff breathes new life into the story of the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad. During the Civil War, Tubman worked as a nurse and a scout for the Union Army. In her later years she joined the struggles for the education of her people and for womens rights.

this text flows as swiftly as a novel.

This book shimmers with authenticity

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anne Schraff is the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction for young people. She maintains a keen interest in United States and world history.

For sixteen years, Harriet Tubman risked her freedom and her life to help almost three hundred slaves escape the shackles of forced labor.

Josiah Bailey was a handsome, muscular Maryland slave, valued as much for his intelligence as for his strength. He was a skilled farmer entrusted with helping to manage the plantation where he worked. A quiet man, Bailey probably would have spent his whole life in slavery except for an incident in November 1856. That incident made him seek out Harriet Tubman, a runaway slave known to thousands as Moses. Their meeting changed Baileys life.

Bailey had been hired out by his master to another plantation owner, William Hughlett, for many years. It was common for masters to rent out their slaves to others when they were not needed on the home plantation. This brought extra income to the masters who owned the slaves.

Hughlett decided he wanted to buy Bailey and train him to be an overseer on his plantation. Hughlett paid $2,000 at a time when good field hands were selling for about $1,500. But on the fall morning when he arrived to take possession of Josiah Bailey, his newly purchased slave, Hughlett made a serious mistake.

Bailey was in his small cabin eating breakfast when Hughlett shouted for him to come out. Bailey left his meal and dutifully presented himself to his new master.

Now Joe, Hughlett demanded, strip, and take a licking.

During the times Hughlett had rented Bailey, the slave had always done excellent work. Hughlett had never found reason to criticize Bailey. What had Bailey done to deserve this? When he asked Hughlett why he was getting a beating, the white man replied, You always worked well, but you belong to me now. I always begin by giving them [new slaves] a good licking.... Now strip and take it.

Bailey obeyed. He stripped and took a terrible beating. But the injustice and humiliation of the flogging made Bailey decide that this would be his final beating. As soon as he could, he sought out Harriet Tubmans father. Next time Moses comes, Bailey told him, let me know.

Moses was Harriet Tubman, a small, ordinary-looking Maryland woman, a runaway slave herself. She secretly met with escaping slaves and led them northward to freedom along a route she knew by heart. She was familiar with every mile of land between Maryland and Canada. She used one of the many trails leading northward toward freedom. These routes were known as the Underground Railroad, and Tubman was one of its most effective and fearless conductors.

Bailey continued to work for Hughlett until one night when word spread through the plantation that Tubman was in the area to shepherd another group of fugitive slaves to freedom. Josiah Bailey joined the group of runaways.

Because Bailey was so valuable, rewards of $1,000 and then $2,000 were offered for his capture and return. But Tubman was extremely clever. Garrett was a friend of Tubmans who actively opposed slavery.

After resting at Garretts home, Tubman led Bailey and the others to a wagon carrying some bricklayers. She had hired them as a decoy for her runaway slaves. Tubman always planned well ahead, using a wide variety of imaginative covers to disguise her caravans of slaves. The bricklayers made room for the slaves among them, and then the bricklayers began singing and shouting merrily as the wagon rolled over a bridge where the local sheriffs frequently searched passing wagons for slaves. The runaways huddled in the bottom of the wagon by the feet of the raucous bricklayers, and the wagon was waved through without a close inspection. Once again, one of Tubmans ruses had worked.

Tubman then led her little group through Chester, Pennsylvania, into Philadelphia, then to upstate New York. But Bailey began to worry that in spite of Tubmans skill they would all be caught and returned to slavery. He could not quite believe Moses could pull this off. Later, Tubman recalled Baileys depression this way: Joe was silent; he talked no more; he sang no more.

They were almost to Canada and freedom, but there was one final hurdle. Tubman led them onto a train that would cross a bridge into Canada. As they crossed over into Canada, Tubman ran to Josiah Bailey, grabbed his shoulder and cried, You shook the lions paw, Joe. Youre free! Tubman called entering Canada, where slavery had been abolished, shaking the lions paw.

Now, at last, Josiah Bailey was a free man. Everyone gathered around him. Tubman could not see Joe during the wild celebration, but she could hear his joyous singing. After that, Tubman saw Bailey several times when he was living in Canadahappy, industrious, and free.

Josiah Bailey was just one of about three hundred slaves Harriet Tubman would lead to freedom.

When Harriet Tubman was a grown-up, she looked back on her childhood and recalled, I grew up like a neglected weed, ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it.

Harriets mother, Harriet Greene, was nicknamed Rit. When Rit was ten years old, she and her mother arrived at the Edward Brodas plantation. Later Rit married Benjamin Ross, a skilled lumberman. Ross supervised a crew of slaves cutting oak, cypress, and poplar trees and then hauling them to the shipyards of Baltimore. Ross was said to have strange powers. Harriet Tubman later said that her father could predict the weather and that he foretold the Mexican War.

Harriet was born around 1820nobody knows for sure because her birth was not recorded. Her parents could neither read nor write. They did not even know what month it was. They told time by the seasons: summer, winter, planting time, and harvest time. When slave children were born, friends and relatives came to visit the mother, and their memories served as birth notices.

Harriet and Benjamin Ross named their daughter Araminta, and as a small child she was called Minty. Sometime during her later childhood she decided to use her mothers nameHarriet. Little Harriet was the middle child of eleven children born to the Rosses. There are no dependable records revealing all their names or how many survived to adulthood.

Harriet was born in the tiny community of Bucktown, in Dorchester County, Maryland, about sixty miles south of Baltimore. The so-called Mason-Dixon line that separated the slave-owning state of Maryland from free Pennsylvania was one hundred miles to the north.