Runaway Slave Harriet Tubman Returned South to Rescue Her Family
Tubman became known as a Moses to her people.
WHILE Harriet Tubman is celebrated today, this amazing woman was already a legend in her own lifetime.
Tubman’s life began as a slave in Maryland. Had she been treated with kindness, she might never have become one of the most-famous conductors on the underground railroad or a spy for the Union during the American Civil War. However, she experienced the full brutality of the slave system. Her family members were sold south. She was whipped to compel her to work night and day without sleep until her health broke. One master even forced her to haul loads some men would have staggered under. At times she was flogged, starved, and threatened. When she was thirteen, an overseer cracked her skull when he flung a two-pound weight at another slave.
But Tubman believed the gospel. After her mother nursed her back to health, the faithful Christian girl prayed that her master would become a Christian. However, when she learned that he was going to sell her south she pleaded, “Lord, if you ain’t never going to change that man’s heart, kill him, Lord...so he won’t do no more mischief.” The master died suddenly. Tubman was horrified, knowing he must have gone to hell. “Oh, then it ’peared like I would give the world full of silver and gold, if I had it, to bring that poor soul back, I would give myself; I would give everything! But he was gone, I couldn’t pray for him no more.”
Finally, Tubman and her brothers fled north. By then she was a married woman, and she resolved by the Lord’s help to make a home for her family in the North and bring them there. The frightened brothers turned back, but Tubman refused to stay in slavery, vowing never to be taken alive. She said, “Lord, I'm going to hold steady on to You and You’ve got to see me through.”
She was as good as her word, returning to Maryland nineteen times, first to attempt the rescue of her husband (who refused to join her) and later to lead over three hundred other slaves to safety. Southern planters offered a $40,000 reward for her, dead or alive. However, she put her confidence in the Lord and was never caught.
Tubman lived to be about 93 years old, dying on this day 10 March 1913 in a home for aged African-Americans that she had founded. Today, statues and plaques commemorate Tubman. President George H.W. Bush proclaimed Harriet Tubman Day on the day of her death in her memory, and the Post Office later issued a stamp in her honor.
—Dan Graves
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For more on Harriet Tubman, watch Harriet Tubman: They Called Her Moses at RedeemTV
(Harriet Tubman: They Called Her Moses can be purchased at Vision Video)
The Torchlighters: The Harriet Tubman Story can be purchased at Vision Video.