Harriet Tubman was born a slave in Dorchester County, Maryland and named Araminta Ross. Maryland did not have the huge plantations we associate with American chattel slavery. “Minty” was rented to many masters to do a variety of work from the age of five until she escaped to freedom. When she ran away from Maryland it took her faith, intelligence, cunning, love of family, and determination to bring her family through. By that time she had married freedman John Tubman and had changed her name to Harriet.  She returned to Dorchester County time and time again to take approximately 70 slaves on the journey to freedom.  Harriet had faith in the American dream and acted out of the conservative values of the time – temperance, Christian service, and love of country. Those values gave her a strong sense of right and wrong. Slavery was wrong. Denying women the right to vote was wrong. Drunken behavior was wrong. She had the responsibility to fight for what she knew to be right.

By 1859, Tubman had brought her aged parents through to Canada. She owned a home in Auburn, New York, where she sheltered and taught fugitives how to live as free people. She had quit the Underground Railroad, but that did not stop her from forcibly rescuing a fugitive slave from a courtroom in Troy, New York in 1860 as she was passing through town.

She was angry with Mr. Lincoln for not doing what he knew was right. Eager to take action toward freeing her people, she went to the Department of the South during the Civil War to serve as a Union nurse and spy. Tubman was able to plan and lead an armed raid that destroyed rebel storehouses, rice plantations, and freed over 750 slaves.

While she lived in the North, Tubman raised money for the abolitionist and the suffrage movements by speaking at conventions and gatherings. The life of white women in the United States was different from hers, but she recognized that all women deserve the right to vote, saying, “I have worked hard enough to believe it.” Women had done more than enough for this country to enjoy that right.

Tubman had a clear vision of what was going on in her country and had the courage to take action. She was compassionate to all and obedient to God, giving Him all credit and glory. But she called a snake a snake (a copperhead was a Northerner with Southern racist attitudes), encouraged people to action (she would have been with John Brown if she could have), and took action herself when needed.  We remember and honor Harriet Tubman as a champion of civil rights, a feminist, and a patriot.