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Among the Bravest: Harriet Tubman
By Dean Kane
Harriet Tubman, who was born around 1822, was one of the bravest people in history.
After escaping from slavery in 1849 by fleeing north from Maryland to Philadelphia, she returned many times to the slave state to rescue other enslaved people, including family members. It is thought that she returned as many as 19 times and rescued approximately 70 people.
It was difficult and dangerous task.
“There was the constant fear of relentless slave catchers, who were armed with guns, knives, and whips and who hunted with vicious dogs that were trained to attack human beings,” says historian Kate Clifford Larson in her 2004 book Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero.
Called “Moses” by some because of her work to free enslaved people, Tubman worked at night when she was more unlikely to be noticed and captured. She carried a pistol, just in case.
Until the Civil War in the 1860s, she continued her mission to free others, risking her own freedom and life many times.
Tubman did not accept white Christian preachers’ teaching that enslaved people should be obedient toward their slave masters. Such a belief made no sense to her.
According to Tubman’s friend and biographer Sarah Hopkins Bradford in Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman (1869),Tubman said, “I started with this idea in my head, ‘Dere’s two things I’ve got a right to, and dese are, Death or Liberty – one or tother I mean to have. No one will take me back alive.”
