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Memories of childhood exist within all of us. Most of us have memories of happy times with one or both of our parents or with sisters or brothers. Very few of us can say our childhood memories also contain memories of terror, beatings or abduction of family members as we helplessly watch.
Harriet Tubman’s childhood memories contained these very elements and, to her, they were part of the normal, everyday life of a child born into slavery in the pre-Civil War South.
Harriet Tubman has been a kind of folklore hero to me. She was someone who spent her life slipping in and out of shadows as she guided people along the secret lines of the Underground Railroad. Author Catherine Clinton was well aware of this symbolic view of Tubman and it was her desire to make Tubman human as well. Through her use of the most recent historical research available as well as family lore from Tubman’s descendants, Clinton has fulfilled her purpose in this book.
Clinton tells us how Harriet, whose given name was Araminta Ross, was born to a slave couple, Harriet Green and Benjamin Ross, who spent much of their married life struggling to create a stable family life for their eleven children even though mother and father had different owners as slaves.
We read about the disappearance of several siblings sold off through the slave trade as young Araminta witnessed the “agonized expression on their
faces.”
Like the prodigal son, Araminta ran away from her heartless mistress at the age of 7 to live for five days hiding in a pigpen, fighting with the piglets for potato peelings. Finally, she could no longer fight off the mother sow, so she returned--starving. But there is no joyful welcome, no robe or fatted calf for Araminta; only the punishment given a runaway slave girl.
Clinton frequently comments on Tubman’s Christianity and deep faith. Though no one in her family were able to read or write, her parents fill her head with Bible stories. They keep in contact with local black preachers and deacons. It is this early religious training that prompts young Araminta to live her life by combining faith with action. By escaping to the North she felt she would be doing God’s will.
This Fall, 2004, it will be 145 years since Araminta began her journey to a new life. Her bravery and resourcefulness shone brightly as the young 20 year-old made her perilous escape on foot from Maryland to Philadelphia with a $500 bounty on her head. The biblical themes of bondage to sin and
freedom in Christ took on real meaning to her as she crossed her own Jordan – the Mason Dixon line – to go into “Canaan.” Like other slaves, she assumed a new identity to protect herself and to assert her new freedom. She chose her mother’s first name, Harriet, and the last name of her husband, John Tubman, who chose not follow her into freedom but remained behind and, to Harriet’s sorrow, took a new wife.
Harriet spent the next 10 years as an Abductor for the Underground Railroad (UGRR). Before Harriet Tubman, only a few abductors gained renown and all of them were white men. As a black, fugitive female, Harriet was unique among her colleagues. She had great confidence that the Lord would provide and showed extraordinary courage in returning to the South to rescue hundreds of family, friends, acquaintances and even strangers bringing them out of slavery and into a new life. Her tireless efforts earned her the admiration from supporters as
far away as England.
The next phase of Harriet Tubman’s life came as a surprise to me and brought her character alive. Harriet had long viewed slavery as a sin but after meeting John Brown, she came to perceive slavery as a state of war. She obtained a sponsorship from the governor of Massachusetts, abolitionist John Andrews, and was linked with a regiment headed for South Carolina. Descriptions of Harriet’s duties were exhausting just to read, much less than actually having to do them in the steamy, tropical conditions of a coastal South Carolina summer. Harriet made herself much beloved to soldiers and civilians alike through her tireless and selfless deeds of goodwill, and her legendary healing skills. What amazed me the most was her role as spy-extraordinaire for the Union Army. Without being able to read, she made herself the most valuable tool for espionage they possessed. She commanded a small group of spies whose intelligence reports were trusted implicitly. One of her raids was so successful, it resulted in the release of more than 750 slaves in one moonlit night. This story of the Combahee River raid makes the entire book worth reading – especially Harriet’s own description of the comical highlights involving two pigs and a boat. Harriet’s work during the Civil War was done despite failing health, no salary and no recognition for her contributions.
After the war she returned home to Auburn, NY, where she continued her work to help blacks and women gain equal rights. Counted among her friends are such familiar names as Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass and John Brown. She fulfilled her lifelong dream in 1908 with the establishment of the Harriet Tubman Home for aged, indigent, orphaned and disabled. She was buried in 1913 with military honors in Auburn, NY’s Fort Hill Cemetery. Harriet lived life purposefully, doing everything not because she saw herself as a hero but because she believed she was doing the Lord’s will. Catherine Clinton asserts, “She did not trust in fate as much as in the power of prayer.”
Lee Burdett is an alumnus of the Auburn Christian Student Center’s campus ministry (Auburn University), and the Meridian Woods church of Christ campus ministry (Florida State University) where she met her husband. They helped to establish a campus
minister in Gainesville, FL with University City church of Christ. She lives in Altamonte Springs, FL, and enjoys her two children.
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