for Canada after the raid because angry sentiments were so high. Harriet and the others were publicly identified as having a connection to John Brown. Despite her absence from the raid itself, Harriet was identified as a co-conspirator through the media and congressional investigation. Many of the few records of the Underground Railroad were destroyed at this time because Underground Railroad workers feared the negative repercussions of the community. But with great foresight, William Still hid his records in a graveyard to preserve them.
As the busiest and the most successful of the conductors on the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman managed to bring over 300 people into Canada. Because exact records could not be kept, it is likely that Harriet brought even more captured Africans to safety under the “lion’s paw,” or British rule. Harriet indicated later in life that she made more than nineteen rescue trips, though some historians doubt this number. However, while the actual number of rescue trips may not be known and is subject to debate, that Harriet Tubman managed even one was sufficient. This was a significant accomplishment given the severe penalties for even reading about abolition in the States, never mind actually motivating and leading people out of bondage. Every time Harriet helped an enslaved person become a free person she was committing a crime, she was causing plantation owners to lose the labour of their slaves, she was disrupting the system, and she was using Canada as a retreat. Every rescue was an anti-slavery statement. And as if Harriet’s own personally escorted rescue missions were not successful enough, her reputation inspired others to take the risk of freeing themselves or of going back to their former plantations to lead their families to freedom.
Without the success of the Underground Railroad, there might not have been a Civil War. It heightened the debate between slave-holding interests and those who promoted abolition. Had Canada not been willing to grant the same rights and privileges to blacks as members of other groups, as well as being in such close proximity to the Americans, there would have been no Underground Railroad. In the pioneer society of English-speaking southern Ontario, conditions supported the entry and security of freedom seekers. The climate, economy, and language were similar to that of the northern United States without the constant threat of being recaptured. Mary Ann Shadd, Frederick Douglass, Samuel Ringgold Ward, William Wells Brown, Henry Bibb, and other black intellectuals of the era made a concerted effort to express the positive life experiences of blacks who had made themselves free in Canada. They were concerned about highlighting their successes because pro-slavery interests promoted the notion that people of African descent could not take care of themselves, would be unable to lead wholesome lives, were incapable of learning, and actually needed slavery to protect them from themselves since they were inferior creatures. The black abolitionists made it their business to portray the free black community in a positive way since the idea that blacks were not only competent and capable but interested in taking care of themselves was critical to foiling this perception. They travelled throughout the north and the south, speaking wherever they could find an audience, sharing information about how well the blacks in Canada were managing, and how they too could join or support other blacks in getting to Canada.
The free black population of Ontario in particular was raised like a beacon of hope, a successful test case of the potential for free blacks to thrive and contribute. If it could work here, it could work there. It could work anywhere. The successful presence of black peoples in Canada, the holding of the North American Free Men’s Convention in Toronto, and Harriet Tubman’s work and residence in Canada, combined with the protection of the rights of blacks under the law, was an affront to slave interests and countered their views.
While John Brown’s plan for freeing the slaves was unsuccessful, it was an international response to an American situation, since he had recruited in Canada with Harriet Tubman’s, and others’, support. Harriet was to have rounded up black recruits and motivated them in battle. She was to have played a key role in guiding the African Americans who would be freed by John Brown’s raids to Canada. Most of the people who were identified with John Brown were taking refuge in Ontario. Both Harriet and the abolitionists/activists were despised since they were viewed as the main targets who were trying to “subvert” the American way of life. Among the abolitionists and well-placed persons that Tubman knew, was supported by, and worked with were William H. Seward, Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Susan B Anthony. There were also William Still, and Thomas Garrett, as well as Frederick Douglass. Often Tubman was invited to rest in one of their homes or to bring others to be fuelled for their onward journeys while conducting a group towards Canada.
By April 1861, Harriet was again moved to do what she could to help her people. Through an interview with John Andrews, governor of Massachusetts, and a John Brown supporter, Harriet joined the Union Forces at Hilton Head, then later Beaufort, South Carolina. She acted as a nurse and became acting head of the hospital. She established a washhouse with the only money she was given during the war: $200. She declined the rations she was entitled to, in deference to her less fortunate neighbours, and spent her evenings making gingerbread, pies, and root beer, which she paid someone to sell for her while she worked during the day.
The lowlands, the Sea Islands near Hilton Head, South Carolina, are remarkably like the terrain of West Africa, where many of the ancestors of the enslaved peoples came from. Here the rice cultivation skills that they arrived with were put to good use. The area was known as the lowlands since they were at sea level. With a tempered climate, and much swamp land, the lowlands were also rather prone to mosquitoes and the related disease of malaria. Since the Africans already had some immunity from their continental upbringing, and since whites had none, plantation owners regularly made arrangements not to be there too often. Slave owners often had more than one plantation or residence, so the enslaved peoples on the Sea Islands were left alone under the direction of their African overseer for weeks, if not months, at a time. This facilitated the retention of African traditions and beliefs and was further fuelled and reinforced by new arrivals, newly enslaved people who had authentic African-isms to share with others.
The people became known as the Gullah People, and had developed their own language — a mix of West African languages, English, and other Creole expressions, as well as their own unique culture and ways of knowing.
By the time the Union Army arrived, they found the Gullah ready to join the fight for their freedom. The southern plantation owners had headed inland indefinitely since they anticipated a naval attack on their coastal properties. The throngs of willing and unsupervised enslaved Africans were included in the Union forces. Harriet may have convinced them to leave their owners to invest their energies with the Union forces. It was Harriet Tubman who challenged herself to work with the Gullah despite what she recognized as a bit of a culture barrier — they spoke differently and had different ways to the people she had grown up with and whom she had come to know — but she found a way to inspire them, to calm them, and to free them.
She worked with Quakers to engage the Gullah in schooling to better prepare them for freedom. By 1862 she was in Beaufort, South Carolina, at the request of Governor Andrew of Massachusetts, and she again acted as a nurse and teacher. In the process, Harriet gained the confidence and trust of the Gullah.
Harriet preferred to be outdoors, so she was pleased to work initially with the First and Second Carolina Regiments as a nurse, then as a spy and a scout. By 1863 Harriet had organized what would be called today an intelligence service, choosing former slaves who knew the terrain to identify food stores or assist in piloting the rivers in preparation for raids. Raids tried to force surrenders from the opposition, gain recruits or raw materials and food, or to destroy property. The information gathered by Harriet made the raids of the Union forces successful. When asked by Colonel Montgomery to see what she could do behind Confederate lines, since the Union still controlled the Sea Islands, Harriet was able to do so. She created a network out of the black men in the area that she could train and trust to see what information they could find out about the activities of the other side, including the ammunition and food stores of the Confederates. This spy ring, of which she was also an active part, successfully managed to find the information that led to a major victory.
One of the most famous
