traps were set in the river and successfully avoided them. Former enslaved field hands piloted gunboats down the river or burned crops and buildings according to Harriet’s instructions. Slaves fled from the plantations and were so elated that Harriet tried to calm them through song. Over 750 slaves were taken on board and a Wisconsin journalist credited Harriet as being the one who led the raid, planned the strategy, and carried it out. This made Harriet Tubman the first woman to lead a military assault in American history.
It is likely that the Gullah who were brought into the army had Tubman’s guidance to prepare them:
Col. Montgomery and his gallant band of 800 black soldiers, under the guidance of a black woman, dashed in to the enemies’ country ... destroying millions of dollars worth of commissary stores, cotton and lordly dwellings, and striking terror to the heart of rebeldom, brought off near 800 slaves and thousands of dollars worth of property.
— The Boston Commonwealth, July 1863
The military action planned by Tubman on the Combahee River destroyed identified mines and torpedoes in the river, identified Confederate supplies (cotton, rice, potatoes, corn, and farm animals) and disrupted the ability of the Confederates to be replenished. Railroads, bridges, and plantations were destroyed in the wake of this battle. Harriet Tubman not only selected, trained, recruited, and roused the men in preparation for the battle, she also helped to calm the hundreds of enslaved Africans from Confederate-controlled plantations through singing and engaging them in song to calm them down afterwards. And they needed calming. Hundreds of enslaved Africans heard the boat whistle and knew it meant that the gun boats had succeeded in defending them from the Confederate Army. They ran out of their homes, carrying pots of rice, with children hanging around the necks of their parents still digging into the food as they were being carried. Tubman remarked on how many twins she saw and just what a sight it was. So the singing was to calm them down as many of them boarded the boats, paying no mind to their former overseers who were really unable to stop them from leaving. As Tubman indicated:
I nebber see such a sight. We laughed, an’ laughed, an’ laughed. Here you’d see a woman wid a pail on her head, rice a smokin’ in it jus’ as she’d taken it from de fire, young one hangin’ on behind, one han’ roun’ her forehead to hold on, t’other han’ diggin’ into de rice-pot, eatin’ wid all its might; hold of her dress two or three more; down her back a bag wid a pig in it. One woman brought two pigs, a white one an’ a black one; we took ’em all on board; named de white pig Beauregard, and de black pig Jeff Davis. Sometimes de women would come wid twins hangin’ roun’ der necks; ‘pears like I nebber see so many twins in my life; bags on der shoulders, baskets on der heads, and young ones taggin’ behin’, all loaded; pigs squealin’, chickens screamin’, young ones squallin …
Because of the way in which smaller boats were sent out to bring newly freed people on board it was a slow process and some were fearful that the smaller boats would not return to pick them up. So it was the excitement of the news, the challenges of loading, and the relief of the end of the battle that caused people to be so emotional.
According to General Saxton, in his report on the Combahee Raid to the Secretary of War Stanton, “This is the only military command in American history wherein a woman, black or white, led the raid and under whose inspiration it was originated and conducted.”
Harriet continued her service to the Union forces by cooking, doing laundry, and carrying dispatches for units. She served Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, of the black Fifty-Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts, his last meal prior to the Fort Wagner battle in Charleston Harbour, captured in the 1990 film Glory. Harriet described this battle, which ended with the death of 1,500 black troops that she helped to bury, as follows:
Then we saw de lightening, and that was de guns; and then we heard de thunder, and that was de big guns; and then we heard de rain falling, and that was de drops of blood falling; and when we came to get in de crops, it was dead men that we reaped.
Harriet requested a leave of absence in the spring of 1864 and returned to Auburn to rest. At this time she was likely interviewed by Sarah Bradford who produced the closest thing we have to an autobiography of Harriet Tubman. Sarah, a teacher in the Auburn area, befriended Tubman and saw this effort as a means of allowing Tubman to acquire some funds. The first Bradford book, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, published in 1869, brought in about $1,000 to help address Tubman’s financial distress. The second publication, Harriet, the Moses of her People, released in 1886, was also intended to address Tubman’s need for funds.
By the summer of 1864 Harriet was again well enough to travel to Boston, meeting the sixty-seven-year-old Sojourner Truth. Sojourner was an outspoken speaker on women’s rights, abolition, and religion. Harriet declined an invitation to join Sojourner at a meeting with President Lincoln because she felt he had done little to free the slaves. Harriet and other abolitionist and black leaders had been shocked when President Abraham Lincoln denied that the goal of the Civil War was to end slavery, and Lincoln had declined to accept blacks in the Union Army until 1863. Volunteers of African descent were allowed to enlist only after pressure from abolitionists and military strategists, and well after the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation giving freedom to slaves in states, which were still embroiled in Civil War conflicts effective January 1, 1863. Harriet did not feel that Lincoln deserved praise for his treatment of people of African descent, feeling that John Brown had done more.
Always ready to serve, Harriet found herself back to tending to wounded soldiers. By 1865, she was acting as the matron of the Fortress Monroe Colored Hospital in Virginia. Deeply dedicated to alleviating suffering, she helped to fundraise for the education of children and freed adults. She also had the care of her parents to deal with, and by 1868 the home that she had was expanded to become the Home for Aged and Indigent Colored People.
Also later in 1865, Harriet agreed to assist Martin Delany in recruiting and training a black military unit drawn from the population of the south. The surrender of General Robert E. Lee, general-in-chief of the Confederate Army, made this unnecessary. But Harriet was willing to work in the government hospital in Fort Munroe, Virginia. Most of the sick had dysentery, severe and painful diarrhea, and with a remedy Harriet had learned from her family or other slaves, they recovered in a day. The herbal medicine she used was derived from roots of the pond lily and wild geranium. Her expertise was needed in Fernadina, Florida, where she next worked. She was appointed “matron” (superintendent) of this hospital after complaining about the conditions there. Harriet, for all her value to the government, still had not received anything more than the original $200 given to her in 1861.
Harriet had a long connection to sickness and healing. As a child, she had become seriously ill while tending swamp traps. It was only her mother’s knowledge of herbal medicine and her constant care which helped Harriet pull through. Later, when Harriet was hit in the head with a two-pound weight, it was her mother again who cared for her. Slaves were not the beneficiaries of the recent medical techniques, and they managed by using remedies, techniques and knowledge brought from Africa. Some slaves may also have had contact with First Nations people who could have taught them about the healing properties of North American plants. Harriet taught her descendants about some of the healing plants and procedures that were successful in her experience. In one instance, a relative of Harriet’s had her thumb almost severed. Harriet immediately went into the barn and got some cobwebs, which she used to wrap around the injury, and she covered it with a handkerchief. In three days, Harriet repeated this procedure. A scar was never seen at the site of the injured thumb and it worked!
Harriet is known to have prepared a poultice out of poke salad and dandelion greens and that was placed on feet to bring down swelling. For a cold, she would prepare a poultice of onions and camphorated oil which would be placed on the chest and covered with flannel. If the onion poultice was brown in the morning, that meant that the fever was broken. For warts, Harriet would use milkweed, break it open and put the milk on the problem area. The treated individual could
