The runaway advertisement for Minty [Harriet Tubman] and her brothers, Ben and Harry [Henry]. Courtesy Jay Meredith, Bucktown Village Museum, Bucktown, Maryland. (Not for Reproduction Without Permission.)
- Harriet Tubman's Underground Railroad -
They litter the forest floor, sometimes inches deep, nature’s bed of nails. The seedpods of the sweet gum tree, common in the forests of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, are large, round, and covered with spiny, prickly burrs. The spines pierce the calloused, unprotected feet of terrified runaway slaves. Struggling to contain the involuntary impulse to wince in pain, the fugitive slaves hesitate, knowing a moment taken to pause or cry out could end their dream of freedom. The lucky ones had shoes. The children never did, and they suffered the most. How ironic the sweet gum would be so cruel.
For many of these slaves, the sweet gum tree had provided for them since birth. A hollowed out trunk would be fashioned into a cradle, affectionately referred to as “the gum,” for generations of slave children. The sweet gum’s bright green star-shaped leaves, which turn a magnificent scarlet in the fall, emit an aromatic fragrance, a subtle hint to its therapeutic properties. A cut in its bark reveals a yellowish resin used in making folk treatments for skin irritations, wounds, and dysentery. Yet for these runaways the burrs of the sweet gum tree would be among the first of many natural and human barriers on the road to freedom. Harriet Tubman knew this was where the weakest would turn back. For the faint of heart she carried a pistol, telling her charges to go on or die, for a dead fugitive slave could tell no tales. Not all the tracks on the Underground Railroad were smooth....
It was late November 1860 and Harriet Tubman had returned to Dorchester County, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, to rescue her sister Rachel and Rachel’s children, Ben and Angerine, from slavery. Tubman had spent ten years trying to bring them to freedom. Time and time again, Rachel had been unable to join Harriet; separated from her children, Rachel had been unwilling to leave them behind, and Harriet had been unsuccessful in retrieving them. This attempt would also end in failure, too. Unbeknownst to Harriet, Rachel had died some months before. To compound the tragedy, Tubman's nephew and niece, Ben and Angerine, remained out of her reach. Overcoming deep anguish and profound sadness, Tubman turned her attention, instead, to rescuing another family from slavery: Stephen and Maria Ennals and their three children.
The weather was bitter cold, and the unexpected driving snow and cold rain made this trip with children particularly dangerous and tense. With little planning, and no additional clothing or food, the Ennals family trusted Tubman to bring them through to freedom. They suffered terribly. The baby had to be drugged with opium to keep it from crying and revealing their hiding places as slave patrols passed by. They starved and froze, and though they eventually celebrated Christmas in freedom, for Harriet the loss of her sister and the debilitating effects on her health from the difficult trip were almost too much for her to bear. A decade of life-threatening devotion to bring away family and friends from enslavement had taken a great toll. This would be Tubman’s last rescue mission...
-- from Bound for the Promised Land -
Underground Railroad Maps - Harriet Tubman's Routes to Freedom:
Harriet Tubman's Southern Route to Freedom. (Not for Reproduction Without Permission.)
Harriet Tubman's Northern Routes to Freedom. (Not for Reproduction Without Permission.)
Read more about some of these incredible liberation stories, learn for the first time the identites of those she helped guide to freedom, and discover intimate details of Tubman's long and remarkable life and the family she risked everything for. From the birth of her parents on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, to the tragic sales of her sisters, to the horrific treatment she received as a slave, follow freedom fighter Harriet Tubman through her Underground Railroad days, her Civil War activities, and life as a suffragist and community activist in Auburn, New York. Based on hundreds of never-before-used letters, diaries, journals, court, federal, state and local government records, a more accurate and vivid account of Tubman's life has finally come to light. Bound For the Promised Land will carry you through a century of remarkable and intimate history of one of America's greatest heroes and her family.
Bound For the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero features 28 photographs, 4 maps, and the most accurate and detailed Tubman family tree to date. Ballantine Books/Random House.
Click the "More Underground RR" and the "Underground RR Escapes" tabs at the top left to view more details regarding Tubman's Underground Railroad activities, including slaveholder reward notices for some of the freedom seekers she helped.
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For the most recent historical information about the national Underground Railroad movement, see Fergus Bordewich's new book, "Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America," at www.fergusbordewich.com
