Historical content:
Harriet Tubman was famous for her involvement in the Underground Railroad and helped save slaves escape to freedom in the mid to late 1800’s. The Underground Railroad was a term for a secret network of houses where runaway slaves could stay, overnight, on their journey north by road and tunnels to freedom. Because of Tubman’s expert knowledge of the routes and different towns across the south, when civil war broke out in America, she was a great use to the Union army in their efforts to win. It was her great success in helping slaves escape to a free life that led her people to know her as the “Moses of her people.” The two main historical events that helped this to occur was Congress passing the Fugitive Slave Act (1850) and the Civil War (1861-1865). Backed by the Union army, Tubman became instrumental in rescuing many slaves from a number of plantations in the south. She quickly gained notoriety and was connected to other respected abolitionists of the time, like John Brown. She was so successful at freeing slaves that slaveholders offered money, called a bounty, for her capture. After the end of the Civil …show more content…
Born Araminta Ross, she later took her mother’s name, Harriet, and the surname, Tubman from her husband. As a slave, Harriet was put to work and often beaten and treated cruelly serving as both field hand and domestic servant. For example, one time, while trying to help a fellow slave to escape, she was caught and punished with a blow to the head causing seizures and intense dreams that she endured for the rest of her life. Harriet had one adopted daughter, Gertie, with her second husband, Nelson Davis after the Civil War. In her later years, she was at the forefront of the women’s suffrage movement. Harriet died on March 10, 1913. She was buried with military honors in Fort Hill Cemetery in New