Underground Railroad



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The Underground Railroad : an encyclopedia of people, places, and operations

Snodgrass, Mary Ellen.

Armonk, N.Y. : M.E. Sharpe, 2008.

2 v. : ill., maps ; 29 cm.

The culmination of years of research in dozens of archives and libraries, this fascinating encyclopedia provides an unprecedented look at the network known as the Underground Railroad--that mysterious system of individuals and organizations that helped slaves escape the American South to freedom during the years before the Civil War. In operation as early as the 1700s and reaching its peak with the abolitionist movement of the antebellum period, the Underground Railroad saved countless lives and helped alter the course of American history. This is the most complete reference on the Underground Railroad ever published. It includes full coverage of the Railroad in both the United States and Canada, which was the ultimate destination of many of the escaping slaves. The Underground Railroad: An Encyclopedia of People, Places, and Operations explores the people, places, writings, laws, and organizations that made this network possible. More than 1,500 entries detail the families and personalities involved in the operation, and sidebars extract primary source materials for longer entries. This encyclopedia features extensive supporting materials, including maps with actual Underground Railroad escape routes, photos, a chronology, genealogies of those involved in the operation, a listing of Underground Railroad operatives by state or Canadian province, a passenger list of escaping slaves, and primary and secondary source bibliographies.

Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman, née Araminta Ross    (born c. 1820, Dorchester county, Maryland, U.S.—died March 10, 1913, Auburn, New York), American bondwoman who escaped from slavery in the South to become a leading abolitionist before the American Civil War. She led hundreds of bondsmen to freedom in the North along the route of the Underground Railroad—an elaborate secret network of safe houses organized for that purpose.

Born a slave, Araminta Ross later adopted her mother’s first name, Harriet. From early childhood she worked variously as a maid, a nurse, a field hand, a cook, and a woodcutter. About 1844 she married John Tubman, a free black.

In 1849, on the strength of rumours that she was about to be sold, Tubman fled to Philadelphia, leaving behind her husband, parents, and siblings. In December 1850 she made her way to Baltimore, Maryland, whence she led her sister and two children

to freedom. That journey was the first of some 19 increasingly dangerous forays into Maryland in which,

over the next decade, she conducted upward of 300 fugitive slaves along the Underground Railroad to Canada. By her extraordinary courage, ingenuity, persistence, and iron discipline, which she enforced upon her charges, Tubman became the railroad’s most famous conductor and was known as the “Moses of her people.” It has been said that she never lost a fugitive she was leading to freedom.

Rewards offered by slaveholders for Tubman’s capture eventually totaled $40,000. Abolitionists, however, celebrated her courage. John Brown, who consulted her about his own plans to organize an antislavery raid of a federal armoury in Harpers Ferry, Va. (now in West Virginia), referred to her as “General” Tubman. About 1858 she bought a small farm near Auburn, New York, where she placed her aged parents (she had brought them out of Maryland in June 1857) and herself lived thereafter. From 1862 to 1865 she served as a scout, as well as nurse and laundress, for Union forces in South Carolina. For the Second Carolina Volunteers, under the command of Colonel James Montgomery, Tubman spied on Confederate territory. When she returned with information about the locations of warehouses and ammunition, Montgomery’s troops were able to make carefully planned attacks. For her wartime service Tubman was paid so little that she had to support herself by selling homemade baked goods.

After the Civil War Tubman settled in Auburn and began taking in orphans and the elderly, a practice that eventuated in the Harriet Tubman Home for Indigent Aged Negroes. The home later attracted the support of former abolitionist comrades and of the citizens of Auburn, and it continued in existence for some years after her death. In the late 1860s and again in the late 1890s she applied for a federal pension for her Civil War services. Some 30 years after her service, a private bill providing for $20 monthly was passed by Congress.

MLA:

"Harriet Tubman." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 30 Jan. 2012. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/608308/Harriet-Tubman>.

APA Style:

Harriet Tubman. (2012). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/608308/Harriet-Tubman