Harriet Tubman and her Role in the Underground Railroad

Harriet Tubman and her Role in the Underground Railroad

Harriet Tubman was born into slavery in Maryland and managed to escape slavery thanks to the Underground Railroad. During her time in enslavement, she suffered numerous instances of physical violence and torture. The abuse she suffered in her early childhood caused permanent physical injuries (Petry, 2015). The most severe injury occurred when Tubman was a teenager, whereby her head was struck with a two-pound weight. Tubman then endured severe migraines and seizures, and for the rest of her life, she experienced narcoleptic episodes. She also experienced vivid dreams that she often classified as religious experiences.

In 1849 when her owner died, Tubman chose to flee Philadelphia. Between the years 1850 and 1860, Tubman made nineteen trips from the South to the North following the network known as the Underground Railroad. She guided more than three hundred individuals, including her parents and numerous siblings, from slavery to freedom and was widely recognized for her leadership.

The Underground Railroad was a network of hidden passages that involved clandestine operations that were highly illegal and secret and therefore had to remain hidden to assist fugitive slaves in staying out of sight. The railroad term was utilized since it was an emerging transportation system, and most supporters of the Underground Railroad used code in communicating specific messages (Petry, 2015). Most of these hidden routes assisted slaves in reaching the Free States of the North in the United States or to Canada. Guides led them along indirect paths, which often meant walking through the wilderness, and climbed mountains to avoid being detected by authorities.

In almost thirteen trips back to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Tubman had already established a vast network of collaborators. This included station masters that hid her charges in barns and other safe houses along the way (Adler, 2013). Tubman easily navigated this private network as she knew the Maryland landscape deeply and consistently followed rivers and landmarks that snaked North. She also knew authorities that were highly susceptible to bribes, and her intelligence gathering and communication expertise improved her abilities to evade capture.

Throughout the development of the Underground Railroad, Tubman developed specific tactics that allowed her to keep pursuers at arms’ length. For one, she usually operated during the winter, which meant longer nights that allowed her to cover more ground. She also mainly conducted her liberation efforts on the weekends, which prevented the authorities from noticing that they had escaped immediately.

The Underground Railroad rarely existed in the Deep South, which meant that a small number of slaves could escape. Even though pro-slavery sentiments were not rampant in these areas, those that liberated slaves faced the constant risk of being identified as criminals and punished by authorities due to their operations in the liberation of slaves (Petry, 2015). Individuals such as Tubman, therefore, went to great lengths in maintaining the secrecy of the operation by communicating in code. Tubman taught runaway slaves on how to utilize secret pathways that ultimately became the most utilized medium of transporting these runaways.

The dynamics of escaping slavery changed in 1850. Being a conductor meant that Tubman had to walk through slavery territories whereby she could be captured easily by armed slave hunters. This means that she voluntarily risked her life every time. It became even more severe due to the Fugitive Slave Act.

This policy highlighted that runaway slaves could be captured in the North and returned to slavery, which led to the abduction of former slaves and free blacks that lived in the Free States. Law enforcement authorities in the North were forced to assist in the capture of slaves regardless of their principles (Adler, 2013). As a response to the law, Tubman re-routed the Underground Railroad to Canada, whereby slavery was categorically not allowed. By December 1851, Tubman guided eleven fugitives into Canada.

In 1861, the American Civil War broke out, which led to the end of the Underground Railroad. Tubman’s heroic deeds were significant in the Civil War as well. She worked as a cook, and a nurse in the Union Army then went on to become a scout and a spy. She was the first woman to lead an armed expedition during the Civil War, which led to the liberation of over seven hundred slaves in South Carolina.