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Sojourner truth: bringing order out of chaos
The Western Journal of Black Studies, Winter 2005
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· Born: c. 1797 in Rifton, New York, United States
· Died: November 26, 1883 in Battle Creek, Michigan, United
States
· Other Names: Bomefree, Isabella; Baumfree, Isabella
· Nationality: American
· Occupation: Abolitionist
Sojourner truth: bringing order out of chaos
Author abstract
This article examines the historical and spiritual significance of
the change of Isabella Van Wagener's name to Sojourner Truth.
This was a very significant existential act. Isabella Van
Wagener took a new name following a mystical revelation on
the Day of Pentecost in 1843. It is consistent with the spiritual
traditions of Ancient Egypt and Zen Buddhism. In Ancient
Egypt, Ma' at was a goddess and a concept that represented a
system of defining one's self through the infusion of spiritual
energy. In Zen Buddhism, Satori represents an intuitive flash of
sudden awareness from which one feels totally at one with the
Divine Creator. This sudden feeling of oneness with the Divine
Creator and the infusion of spiritual energy into her life is how
Sojourner Truth describes the mystical experience that led to
her name change and ministry. In short, this paper focuses on
the spiritual life of Sojourner Truth, and provides insight into
how she brought order out of the chaos of enslavement.

God revealed himself ... with all the suddenness of a flash of
lightning, showing [Sojourner Truth] ... that he pervaded the
universe--"and that there was no place where God was not."
(Narrative p. 65)
Sojourner Truth is a well-known figure in Africana and women's
history who has been examined from various perspectives.
Sojourner Truth lived a spiritually rich life and in this article
she will be examined from a Ma'atian perspective.
Ma'at was usually represented as a goddess with the feather of
truth on her head, but during the Pharaoh Akhenaten's reign
Ma'at was written phonetically, without the goddess sign. She
had become a concept (Freed, Markowitz & D'Auria, 1999, p.
102). The concept of time ... and order are closely related to the
domain of Ma'at (Teeter, 1997, p. 34). She most particularly
represented the creation of divine cosmic order from chaos. It
was the Pharaoh's duty to maintain Ma'at, to maintain order.
Ma'at was symbolized by an ostrich feather, "niw." This is a
play on words, for in the mdu neter, "niw" is the word for
creation (Obenga, 1995). She was the daughter of the sun god,
Re, and rose with him from the primordial waters at the moment
of creation. She was considered as essential to the fabric of
Kemet as water and the sun (Armour, 1986, p. 164). Thus the
domain of Ma'at not only included time and order but also water
and the sun.
The concept of Ma'at was so essential to the ancient Egyptians
that there is no one word which capture the full meaning of
Ma'at. Scholar Maulana Karenga asserts that she represented
truth, justice, reciprocity, balance, order, and harmony (1984).
Egyptologist E. A. Budge maintains that "Maat meant right,
true, truth, real, genuine, upright, righteousness, just, steadfast,
unalterable, etc." ([1895] 1967, p. cxix). In a hymn written by
the Pharaoh Akhenaten, in addition to cosmic order, he stressed
aspects of Ma'at that could be defined as beauty. In short, in the
worldview of the people of the Nile Valley, she represented the
right things (Monges, 1999)
Afrocentric scholar Molefi Asante in Kernet, Afrocentricity,

and Knowledge asserts that Ma'at was a symbol of the search
for existential peace (1990, p. 83) Asante stresses the
philosophical path that must be followed in order to adhere to
the principles of Ma'at. He asserts that "[Ma'at] suggests
knowledge of self as the absolute path" (Asante, 1990, p. 87).
Ma'at symbolized a process of infusing spiritual energy into
one's definition of one's self. From this perspective, Isabella
Van Wagener stamped order into the chaos of enslavement by
transforming herself into Sojourner Truth. She asserted herself
existentially becoming Sojourner Truth.
Historical Background
Isabella was born between the years 1797 and 1800 (Narrative
p. 13). She was an enslaved African woman in New York State
who was owned by Dutch masters. She was very valuable to her
masters because she was a very hard worker who also produced
children. Living as an enslaved African in the north was
different from living in the slave cabins of the south. One of her
earliest memories was of breathing the venomous vapors of the
cellar in which she lived under her master's hotel, along with
his other enslaved Africansmale and female. She and the other
inhabitants slept on straw with a blanket the way horses did.
Its only lights consisting of a few panes of glass, through which
she thinks the sun never shone, but with thrice reflected rays;
and the space between the loose boards on the floor, and the
uneven earth below was filled with mud and water ... (p. 14)
Her father was called 'Bomefree' which is low Dutch for tree
and her mother was known as 'Mau-mau Bett'. Her enslaver
named her Isabella (p. 17). She was next to the youngest of ten
to twelve children, most of whom were taken and sold away
from her parents.
Spiritual Education
Her mother, Mau-mau Bett, was her primary spiritual guide and
she referred back to the lessons learned from her mother, during
the rest of her life. Man-man Bett taught her and her siblings
about a Divine Power who would neither fail nor forsake them:

My children, there is a God, who hears and sees
you.... He lives in the sky ... and when you are
beaten, or cruelly treated, or fall into any trouble,
you must ask help of him, and he will always hear
and help you (p. 17).
Her mother taught her a belief system, which was Ma'atian in
principle in that it was focused on truth. She entreated her to
tell the truth and not to steal, and to obey her masters, as much
as possible. She taught her to kneel and pray. Mau-mau Bett
also taught Isabella to connect with energy forces more
powerful than she by teaching her to look at the stars and bond
with them. She told her:
Those are the same stars, and that is the same
moon, that look down upon your brothers and
sisters, and which they see as they look up to them,
though they are ever so far away from us, and each
other (p. 18)
This was a part of Mau-mau Bett's African heritage. The stars
feature in the beliefs of many African peoples (Mbiti 53).
Mountains, hills, and other high standing earth formations are
considered by many African people to be concrete
manifestations of divine presence. For many African people the
stars are points of contact, which draw humans together with
other spiritual beings and the Divine (Mbiti p. 55). Thus Mau-
mau Bett infused in Isabella, very early in her life, the African
spiritual tradition.
The African tradition is one of a close relationship with the
Divine. In traditional Africa the spiritual is intertwined with the
material. Isabella demonstrated this closeness with the Divine.
According to her Narrative:
She always asked with an unwavering faith that
she should receive just what she plead for,--"And
now, she say, "though it seems curious, I do not
remember ever asking for any thing but what I got

it. And I always received it as an answer to my
prayers [Emphasis in text] (p. 27)
Her masters once controlled her thinking. Isabella believed in
the institution of slavery so she followed its principles with the
same passion that she would later follow in the abolition of
slavery. She wrote that she believed that her masters were "a
God; and believed that he knew of and could see her at all
times, even as God himself" (33). In the pursuit of truth, she
used to confess her and other enslaved
Africans' alleged transgressions to her master. Dr. Carter G.
Woodson expressed it so eloquently when he said:
When you control a man's thinking you do not
have to worry about his actions. You do not have
to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will
find his 'proper place' and will stay in it. You do
not need to send him to the back door He will go
without being told. In fact, if there is no back door,
he will cut one for his special benefit. His education
makes it necessary (p. xiii) During the process of
becoming spiritually enlightened, Isabella saw the
errors of her ways.
Her original moral system was a combination of that which was
taught to her by her mother Mau-mau Bett and by her master.
Her mother taught her honesty as part of a moral system. The
masters also stressed honesty to the slaves. Thus, when she
became a mother, she would at times whip her children when
they cried for food, rather than give them food that was not
their own (Narrative p. 34) Her moral system, even though
sometimes misguided, was always strong and directed by her
principles.
When Isabella became enlightened she still did not regret the
time she had spent being faithful and true to her master, because
"[ii t made me true to my God." Using everything in life as a
lesson, "It helped her form in her a character that loved truth,
and hated a lie, and had saved her from the bitter pains and

fears that are sure to follow in the wake of insincerity and
hypocrisy" (Narrative p. 34). Truth is a Ma'atian principle.
The Pursuit of Freedom
Isabella was legally a free woman on July 4, 1827 but her
master refused to grant her freedom. She had a diseased hand
for a year, which greatly diminished the amount of work that
she could perform. Her master refused her freedom because he
had sustained a loss of profit. She pleaded with him, but
probably because of her faithfulness and honesty, he was very
reluctant to give her up. So Isabella, even though she was a
legally free African, decided to escape.
As with all things, she discussed it in detail with God. She got
an idea to leave just before dawn and thanked God "Yes, said
she, fervently, 'that's a good thought! Thank you, God, for that
thought!" [Emphasis in text] (Narrative 41). She left and prayed
to God for a safe asylum. While on her journey, a thought came
to her about a man who lived in the direction in which she was
traveling, who would be likely to befriend her. She went to his
house and he indeed welcomed her, but since he was on his
deathbed, he referred her to two other places that might
welcome her. She remembered that the inhabitants of the first
house were hospitable people. She followed her inner spirit and
stopped there. The Van Wageners not only welcomed her, they
hired her.
Isabella's master eventually found her and accused her of
running away. She replied that she did not run away but had
walked away in daylight because he had promised her freedom.
Mr. Van Wagener stepped in and agreed to buy her services for
a year. He then told her not to call him master because the only
master was God. At first, she did not believe that he did not
want to function in a masterslave relationship, but he did not.
She perceived the Van Wageners to be relatively kind people.
She made a decision to bring more order into her life by
redefining herself. She became Isabella Van Wagener.
Isabella's Sacred Place
Her first and foremost spiritual teacher, her mother, Maumau

Bett, taught her to pray. She believed that she could only pray
by speaking out to the Divine when she was alone (Narrative p.
27) so she created a sacred place.
It was "a small island in a small stream, covered with willow
shrubbery ... It was a lonely spot chosen by her for its beauty,
its retirement, and because she thought that there, in the noise
of those waters, she could speak louder to God, without being
overheard by any who might pass that way" (Narrative p. 60).
She would use her sacred place for intimate discussions with the
Divine force. At this point, she did not have any formal
religious instruction. Her spirituality was based on her intimate
relationship with the Divine. Mau-mau Bett was her minister
and spiritual role model. She stated that when she arrived in
New York City in 1829, "She had known nothing of religion a
few months before-not even that Jesus Christ was the Son of
God" (Stetson and David p. 68). When she moved to New York
she first joined the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.
In 1832, she joined a religious community but later left it.
Reading Sacred Text
Real education means to inspire people to live more abundantly,
to learn to begin with life as they find it and make it better
(Carter G. Woodson 29)
Isabella Van Wagener continued to develop and engage in the
process of becoming. She was illiterate but wanted to
understand the Bible. She wanted the text read to her without
comment so that she could translate its meaning for herself. She
found that she could get children to read to her without
comment, more easily than she could adults. They did not mind
reading the same sentence over and over. Thus, even though she
was illiterate, she was able to study the sacred text and make
her own interpretations. She wished to compare the teachings of
the Bible with the witness within her; and she came to the
conclusion, that the spirit of truth spoke in those records, but
that the recorders of those truths had intermingled with them
ideas and suppositions of their own [Emphasis Supplied]
(Narrative p. 109)

In all aspects of her life, Isabella Van Wagener showed
indications of being an independent thinker. She desired to live
life more abundantly. She was constantly seeking knowledge of
herself and acting upon it. Like the sun, her life manifested the
potent, unfailing energy of becoming.
The African view is ... th[e] idea of unity with the cosmos. In
the sense of the Zulu declaration, one says "I am river, I am
mountain, I am tree, I am love, I am emotion, I am beauty, I am
lake, I am cloud, I am sun, I am sky, I am mind, I am one with
one." There is no difference between human beings in-
knowledge-of-themselves and the cosmosbecoming. The
symbols, which suggest Ma'at, provide existential connections
to those who would decipher the orator's message (Asante p. 83)
When she moved to New York, she first joined the African
Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.
In 1832, she joined a religious community in Sing Sing, New
York. Elijah Pierson led it first and then later Robert Matthews,
who was better known as The Prophet Matthias, whom she
believed, was an avatar of God with equanimity. He had a long
white beard and appeared to her and others to look similar to
the pictures of Jesus Christ that were in many Bibles (Stetson
and David p. 68). She was the only Black person in the
community and by all accounts was treated as an equal.
Matthias and his disciples believed that after death bodies
would not be resurrected, but the spirits of former saints would
enter the bodies of the present generation and begin heaven on
earth, with Matthias and Pierson being the first to become saints
(Narrative p. 95-6). The community ended in controversy.
Mattias was eventually arrested for, but was later acquitted, of
the charge of murdering Pierson. Isabella eventually escaped the
negative consequences suffered by many others in the
community. However, she became disillusioned, and
disassociated herself from the group.
Spiritual Epiphany: From Isabella to SoJourner Truth
It was in New York City that Isabella had a spiritual
transformation and became the person with whom we are most

familiar. On June 1, 1843, the day of Pentecost, Isabella felt
called to leave New York City. Like Buddha, she "awakened,"
as with an epiphany experience. She had never been outside of
New York State nor did she know any one outside of the state.
Yet Isabella felt that she was meant to go east' and that all
would be well for her on her journey. She did not tell her
children or her friends because she felt that they would try to
discourage her (Narrative p. 100).
She put a few items in a pillowcase. An hour before leaving, she
informed Mrs. Whiting, the woman in whose house she was
living, that she was a new person, Sojourner Truth, and that she
was going east. Truth's taking a new name that was not
connected to a master or a husband was a Ma'atian act. She
proclaimed herself existentially as a "self-determining agent
responsible for the authenticity of her choices" (Webster p.
678). Her taking on a new name was what Zen Buddhists refer
to as the ultimate spiritual experience, Satori, an intuitive flash
of sudden awareness. Clinical psychologist and psychotherapist
John Weiwood describes Satori as an immense, cosmic felt
shaft, where one's whole life suddenly changes, and one walks
away a new being (Welwood p.98). She described her
experience as a revelation that came as sudden as a flash of
lightening and she felt totally at one with the Divine Creator
(Narrative p. 65) She re-defined her existence. It was an act of
faith. When Whiting asked her, "What are you going east for?
Her answer was, "The Spirit calls me there, and I must go"
(Narrative p. 100)
Going east to Truth meant traveling "up and down the land"
(Stetson 93)
She told the abolitionist writer, Harriet Beecher Stowe, the
story of her transformation:
My name was Isabella: but when I left the house
of bondage, I left everything behind. I wa'n't goin
to keep nothin' of Egypt on me, an 'so I went to the
Lord an' asked him to give me a new name. And the

Lord gave me Sojourner, because I was to travel up
an' down the land, showin' the people their sins an'
bein' a sign unto them. Afterwards I told the Lord I
wanted another name, 'cause everybody else had
two names; and the Lord gave Truth, because I
was to declare the truth to the people (Stetson and
David p. 88)
It was also an act of courage. She had the courage to affirm
herself and to step out into the unknown. She believed then, as
always in her life, that she was in direct communication with
God and her needs would be met. Her mission was to testify to
the hope that was within her (Narrative p. 101). Thus she:
... left the city on the morning of the 1st of June,
1843 ... and taking the rising sun for her only
compass and guide, she "remembered Lot's wife"
and hoping to avoid her fate, she resolved not to
look back till she felt sure the wicked city from which
she was fleeing was left too far behind to be visible
in the distance ... (Narrative p. 100)
At first she would speak to people as she found them already
assembled during her travels, but eventually she began to
advertise her own meetings. She spoke across the nation on
issues of personal empowerment through the spirit, abolition of
enslavement, and women's rights. She was a skillful and popular
orator and Truth testified that she and her audience had "a good
time" (Narrative p. 101)
Conclusion
During Isabelle Van Wagener!s personal transformation into
Sojourner Truth, she became a fighter for justice for enslaved
Africans and all women. Truth's life continues to empower and
inspire today. She inspires people to live life more abundantly,
define their existence, pursue truth and justice, live by the
principles that are just, and have the courage and faith to see it
through.
Sojourner Truth was the archetype of Ma'at. She lived in the

midst of chaos. She suffered horrendous physical, mental,
sexual, and spiritual torture. She endured the loss of parents,
siblings, a spouse, and children. She chose to redefine herself.
She embodied Ma'atian principles. She pursued truth with a
passion and it was truth that set her free. She constantly sought
balance in her life. Her good deeds outweighed her negative
acts. Ultimately, she brought order out of the chaos of
enslavement.
References
Armour, R. (1986) Gods and Myths of Ancient Egypt. Cairo:
The American University in Cairo Press.
Asante, Molefi (1990) Kemet Afrocentricity and Knowledge.
Trenton: Africa World Press.
Freed, R. E., Markowitz, Y. J., & D'Auria, S. E. (1999) (Eds.)
Pharaohs of the Sun. Boston: Bulfinch Press.
Karenga, Maulana (1993) Introduction to Black Studies 2
Edition. Los Angeles: The University of Sankore Press.
Monges, Miriam M. (1999) Candace Rites of Passage Program:
The Cultural Context As an Empowerment Tool. Journal of
Black Studies 29, 827-840.
Obenga, Theophile (1995) A Lost Tradition African Philosophy
in Worm History. Philadelphia: The Source Editions.
Stetson, Erlene and Linda David (1994) Glorying in Tribulation
The Lifework of Sojourner Truth. East Lansing: Michigan State
University Press.
Teeter, Emily (1997) The Presentation of Maat Ritual and
Legitimacy in Ancient Egypt. Chicago: The' Oriental Institute
of the University of Chicago.
Truth, Sojourner Narrative of Sojourner Truth A Bondswoman
of Olden Time With a History of Her Labors and
Correspondence Drawn from Her "Book of Life_(1878/1991)
Ed. Gates, Henry. The Schomburg Library of NineteenthCentury
Black Women Writers. New York: Oxford University Press.
Woodson, Carter G. (1990) The Mis-education of the Negro
1933. Trenton: African World Press.
Webster New Universal Unabridged Dictionary (2nd ed.)

(1996). United States: Barnes and Nobles.
Welwood, John (2000) Toward a Psychology of Awakening
Buddhism Psychotherapy and the Path of Personal and Spiritual
Transformation Boston: Shainbhala.
MIRIAM MA'AT -KA -RE MON GES--CALIFORNIA STATE
UNIVERSITY, CHICO
Miriam Ma'at -Ka -Re Mon ges, at the time of her passing, was
a Professor in Social Work at Cal State Chico. She obtained
both Master's and Doctoral degrees from Temple University and
a B.A. from Brooklyn College.
Monges, Miriam Ma'at -Ka -Re
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2005 The Western Journal of Black
Studies
Citation Chicago
Monges, Miriam Ma'at -Ka -Re. "Sojourner truth: bringing order
out of chaos." The Western Journal of Black Studies 29, no. 4
(2005): 682+. U.S. History in Context (accessed April 18,
2017).
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Truth, Sojourner
By: Nell Irvin Painter
Source:
Black Women in America, Second Edition

· Bibliography
Related Content
· Truth, Sojourner At a Glance
· Abolition Movement
· Douglass, Sarah Mapps
· Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins
· Remond, Sarah Parker
· Slavery
Truth, Sojourner
Sex: Female
Born: Hurley, Ulster County, New York, United States
c.1799
Died: Battle Creek, Michigan, United States
26 November 1883
Activity/Profession: Abolitionist, Slave, Women's Rights
Advocate, Litigant
(b. c. 1797; d. 26 November 1883),
abolitionist, women's rights advocate.
Sojourner Truth is one of the two most widely known
nineteenth-century black women; the other, Harriet Tubman,
was also a former slave without formal education. While
Tubman is known as the “Moses of her people” for having led
hundreds of slaves to freedom, Truth is remembered more for a
few memorable utterances than for her acts. Before the Civil
War, she was a feminist abolitionist; after the war, she worked
in freedpeople's relief. Truth is closely identified with a phrase
she did not utter, “and ar'n't I a woman?” She often made the
point that women who are poor and black must be included
within the category of woman, but not in these precise words. A
white feminist journalist, Frances Dana Gage, invented these
particular words in 1863. Truth's twentieth- and twenty-first-
century persona worked most effectively within the politically-
minded worlds of black civil rights and feminism, in which she
gainsays assumptions about race, class, and gender in American
society. During her lifetime, however, Truth was deeply
immersed in the Second Great Awakening's propagation of

Methodist-inflected and unconstrained religiosity known as
Perfectionism, much of which resembled modern
Pentecostalism. Hence, the making of Truth's modern reputation
entailed the creative reworking of much of her life, an
elaboration that she encouraged and that began during her
lifetime. The emblematic character of Sojourner Truth is
constructed on a peculiarly nineteenth-century life experience
that is nearly as obscure as the symbolic figure is well known.
Sojourner Truth, in a carte-de-visite (a small visiting card
portrait), possibly from 1864. It was captioned “I sell the
shadow to support the substance.” Library of Congress
The symbol of Sojourner Truth was born of two speeches
delivered in the 1850s: one in Akron, Ohio, in 1851; the other
in Silver Lake, a small town in northern Indiana, in 1858. Like
everything that happened to Truth after 1849, both events are
known only through reports from other people. Truth was
illiterate, and even her Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1878) was
dictated in the late 1840s. In Akron, Ohio, in May 1851
Sojourner Truth joined the exchange at a woman's rights
convention. The secretary of the meeting, Marius Robinson,
took these notes as she was speaking:
"I am a woman's rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and
can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and
husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than
that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal; I can carry
as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I
am as strong as any man that is now. As for intellect, all I can
say is, if a woman have a pint and a man a quart—why cant she
have her little pint full? You need not be afraid to give us our
rights for fear we will take too much—for we cant take more
than our pint'll hold. The poor men seem to be all in confusion,
and don't know what to do. Why children, if you have woman's
rights give it to her and you will feel better. You will have your
own rights, and they wont be so much trouble. I cant read, but I
can hear. I have heard the bible and have learned that Eve
caused man to sin. Well if woman upset the world, do give her a

chance to set it right side up again…man is in a tight place, the
poor slave is on him, woman is coming on him, and he is surely
between a hawk and a buzzard."
(Antislavery Bugle, 21 June 1851, in Painter, Sojourner Truth,
A Life, A Symbol: 125–126)
Truth's 1851 speech demands that definitions of female gender
allow for women's strength as well as for their suffering from
poverty and enslavement. Her 1858 gesture, recorded by
abolitionist William Hayward, again reclaims her gender and
defies critics who seek to silence an eloquent critic of slavery
and sexism. Faced with a hostile audience that questioned a
black woman's right to speak in public and that intended to
shame her out of presenting her case, Truth confronted men who
claimed she was too forceful a speaker to be a woman. After
they demanded that she prove her sexual identity through a
performance intended to humiliate, Truth bared her breast in
public, turned the imputed shame back upon her tormenters,
and, transcending their small-minded test, turned their spite
back on them.
Based on these words and gestures, the symbol of Sojourner
Truth is an eloquent, inspired, former slave who made her
experience of work and victimized motherhood into an alternate
model of womanhood. In a world that saw woman as white and
black as male, she was a woman who was also black and a black
who was also woman. Although several black women worked
for the abolition of slavery and the achievement of women's
rights in the middle of the nineteenth century, such as Sarah
Mapps Douglass, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Sarah Remond,
the former slave Sojourner Truth became the emblematic
nineteenth-century black woman and the symbol of the
conjunction of sex and race.
Sojourner Truth was born about 1797 in Ulster County, New
York, on the west side of the Hudson River and some eighty
miles north of New York City, in a region dominated culturally
and economically by people of Dutch descent. She was the
second youngest of ten or twelve children, and her parents,

James and Elizabeth Bomefree, named her Isabella. Their first
language was Dutch. As a child Isabella belonged to several
owners, the most significant of whom was John Dumont, for
whom she worked from 1810 until a year before she was
emancipated by state law in 1827. She kept in touch with the
Dumont family until they moved west in 1849.
When she was about fourteen years old, Isabella was married to
another of Dumont's slaves, an older man named Thomas.
Thomas and Isabella had five children: Diana, Sophia,
Elizabeth, Peter, and, perhaps, Hannah. In 1826 to 1827, the
year before she became free, Isabella had several critical
experiences. She left her long-time master Dumont of her own
accord and went to work for the family of Isaac Van Wagenen.
When her son's owner illegally sold him into perpetual slavery
in Alabama, Isabella went to court in Kingston, New York, and
sued successfully for his return. She also had a dramatic
conversion experience and joined the recently established
Methodist church in Kingston, where she met a Miss Grear, with
whom she journeyed to New York City after her emancipation.
Leaving her daughters, who were still bound through indenture,
in Ulster County at work or in the care of their father, Isabella
took Peter, a troubled young teenager, with her.
In New York City in the early 1830s, Isabella supported herself
through household work. She attended the white John Street
Methodist Church and the Black African Methodist Episcopal
Zion Church, where she briefly encountered three of her older
siblings. She also began to preach at the camp meetings held
around the city and attracted the attention of white religious
mavericks, some of whom became her employers. Through the
dissident Methodist Latourette family, Isabella encountered the
Magdalene Society, a mission to prostitutes founded by Arthur
Tappan, who became a leading abolitionist in the mid-1830s. In
the Magdalene Society, she met Elijah Pierson, and through
Pierson, the self-proclaimed prophet Matthias (Robert
Matthews).
Between 1832 and 1835, Isabella was a follower of Matthias

and lived in his “kingdom,” a commune in Ossining
underwritten by Pierson and another wealthy merchant family.
The only black follower among Matthias's adherents, Isabella
was also one of only two of the commune's working-class
members. Like that of many other independent popular prophets
of the early nineteenth century, Matthias's message was eclectic
and idiosyncratic. Matthias, who had begun his public life as an
ardent advocate of temperance and a fiery anti-Mason,
advocated several of the enthusiasms that were current in the
1830s: He claimed to possess the spirit of God and taught his
followers that there were good and evil spirits and that the
millennium was imminent. The virtually corporeal existence of
spirits was also a central tenet of the kingdom. Matthias and his
followers did not believe in doctors, reasoning that illness was
caused by evil spirits that must be cast out. Members of the
kingdom fasted often and followed a diet that emphasized fresh
fruit and vegetables and prohibited alcohol. Although other
communities with which Sojourner Truth would be connected
would hold many of these same convictions, Matthias's kingdom
was the only one organized around so autocratic and charismatic
a prophet.
Matthias's kingdom collapsed in 1835 after an accusation of
murder and a free love scandal brought the community
tremendous notoriety. Matthias left for the West, and Isabella
resumed household work in New York City for another eight
years. Her Narrative contains no record of her activities
between the breakup of the Matthias commune in 1835 and her
assumption of a new identity in the midst of economic hard
times in 1843. The Narrative does indicate that in 1843 Isabella
was profoundly influenced by the millenarian movement
inspired by a religiously independent farmer named William
Miller. Making his own calculations based on biblical
prophesies, Miller had figured that the world would come to an
end in 1843. Scores of itinerant preachers, who addressed
hundreds of camp meetings, which were coordinated by several
well-run newspapers (including the New York Midnight Cry),

spread Miller's message. Believing herself to be part of what
she called a great drama of robbery and wrong, Isabella felt that
she must make a definitive break with her old way of life. On 1
June 1843, which was also the day of Pentecost, she changed
her name to Sojourner Truth, which means “itinerant preacher.”
Without informing her family or friends, she set out eastward,
exhorting people to embrace Jesus, as the Spirit had commanded
her. Following a network of Millerite camp meetings, she made
her way from Brooklyn, across Long Island, into Connecticut,
and up the Connecticut River Valley. By December 1843 the
Millerites were facing the reality of the Great Disappointment,
and Sojourner Truth had joined the utopian Northampton
Association, located in what later became Florence,
Massachusetts.
A utopian community dedicated to the cooperative manufacture
of silk, the Northampton Association attracted relatively well-
educated people whose reforming sentiments were broad and
deep-running. Unusual at the time, the Northampton Association
did not draw the color line, and there Truth encountered the
retired black abolitionist David Ruggles, who was a permanent
resident, and Frederick Douglass, who visited occasionally.
William Lloyd Garrison also spent months at a time at the
Northampton Association, staying with his brother-in-law
George Benson, who was one of the association's founders.
Between residents and visitors at the association, Truth lived
for the first time in an environment permeated with liberal
reforms like feminism and abolitionism. Even before the
association collapsed in 1846 and its lands subdivided and sold,
Truth began to address antislavery audiences, taking her
preacher's speaking skills into a new field. After 1846, she
stayed on in Florence, where she bought a house on Park Street.
In 1849 she joined George Thompson, an antislavery member of
the British Parliament, on the antislavery and women's rights
lecture circuit, selling her Narrative to pay off the mortgage on
her house. Florence remained her base until she moved to Battle
Creek, Michigan, in 1856.

As an antislavery feminist speaker, Sojourner Truth quickly
gained a reputation for pungent wit and insight. Whether she
said that women deserved equal rights with men, that slavery
should be abolished, or that freed people should be allocated
government lands in the West, she always prefaced her remarks
and authenticated her authority by recalling her experience in
slavery. In time, she overstated both the duration of her
enslavement and the particulars of her suffering. After the Civil
War, Truth routinely spoke of having spent her mother's forty,
rather than her own thirty, years as a slave. Stressing her
identification with slavery, Truth gauged her audiences well, for
she, rather than her free, educated, and ladylike black
colleagues, found a fond place in American memory.
Truth continued to lecture to antislavery and women's rights
audiences until she went to Washington, DC, in 1863 to aid
black refugees fleeing the warfare of northern Virginia and the
continued slavery of Maryland. As she nursed and taught
domestic skills among destitute former slaves, Truth realized
that the old clothes and handouts of charitable aid could not
address the fundamental causes of poverty among the freed
people: lack of paying jobs and material resources. In 1867 she
initiated a job-placement effort that matched refugee workers
with employers in Rochester, New York, and Battle Creek,
Michigan. When that operation became too cumbersome for
volunteers to manage, she drew up a petition to Congress that
demanded that western land be set aside for the freed people's
settlement. In 1870 and 1871 she traveled throughout New
England and the Midwest, including Kansas, collecting
signatures on her petition, on which no action was taken. In
1879, however, scores of black southerners, called Exodusters,
migrated to Kansas spontaneously. The Exodusters were acting
independently on the same kind of millenarian fear of imminent
transformation that Truth had experienced in 1843. Fearing
(rightly) that ascendant Democrats would seek to reenslave
them, Exodusters from Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and
Tennessee flocked to the state that they knew as Free Kansas.

By the late 1870s Sojourner Truth had fallen into poor health,
but she applauded the Exodusters' venture, even traveling to
Kansas to support them. She died in Battle Creek in 1883,
mourned as a stalwart of antebellum reform.
Well before her death, Truth had begun to enter historical
memory. Writing down Truth's autobiography, which Truth
published in 1850 as The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, Olive
Gilbert (who also lived in the Northampton Association)
preserved the first portrait of Sojourner Truth. Harriet Beecher
Stowe wrote a widely circulated profile entitled “Sojourner
Truth, the Libyan Sibyl,” which was published in the Atlantic
Monthly in April 1863 and reprinted in the 1875–1878 edition
of The Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Stowe's article motivated
Frances Dana Gage to write her own recollections of Truth, also
in April 1863, which were republished in the 1875–1878 edition
of The Narrative of Sojourner Truth and volume one of
Elizabeth Cady Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage
(1881). Gage, who had chaired the meeting in Akron in 1851,
invented the rhetorical question, “Ar'n't I a woman?”
Subsequent Sojourner Truth biographies, long and short, mostly
repeated material from these three mid-nineteenth-century
sources.
So singular and so eloquent a personage appealed to educated
American women, who embedded various versions of her in
women's history. Because Truth left only fragmentary bits of
autobiography, and her surviving children, also poor and
illiterate, lacked the resources to create a stable historical
character, Sojourner Truth's persona has changed to reflect the
needs and tastes of her audiences since she entered the public
realm in the early 1830s. In camp meetings around New York
City, she gained renown as a preacher and singer, a reputation
that she retained well after she became Sojourner Truth, the
itinerant preacher, in 1843. In 1863 Harriet Beecher Stowe
established Truth as a Christian of exquisite faith, in accordance
with nineteenth-century evangelical sensibilities. By the end of
the nineteenth century, the popularity of Stowe's version of

Truth had begun to fade. Modern audiences are more likely to
know Truth through Frances Dana Gage, as a feminist who
redefines womanhood along contemporary lines. To reinforce
the power of this black feminist persona, it became common
practice to collapse her 1851 sentiments and 1858 actions into
one event. This combination produces an angry, defiant
character that may suit modern tastes but that does not match
the evangelical qualities of the historic Sojourner Truth.
See also Abolition Movement.
Bibliography
· Collins, Kathleen. Shadow and Substance: Sojourner Truth.
History of Photography, July–September 1983.
· Fauset, Arthur Huff. Sojourner Truth: God's Faithful Pilgrim
(1938). New York: Russell & Russell, 1971.
· Mabee, Carleton, with Susan Mabee Newhouse. Sojourner
Truth: Slave, Prophet, Legend. New York: New York University
Press, 1993.
· Mabee, Carleton. Sojourner Truth, Bold Prophet: Why Did She
Never Learn to Read? New York History, January 1988.
· Ortiz, Victoria. Sojourner Truth, A Self-made Woman. New
York: Harper Collins, 1974.
· Painter, Nell Irvin. Sojurner Truth, A Life, A Symbol. New
York: W.W. Norton, 1996.
· Painter, Nell Irvin, ed. The Narrative of Sojourner Truth. New
York: Penguin Books, 1998.
· Painter, Nell Irvin. Sojourner Truth in Life and Memory:
Writing the Biography of an American Exotic. Gender and
History, Spring 1990.
· Painter, Nell Irvin. Introduction to reprinted edition of
Jacqueline Bernard, Journey Roward Freedom: The Story of
Sojourner Truth. New York: Feminist Press, 1990.
· Painter, Nell Irvin. Sojourner Truth in Feminist Abolitionism:
Difference, Slavery, and Memory. In An Untrodden Path:
Antislavery and Women's Political Culture, edited by Jean
Yellin and John Van Horne. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1992.

· Pauli, Hertha. Her Name Was Sojourner Truth. New York:
Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1962.
· Stetson, Erlene, and Linda David. Glorying in Tribulation.
East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1994.
· Yellin, Jean Fagan. Women and Sisters: The Antislavery
Feminists in American Culture. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1989.
Citation forTruth, Sojourner
Citation styles are based on the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th
Ed., and the MLA Style Manual, 2nd Ed..
MLA
Painter, Nell Irvin. "Truth, Sojourner." Black Women in
America, Second Edition. Ed. Darlene Clark HineNew York:
Oxford UP, 2008. Oxford African American Studies Center. Tue
Apr 18 20:45:22 EDT 2017.
<http://www.oxfordaasc.com/article/opr/t0003/e0439>.

Chicago
Painter, Nell Irvin. "Truth, Sojourner." Black Women in
America, Second Edition, edited by Ed. Darlene Clark Hine.
Oxford African American Studies Center,
http://www.oxfordaasc.com/article/opr/t0003/e0439 (accessed
Tue Apr 18 20:45:22 EDT 2017).
“I Want to Keep Things Stirring” ( 1867 )
Document Type:
Speech
Document Type:
Primary source
Document Type:
Primary source
“I Want to Keep Things Stirring” ( 1867 )
Commentary
Among the great voices for civil rights in American history is
Sojourner Truth, “forty years a slave and forty years free.”
Truth was born into slavery and bore five children into slavery;
she escaped from bondage and became (and remains) one of
American history's most powerful, plainspoken advocates of
equal rights, not only for black and white but for men and
women, too. Born Isabella Baumfree in Hurley, New York,
sometime around the end of the eighteenth century, the woman
who would later name herself Sojourner Truth grew to
adulthood under the perpetual barbarities of chattel slavery. Her
father, when an old man, was abandoned in the wilderness by
his owner and died of starvation. Separated from her family,
Truth was cruelly treated and routinely beaten before being sold
again and finally escaping to Canada, returning to the United
States only after New York outlawed slavery in 1829. Truth
went on to become an itinerant preacher, to dictate her widely
read autobiography, and eventually to become one of the most
influential and persuasive advocates of universal equality in the

history of the United States.
In the short address presented here, delivered 9 May 1867 at the
First Annual Meeting of the American Equal Rights
Association, Truth reviewed her life's work but noted that much
work remained to be done: “I suppose I am kept here because
something remains for me to do; I suppose I am yet to help to
break the chain. I have done a great deal of work; as much as a
man, but did not get so much pay. I used to work in the field
and bind grain, keeping up with the cradler; but men doing no
more, got twice as much pay; so with the German women. They
work in the field and do as much work, but do not get the pay.
We do as much, we eat as much, we want as much. I suppose I
am about the only colored woman that goes about to speak for
the rights of colored women. I want to keep the thing stirring,
now that the ice is cracked.”
My friends, I am rejoiced that you are glad, but I don't know
how you will feel when I get through. I come from another
field—the country of the slave. They have got their liberty—so
much good luck to have slavery partly destroyed; not entirely. I
want it root and branch destroyed. Then we will all be free
indeed. I feel that if I have to answer for the deeds done in my
body just as much as a man, I have a right to have just as much
as a man. There is a great stir about colored men getting their
rights, but not a word about the colored women; and if colored
men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the
colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just
as bad as it was before. So I am for keeping the thing going
while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will
take a great while to get it going again. White women are a
great deal smarter, and know more than colored women, while
colored women do not know scarcely anything. They go out
washing, which is about as high as a colored woman gets, and
their men go about idle, strutting up and down; and take it all,
and then scold because there is no food. I want you consider on
that, chil'n. I call you chil'n; you are somebody's chil'n, and I
am old enough to be mother of all that is here. I want women to

have their rights. In the courts women have no right, no voice;
nobody speaks for them. I wish woman to have her voice there
among the pettifoggers. If it is not a fit place for women, it is
unfit for men to be there.
I am above eighty years old; it is about time for me to be going.
I have been forty years a slave and forty years free and would
be here forty years more to have equal rights for all. I suppose I
am kept here because something remains for me to do; I suppose
I am yet to help to break the chain. I have done a great deal of
work; as much as a man, but did not get so much pay. I used to
work in the field and bind grain, keeping up with the cradler;
but men doing no more, got twice as much pay; so with the
German women. They work in the field and do as much work,
but do not get the pay. We do as much, we eat as much, we want
as much. I suppose I am about the only colored woman that goes
about to speak for the rights of colored women. I want to keep
the thing stirring, now that the ice is cracked. What we want is a
little money. You men know that you get as much again as
women when you write, or for what you do. When we get our
rights we shall not have to come to you for money, for then we
shall have money enough in our own pockets; and may be you
will ask us for money. But help us now until we get it. It is a
good consolation to know that when we have got this battle
once fought we shall not be coming to you any more. You have
been having our rights so long, that you think, like a slave-
holder, that you own us. I know that is hard for one who has
held the reins for so long to give up; it cuts like a knife. It will
feel all the better when it closes up again. I have been in
Washington about three years, seeing about these colored
people. Now colored men have the right to vote. There ought to
be equal rights now more than ever, since colored people have
got their freedom. I am going to talk several times while I am
here; so now I will do a little singing. I have not heard any
singing since I came here.

Citation for“I Want to Keep Things Stirring” ( 1867 )
MLA
"“I Want to Keep Things Stirring” ( 1867 )." Oxford African
American Studies Center. Tue Apr 18 20:32:47 EDT 2017.
<http://www.oxfordaasc.com/article/ps/ps-aasc-0122>.
Chicago
"“I Want to Keep Things Stirring” ( 1867 )." Oxford African
American Studies Center,
http://www.oxfordaasc.com/article/ps/ps-aasc-0122 (accessed
Tue Apr 18 20:32:47 EDT 2017).
We may never know the real Harriet Tubman
Afro-Americans in New York Life and History, January 2012
From U.S. History in Context
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We may never know the real Harriet Tubman
During the 150th anniversary celebrations of the American Civil
War, the Emancipation Proclamation, and 13th Amendment to
the United States Constitution, it is fitting to focus attention on
the life of Harriet Tubman, New Yorker by choice, self-
liberated former slave, religious evangelical Underground

Railroad conductor, and Civil War scout and nurse. However,
we may never know who the real Harriet Tubman was. There is
even debate over her signature achievement as a conductor on
the Underground Railroad leading enslaved Africans to freedom
in the North and Canada. The number of trips she made to the
South is not well documented and estimates range between
seven and nineteen, although fourteen is probably the more
accurate figure. Similarly, there is disagreement about the
number of people she rescued on these trips, from sixty to
almost four hundred. (2) The highly regarded Black Abolitionist
Papers credit Tubman with "at least nine during the 1850s to
lead some 180 slaves to freedom ..." (3)
Tubman's star as a major historical actor has risen and fallen in
the past 150 years. (4) In 1994, the heavily maligned National
Council for History proposed U.S. History standards,
overwhelmingly rejected by a vote of the U.S. Senate, that
included six references to Harriet Tubman but none for Paul
Revere, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, or the Wright
blothers. (5) However, in 2006, when Atlantic magazine asked a
panel of ten eminent historians to identify the 100 most
influential figures in American history, Harriet Tubman did not
make a list that included ten other women, four white
abolitionists, and eight African Americans. On this list, Bell
ranked as the 24th most influential American, the Wright
brothers 23rd, and Thomas Edison 9th. (6)
One reason we may never know who the real Harriet Tubman
was is because her life has been reconstructed based on limited
historical evidence to make what are essentially political points.
I find it is useful to compare her tale to accounts of the life of
Malcolm X. There is Ossie Davis' noble Black Prince, (7) the
changeling portrayed by Alex Haley in Malcolm's
"autobiography," (8) Spike Lee and Denzel Washington's much
cooler and composed movie version, (9) and the Malcolm buried
beneath a mountain of information in Manning Marable's
definitive and encyclopedic biography. (10) Similarly, Harriet
Tubman has been depicted in messianic terms as the Moses of

her people and the Black Joan of Arc, portrayed as the noble
Queen of the Underground Railroad, described using military
parlance as General Tubman, and been presented as a much
simpler and maternal Mother Tubman or Aunt Harriet. (11)
One of the most power iterations of Harriet Tubman is a
painting by Jacob Lawrence with a youthful looking, strong,
upright, and barefoot Harriet wearing a red blouse and white
skirt while holding a pistol in her hand as she pushes and leads
a band of fugitive slaves to freedom. (12) Surviving
photographs provide us with very different images Tubman. One
photograph historian Kale Clifford Larson dates to 1887 or 1888
(other accounts differ), show her with a group of African
Americans, three children, two adult males, and an elderly
woman. (13) Tubman, to the far left in the picture, is hunched
over, her shoulders facing inward. She holds a washing bowl in
front of her and wears a long simple dress and a round-brimmed
hat. This is certainly not the ferocious heroine portrayed by
Lawrence.
There also survive a posed headshot of Tubman and at least five
full-length portraits, two standing, and three sitting, as well as a
widely-circulated woodcut from the first edition of the Sarah
Bradford biography. Tubman portrayed as a Civil War scout
carrying a rifle. (14) One of the full-length portraits shows
Tubman dressed in plain but formal dress with a neck scarf.
This picture probably was intended as a publicity shot for
books. The most intriguing photograph, circa 1895, shows
Tubman wearing a headscarf and looking much more like a
veteran of the anti-slavery campaigns and the Civil War. (15)
As with Malcolm X, with so many possible variations, it is
impossible to tell which image is the real Harriet.
Despite these variations, Tubman has become a legendary figure
in elementary school classrooms and in children's literature.
Like Paul Bunyan, John Henry, Betsy-Ross, and Davy Crockett,
her life is deeply woven into the myths we tell school children
about the history of American society. Tubman stands as the
personification of the ability of people to persevere against

difficulties and injustices. She is probably the subject of more
children's books than any African American historical figure
except perhaps Martin Luther King, Jr. The Brooklyn Public
Library lists twenty-eight biographies of Tubman in its juvenile
collection. (16) At the same time her story has been sanitized,
blemishes have been removed, radicalism has been
deemphasized, like in the stories of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther
King, and Frederick Douglass, to make them more appropriate
as American heroes.
Because she was illiterate, it was illegal to teach enslaved
Africans to read and write in the South, and perhaps also
because of a brain injury she suffered when struck in the head
in her youth, Harriet Tubman was forced to rely on others to
write her story. Her chief spokesperson was Sarah H. Bradford,
a white woman, who was a schoolteacher from Geneva, New
York. Bradford was about the same age as Tubman. The text
suggests she was in awe of her friend and neighbor's
achievements, although some authors believe she was not
closely connected to Tubman and was recruited to write the
book. (17)
After the Civil War, Tubman was repeatedly in financial
difficulty. Bradford and Tubman's supporteis saw-promotion of
her story as a way for her to achieve financial security and to
repay her debts. Among other things, Bradford arranged for the
costs of the book's publication to be donated. (18) In the
introduction to the 1869 edition of her biography of Tubman,
Bradford claimed her "single object" in writing the book was to
argue Tubman's case for a Civil War veterans pension, however
she also wanted to ensure Tubman's place in history. (19) The
biography was revised, lengthened, and reissued in 1886 as
Harriet, The Moses of Her People. (20)
Larson argues that Bradford's revisions to the biography reflect
changes in American culture and society from the post-Civil
War era to the post-Reconstruction period. They may also
reflect changes in Tubman's own life. (21) In 1856, Tubman was
"wanted" in the South because of her activities on the

Underground Railroad, theft of human "property," and violation
of the Fugitive Slave laws. In the 1860s she served in the Union
army as a nurse, cook, scout, and spy. Little, however, is known
about Tubman's life in the 1870s and 1880s and what we do
know suggests a series of problems including charges that she
was involved in a financial scandal. Tubman experienced the
death of close members of her family including her mother and
husband, and between 1882 and 1884, the destruction by fire of
her home. (22)
Later in life Tubman became a noted local storyteller
elaborating on her own exploits and reworking her legend. In a
1890s interview, she supposedly welcomed the appellation,
"Moses of Her People" claiming. "I felt like Moses. De Lord
tole me to do dis. I said, 'O Lord, I can't - don't ask me - take
somebody else." Den I could hear de Lord answer, It's you I
want. Harriet Tubman' -jess as clar I heard him speak - an' den
I'd go agen down South an' bring up my brudders and sisters'"
(23)
Among other things, in the second edition, Bradford muted
criticism of slavery, wrote passages in dialect, and used racist
stereotypes in her descriptions of African Americans. In the
preface to the 1869 edition, Bradford had no problem claiming
Tubman's achievements deserved equal mention with Joan of
Arc and Florence Nightingale, and that she was providing a
"plain and unvarnished account of some scenes and adventures
in the life of a woman who, though one of earth's lowly ones,
and of dark-hued skin, has shown an amount of heroism in her
character rarely possessed by those of any station in life ... Well
has she been called "Moses," for she has been a leader and
deliverer unto hundreds of her people." (24) However, in the
preface to second edition, Bradford felt compelled to justify
calling Harriet "Moses" when she was a woman and had
"succeeded in piloting only three or four hundred slaves from
the land of bondage to the land of freedom." (25) Larson offers
a well-documented criticism of Bradford's work, but it is likely
that without Bradford, Harriet Tubman would have been

forgotten. (26) Among other things, it was Bradford who
secured endorsements of the biographies and Harriet Tubman's
accomplishments from noted abolitionists and politicians
including Frederick Douglass, Gerrit Smith, Wendell Phillips,
and William Seward.
Tubman was barely mentioned in major contemporary accounts
of the Underground Railroad, which suggests her current
renown developed after the fact. In 1883, R.C. Smedley, a
White physician, published History of the Underground
Railroad in Chester and the Neighboring counties of
Pennsylvania. (27) This region of Pennsylvania is southwest of
Philadelphia on the Delaware River and definitely was an area
where Tubman operated as a conductor. In the introduction to
the 1969 Arno Press reissue of Smedley's book, series editor
William L. Katz describes Smedley as the "first nonparticipant"
to write about the Underground Railroad and "more concerned
and aware of the selfless devotion of local whites, particularly
those motivated by deep religious conviction1" than he is with
black participants. (28) In a book that is over four hundred-
pages long, Smedley included only three paragraphs about a
"colored woman named Harriet Tubman" who was "active in
helping hundreds to escape, " although he does suggest she
merits comparison with Joan of Arc because of her bravery,
success, and her belief that she was in constant communication
with God. (29)
Unlike Smedley, William Still, who published his history of the
Underground Railroad in 1872, had significant personal
experience in the struggle to end slavery. Still was a free black
and an Underground Railroad stationmaster in Philadelphia as
well as a member of Pennsylvania Anti-SJavery Society and
secretary and executive director of the area's General Vigilance
Committee. (30) His eight-hundred page book, The
Underground Rail Road, A Record of Facts, Authentic
Narratives, Letters, etc., Narrating the Hardships Hair-breadth
Escapes and Death Struggles of the Slaves in their efforts for
Freedom, as related by themselves and others, or witnessed by

the author; together with sketches of some of the largest
stockholders, and most liberal aiders and advisers, of the road,
primarily focused on Philadelphia. It is filled with anecdotes
and biographical information about abolitionists and fugitive
slaves, but Still only included three paragraphs on Harriet
Tubman describing one incident where "Moses" arrived in
Philadelphia with six "passengers." (31)
In 1898, Wilbur H. Siebert, a historian and professor at Ohio
State University who was White, published what was at the time
a definitive history of the Underground Railroad, The
Underground Railroad: From Slavery to Freedom, Tubman is
only discussed in a five-page section of the 478-page book. (32)
Siebert interviewed Harriet Tubman in 1897, however according
to footnotes the information on Tubman is almost entirely
drawn from the second edition of the Bradford book. (33)
I think Frederick Douglass may have provided the best
explanation for the difficulty in defining Harriet Tubman. In a
letter to Tubman and Bradford prior to publication of the first
edition of the Bradford biography, Douglass wrote:
'The difference between us is very marked. Most that I have
done and
suffered in the service of our cause has been in public, and 1
have
received much encouragement at every step of the way. You,
on the
other hand, have labored in a private way. I have wrought in
the
day - you in the night. I have had the applause of the crowd
and the
satisfaction that comes of being approved by the multitude,
while
the most that you have done has been witnessed by a few
trembling,
scarred, and foot-sore bondmen and women, whom you have
led out of

the house of bondage, and whose heartfelt "God bless you" has
been
your only reward. The midnight sky and the silent stars have
been
the witnesses of your devotion to freedom and of your
heroism.
Excepting John Brown - of sacred memory - I know of no one
who has
willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our
enslaved
people than you have. Much that you have done would seem
improbable
to those who do not know you as I know you." (34)
While Douglass was a spokesperson for the abolitionist cause
and a public figure, Tubman, by necessity, worked at night, in
private, and with the most marginalized members of the
community. In addition, Douglass seems to suggest her
accomplishments were minimized because of who she was. Her
exploits on the Underground Railroad in defiance of Southern
Slave power and as a scout for the Union Army during the Civil
War seemed "improbable" because she was a woman, someone
of African ancestry, and for a former slave. The racism and
gender bias of the period forced commentators like Bradford
and Siebert to defend Tubman's personal credibility when
recording accomplishments. Even John Brown, who called her
"General Tubman" felt compelled to describe Harriet in
masculine terms. "He [Harriet] is the most of a man naturally;
that I ever met with." (35)
In the first decade of the 21st century there were a series of new
Harriet Tubman biographies. By far the most intriguing is a
book by Milton Sernett, Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory, and
History, that is more a commentary on the interplay between
history and public memory than it is an actual biography. (36)
Sernett wanted to understand why Tubman so strongly captured
the American imagination in the recent past, and to do this, he
had to sort out the "legend" from the "lady." (37) The book is

broadly chronological with chapters on the original or core
Tubman myth, the Underground Railroad, Tubman during the
Civil War, her relationship with Sarah Bradford, life and death
in Auburn, New York, and popularization and new myths. I
agree with Sernett that nations and social movements need
heroes like Tubman. The best heroes are dead ones who do not
embarrass them by developing new ideas and or taking
unpopular political stands.
Sernett's book draws on both recent and past efforts to
understand Tubman. He praises a 1943 book by Earl Conrad,
Harriet Tubman, that inaugurates modern Tubman scholarship,
books by Kate Clifford Larson and Jean Humez, and a series of
articles by James McGowan. (38) McGowan later co-authored a
biography with William Kashatus, Harriet Tubman: A
Biography. (39)
I found the Larson book to be carefully documented with
reproductions of a runaway slave advertisement calling for the
recapture of Harriet Tubman, known at the time as Minty, and
four runaway slaves she had helped liberate. (40) According to
the 1849 runaway slave ad, Tubman was 27 years old, "of a
chestnut color, fine looking, and about 5 feet high." The reward
was $50 if she was captured in Maryland and $100 if she had
escaped to another state. Larson also debunked the legend that
Southerners had placed an extraordinarily high bounty of
between $12,000 and $40,000 on Harriet Tubman because of her
role in the Underground Railroad. Larson could find no
evidence to support claims made by Sarah Bradford. (41)
Other recent Tubman biographies include Catherine Clinton's
Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom and Beverly Lowry's
Harriet Tubman: Imagining a Life. (42) Lowry's book is the
least academic of this group. Her subtitle and opening author's
note are suggestive of the problems faced by Tubman
biographers. She explicitly states that in this work she has
"reimagined" Tubman's life "as best as I could." (43)
Sernett agrees with Frederick Douglass' assertion that Tubman's
fame was initially hidden from the public because the risks

involved as a conductor on the Underground Railroad required
secrecy to ensure success and survival. While largely unknown
to Whites prior to publication of the Bradford biography.
Tubman was already known in Black communities as "Moses"
because of her frequent visits to the South "always carrying
away some of the oppressed." (44)
The earliest independent documentary evidence of Harriet
Tubman's activities is from a brief letter written in December
1854 by Thomas Garrett. The letter was published in William
Stilt's history of the Underground Railroad. (45) Garrett was an
Underground Railroad stationmaster in Wilmington, Delaware
on the escape route to Philadelphia. The letter was written to J.
Miller McKim, the corresponding secretary of the Philadelphia
Anti-Slavery Society. The tone of the letter and the commentary
provided by Still make it clear that McKim and Still were both
familiar with Tubman and her work. Garrett wrote:
"We made arrangements last night, and sent away Harriet
Tubman, with
six men and one woman to Allen Agnew's, to forwarded across
the
country to the city. Harriet, and one of the men had worn their
shoes
off their feet, and 1 gave them two dollars to help fit them
out ... " (46)
Tubman is also briefly mentioned in an 1856 book written by
Benjamin Drew, who met Tubman in St. Catherines, Ontario
during the previous year. (47) In 1863, Tubman was introduced
to a broader northern public in a front-page featured article in
the Boston abolitionist newspaper Commonwealth. (48) Written
during the Civil War in defense of emancipation, this article
presented Tubman in heroic terms.
In a book published in 1874, William Wells Brown, described
Harriet Tubman as a frequent presence at abolitionist meetings
in the decade prior to the Civil War. (49) From an article in the
Liberator, we know that Harriet Tubman was a speaker at an

anti-slavery rally in Framingham, Massachusetts on July 4,
1859. (50) Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who later was a
White officer in command of Black troops during the Civil War,
introduced Tubman at the Framingham rally. In a letter written
in June 1859, he wrote:
"I have known her for some time and mentioned her in
speeches once or
twice - the slaves call her Moses. She had a reward of twelve
thousand dollars offered for her in Maryland and will probably
be
burned alive whenever she is caught, which she probably will
be,
first or last, as she is going again." (51)
Decades later, in a book describing his contemporaries,
Higginson wrote that he considered Harriet Tubman one of the
most eminent figures of the age, "a black woman, who. after
escaping from slavery herself, had gone back secretly eight
times into the jaws of death to bring out persons she had never
seen, " however, curiously, he did not mention her by name.
(52)
One of the more interesting debates about Tubman concerns the
nature of her religiosity and reflects the beliefs and politics of
Tubman's biographers. According to Sernett, Sarah Bradford
tried to fit Tubman's belief that she personally experienced
divine guidance and had an active, even mystical relationship
with God, into her own more traditional Protestant religious
framework. (53) Earl Conrad, writing within a Marxist tradition
in the 1940s, promoted Tubman as a working-class
revolutionary hero. He attributed Tubman's visions to the
physical injury she incurred in her youth, rather than to her
religious beliefs. (54) More recently, Jean Humez situated
Tubman's spirituality, visions, dream language, and belief in
charms, within a syncretic slave Christianity infused with
African ritual and belief. (55) I confess I did find puzzling, and
perhaps I misread. Serrnett's discussion of Tubman's "psychic

abilities." (56) He cites James McGowairs efforts to document
these powers. While it may be true that Tubman believed she
had some kind of supernatural powers because of a close
connection with God, that is different from suggesting that
these powers actually existed.
There is a relatively well-known quote from the Sherlock
Holmes story 'Silver Blaze" that suggests sometimes the most
telling evidence is the absence of evidence. (57) Scotland Yard
Detective Gregory asks Holmes "Is there any other point to
which you would wish to draw my attention?" Holmes replies:
"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time." Gregory,
puzzled, informs Holmes, "The dog did nothing in the night-
time." Holmes them answers, "That was the curious incident."
The curious incidents in this case present several important
questions. Why do we have so little documentary evidence
about Harriet Tubman's relationship to prominent white
abolitionists, particularly William Seward? How should we
understand Tubman's relationships with John Brown and
Frederick Douglass? What can we learn about Harriet Tubman
from the one independently documented incident in her career,
the April 1860 Nalle rescue in Troy, New York?
William Seward was probably the most prominent political
abolitionist in the United States during the 1850s. As a Senator
from New York State, he was an outspoken critic of the 1850
Fugitive Slave law and he was one of the leading candidates for
the Republican Party's Presidential nomination in 1860. Larson
believes the connection between Tubman and Seward developed
out of a previous contact Tubman had with Auburn, New York
abolitionist Martha Coffin Wright. (58) Wright's sister, Lucretia
Coffin Mott was a supporter of Underground Railroad activities
in the Philadelphia region where Tubman operated. Wright's
husband was Seward's lav. partner. Originally, Seward and his
wife Frances helped Tubman and the Underground Railroad
hiding fugitive slaves in their home.
In 1858 Seward became Tubman's benefactor. In open violation
of the Fugitive Slave Act and the 1857 Dred Scott decision,

Seward sold property to Tubman on the outskirts of Auburn for
use by her family. (59) He required only a minimal down
payment and charged a low quarterly fee for the principal and
interest. When Tubman, always pressed for money, was unable
to cover her expenses, Seward paid her property taxes and
insurance. (60) During the Civil War, Seward helped Tubman
secure a position as a nurse in a hospital for wounded Black
Civil War veterans. (61) Later, he supported her effort to secure
a military pension. When Seward died, much of Tubman's debt
to his estate was forgiven. (62)
Yet despite this long term and seemingly significant
partnership, Seward biographies and papers do not mention his
relationship to or support of Tubman. All evidence for a
connection between Seward and Tubman come from Tubman
biographers, primarily Franklin Sanborn's brief article about
Tubman published in 1863, and Bradford. (63) Other than these
sources, Larson cites only one reference to the mortgage
arrangement she located in the Seward Papers at Harvard
University. (64) I suspect the relationship, which made it
possible for Tubman to do her work, have some economic
security. and fulfill family obligations, was much more
important to Tubman, a formerly enslaved, non-literate,
impoverished, largely unknown, African American woman, than
it was to Seward.
While Seward hardly acknowledged a relationship with Tubman,
John Brown probably exaggerated his connection to her and
other radical black abolitionists in order to establish his
credibility as he recruited for the Harpers Ferry raid. According
to a letter written by Brown in April 1858, he met with Tubman
in Canada where he enlisted her support for the raid, asking her
to recruit runaway slaves and free blacks for the enterprise. (65)
From the enthusiasm expressed in his letter, Brown was clearly
impressed with Tubman and believed her participation would
ensure the success of his plan. In the Bradford biographies,
Tubman claimed to have had a vision of Brown before she met
him and that she did not fully understand the vision until after

the events at Harpers Ferry. (66) In Earl Conrad's biography of
Tubman, Conrad claims she was scheduled to participate in the
raid but could not because of illness. (67)
I think it is telling that no one from among Harriet Tubman,
Frederick Douglass, and Jermain Loguen, who introduced
Tubman to Brown in St. Catharines, participated in the Harpers
Ferry raid. (68) Douglass, who had a longer and deeper
relationship with Brown than Tubman, decided not to join
Brown because he felt the venture could not succeed. (69) We
do not know why Tubman was not there, but I suspect she was
never completely on board with Brown's plan. Harriet Tubman
worked at night and alone, and whatever her feelings for Brown
or the Harpers Ferry raid, she was unlikely to enlist in someone
else's operation.
Frederick Douglass was a prolific writer and frequent orator,
yet leaves behind almost no suggestion of a relationship with
Harriet Tubman besides the 1868 endorsement of the Bradford
biography. He did not mention Tubman or a relationship with
her in any of the editions of his memoirs. Frederick Douglass:
Selected Speeches and Writings includes the 1868 letter and
mentions a January 1858 letter from Douglass to the Ladies
"Irish Anti-Slavery Association where he referred to an
unnamed" coloured woman, who escaped from slavery eight
years ago."who" has made several returns at great risk, and has
brought out since obtaining her freedom fifty others from the
house of bondage. She has been spending a short time with us
since the holidays. She possesses great courage and shrewdness,
and may yet render even more important service to the Cause,"
(70) However, in this letter Douglass did not mention Tubman
by name. The Frederick Douglass Papers in the Library of
Congress' Manuscript Division, contain over seven thousand
items relating to Douglass' life as "an escaped slave,
abolitionist, editor, orator, and public servant. The papers span
the years 1841 to 1964, with the bulk of the material from 1862
to 1895. The collection consists of correspondence, speeches
and articles by Douglass and his contemporaries, a draft of his

autobiography, financial and legal papers, scrapbooks, and
miscellaneous items," (71) There is correspondence between
Douglass and Susan B. Anthony, William Lloyd Garrison,
Gerrit Smith, Horace Greeley, and Grover Cleveland, but there
are no references in the collection to Harriet Tubman.
Larson believes Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman may
have met in 1851 when Tubman led a band of eleven fugitives
through Rochester on the route to Canada. (72) Douglass
mentions the "occasion" in his memoirs because it stood out for
him as "the largest number I ever had at one time, and I had
some difficulty in providing so many with food and shelter ..."
(73) However, he did not identify Tubman as part of this group,
place her in the group in his 1858 letter to the Irish Ladies, or
refer to the incident in his endorsement of the Bradford
biography.
Larson also speculates that Tubman and Douglass knew each
other while enslaved on Maryland's Eastern Shore, however, she
concedes that "little documentation exists that definitely points
to any relationship between Douglass and Tubman prior to
Tubman's own liberation." (74) This kind of speculation, which
I feel weakens the Larson book, underscores how little we
actually know about Tubman. The reality is there is little
documentation of a relationship between Douglass and Tubman
at any point in their lives, despite the fact that they lived about
sixty miles apart in upstate New York for many years. For me,
the absence of documentation points to the absence of a
significant relationship.
Harriet Tubman's role in the Nalle Rescue in Troy, New York
on April 28, 1860 is documented by independent sources, but
the sources tell different stories. Not surprisingly, Sarah
Bradford, claiming she is presenting Tubman's version, places
Harriet Tubman at the center of the events. (75) In the Bradford
biography, it is Tubman who rushes to the "office of the United
States Commissioner" following the arrest of Charles Nalle,
"scattering the tidings as she went." (76) It is Harriet standinu
in the window of the office wearinu a "sun-bonnet" who signals

to the group gathering outside and sends boys to cry "fire" in an
attempt to drew an even bigger crowd. It is Harriet who blocks
the stairwell as the marshals try to move Nalle and who finally
commands the crowd to drag Nalle to the river, even as the
marshals open fire. (77)
Concerned that some readers would find this account "too
wonderful for belief," Bradford sought independent
confirmation from Martin Townsend, the lawyer for Charles
Nalle, Townsend confirmed that Tubman had grabbed a
manacled Nalle and held on to him during a half-an-hour's
struggle and was severely beaten by police. (78) Townsend,
according to Bradford, commended Tubman who "exposed
herself to the fury of the sympathizers with slavery, without
fear, and suffered their blows without flinching." (79)
Three contemporary newspaper accounts, however, have
Tubman playing a less prominent role in the Nalle rescue.
Bradford reprinted an article from the April 28, 1860 (which she
misdated) Troy Whig in her appendix. (80) In the Whig version,
key leadership roles are played by William Henry, "a colored
man, with whom Nalle boarded," and Nalle's attorney, Martin
Townsend. neither of whom are mentioned by Bradford in the
text of the biographies. (81) It is Henry who whips up the crowd
to intervene and help Nalle escape. Although the article
describes Blacks and women in the crowd, there is no one
mentioned who could have been Harriet Tubman.
The Troy Daily Times also cites Henry and Townsend for their
efforts to free Nalle, and credits Henry tor arranging for Nalle's
legal counsel. (82) This newspaper noted the presence of a
"somewhat antiquated colored woman, who at a later period
became an active spirit of the melee, and who was said to be in
some way related to the prisoner. She was provided with a
signal to prepare those on the outside for an attack, when the
prisoner should be brought forth." Later in to the article readers
learn "The most conspicuous person opposed to the legal
course, was the venerable colored woman, who exclaimed. 'Give
us liberty or give us death!' and by vehement gesticulations

urged the rescuers on."
The New York Times coverage of "The Slave Rescue at Troy"
was somewhat less comprehensive than that of either Troy
newspaper. (83) It did not mention Henry, Townsend, Tubman,
or the "somewhat antiquated colored woman." Milton Sernett, in
his review of both primary sources and secondary accounts of
the Nalle Rescue found it almost impossible to sort out what
actually happened in Troy that day, partly because 'Tubman was
fond of retelling, "and perhaps elaborating on, "the story of the
Nalle rescue in her later years." (84)
Based on my reading of the sources and the biographies, this is
the Harriet Tubman who I found. For whatever reason,
illiteracy, suspicion of others born out of enslavement, serious
injury incurred as a youth, or personality, Harriet Tubman was a
lone wolf who operated by herself. I think this explains why she
did not participate in Harpers Ferry. As a conductor on the
Underground Railroad, Tubman worked on the margins of
society. That meant she left behind few eyewitnesses in a
position to speak about her exploits and a slender paper trail.
In some ways, calling her the Black Moses robs Tubman of her
militancy. The biblical Moses acted as God's agent when he led
the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt, not as a freedom fighter.
Tubman not only led people to freedom, but she was willing and
able to fight, as she demonstrated in Troy. On the other hand,
Tubman was not the gun-toting revolutionary celebrated by
Jacob Lawrence and Earl Conrad. Survival on repeated trips into
the slave holding South meant she had to be more cautious and
calculating than the Lawrence portrayal.
I have no idea of the extent of Tubman's physical disability and
its impact on her mental functioning. Clearly she was sustained
by her religious conviction and what she felt was a personal
relationship with God, which was not uncommon in that era.
While she identified as a Christian, it is almost certain she did
not practice what would have been considered traditional
Christianity in the United States at that time.
The repeated violation of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 by

abolitionists in the decade before the Civil War provoked the
South's virulent reaction to this perceived threat to the sanctity
of slave property. It undermined the precarious balance between
regions established by the United States (institution and
precipitated both the Civil War and emancipation. Tubman, as a
conductor on the Underground Railroad, contributed to the
conditions that produced the impending crisis. Perhaps
Tubman's greatest achievement. however, was her involvement
in the Nalle rescue, because unlike her efforts on the
Underground Railroad, it was done in the light of day and
brought publicity to the cause at a particularly crucial moment.
Milton Sernett argues, and I agree, that Harriet Tubman has
come to represent and personalize the Underground Railroad, in
much the same way that Anne Frank represents the European
Holocaust and Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks are symbols
of the African American Civil Rights movement. However, as in
each of these cases, the events were much larger than the
individual. No one living person, no matter how great, could
ever be Sarah Bradford's "Harriet Tubman. Moses of her
People."
(1) Alan Singer is author of New York and Slavery: Time to
Teach the Truth (Albany. NY: SUNY Press), editor of Social
Science Docket, a joint publication of the New-York and New
Jersey Councils for the Social Studies, and a professor of social
studies education at Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York
(2) Milton Sernelt. Harriet Tubman: Myth. Memory, and
History. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007, 56-62.
(3) C. Peter Ripley, editor The Abolitionist Papers, Volume 5.
The United Slates, 1859-65. Chapel Hill, NC: University of
North Carolina Press, 1992, 222.
(4) Sernett, 2.
(5) Alan Singer. Social Studies for Secondary Schools.
Teaching to Learn. Learning to Teach, 3rd edition. New York:
Routledge, 2008, 24; Sernett. 1
(6) http://www.theathlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/12/the-
top-100-influential-figtures-in-american-

history/5384/#slide100, accessed Seplember 12, 2011.
(7) Ossic Davis "Eulogy for Malcolm X." February 27. 1965.
http://wwwhartlord-hwp.com/archives/45a/071.html, accessed
October 19, 2011.
(8) Malcolm X with Alex Haley. The Autobiography of
Malcolm X. New York: Grave, 1956.
(9) Spike Lee. Malcolm X. 1992.
hup://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104797/.accessed October 19,
2011.
(10) Manning Marable. Malcolm A. A Life of Reinvention. New
York: Viking, 2011.
(11) Sernett, passim.
(12) http://worldclasskids.tripod.com/harietttubmanforward.jpg,
accessed Seplember 10. 2011.
(13) Kate Clifford Larson, Bound for the Promised Land,
Harriet Tubman. Portrait of an American Hero. New York:
Ballantinc, 2004; http://www.math.buffalo.edu/-
sww/Ohistoiy/hwny-tubman.html, accessed September 10, 2011.
(14) http://www.hamettubmanbiography.com/;
http://www.math.bulTalo.edu/-sww/OhistOiy/hwny-
tubman.html; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman;
http://maap.columbia.edu/content/places/harriet_tubman/images
/274 MAAP_Harriet Tubman_Then_274.jpg;
http://www.ahsd25.kl2.il.us/womenshistory/tubman.html; and
http://daringbookforgirls.com/about-the-bookabout-the-double-
daring-book-for-girls/harriet-tubman/, accessed Seplember 11,
2011. (http://en.wikipedia/org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman, accessed
October 5. 2011); Sarah H Bradford. Scenes in the Life of
Harriet Tubman. Auburn. NY: W. J. Moses, 1869.
(15) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman, accessed
September 11. 2011).
(16) Sernett, 22;
http://catalog.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/search-
S62?dtubman/dtubman/%2C7%2C48%2CB/exact&FF=dtubman+
harriet+1820+1913&1%2C28%2C, accessed October 19,2011.
(17) Larson, 242.

(18) Larson. 248.
(19) Bradford, 1869, i. 1.
(20) Sarah Bradford. Harriet Tubman. The Moses of Her People.
New York: George R Loekwood and Son, 1886.
(21) Larson. 266.
(22) Larson, 257-261
(23) Semen, 12, 42.
(24) Bradford, 1869, 1.
(25) Bradford, 1886.3-4.
(26) Larson, 266-270.
(27) Robert C. Smedley. History of the Underground Railroad.
1883. Reprinted New-York: A mo Press, 1969.
(28) William L Katz, preface, Smedley. FHstory of the
Underground Railroad. New York: Amo Press. 1969. np.
(29) Smedley. 250-251.
(30) Willuim Still, The Underground Rail Road, 1872.
Reprinted Chicago: Johnson Publishing. 1970, v.
(31) Still, 305-306
(32) Wilbur Siebeit. The Underground Railroad: From Slavery
to Freedom New York The Macmillan Company.l898, 185-189.
(33) Scrneu. 59;
http://deila.dickmson.edu./theirownwords.title/0090.htm.
accessed September 12, 2011.
(34) Bradford, 1869, 6-8
(35) Catherine Clinton. Harriet Tubman. The Road to Freedom,
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2004. 129
(36) Sernetl.2
(37) Semen 3
(38) Earl Conrad. Harriet Tuhmwu, New York: International
Publishers. 1942; Larson; Jean Humez, Harriet Tubman; The
Life and the Life Stories Madison Wl: University of Wisconsin,
2003
(39) James McGowjin and William Kashatus. Harriet Tuhman:
A Biography, Westport, CT Greenwood. 2011.
(40) Larson, 79. 147
(41) Larson. 344. Bradford. 1886, 33

(42) Catherine Clinton. Harriet Tubman The Road to Freedom,
New York: Little Brown. 2004; Beverly Lowry. Harriet
Tubman; Imagining a Life. New York: Doubleday, 2007.
(43) Lowry 1
(44) Semen. 42
(45) William Still The Underground Rail Road, 1872. Reprinted
Chicago: Johnson Publishing, 1970.
(46) Still, 305.
(47) Sernett. 15.
(48) Sernett, 46.
(49) Sernett.47.
(50) Sernett, 48.
(51) Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, editor Letters and Journals
of Thomas Wentworth Higginson. 1846-1906, Boston. MA:
Houghton Mifflin. 1921, 81
(52) Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Contemporaries, Boston,
MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1899. 227.
(53) Sernett, 135-138.
(54) Alan Wald Between Insularity and Internationalism: The
Lost World of the Jewish Communist "Cultural Workers" in
Jonathan Frankel. editor. America in Dark Times, Dire
Decisions: Jews and Communism, Studies in Contemporary
Jewry, Volume.XX. Oxford University Press. 2005: Seniett 139-
140
(55) Sernett, 138.
(56) Sernett, 144-148
(57) Arthur Conan Doyle, Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. New
York: Harper & Brothers, 1894, 22.
(58) Larson, 155.
(59) Larson, 163-166
(60) Larson, 184.
(61) Larson, 229-230.
(62) Larson. 253.
(63) Bradford. 1869, 73,80-81, 112
(64) Larson, 164.
(65) Sernett, 209.

(66) Larson, 158-159; Bradford, 1886, 118-119
(67) Conrad, 126; Larson. 174.
(68) Lawson, 159.
(69) Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.
Boston: De Wolfe & Fiske Co.. 1892. Reprinted London, UK:
Collier Books, 1962. 314-325.
(70) Frederick Douglass. Philip Foner, and Yuval Taylor.
Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings, Chicago,
IL: Chicago Review Press, 1999, 600-601.
(71)
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/doughtml/doughome.html.access
ed October 24, 2011.
(72) Larson, 92-93.
(73) Douglass. 1992/1962, 266.
(74) Larson, 94
(75) Bradford, 1886. 119-124.
(76) Bradford, 1886, 120.
(77) Bradford, 1886. 121. 123.
(78) Bradford. 1886. 126-127.
(79) Bradford. 1886, 127.
(80) Bradford, 1886, 143-149.
(81) Bradford. 1886. 145.
(82) Troy Daily Times, April 28, 1860, 1.
(83) The New York Times. May I. 1860, 8.
(84) Sernett. 84.
Alan Singer (1)
Singer, Alan
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2012 Afro-American Historical
Association of the Niagara Frontier, Inc.
http://www.nyhistory.com/aanylh

Citation Chicago
Singer, Alan. "We may never know the real Harriet Tubman."
Afro-Americans in New York Life and History 36, no. 1 (2012):
64+. U.S. History in Context (accessed April 18, 2017).
http://proxy.deltacollege.edu:8080/login?url=http://link.galegro
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Tubman, Harriet
By: Margaret Washington
Source:
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Related Content
· Tubman, Harriet Ross At a Glance
· Brown, John
Tubman, Harriet
Sex: Female
Born: Dorchester County, Maryland, United States, Plantation,
Peter's Neck
c.1820
Died: Auburn, New York, United States
10 March 1913
Activity/Profession: Abolitionist, Slave
Harriet Tubman.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-7816).
legendary Underground Railroad conductor, was born Araminta
“Minty” Ross in Dorchester County, Maryland, the daughter of
Benjamin Ross and Harriet Greene, slaves. Often a hired-out
worker, at age five she did household chores and child-tending.
At seven she ran away to avoid a beating for stealing a lump of
sugar. After taking refuge for five days in a pigpen, where she

competed unsuccessfully for food, Minty returned and accepted
her flogging. As a child nurse and housekeeper at nine, Minty
was disabled by physical abuse and starvation. Placed in the
fields at thirteen, she was glad to be among the folk and taking
in the wonders of nature.
A dutiful worker, Minty was also a natural rebel who defied
unjust orders. Her life was transformed and almost ended at
fifteen. She refused to help an overseer tie a fellow bondsman
and blocked the overseer’s pursuit path as the man fled. The
overseer threw a two-pound weight at the fleeing man, which
struck Minty a “stunning blow to the head.” She suffered
immensely with brain fever but survived, although considered
hopelessly maimed, unproductive, and dull-witted. A spiritual
awakening, family support, and a strong will guided Minty
through a slow but miraculous physical and emotional recovery.
By nineteen Minty Ross, well-formed and five feet tall, was a
match for the strongest men on the plantation. Still partial to
outdoor work, she drove oxen, carted, chopped wood, plowed,
lifted huge barrels of produce, and was an expert runner. Stories
of heroic strikes for freedom always inspired her. Freedom
aspirations were intensified by her marriage in 1844 to freeman
John Tubman, by the discovery that her mother was freed by a
previous owner but was never told, and by news of her family’s
impending sale. In 1849 Araminta Tubman escaped to
Philadelphia and adopted her mother’s given name, Harriet.
In 1851, having worked and saved, Harriet Tubman daringly
stole back into Maryland for her husband, but he had another
wife and refused to join her. Tubman transformed her initial
anger and grief into a commitment to live for her people’s
freedom. Already befriended by William Still, the black
abolitionist and “chief brakeman” on the Pennsylvania
Underground Railroad, Tubman returned with a party of escaped
bondspeople.
Tubman’s physical appearance has been described as both
“magnificent” and “fierce.” Always commonly dressed, except
for colorful head scarves, she had small “appraising” eyes and a

round, “rocklike” chin. Her most revealing physical feature was
a permanently convexed forehead, which, along with her
lifelong somnolence, were marks of bondage left by an
overseer. Although nonliterate, she had expert strategical sense,
military genius, discipline, and leadership skills. She gathered
money and planned her route beforehand, kept her movements
secret, collected people privately through trusted sources, and
never entered a plantation but instead established a meeting
place some miles away. Travel North occurred during cold, dark
winter months, when people stayed inside, and began on
Saturday, thereby taking advantage of the Sabbath “rest” day.
With the North Star as a guide, Tubman was completely
comfortable in natural terrain, able to tell time by the sun and
moon and administer roots and herbs as cures. Travel was by
foot, stagecoach, railroad, and sometimes boat. She was
ingenious at deceptive tactics and countless tricks of travel,
including forged passes and gender crossovers. When her group,
heading North, was closely pursued by slave catchers, Tubman
turned them South. Once, overhearing men discussing her
whereabouts, she picked up a book, pretended to read, and
prayed she had it right side up. Despite a gentle, caring
character, Tubman was a strict, commanding, undisputed leader
who always carried a revolver. “Dead men tell no tales,” she
said, and once the trip began even the fainthearted had to “move
or die.” Tubman made nineteen recorded trips South and led
hundreds of bondspeople out of enslavement, including her
parents and other relatives. A constant procession of single and
group flights out of Maryland occurred independent of Tubman
but were ignited by her example. A total of $40,000 was offered
for her capture.
The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 forced Tubman to transport
newly emancipated groups into Canada-West (now Ontario),
placing them “under the paw of the British lion” since England
had abolished enslavement. Routes from Canada to Maryland
depended on the exigency of the moment. Tubman’s favorite
route, also the most dangerous because of proslavery attitudes,

was the Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania
circuit, where Thomas Garrett, a Delaware Quaker, was her
main contact. Her staunchest supporters were on the Central
New York Road, where she met abolitionists Frederick
Douglass, Gerrit Smith, Oliver Johnson, and Reverend J. W.
Loguen, as well as future suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton
and Susan B. Anthony. In 1858 Tubman met archrevolutionary
John Brown, whose radical, military fiber matched hers.
Together they plotted the Harpers Ferry raid, but illness
prevented Tubman’s participation. In 1860 she successfully led
a bloody battle regarding an escaped bondsman in Troy, New
York.
The Civil War found Tubman condemning a reluctant President
Abraham Lincoln, agitating for immediate emancipation, and
spending 1862 in Union-occupied areas nursing white soldiers
and black “contrabands” injured while fleeing enslavement. In
1863, when blacks joined the military, Tubman hand-picked and
commanded a black corps of spies, scouts, and river pilots who
conducted daring surveillance, espionage, and intelligence
operations throughout the southeastern seaboard. She
strategized and guided a band of black soldiers (under Colonel
James Montgomery) into the Confederate-held Combahee, South
Carolina, region and successfully disabled their supply line.
Tubman witnessed the Fort Wagner battle involving the heroic
Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Black Regiment and described the
carnage: “And then we saw the lightning, and that was the guns;
and then we heard the thunder, and that was the big guns; and
then we heard the rain falling, and that was the drops of blood
falling; and then we came to get in the crops, it was dead men
that we reaped.” In 1864 Harriet Tubman met Sojourner Truth,
also a former slave transformed into a popular reformer and
public woman.
In the postwar years Tubman settled with her family in Auburn,
New York, supported woman suffrage, established a home for
the aged and indigent, and engaged in a 35-year unsuccessful
struggle for recognition of her war service. In 1890 she received

a meager pension only because her second husband, Nelson
Davis, whom she had married in 1869, was a Civil War veteran.
Despite this personal insult, when Tubman died in Auburn, her
last rites were military and presided over by a representative of
Auburn’s Grand Army of the Republic.
Harriet Tubman was the most daring, legendary, and courageous
conductor on the human network of self-freed blacks called the
“Underground Railroad.” A Civil War freedom fighter and
woman suffrage advocate, African Americans called Tubman
“Moses,” symbolizing her premier leadership, and “Old
Chariot,” a term taken from spirituals she sang to alert the
enslaved of her presence.
Annotated Bibliography
•Important sources on Tubman are Sarah Bradford, Scenes in
the Life of Harriet Tubman (1869; repr. 1992), and Earl Conrad,
Harriet Tubman (1943). See also Dorothy Sterling, Freedom
Train: The Story of Harriet Tubman (1954), and Benjamin
Quarles, “Harriet Tubman’s Unlikely Leadership,” in Black
Leaders in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Leon F. Litwack and
August Meier (1988). An obituary is in the New York Times, 14
Mar. 1913.
Bibliography
· Bradford, Sarah H. Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman
(1869; repr. 1992).
· Conrad, Earl . Harriet Tubman (1943).
· Sterling, Dorothy . Freedom Train: The Story of Harriet
Tubman (1954).
· Quarles, Benjamin . “Harriet Tubman’s Unlikely Leadership,”
in Black Leaders in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Leon F.
Litwack and August Meier (1988).
· Obituary, New York Times, (14 Mar. 1913).
Online Resources
· Sarah H. Bradford, Harriet, the Moses of Her People 1886.
http://docsouth.unc.edu/harriet/menu.html A full-text version
from Documenting the American South, University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.

· Sarah H. Bradford, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman,
1869. http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/bradford/menu.html A full-
text version from Documenting the American South, University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Citation forTubman, Harriet
MLA

Washington, Margaret. "Tubman, Harriet." American National
Biography Online. and Mark C. Carnes. , John A. GarratyNew
York: Oxford UP, 2008. Oxford African American Studies
Center. Tue Apr 18 21:02:29 EDT 2017.
<http://www.oxfordaasc.com/article/anb/1500707>.
Chicago
Washington, Margaret. "Tubman, Harriet." American National
Biography Online, edited by and Mark C. Carnes. . , edited by ,
John A. Garraty. Oxford African American Studies Center,
http://www.oxfordaasc.com/article/anb/1500707 (accessed Tue
Apr 18 21:02:29 EDT 2017).
Petition for a Government Pension by Harriet Tubman (1898)
Document Type:
Legal Document
Document Type:
Primary source
Petition for a Government Pension by Harriet Tubman (1898)
Commentary
In the decades following the Civil War, white Southern
Democrats steadily undid the reforms of Reconstruction,
effectively disenfranchising African Americans and setting the
stage for the official era of segregation that began with Plessy
v. Ferguson (1896). During this time, a common but often futile
method of addressing grievances available to freed blacks was
the petition, and many such documents are still available. Even
the American hero Harriet Tubman had to resort to such legal
recourse later in her life. Tubman, an agent of the Underground
Railroad and civil rights activist, lived in poverty following
emancipation and sought a pension from the U.S. government
for her services during the war. With the help of attorney
Charles P. Wood, Tubman began the petition process in the late
1860s, but it would take nearly thirty years for the government
to finally grant her a meager twenty-five dollars per month. The

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