Harriet Tubman_ Rescued Over 300 Slaves through Underground Railroad _ Biography

As one of the most well-known conductors of the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman rescued more than 300 slaves over the span of 11 years. Harriet Tubman was one of the most remarkable women in American history. Born a slave in the early 1820s, Ara Minter-Ross changed her name to Harriet Tubman after marrying a free black man named John Tubman around 1844. As a slave, Harriet Tubman was repeatedly whipped. She also later was hit by a lead weight mistakenly, but that lead weight caused her to experience narcolepsy for the rest of her life. Fearing that she would be sold away from her family in 1849, Tubman fled to Philadelphia using an informal but well-organized network known as the Underground Railroad. She felt that she would be sold away because she was viewed as a sickly person. She and two of her brothers ran away, and the brothers decided they would return to the plantation. And she, instead of abandoning them, turned around, went back with them to the plantation, and then turned around and escaped a second time by herself. Using her own money, Tubman made separate journeys to rescue her sister and brother. And in 1851, Tubman guided a group of 11 fugitives north, earning her the nickname Moses. Harriet Tubman was called the Moses of her people, largely because she was so successful in leading slaves out of slavery, out of the South, into the North, which symbolically is known as the Promised Land. Moses, the figure from the Bible, leading his chosen people, Tubman took on that kind of mythic quality. In 1858, Tubman assisted abolitionist John Brown in recruiting men for the raid on Harper's Ferry. During the Civil War, Tubman became a Union Army scout, a nurse, and led an armed expedition to liberate more than 700 slaves. Harriet Tubman was an incredibly brave African American woman. She sacrificed her own life, and she freed probably over a thousand people. And she said she could have freed a lot more if they had known they actually were slaves. Although Tubman was widely well-respected during her lifetime, she was impoverished and died of pneumonia in 1913. Tubman was buried with military honors and was later named an American hero by President Barack Obama. Harriet Tubman is one of the amazing women in history. She not only brought these slaves out, but she never lost a life.