The Tubman Command

by Elizabeth Cobbs

  The room quieted and vanished. Everything went dark.

  “Jest a nip,” she whispered to a tall runaway as she handed him a jug of water. The man sat with a four-year-old on his lap, his shoulders tipped against the slanted eaves. “And don’t let that baby spill none.”

  They had traveled over one hundred miles since leaving Cambridge the week before. Stray beams of candlelight from cracks in the floorboards gleamed on the sweat-streaked faces of the runaways in the attic of a Delaware farmhouse. A woman with twin ten-year-olds, a married couple, and a teenager with a brand burned into his cheek all slumped in awkward postures on the rough planks. Only Harriet, the man, and the boy remained awake. She’d been thankful when the free colored woman opened the door of her home just as sunrise turned trees the color of ghosts.

  “Patrollers posted rewards for your capture all over Baltimore and Wilmington,” the last conductor had told her. “Don’t stop for nothing, but don’t get caught in daylight neither.”

  The isolated farmhouse wasn’t Harriet’s usual stop, but it was close to the border of Pennsylvania, where train tickets to Canada awaited them at the headquarters of the Anti-Slavery Society, and she had been told the family was friendly. It was Harriet’s seventh trip bringing runaways north. She’d gone with the intent of rescuing Rachel, but Harriet had been unable to convince her.

  The young father took the jug and gave a sip to his boy, whose solemn gaze was fixed on Harriet. Somewhere below, a door opened and closed. Harriet put her finger to her lips. Muffled voices suggested that the woman’s husband had finally come home. The farmer had already left for market when the refugees arrived around daybreak. A thump and then a clank sounded, as if someone in the kitchen underneath had placed a plate and some other item—a tankard, or perhaps a metal spoon—on the table.

  “Rice and collards?” a querulous male voice said. “How I sposed to keep up my strength if these vittles are all you feed me? Where’s that rabbit from yesterday?”

  “Runaways stopped by,” the woman said. “I had to give em something.” Another dull thump, followed by the shriek of a chair, indicated that the wife had placed another plate on the table and taken her own seat.

  “Why my meat? We live close enough to the bone already, woman. Couldn’t you just give em a taste of sorghum fore sending them on their way?”

  “They had chil’ren with em, Hank. Little ones. And they were with that Tubman woman. The one they call Moses. Can’t move again til after midnight, she said.”

  “They still here?” He sounded surprised. “The Tubman woman? The one they offering a reward for?”

  “So she say. Seemed in charge, though she ain’t no bigger than a girl.”

  “Where you put em? The barn?”

  “No. The gal said it ain’t safe. I put em in the attic. Ain’t heard a peep since.”

  Harriet didn’t catch the next thing the husband said. He spoke quietly, though with greater intensity. The back of her neck tingled, and she leaned forward as his voice dropped.

  “We ain’t that hard up,” the woman said. “Please, Hank.”

  The man replied in a low buzz, definite and commanding.

  “They jest like us,” the woman said.

  The man’s voice rose. Harriet caught the words “—ain’t like us. They slaves.”

  A chair scraped the floor again. Harriet peered between her shoes, trying to see through the cracks in the boards, but all she could make out was a wobble in the light, as if someone had walked around the candlestick. The man’s voice sounded from a different part of the room, and the front door creaked. It seemed he was saying goodbye.

  Harriet looked at the runaway across from her. The man drew his child tighter. Sensing a change, the boy shrunk against his father’s chest. “What is it, Pa?” he whispered. The child looked up when the man didn’t answer and reached a hand to brush off dirt that had fallen from the rafters onto his father’s nose. The pair appeared to have the same jumpy nerves. Neither had slept much.

  “We got to go,” Harriet said as she reached for her satchel, heavy with her pistol. She would never be able to hold off a determined posse, but the gun would motivate any runaway who panicked. The last bullet was for her. No patroller would ever take her alive.

  An unquenchable resolve filled Harriet. She would get them out. She would entertain no other outcome. If it took every last drop of blood in her veins, this boy in this attic on this night would not grow up a slave. That was her mission. It made everything worthwhile. Running wasn’t lonely if you took others with you.

  “We got to get out ahead a the patrollers,” she told the man.

  A door opened. Harriet felt someone tap her foot. She wished she’d taken a drink before handing off the jug. Her mouth was truly parched. A loud buzzing started up, filling her head. Someone kicked her foot harder.

  “Sit up, hear?” a faraway voice said. “What’s wrong with you?”

  The buzz in her head faded, as Harriet regained consciousness. She forced her eyes open in time to see Walter Plowden come out of the adjutant’s office. The soldier shook her shoulder, but she saw past him to the scout. Walter gave her a meaningful look as a pair of guards escorted him down the hall. His face was grim, and the wire that held him together appeared to have been tightened, but he wasn’t handcuffed. His eyes conveyed a warning as he passed her chair and headed for the staircase under escort.

  The marshal prodded her again. “Okay, mammy. Captain Lambert’s ready.”

  Harriet pushed to her feet. The day was hardly two hours old yet felt like an eternity.

  The captain didn’t look up at Harriet’s entrance. She stood a long moment in front of his desk as he made notes on a pad and shifted documents from one pile to another. His motionless face was dispassionate. At last, he gave her his attention.

  “Take a seat, Miz Tubman,” Lambert said, and he indicated the straight-backed chair that faced his desk like the witness box in a courtroom. A swarthy man, he had a low forehead and deep eye sockets. His hair was plastered flat with pomade, in which the teeth of his comb had left deep grooves.

  “Yes, Captain,” she said and sat down.

  “I understand you volunteer at the hospital. I hope my officers weren’t rough.” Lambert said mechanically, as if reciting army protocol about fair treatment of contraband.

  “No, sir. They was gentlemen,” she replied, as it was the only allowable answer and close enough.

  “I asked you here because John Lilly over at the General Mercantile has reported some stolen supplies. You appreciate the seriousness.”

  Captain Lambert said the words without preliminaries, perhaps to test her. He looked at her without expression, which itself was an expression. Cold. Would she deflect or start making excuses?

  “Yes, sir, I do appreciate that.” Harriet looked into his eyes and allowed her shoulders to soften. Inside, she could hardly catch her wind, but he couldn’t see that. “Men who steal from the Union, why, they the lowest of the low,” she continued. “I told Mister Lilly that very thing when he asked bout the sack a sugar I tried to sell him yesterday.”

  Captain Lambert sat back. A faint flicker of his nostrils indicated surprise. His uncallused, well-groomed hands relaxed on the wooden armrests. “Mister Lilly shared his suspicions with you?”

  “Yes, sir, he did. And I tell you, it tested my faith in mankind. Who would take food out a the mouths a black men and women struggling for freedom—or from the brave white men risking their lives to defend em?”

  Lambert’s steady gaze was appraising. Harriet sensed he might have been a banker or circuit judge before the war. Someone used to excuses. “Humans are morally frail, Miz Tubman. Most are prey to temptation.” His voice hardened. “Can you tell me how you came in possession of these supplies?”

  “I was in Hilton Head a few days ago, sir. I stopped by General Hunter’s office to pay my respects.”

  Lambert’s eyebrows drew together. He must wonder why she would have occasion to kn
ow Hunter. “I knew Colonel Higginson fore the war,” Harriet said, “when he helped me get some a my kin to Canada. He introduced me to General Hunter. I help the general when he needs someone to talk to new contraband.”

  Lambert jotted a note on a paper in front of him. “So a contraband sold you these supplies?”

  “No, sir. No how. It was Private Webster from the commissary. I chanced upon him that same afternoon. He stopped me coming out a the general’s office and asked if I’d like to buy some sugar. I said yes, thinking I was low, but realized later I had too much. That’s when I offered it up to John Lilly.”

  Lambert’s blank expression was unsympathetic. He must be one of those officers who blamed blacks for the war that had split the alumni of West Point. Few men were like Hunter, Saxton, Higginson, and Montgomery, in the tiny abolitionist wing of the army. Draftees sometimes expressed contempt even more forcefully, like the New Yorkers liquored up on Cuban rum who had recently torched the cabins on the nearby Jenkins Plantation. Afterward, General Saxton sent Harriet to reassure the inhabitants that not all Yankee Buckra were evil. Captain Lambert needed someone to blame for the pilfering that was common when men had access to government stores, and John Lilly had given him a name. Hers.

  The officer made another note. “Did Private Webster give you a receipt for the purchase?”

  “No, sir. I thought he’d write it in his register. He usually does,” she said.

  Lambert looked up again. “Usually?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “That’s how he keeps track a what I owe. I pay up at the end a the month.”

  “You have no receipt, then? Nothing to prove Private Webster sold you these supplies?”

  “I give you my word, Captain. Anyone who knows me knows my word is good.”

  Lambert leaned forward. “The last contraband I spoke to said the same thing. Are you acquainted with Walter Plowden? Did you discuss your story with him?” His bland tone had turned accusatory.

  “Yes, sir. I mean, I-I-I knows him.” Harriet tripped over the words. She hadn’t meant to agree with the second question. “But we didn’t talk on this. I jest happened to see him at Mister Lilly’s place. Plowden had extra supplies, too.”

  Lambert’s features hardened. “You realize the penalty for defrauding the US government, Miz Tubman? You may think you’ve got some special status on account—”

  “Sir—” Harriet started to say.

  “On account of your activities before the war,” he continued, “but it’s best to admit your mistake right off. Things go easier that way. Five years hard labor is a long time.”

  Harriet sat as still as she could, hardly breathing. She didn’t flinch or blink or shuffle her feet. “I’m telling you God’s honest truth, Captain Lambert. I did not volunteer to come south, where I got a price on my head, jest to steal a sack a sugar.”

  Lambert picked up his pen again. “Well, we can’t have contraband spreading stolen supplies about town. I’m holding you until General Rufus Saxton returns next week, when I can speak to him about court-martial proceedings. That may prompt your memory.”

  Harriet gripped her seat. Colonel Montgomery mustn’t sail without her. For all his tenacity, Harriet trusted no man like she trusted herself. She had to be on that gunship. “Next week, sir? But you can’t—”

  “I can, and I shall.” He signed the document before him. “This thievery ends right now.” He reached for a bell on his desk to ring for the marshal. Before he could do so, the door opened. Lambert glanced over Harriet’s shoulder. “Yes?”

  “Captain Lambert, if you will—” a familiar voice began.

  Harriet turned to see Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson. He gazed over her head.

  “May I help you, Colonel?” the adjutant general asked.

  Thomas entered the room until he stood alongside Harriet, and she breathed in the clean scent of lemon verbena. Shoulders back and chin lifted, he looked like a Harper’s Weekly drawing of the gallant reformer he had been before the war. One hand rested lightly on the hilt of his sword. “I’m sorry to interrupt, Captain,” he said, “but I happened to arrive just as a man who sells coffee near my camp passed by. Walter Plowden informed me of your conversation. Plowden is absolutely trustworthy. I vouch for him without hesitation.”

  Lambert’s jaw tightened. “Thank you, Colonel. I’ll take your testimony under advisement.”

  Thomas didn’t move to withdraw. Instead, the former preacher remained as still as a statue. “You most certainly should, sir,” he said. “I have grave doubts about the veracity of Private Webster’s records and no doubt whatsoever about either Walter Plowden or Harriet Tubman.”

  Thomas laid his free hand on Harriet’s shoulder. It felt like an anchor. “You may not be aware of Miz Tubman’s prior record, sir,” he continued, “but there is no more noble person in our forces. She freed nearly a hundred slaves before the war, at great personal risk. Miz Tubman would no more steal from the Union than a mother would rob her child of milk.”

  “Are you suggesting Private Webster is behind this?” Lambert said. “On the word of some coloreds?”

  “I do not see what role color plays, Captain. Private Webster should be next on your list of people to interview.” Thomas’s tone was genteel, but there was no mistaking who was the superior officer.

  Captain Lambert gazed down at his signature, then at the papers he had been arranging when Harriet entered the room. He moved the arrest warrant from one pile to the other and looked up.

  “You may go now, Miz Tubman,” Lambert said. “But do not go far. I’ll need to interview you and Mister Plowden again for further details. I intend to get to the bottom of this.”

  “Yes, sir, Captain Lambert,” she said and rose.

  Thomas reached out to shake her hand. “It’s good to see you again, Miz Tubman,” he said, as if they had been casual acquaintances before the war, not fugitive co-conspirators who had plotted with John Brown. “Would you mind if I take that chair? Captain Lambert and I have matters to discuss.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” she said and made her way to the door.

  At the threshold, Harriet glanced over her shoulder. Lambert stared back with cold dislike, then slipped the signed warrant under the blotter on his desk for apparent safekeeping. The captain would be coming for her. Harriet realized it was only a matter of when. He’d been thwarted in front of a superior officer and wouldn’t forget. Now it was personal.

  The corridor outside the door was empty. Thomas must have dismissed the guards to spare Harriet’s feelings and defend her honor—something that apparently required constant vigilance no matter her sacrifices. Even in Beaufort, she must watch her back. Harriet gripped the newel post at the top of the stairs and started down.

  She wished she could be as loyal a friend as Thomas Wentworth Higginson, but she just didn’t have that luxury.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I would go along the picket line, and I could see the rebels on the opposite side of the river.. . . Sometimes one or two would desert to us, saying, they “had no negroes to fight for.” . . . I learned to handle a musket very well while in the regiment, and could shoot straight and often hit the target.

  Susie King Taylor, Nurse, 1st South Carolina Volunteers

  HARRIET SPOTTED WALTER WHEN HE STEPPED out of an alley a short distance from the Verdier House. His lips were pinched so tight they looked gray.

  “What you tell him?” he asked.

  “The truth. But I sure wish General Saxton was around,” Harriet said.

  Walter shook his head in disgust. “I can’t tell if we safer with the Johnnies or the Union.”

  “We ain’t safe anywhere,” Harriet said, “but in one we’re slaves, the other free.”

  Walter spat onto a dandelion growing between the paving stones as if to insult both sides personally. He changed the subject. “I got to get back to camp. What you gone do?”

  Harriet considered her choices. The brush with Lambert changed e
verything. They must improve their odds. If they mapped the last torpedo and alerted at least one key person on every plantation, the plan would be more secure, even if Lambert arrested her. The thought was horrifying, but she must face it and do everything possible to become less indispensable. As to Samuel and his rude disappearance, the morning proved she needed no further complications. The war presented more than enough challenges.

  Her stomach knotted and growled. “I’ll come with you,” she said, “so long as we stop by the cookhouse first. I need to eat.” Harriet glanced around and lowered her voice. “After that, we gone find Montgomery—and head back up the Cum’bee.”

  Harriet shook the reins of a wagon from a stable owned by an enterprising contraband and urged her mule across a muddy rut in the road that flanked the parade ground at Camp Saxton. Walter had climbed down earlier. The tents of the 1st South Carolina stood in rows on one side of the parade ground while the tents of the 2nd South Carolina were arrayed on the other. The army had billeted its colored regiments four miles from town to avoid conflict with units from Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and New York quartered closer to civilization. Some white draftees resented blacks in uniform and the equality it implied.

  Camp Saxton overlooked the Beaufort River and, across its shimmering waters, the low wooded shoreline of Lady’s Island. The mule pulled Harriet’s wagon imperturbably through the military base despite the clamor of men shoeing horses, hammering structures, and practicing firearms. An instructor drilled his platoon in bayonet techniques. He apparently found much to criticize.

  “Not like that! Double-quick!” the colored officer yelled at infantry soldiers abusing hay bales. Harriet stopped to watch as he waved the group of soldiers, faces streaming with sweat, back to their starting point on the parade ground. From there the men ran the length of the immense field with bulging knapsacks and fixed bayonets before spearing the inoffensive horse fodder. The officer waved them back again. “Faster! Double-quick. Goddammit! What it is bout them two words you don’t understand?” he yelled as Harriet flicked the reins of her mule.