Harriet Tubman

by Rosemary Sadlier

  Every enslaved African who made it into free territory did not have to encounter Harriet Tubman to get the “directions” — they were shared by many Africans, First Nations, and abolitionists. However, not all were successful at running away and remaining clear of recapture or settlement in a secret maroon enclave. Harriet had proven success at making her way from the Maryland area into Philadelphia. Harriet was self-reliant — readily able to find work, accommodation, and advice while feeling relatively secure in this setting. However, after a time of taking jobs and quitting jobs to ensure that no one would have the opportunity to identify her as a runaway and to experience the meaning of freedom and personal choice, Harriet began to feel lonely. She compared herself to an incarcerated man who returns home after twenty-five years to discover his home, family, and friends are gone and forgotten.

  I had crossed de line (of freedom) of which I had so long been dreaming. I was free; but dere was no one to welcome me to de land of freedom, I was a stranger in a strange land, and my home after all was down in de old cabin quarter, wid de ole folks, and my brudders and sisters. But to dis solemn resolution I came; I was free, and dey should be free also; I would make a home for dem in the North, and de Lord helping me, I would bring dem all dere….

  During the early part of 1850, Harriet saved all her money earned from her positions as cook, seamstress, housekeeper, laundress, and scrubwoman in the hotels and private homes of Philadelphia and Cape May, New Jersey. She had initially resolved to free her family, for she did not think that they would leave on their own, but later she began to think of making a return trip, going back into slave-holding areas on her own to free other slaves. She would not be content until all of her people were free.

  Harriet tried to stay informed about her relatives in the south. To do this she made contacts with free black and white abolitionists. Because they could read newspapers describing events or pending slave auction, and because they could write coded letters to individuals that Harriet identified, or to other abolitionists in the south, or through word of mouth, Harriet was able to keep tabs on her family. This is how Harriet was able to learn that her niece (some reports refer to her as a sister) was near Baltimore.

  Harriet devised a plan to rescue her niece, Mary Ann Bowley. She asked someone to write a letter to Mary Ann’s husband, John Bowley, a free man. Harriet advised him that she would conduct Mary Ann to Philadelphia if he could get her to Baltimore. In December 1850, the rescue plan was almost thwarted by the sudden intent of Mary Ann’s master to sell her at an auction in Cambridge. Harriet quickly developed an alternative plan that involved hiding Mary Ann in Cambridge even while the bidding was taking place on her and later spiriting her out of the area to freedom in a six-horse wagon. Harriet’s first rescue was successful. Mary Ann was later reunited with her husband and children in Chatham, Ontario.

  Harriet may have borrowed passports, called “freedoms,” from the free black residents of Philadelphia to assist her with Mary Ann’s rescue and other rescues. A freedom was like a passport that free blacks were required to carry at all times that verified their freedom to anyone who demanded to know their status. She may have identified government workers who were willing to look the other way and allow rescues to occur or who would accept bribes for their silence. Harriet extended her connection to William Still, who would have been able to assist her. William Still was the executive director of the General Vigilance Committee.

  Clearly, Harriet’s desire to see her family free, her knowledge of who could help her and how, and her success in freeing Mary Ann, likely with the assistance of her brothers, prompted her to attempt another rescue. But with the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, Harriet said, “After that, I wouldn’t trust Uncle Sam wid my people no longer, but I brought ’em all clar off to Canada.”

  This time Harriet targeted her brother John Ross and his sons, Harriet’s nephews, who were in Talbot County, north of Dorchester County. John started out with two other slaves, but he had to leave his sons behind because they could not be isolated from their owner. Because John Bowley had authentic free-freedom papers, it was decided that he should return for John Ross’s sons. Bowley was able to kidnap the boys in 1851 and send them back to their self-emancipated father with the assistance of Harriet’s planning and contacts.

  The third rescue that Harriet attempted was to bring her husband, John Tubman, to Philadelphia to join her in the home that she had made for them. Even though Tubman had not been supportive of Harriet’s dream of also being free, and even though he told her master that she had run away, Harriet still loved him. She was bitterly disappointed to find that he had taken another wife, Caroline, and was hurt when they laughed at her suggestion that she could conduct them north. Because of John’s rejection, she became even more determined to find happiness in helping others. She also had a large family that needed to be freed. She decided that she would not be content until all of her people in bondage were free.

  Harriet found ten slaves who were interested in fleeing north and she conducted them on to freedom. So, in the fall of 1851, Harriet began her third rescue. Her experience and advice prompted her to start out from the south on a Friday, or, more commonly, Saturday night. Slaves did not have as stringent a routine on Sundays because their overseers had the day off, so their absence would not be immediately noticed or acted upon. Handbills and newspapers alerting the community that there were runaways could not be printed until Monday at the earliest because Christian printers closed their businesses on Sunday.

  Harriet Tubman travelled by night and rested by day to further avoid detection. She was now a seasoned escape artist and motivator for freedom seekers. However dedicated to freedom Harriet may have been, there were times when “passengers” on her train doubted her ability to escort them north in safety, and who could believe this short, plain woman with sudden sleeping attacks could successfully get them to freedom? She often tried to motivate and assuage fears through singing songs familiar to her passengers, but when that was not enough she was known to pull out her lethal sharpened clam shells and threaten, “Live north or die here!” Harriet Tubman later said of a passenger who wanted to return to his plantation after joining Harriet’s rescue party, “If he was weak enough to give out, he’d be weak enough to betray us all, and all who had helped us, and do you think I’d let so many die just for one coward man?”

  Harriet was the primary conductor on her freedom train, and she took her responsibility seriously.

  6

  Arriving in Canada

  By 1850 the more powerful Fugitive Slave Act had been passed in the United States. It stipulated that any black person could be arrested as a suspected runaway slave if a white person accused them anywhere in the United States, and the charged black person could not testify on their own behalf or be represented by a lawyer. In other words, now there was no safe place in the United States for those who had been free because they had been manumitted or self-emancipated. In the eyes of the law, if you were black, you were likely an escaping slave who ought to be captured. If you had achieved some measure of wealth through hard work, your business, home, or assets might seem attractive to someone who would then accuse you of being an escaped slave. It also stated that any person aiding a runaway slave could be fined $1,000 or face six months in jail. To make matters worse, the special commissioners who chaired the hearings were paid on the basis of their verdicts. They received twice the amount of money for every black person they sent back to the south and perpetual slavery than for the ones who were freed. It was therefore more profitable for them to return someone to slavery. This made Canada seem to be the only viable refuge for American blacks because the legal and social system which had provided some measure of support for free black people now clearly was being used against them.

  Harriet’s Escape Routes

  A

  This was probably Harriet’s favourite route: from Polar Neck in Caroline County to Denton and then into Delaware; from ther
e up to Wilmington, home of Harriet’s friend, the Quaker abolitionist Thomas Garrett, and from there across the Pennsylvania state line to Philadelphia.

  B

  The daring route of James and Kessiah Bowley and their children, from the courthouse steps in Cambridge and into the Choptank River on a small boat, in which they rowed their way into the Chesapeake and up to Baltimore, where Harriet awaited their arrival in order to whisk them on to Philadelphia. Afterward they made their way across New York State and into Canada.

  C

  The route from Cambridge to Polar Neck, which Harriet used when facilitating rescues from Bucktown and other Dorchester communities.

  D

  From Philadelphia, Harriet travelled through the Delaware Canal and down the Chesapeake to Baltimore, where she gathered up Tilly. The two women then went by steamboat even farther south, beyond Cambridge to the southern Dorchester County line, where, after passing through the Hooper Strait, they steamed up the Nanticoke River to Seaford, Delaware, then took a land route north to Wilmington, and, finally, Philadelphia.

  Many incidents of racial intolerance and riots also occurred during this period in the northern States as the competition for manual labour or any wage labour became more competitive since immigration from Europe was increasing. Harriet, her passengers, and her family were at terrible risk. Canada presented itself as the closest location in which to find freedom, although other British possessions within the Caribbean and South America were potential sites, but not as easy to travel to. Harriet had travelled on her own two feet; being self-reliant, Harriet would want to take a route that she could walk the whole way if she had to, a route that allowed her many options in arriving at her goal. Canada seemed a good choice, not only because it was close and because it would be possible to walk to this destination, but also because of a series of laws and events within Canada that had given the impression that Canada truly welcomed slaves and would respect their rights to remain free under the law.

  The first African to reach Canadian shores was a free black, Mathieu Da Costa, serving in the capacity of translator, and he arrived as early as 1604. The first slave arrived in 1628. So people of African descent had long been part of the fabric of what we now call Canada. While large-scale plantation use of African Canadians was not common, they did provide personal and domestic services for affluent and prominent individuals in all the major cities of the time. The black population grew slowly and steadily following the American War of Independence and the War of 1812, until certain events accelerated this rate.

  Black men had been invited to join the ranks of the British forces by Lord Dunmore in 1775 to help to overcome the rebels in the American colony. Sir Henry Clinton invited all blacks, whether fighting men or infirm, women or children, to come to the British side by 1779, and they were promised they would receive the same treatment and rewards as white Loyalists for fighting the rebels. The Upper Canada Abolition Act of 1793 provided that any slave that came into what we now call the province of Ontario would be free, whether being brought in by a master or brought there by the force of the slave’s will to escape bondage. Any child born of a slave mother would be free by the age of twenty-five. William Osgoode, Chief Justice of Lower Canada, declared in 1803 that slavery was inconsistent with British Law. The Cochrane Proclamation aimed at the white and black refugees of the War of 1812 and invited Americans to become British citizens through residence in British Possessions which included Canada, the West Indies, and Bermuda. The British Imperial Act of 1833 abolished slavery throughout the Empire, including Canada. This act became effective August 1, 1834. And, at the North American Convention of Colored Freemen, held for the first time outside of the United States in Toronto in September 1851, it was decided by black peoples that Canada was the preferred choice for black emigration from the United States because free black people within Canada would be able to assist the fleeing former slave population. Canada seemed to be a safe haven for enslaved black people wanting their freedom and for free blacks desiring a more secure lifestyle because it seemed to be a place where the rights and privileges of the African population would be protected. It was close enough to walk to, the climate was similar to that of the northern United States, there were opportunities to become self-supporting, and Canadians spoke English, the language that most enslaved Africans had become familiar with during enslavement in the United States.

  Beginning in the 1830s, free black people and other abolitionists often met at conventions. Initially these gatherings allowed people to share their concerns and to plan ways to end slavery. Interested black people would invite others to their city to have these meetings.

  One of the most important of these meetings was the North American Convention of Colored Freemen held in St. Lawrence Hall in Toronto from September 11–13, 1851. It started a trend of discussing black nationalism and emigration of enslaved Africans to Canada. Called by many Ontario black residents such as Henry Bibb, editor of the Voice of the Fugitive, and James Theodore Holly, an American-born free black who was devoted to emigration, the convention concluded with the agreement that Canada was a preferred destination for freedom seekers. Other options, such as the West Indies or Africa, were too far from black abolitionist centres in the U.S., and Canada was a more convenient location from which to initiate the escapes of slaves or to assist in the establishing of African-Canadian settlements. Canada, in the eyes of the black community, was considered to be a “beacon of hope” to the enslaved.

  When Harriet decided to make her fourth rescue to get her brother James Ross, his wife, children, and nine others, the trip was longer and more dangerous. After stopping at the home of black abolitionist Frederick Douglass in Rochester, Harriet likely made her way to St. Catharines, Ontario, in December 1851 with eleven fugitives.

  Frederick Douglass was a self-freed former slave who hailed from Maryland like Harriet Tubman. Unlike Tubman, who suffered a disabling injury as a young woman, Douglass was secretly taught to read by his owner’s wife while a young man. In this way he came to learn about other abolitionist stances and about The Liberator, the paper of William Lloyd Garrison, a white anti-slavery worker. Ultimately making himself free through the use of a sailor’s uniform with “free papers,” Douglass married and began to give rousing public speeches, later to write about his experiences as an enslaved African. His autobiography, Narratives in the Life of Frederick Douglass, was a bestseller and reprinted several times. He would write a paper, The North Star, that would challenge the readership of the Garrison paper and became an advocate for women’s rights. Following the Civil War, he was appointed Consul General to Haiti.

  However, for Harriet, Douglass also had some valuable contacts in many of the cities that became a part of Harriet Tubman’s routes to Canada. From his first steps as a free man, he was acquainted with David Ruggles in New York, initially staying at his safe house. From his women’s rights activities he knew the co-founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society, James Mott, his wife Lucretia (Lucretia having relatives in Rochester), and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Other abolitionists or station masters would include John Hooper and Stephen Meyers in Albany (the Meyer home is being restored as an example of a black abolitionist abode) and Jermaine Loguen in Syracuse.

  < Some of Harriet’s helpers. From left to right: unidentified woman (possibly Eliza Wright Osborne’s daughter), Martha Coffin Wright, Eliza Wright Osborne (Martha’s daughter), and Lucretia Mott.

  Courtesy Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.

  While some freedom seekers were comfortable in remaining in some of these northern cities, others opted to head all the way across the Canadian border. This would have them enter Canada at Niagara Falls. However, since it was so close to the border at Niagara Falls, a safer option was to go further inland to St. Catharines, Ontario. Harriet Tubman met with Douglass in Rochester and headed to St. Catharines because of a well-known contact, Reverend Hiram Wilson. Wilson had been working with
refugees first in Dresden, Ontario, then in the Niagara area for several years.

  In addition to the human landscape, there was the physical landscape that presented an excellent opportunity for Harriet Tubman and to anyone wishing to have a fairly direct route to the Niagara area. The canal system of New York State and in southern Ontario provided good secret highways for freedom seekers and the canal systems were fairly well established by the 1850s. Tubman could make her way to Troy, New York, and from there travel east along the route of the Erie Canal. This route would have her touch the tips of the Finger Lakes under the shroud of cover provided by the canal trench and the human connections. If her connections were able to respond to her request for assistance, that would further facilitate her journey. Ultimately crossing at Niagara, a freedom seeker could make their way without as much need for secrecy since crossing into Canada provided freedom under the law. However, should there have been a need to be extra cautious, freedom seekers could have also followed the Welland Canal north from Port Colborne into St. Catharines. With the construction going on for its second stage, the movement of new arrivals would scarcely have been noticed.

  Many blacks had settled the Niagara Peninsula before 1840. As a group they were tolerated and accepted, primarily for the manual labour they provided at a low cost. At times, despite their hard work, thriftiness, and industriousness, they were in need of assistance or were in a position where they needed donated food, especially when they first arrived in Canada. At the time of the Mackenzie Rebellion of 1837, the men, black and non-black, left their families for military duties. So when a group of white women gave the “coloured ladies of St. Catharines” some highly rationed sugar and tea, it was not just enough for them to say thank you, but it became an item for the newspapers! Even though the assistance was sporadic, and not really enough to have kept black people from starving if they were impoverished, there was a certain expected type of behaviour that sympathetic whites wished to see. Blacks were to be overly grateful for every courtesy extended to them, even by people who considered themselves to be abolitionists — the supposed progressive, liberal, activist element of society. Mary Ann Shadd, a black investigative reporter and editor, felt that anti-slavery advocates were more inclined to expect this degrading behaviour than the regular population who might be less supportive of the black community. Said of this ad hoc charity by Shadd, “[The charity of white abolitionists displays] this disgusting, repulsive surveillance, this despotic, dictatorial, snobbish air of superiority of white people over the fugitives.”