Bound for the Promised Land

Harriet Tubman: Portrait of an American Hero

Kate Clifford Larson

2003 • 432 pages

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Harriet Tubman is one of the giants of American history--a fearless visionary who led scores of her fellow slaves to freedom and battled courageously behind enemy lines during the Civil War. And yet in the nine decades since her death, next to nothing has been written about this extraordinary woman aside from juvenile biographies. The truth about Harriet Tubman has become lost inside a legend woven of racial and gender stereotypes. Now at last, in this long-overdue biography, historian Kate Clifford Larson gives Harriet Tubman the powerful, intimate, meticulously detailed life she deserves.Drawing from a trove of new documents and sources as well extensive genealogical research, Larson reveals Tubman as a complex woman-- brilliant, shrewd, deeply religious, and passionate in her pursuit of freedom. The descendant of the vibrant, matrilineal Asanti people of the West African Gold Coast, Tubman was born into slavery on the Eastern Shore of Maryland but refused to spend her life in bondage. While still a young woman she embarked on a perilous journey of self-liberation--and then, having won her own freedom, she returned again and again to liberate family and friends, tapping into the Underground Railroad. Yet despite her success, her celebrity, her close ties with Northern politicians and abolitionists, Tubman suffered crushing physical pain and emotional setbacks. Stripping away myths and misconceptions, Larson presents stunning new details about Tubman's accomplishments, personal life, and influence, including her relationship with Frederick Douglass, her involvement with John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, and revelations about a young woman who may have been Tubman's daughter. Here too are Tubman's twilight years after the war, when she worked for women's rights and in support of her fellow blacks, and when racist politicians and suffragists marginalized her contribution.Harriet Tubman, her life and her work, remain an inspiration to all who value freedom. Now, thanks to Larson's breathtaking biography, we can finally appreciate Tubman as a complete human being--an American hero, yes, but also a woman who loved, suffered, and sacrificed. Bound for the Promised Land is a magnificent work of biography, history, and truth telling.From the Hardcover edition.

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jelly

I did not finished this book. *

An extremely detailed biography of Harriett Tubman.

I - Introduction

“Tubman took her own liberty in the late fall of 1849. She tapped into an underground organization that was already functioning well on the Eastern Shore. Traveling by night, using the North Star and instructions from black and white helpers, she found her way in Philadelphia.

Over the next 11 years Tubman returned to the Eastern Shore of Maryland approximately 13 times; in all, she personally brought away about 70 former slaves, including her brothers and other family and friends. She also gave instructions to approximately 50 more slaves who found their way to freedom independently.

Tubman's remarkable ability to travel undetected in slave territory piqued the interest of John Brown, a radical abolitionist and fiery freedom fighter. Tubman helped Brown plan for his ultimately flawed attack on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859. Her commitment led her to South Carolina during the Civil War, where she alternated roles as nurse and scoot, cook and spy, in the service of the Union army. Eventually, she became the first American woman ever to lead an armed raid into enemy territory.

Settling in Fleming, New York, outside the city of Auburn, after the Civil War, Tubman became an active member of the local African American community. She welcomed scores of orphaned children, destitute and sick former slaves, and others in need into her home.

She remained an active presence in the woman suffrage movement and continued her campaign for civil rights until her death in 1913.”

Chapter I - Life on the Chesapeake

“In Maryland, citizens from the Eastern Shore petitioned the House of Delegates in 1785 for the abolition of slavery. Abolitionist voices throughout Maryland became more influential, so much so that increasing numbers of slaves initiated successful lawsuits against their masters for their freedom. The slaveholders forced the Maryland state legislature to impose sanctions against the Maryland Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, effectively dismantling it by mid-1790's.

By the 1740s enslaved Africans had become the dominant labor resource for the expanding agricultural and timber economy of the Chesapeake. After banning slave imports in 1783, Maryland relied more and more on intraregional trading, smuggling and the natural growth of the slave community to increase its slave labor force.

Meanwhile, the state's free black population grew from 1,800 in 1755 to 8,000 in 1790 and 34,000 by 1810. As the free black population increased, whites became alarmed and quickly enacted new laws and code to restrict free blacks' political rights. By 1796 free blacks could no longer testify in court. Though some were given the right to vote if they have been free before 1783 and owned property, by 1802 all free blacks were stripped of voting rights, just as landless whites were gaining access to the vote.

During the War of 1812 British forces established a base on Tangier Island in the mouth of Chesapeake, where they made numerous successful attempts to entice slaves away from their owners to join the ranks of the British military, as the ‘Colonial Marines'.

Chapter 2 - The Changing world of the Eastern Shore

Frederick Douglass, abolitionist and runaway slave: “I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant. I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday. They seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvest-time, cherry-time, spring-time, or fall-time.”

Outlawed in 1793, the building of slave ships became a clandestine operation; it would take another twenty-five years before the penalties were serious enough to drive most Americans out of direct participation in the trade.

The American Colonization Society, founded in 1817 by prominent slaveholders, antislavery activists and non-slaveholders alike, sough to establish a colony in Africa to resettle free blacks. Faced with one the largest free black populations among the slave states, Maryland eventually established its own colonization society to expedite settlement to Cape Palmas in Liberia.

The transformation of cash-crop agriculture on the Eastern Shore had dramatically affected the nature of slavery by the beginning of the 19th century. Soil depletion, expansion into the Deep South, production of corn, wheat, and timber harvesting drastically reduced the need for a large slave labor force in Maryland. Meanwhile, there was a growing demand for labor on the rapidly expanding cotton and sugar plantations in the South. Professional slave traders became more common, so as the sight of slave coffles, groups of slaves chained together for their journey south.

Patriarcal, almost feudal attitudes toward inheritance from the 17th to the 19th centuries encourages intrafamily marriages that kept white family assets intact, including groups of slaves. This, in turn, ensured the stability of slave families within the region.

Gradual emancipation reduced the slave owners' obligation to provide board and care for aged slaves, and the children born of enslaved women would provide slave labor into perpetuity. From the point of view of the master, having family-oriented slaves kept them closer to the plantation and less likely to run away.”

Extracts from the first 10% of the book.