Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman
"When I found I had crossed dat _line_," she said, "I looked at my hands
to see if I was de same pusson. There was such a glory ober ebery ting;
de sun came like gold through the trees, and ober the fields, and I felt
like I was in Heaben."
But then came the bitter drop in the cup of joy. She said she felt like
a man who was put in State Prison for twenty-five years. All these
twenty-five years he was thinking of his home, and longing for the time
when he would see it again. At last the day comes--he leaves the prison
gates--he makes his way to his old home, but his old home is not there.
The house has been pulled down, and a new one has been put up in its
place; his family and friends are gone nobody knows where; there is no
one to take him by the hand, no one to welcome him.
"So it was with me," she said. "I had crossed the line. I was _free_;
but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a
stranger in a strange land; and my home, after all, was down in
Maryland; because my father, my mother, my brothers, and sisters, and
friends were there. But I was free, and _they_ should be free. I would
make a home in the North and bring them there, God helping me. Oh, how I
prayed then," she said; "I said to de Lord, 'I'm gwine to hole stiddy on
to _you_, an' I _know_ you'll see me through.'"
She came to Philadelphia, and worked in hotels, in club houses, and
afterwards at Cape May. Whenever she had raised money enough to pay
expenses, she would make her way back, hide herself, and in various ways
give notice to those who were ready to strike for freedom. When her
party was made up, they would start always on Saturday night, because
advertisements could not be sent out on Sunday, which gave them one day
in advance.
Then the pursuers would start after them. Advertisements would be posted
everywhere. There was one reward of $12,000 offered for the head of the
woman who was constantly appearing and enticing away parties of slaves
from their master. She had traveled in the cars when these posters were
put up over her head, and she heard them read by those about her--for
she could not read herself. Fearlessly she went on, trusting in the
Lord. She said, "I started with this idea in my head, 'Dere's _two_
things I've got a _right_ to, and dese are, Death or Liberty--one or
tother I mean to have. No one will take me back alive; I shall fight for
my liberty, and when de time has come for me to go, de Lord will let dem
kill me." And acting upon this simple creed, and firm in this trusting
faith, she went back and forth _nineteen times_, according to the
reckoning of her friends. She remembers that she went eleven times from
Canada, but of the other journeys she kept no reckoning.
While Harriet was working as cook in one of the large hotels in
Philadelphia, the play of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was being performed for
many weeks every night. Some of her fellow-servants wanted her to go and
see it. "No," said Harriet, "I haint got no heart to go and see the
sufferings of my people played on de stage. I've heard 'Uncle Tom's
Cabin' read, and I tell you Mrs. Stowe's pen hasn't begun to paint what
slavery is as I have seen it at the far South. I've seen de _real ting_,
and I don't want to see it on no stage or in no teater."
I will give here an article from a paper published nearly a year ago,
which mentions that the price set upon the head of Harriet was much
higher than I have stated it to be. When asked about this, Harriet said
she did not know whether it was so, but she heard them read from one
paper that the reward offered was $12,000.
"Among American women," says the article referred to, "who has shown a
courage and self-devotion to the welfare of others, equal to Harriet
Tubman? Hear her story of going down again and again into the very jaws
of slavery, to rescue her suffering people, bringing them off through
perils and dangers enough to appall the stoutest heart, till she was
known among them as 'Moses.'
"_Forty thousand dollars_ was not too great a reward for the Maryland
slaveholders to offer for her.
"Think of her brave spirit, as strong as Daniel's of old, in its
fearless purpose to serve God, even though the fiery furnace should be
her portion. I have looked into her dark face, and wondered and admired
as I listened to the thrilling deeds her lion heart had prompted her to
dare. 'I have heard their groans and sighs, and seen their tears, and I
would give every drop of blood in my veins to free them,' she said.
"The other day, at Gerrit Smith's, I saw this heroic woman, whom the pen
of genius will yet make famous, as one of the noblest Christian hearts
ever inspired to lift the burdens of the wronged and oppressed, and what
do you think she said to me? She had been tending and caring for our
Union black (and white) soldiers in hospital during the war, and at the
end of her labors was on her way home, coming in a car through New
Jersey. A white man, the conductor, thrust her out of the car with such
violence that she has not been able to work scarcely any since; and as
she told me of the pain she had and still suffered, she said she did not
know what she should have done for herself, and the old father and
mother she takes care of, if Mr. Wendell Phillips had not sent her $60,
that kept them warm through the winter. She had a letter from W. H.
Seward to Maj.-Gen. Hunter, in which he says, 'I have known her long,
and a nobler, higher spirit, or truer, seldom dwells in the human
form.'"
It will be impossible to give any connected account of the different
journeys taken by Harriet for the rescue of her people, as she herself
has no idea of the dates connected with them, or of the order in which
they were made. She thinks she was about 25 when she made her own
escape, and this was in the last year of James K. Polk's administration.
From that time till the beginning of the war, her years were spent in
these journeyings back and forth, with intervals between, in which she
worked only to spend the avails of her labor in providing for the wants
of her next party of fugitives. By night she traveled, many times on
foot, over mountains, through forests, across rivers, mid perils by
land, perils by water, perils from enemies, "perils among false
brethren." Sometimes members of her party would become exhausted,
foot-sore, and bleeding, and declare they could not go on, they must
stay where they dropped down, and die; others would think a voluntary
return to slavery better than being overtaken and carried back, and
would insist upon returning; then there was no remedy but force; the
revolver carried by this bold and daring pioneer would be pointed at
their heads. "Dead niggers tell no tales," said Harriet; "Go on or die;"
and so she compelled them to drag their weary limbs on their northward
journey.
At one time she collected and sent on a gang of thirty-nine fugitives in
the care of others, as from some cause she was prevented from
accompanying them. Sometimes, when she and her party were concealed in
the woods, they saw their pursuers pass, on their horses, down the high
road, tacking up the advertisements for them on the fences and trees.
"And den how we laughed," said she. "_We_ was de fools, and _dey_ was de
wise men; but we wasn't fools enough to go down de high road in de broad
daylight." At one time she left her party in the woods, and went by a
long and roundabout way to one of the "stations of the Underground
Railway," as she called them. Here she procured food for her famished
party, often paying out of her hardly-gained earnings, five dollars a
day for food for them. But she dared not go back to them till night, for
fear of being watched, and thus revealing their hiding-place. After
nightfall, the sound of a hymn sung at a distance comes upon the ears
of the concealed and famished fugitives in the woods, and they know that
their deliverer is at hand. They listen eagerly for the words she sings,
for by them they are to be warned of danger, or informed of safety.
Nearer and nearer comes the unseen singer, and the words are wafted to
their ears:
Hail, oh hail ye happy spirits,
Death no more shall make you fear,
No grief nor sorrow, pain nor anger (anguish)
Shall no more distress you there.
Around him are ten thousan' angels,
Always ready to 'bey comman'.
Dey are always hobring round you,
Till you reach the hebbenly lan'.
Jesus, Jesus will go wid you;
He will lead you to his throne;
He who died has gone before you,
Trod de wine-press all alone.
He whose thunders shake creation;
He who bids the planets roll;
He who rides upon the temple, (tempest)
An' his scepter sways de whole.
Dark and thorny is de desert,
Through de pilgrim makes his ways,
Yet beyon' dis vale of sorrow,
Lies de fiel's of endless days.
I give these words exactly as Harriet sang them to me to a sweet and
simple Methodist air. "De first time I go by singing dis hymn, dey don't
come out to me," she said, "till I listen if de coast is clar; den when
I go back and sing it again, dey come out. But if I sing:
Moses go down in Egypt,
Till ole Pharo' let me go;
Hadn't been for Adam's fall,
Shouldn't hab to died at all,
den dey don't come out, for dere's danger in de way."
And so by night travel, by hiding, by signals, by threatening, she
brought the people safely to the land of liberty. But after the passage
of the Fugitive Slave law, she said, "I wouldn't trust Uncle Sam wid my
people no longer; I brought 'em all clar off to Canada."
Of the very many interesting stories told me by Harriet, I cannot
refrain from telling to my readers that of _Joe_, who accompanied her
upon her seventh or eighth journey from Maryland to Canada.
Joe was a noble specimen of a negro, and was hired out by his master to
a man for whom he worked faithfully for six years, saving him the
expense of an overseer, and taking all trouble off his hands. At length
this man found him so absolutely necessary to him, that he determined to
buy him at any cost. His master held him proportionably high. However,
by paying a thousand dollars down for him, and promising to pay another
thousand in a certain time, Joe passed into the hands of his new
master.
As may be imagined, Joe was somewhat surprised when the first order
issued from his master's lips, was, "Now, Joe, strip and take a
whipping!" Joe's experience of _whippings_, as he had seen them
inflicted upon others, was not such as to cause him particularly to
desire to go through the same operation on his own account; and he,
naturally enough, demurred, and at first thought of resisting. But he
called to mind a scene which he had witnessed a few days before, in the
field, the particulars of which are too horrible and too harassing to
the feelings to be given to my readers, and he thought it best to
submit; but first he tried remonstrance.
"Mas'r," said he, "habn't I always been faithful to you? Habn't I worked
through sun an' rain, early in de mornin', and late at night; habn't I
saved you an oberseer by doin' his work; hab you anyting to complain of
agin me?"
"No, Joe; I've no complaint to make of you; you're a good nigger, and
you've always worked well; but the first lesson my niggers have to learn
is that I am _master_, and that they are not to resist or refuse to obey
anything I tell 'em to do. So the first thing they've got to do, is to
be whipped; if they resist, they get it all the harder; and so I'll go
on, till I kill 'em, but they've got to give up at last, and learn that
I'm master."
Joe thought it best to submit. He stripped off his upper clothing, and