Harriet tubman freed how many slaves

Her infirmity made her unattractive to potential slave buyers and renters. The marriage was not good, and the knowledge that two of her brothers—Ben and Henry—were about to be sold provoked Harriet to plan an escape.

The brothers, however, changed their minds and went back. With the help of the Underground Railroad , Harriet persevered and traveled 90 miles north to Pennsylvania and freedom. The Fugitive Slave Act allowed fugitive and freed workers in the north to be captured and enslaved. She often drugged babies and young children to prevent slave catchers from hearing their cries. Over the next ten years, Harriet befriended other abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass , Thomas Garrett and Martha Coffin Wright, and established her own Underground Railroad network.

When the Civil War broke out in , Harriet found new ways to fight slavery. She was recruited to assist fugitive enslave people at Fort Monroe and worked as a nurse, cook and laundress.

Harriet used her knowledge of herbal medicines to help treat sick soldiers and fugitive enslaved people. In , Harriet became head of an espionage and scout network for the Union Army. She provided crucial intelligence to Union commanders about Confederate Army supply routes and troops and helped liberate enslaved people to form Black Union regiments.

Though just over five feet tall, she was a force to be reckoned with, although it took over three decades for the government to recognize her military contributions and award her financially. She married former enslaved man and Civil War veteran Nelson Davis in her husband John had died and they adopted a little girl named Gertie a few years later.

Harriet had an open-door policy for anyone in need. Part 3: Resource Bank Contents. Harriet Tubman is perhaps the most well-known of all the Underground Railroad's "conductors. And, as she once proudly pointed out to Frederick Douglass, in all of her journeys she "never lost a single passenger. At age five or six, she began to work as a house servant. Seven years later she was sent to work in the fields. While she was still in her early teens, she suffered an injury that would follow her for the rest of her life.

Always ready to stand up for someone else, Tubman blocked a doorway to protect another field hand from an angry overseer. She was a house slave from a young age before working the field harvesting flax at age Early on, Tubman suffered a traumatic brain injury when an overseer threw a heavy weight, aiming for another slave but striking Tubman instead. She did not receive proper medical care and would suffer "sleeping fits," likely seizures, for years after.

In the fall of , Tubman managed to escape north using the Underground Railroad and would later serve as a "conductor" for many other escaping slaves. Existing documentation and Tubman's own words show she would make the trip to Maryland approximately 13 times, not 19 as the meme claims.

According to the National Park Service in an article on myths and facts about Tubman, "During public and private meetings during and , Tubman repeatedly told people that she had rescued 50 to 60 people in eight or nine trips.

This was before her very last mission, in December , when she brought away seven people. The exaggerated number in the meme is believed to have been propagated by Sarah Hopkins Bradford, a writer and historian who was a contemporary of Tubman, best known for her biographies on the abolitionist.

Tubman helped John Brown plan his raid of a Harpers Ferry arsenal, one of the major events that led to the Civil War. The act threatened imprisonment for anyone caught assisting a fugitive and meant she was at greater risk of capture if she stayed in the U. It was in Canada that she first met John Brown, an abolitionist who believed that if he armed enslaved people with weapons, it would lead to widespread revolts and an end to slavery. Tubman helped him plan his raid on a federal arsenal by recruiting supporters and sharing her contacts and information on escape routes in the region.

Many of the men who joined his raid were killed, including two of his sons. The act of resistance sharpened tensions between the North and South and served as a major catalyst for the Civil War.

Tubman helped to coordinate a military assault during the Civil War that freed more than people from slavery. When the Civil War finally began, Tubman did not stand on the sidelines. She first served as a cook and nurse, then as a scout and a spy for Union soldiers in South Carolina. In June , under the leadership of Col. James Montgomery, she served as a key adviser for an operation in Combahee Ferry, South Carolina, in which a regiment of soldiers, whom she accompanied, set fire to a large plantation, forced Confederate soldiers to retreat, and used gunboats to rescue hundreds of enslaved people.

The Bucktown Village Store, where Harriet Tubman suffered a traumatic head injury at the hands of an overseer.