Tubman, Harriet | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

Harriet Tubman

Born c. 1820

Dorchester County, Maryland

Died March 10, 1913

Auburn, New York

African American abolitionist who helped slaves emigrate from the United States to freedom in Canada using the Underground Railroad

"I was a stranger in a strange land."

For millions of people from Europe, and later Asia, the United States was a beacon of freedom and opportunity. For millions of African Americans living in the United States from 1619 to 1863, however, the United States was a prison, a place of enslavement from which the only escape in the middle of the nineteenth century was Canada. Harriet Tubman was the most prominent African American who helped slaves make the dangerous journey to freedom on the Underground Railroad.

Tubman made an estimated twenty round trips from the North to the South, and back north to Canada during the 1850s, a time when escaping slaves were subject to arrest and forced return to bondage, even in the nonslave states of the North. For several years, Tubman, herself an escaped slave, lived in Canada where she could be safe from arrest. A large reward was offered in the South for her capture, but she later boasted: "I never ran my train off the track, and I never lost a passenger."

Life in Bondage

Harriet Tubman was the daughter of slaves, Harriet and Benjamin Ross.

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