Harriet Tubman
Harriet TubmanHarriet Tubman
Even before Harriet Tubman was born she had a powerful enemy. Her enemy wasn�t a person or even a country; it was the system known as slavery. It is known that at least two grandparents were captured by slave traders and brought to North America from the Slave Coast of Africa during the 18th century. Because slaves were not allowed to read and write, Tubman grew up illiterate. She left no letters or diaries that would later allow historians to piece together all the parts of her life story. But we do know that she was one of history�s great heroines. With courage and determination, she escaped from slavery herself and then led more than 300 slaves to safety and freedom. When the Civil War began, she tirelessly scouted for the Union army and continued to free her people. Many of these newly freed slaves became new recruits for the Union army. Tubman rose from slavery to become one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the United States of America.
About 40 years before the Civil War began, a slave child, Araminta. Like others born into slavery, Araminta, who later become known as Harriet Ross Tubman, was never to know her birth date. Her parents, Harriet Greene and Benjamin Ross, couldn�t read or write. They didn�t even know the months of the year. They simply kept track by the seasons: summer, winter, harvest time, and planting time. They had no family records beyond their own memories to document the births of their 11 children.
The most important fact about Harriet Tubman�s birth was not the date or the place, or even who her parents were. It was that she was, from the day she was born the property of Edward Brodas, who owned her parents. A child was a slave if either her mother or father was a slave.
Araminta�s master, Edward Brodas, wasn�t an evil man. He went to church, where he was taught that slavery was a natural part of life and that God had made white people better than black people. He was taught that because he was born with the privilege of being white and wealthy, it was his responsibility to provide those entrusted to his care. He didn�t feel sorry for his slaves as they worked all day in the hot sun, because he honestly believed that the Africans were better suited to such labor than he was. He believed that they had been created for just such hard, backbreaking work. When he heard his slaves singing as they worked among the tobacco plants, he liked to think to think it was a sign that they were happy.
Araminta, having her mother near her, was very fortunate. Some slave owners separated a mother from her children very soon after she stopped nursing. Sometimes the mother was sold or hired out to live and work on another farm. The law did not recognize the marriages and families of slaves. It was up to...
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