Preview

Why Did Harriet Tubman Escape Slavery

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
361 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Why Did Harriet Tubman Escape Slavery
Edward's son was unable to run the plantation by himself, but he still owned it. Harriet convinced him to hire her out to people everywhere. They made a deal that she would give most of her earnings to him, but she kept a small bit of every job. She saved up so she would be able to live on the run and escape slavery. Harriet started to have dreams that gave her one message, escape slavery. Harriet heard stories of the Underground Railroad, and how many slaves used it to escape. When Harriet was 24, her owner arranged for her to marry a free man, John Tubman. He was a free black man, but he did not change Harriet's status. She was still a slave. Harriet often spoke to her husband about her dreams and about running away, but he did

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Before Harriet Tubman became a great conductor of the Underground Railroad, she was a slave in Maryland. Harriet was born into slavery around 1820 and worked as a slave throughout her childhood. She later married a free man, John Tubman, in 1844. Although she was married to a free man she was still a slave. Until one day in 1849, when she decided to run away from her plantation to become free. She escaped, using the help of the Underground Railroad, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Once she became free, she decided to make trips the south to help others break free of slavery as well. Harriet Tubman took 19 treacherous trips to the south and helped free over 300 slaves. She fought slavery through the entirety of her life, passing away peacefully…

    • 133 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Given these points, the events that led to the freedom of her and her children were all powered by her perseverance. Harriet made her escape to freedom in 1842. She travelled to New York City after sailing to Philadelphia. Once there, she was able to reunite with her daughter, who was sent by her father in the time that Jacobs faced the many hardships she overcame. After some time, Harriet decided to move to Rochester, New York, that way she could be close to her brother, who obviously ran away too.…

    • 162 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Harriet set out for the free state of Philadelphia alone and by foot, later making use of the underground railroad, traveling almost 90 miles to reach freedom. “When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven” (Bradford). Rather than stay in the safety of the north, Harriet returned to the south, first for her niece and her children, then for her brother and a few other men. On her third trip, she attempted to bring her husband, but he had already taken a new wife, so she instead helped others who were seeking freedom.…

    • 899 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Harriet Tubman was an African American who helped hundreds of slaves in the southern United States escape to freedom. She became a famous leader of the underground railroad. The underground railroad was a secret system that helped slaves escape to the northern United States or to Canada . Admirers called her Tubman became a conductor on the underground railroad. She carried a gun and promised to use it on anyone who threatened the success of her operation. She was assisted by white and free black abolitionists.…

    • 318 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    After crossing the Mason-Dixon line for the first time ever, achieving freedom, Harriet Tubman recalled “I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person now that I was free. There was such glory over everything, the sun came up like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in heaven.” She was overwhelmed at the feeling of being a freed person at last, which prompted her to return to the South and help other slaves achieve freedom. Then, she explained while talking about her trips to the South, she said that “I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.” On her own, Harriet Tubman led three-hundred slaves to freedom.…

    • 694 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Eventually, she struck out on her own in the fall of 1849, on foot. On the first leg of the journey she was assisted by a kind Quaker woman she had met while working out in the fields—the woman had just stopped one day to chat with her and offered her assistance should she need it. Harriet traded the wedding quilt she had pieced together when she married John Tubman for two names along with directions of how to get to the first house where the people would take her in and instruct her on how to get to the next station on what came to be known as the Underground Railroad. The legend goes that in the year 1831, a Kentucky slave escaped his home headed for freedom in Ohio. His master tracked him to the Ohio River where he watched the slave jump in and swim across. Waiting for a boat to ferry him across, the master kept his eyes peeled on the slave, saw him scramble up the bank, and just disappear as if he had gone on some underground road. Allegedly, this account was the origin of the nickname Underground Railroad also known as the…

    • 5303 Words
    • 22 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Harriet’s early childhood was spent with her grandmother, who was too old to do slave labor. In 1844, Harriet married John Tubman at the age of 25. Five years later, in 1849, Harriet escaped the slavery society. During her escape she followed the North Star until she knew she was free. Since Harriet was a very brave, strong-minded, determined, decisive, tenacious woman, it helped her…

    • 809 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Harriet Tubman was a slave in Maryland in 1820. Once she was born she was considered a slave. No one knows the exact date when Harriet Tubman’s birthday is. Her first job was at the age of five. Tubman was hired to take care of an infant. Harriet Tubman’s job was trying not to make the infant cry, so every time the infant cries Miss Susan the mother of the baby, whips Harriet Tubman on the neck. These scars around her neck stayed there forever. Then she was weak so then she was sent home.…

    • 556 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Harriet Tubman was a huge part of the Underground Railroad. She was a big part in helping slaves escape, she is seen as a hero in many people’s opinions. Harriet was never sure of her exact age, but she believes she was born in Maryland, around 1822. She was the fifth child out of nine, her mothers name was Harriet Ross and her fathers name Ben Ross. When she had turned six she had been taken to live with James Cook.…

    • 2105 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    A strong and powerful lady said these wise words: “There was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when the time came for me to go, the Lord would let them take me”. The brave women who said these words were Harriet Tubman and she was one of the leaders of the Underground Railroad that helped slaves reach freedom. “Although not an actual railroad of steel rails, locomotives and steam engines, the Underground Railroad was real nevertheless” (encyclopedia The Civil War and African Americans 329) The term “Underground Railroad” referred to the network of safe houses, transportation and the many very kind hearted people who risked their own lives to help the slaves escape from the Southern States to freedom. Many different kinds of transportation were actually used. Sometimes the slaves would travel by foot or they could be hidden on boats, or hide in wagons or carts carrying vegetables or other goods The runaway slaves became known as “passengers”, and the route traveled was the “line” while people who helped out along the way were called the “agents”. Leaders like Harriet Tubman who would travel with the slaves that were escaping, were called “conductors”.…

    • 1698 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Harriet Tubman Biography

    • 854 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Throughout Harriet Tubman’s life, she experienced events at each stage that would further develop her incredible story. Evidently, Harriet Tubman was an extraordinary heroine. She was first forced to endure a traumatic, painful adolescence period. Later, once settling as a slave in Bucktown, Maryland, Harriet was presented with unpleasant work and an ill-fated marriage; consequently, she possessed bitter emotions at this time. These feelings fueled the final dramatic section of her life: her escape and conducting in the Underground Railroad. It was clear Harriet Tubman lived through a remarkable journey; her unfortunate childhood was only the beginning.…

    • 854 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Harriet was free but she felt awful leaving her family, friends, and other slaves to suffer. So she went back to free the others. Before she returned she wrote a letter to her parents to notify them that she is coming to set them free. With her return the slaves rejoiced and revolted against the owners of the compound. After that Harriet’s family, friends, and other slaves were running for freedom; running for their lives.…

    • 471 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Harriet Tubman made many journey on the Underground Railroad. Tubman went back to free not only her family, but many others. Tubman got word that her niece and nephew, were soon going to be sold, so she set out to meet them and bring them back to the North. That was one of nineteen trips that Tubman would make on the Underground Railroad. Tubman suffered a head injury in her early years, due to a beating she received and would experience black out spells, this would not stop her or slow her down and freeing slaves. Tubman made her way back to her parents and was able to free them also. Harriet would use the…

    • 832 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    A Hidden Hero

    • 947 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Harriet Tubman is the most well-known for her use of the ‘underground railroad’. On this dangerous mission she took upon herself, Harriet rescued three hundred slaves. She traveled repeatedly over swamps, where the weight of the water would suck you deep into its depths, thick wooded forest, where, at night, you couldn’t see farther away than your fingertips, and through the tips of those who wanted to capture her, for eleven years.…

    • 947 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Perhaps the most outstanding “conductor” of the Underground Railroad was Harriet Tubman born a slave herself.” -(USHistory.org 2016). Harriet Tubman could be described as brave because she went to go help her people. “Throughout the 1850s, Tubman made 19 separate trips into slave territory.” -(USHistory.org 2016). This can show us that Tubman had gone back to her home town & other places in the South to make sure that her people would be freed into the North. In the North they wouldn’t accept slavery, but in the South they wanted slaves & they had them. “By the end of the decade, she was responsible for freeing about 300 slaves. When the Civil War broke out, she used her knowledge from working the railroad to serve as a spy for the Union.” -(USHistory.org 2016). Tubman was one of the most successful woman to free slaves & to not get caught as often. Also, they had to help free the slaves because many people were fighting so that people everyone could get the same right no matter the color of their…

    • 1175 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays