Harriet Tubman makes a bid for freedom
After a successful escape (at the second attempt) she returns to rescue more slaves
“Three Hundred Dollars Reward,” began the advertisement in the Cambridge Democrat, published in a small town in rural Maryland. “Ran away from the subscriber on Monday the 17th, three negroes, named as follows: Harry, aged about 19 years …; Ben, aged about 25 years …; Minty, aged about 27 years, is of a chestnut color, fine looking and about 5 feet high.”
The woman who placed that advert was Eliza Ann Brodess, and today she is completely forgotten. But almost every American schoolchild has heard of her former slave Minty, better known as Harriet Tubman, who escaped from slavery, made more than a dozen missions to rescue other slaves, worked with the radical abolitionist John Brown and even spied for the North during the American Civil War.
Born into slavery in about 1822, Tubman had grown up on a Maryland plantation where as a child she was badly beaten. After suffering a serious head injury, she was plagued with seizures.
When her master Edward Brodess died in 1849, his widow began to sell his slaves, breaking up their families. So on Monday 17 September, Harriet and her brothers decided to take their futures into their own hands. They were supposed to be working at a neighbouring plantation, so as a result, Mrs Brodess did not initially realise that they had run away. Harriet’s brothers soon became frightened and turned back, and at first she chose – or was forced – to go back with them. But having tasted freedom once already, Harriet had had enough of life as a slave. And by the end of October she had escaped again, this time for good.