🌅 Harriet Tubman Was a Union Spy

SOURCE

National Park Service

WHAT TO KNOW

• As night fell on June 1, 1863, Harriet Tubman, better known as a conductor of the historic Underground Railroad, led Col. James Montgomery and his 2nd South Carolina Colored Volunteers Regiment up the Combahee River, deftly navigating their Union gunboats through a series of deadly Confederate torpedoes Tubman had located through her earlier work gathering intelligence behind enemy lines. The Union troops unleashed a devastating raid as they moved up the river, burning bridges, destroying outposts, and cutting off vital Confederate supply lines. Over 750 enslaved people were liberated as a result of the mission.

WHY IT MATTERS

• The Combahee Ferry Raid made Tubman the first woman in American history to plan and lead a U.S. military raid, and earned her spots in both the U.S. Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame and the International Spy Museum. Though Tubman only received $200 for her military service and didn’t begin receiving a pension until the 1890s—for her husband’s service, not her own—when she passed in 1913 at about 91 years old, she was buried with full military honors.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• Contrary to what many think, the Underground Railroad wasn’t a formal network or system, but a vast collection of routes, places, and individuals that helped enslaved people escape the American South and reach freedom in the North. The Railroad began wherever an enslaved person—called a “passenger”—was held, with “conductors” moving passengers through various homes, businesses, churches, and barns referred to as “stations.” From 1850 to 1860, Tubman helped free around 70 enslaved people as a conductor of the Railroad.