Transcription
Born into slavery on Maryland's Eastern Shore, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in 1849. It was just the first of her many dangerous forays leading runaway slaves from safe house to safe house.
Harriet Tubman was a very spiritual, very religious person and carried this um himnil with her on her trips to bring people out of the Eastern Shore in Maryland. She would often sing with them and pray with them. And is this her favorite song? Um many of the pages have little X's that designate those hymns as her favorites. Oh, okay. Wow. The Shaw. Uh evidently this was a very favorite piece of hers.
She was tiny, very tiny, but she was very strong, very determined, very directed and had a kind of forcefulness and a kind of authority that people felt when they were with her. You know, they followed her orders and did what she said. And if they didn't, uh she uh very uh famously threatened to shoot them because she couldn't risk alerting the enemy to their presence. Wow. just took charge. Oh, what an amazing woman.
I think the common vision that people have of Harriet Tubman is this woman who would go south during the Underground Railroad and would bring people north and that's all she was about and that was her claim to fame. By secret paths and waterways, Tudman did lead dozens of slaves to freedom. But her experience also made her a valuable military asset. The skills she gained as a young woman in terms of the ability to, you know, go in the woods and travel in strange places translates into very useful skills for the Union Army.
In 1863, the Union command sent her deep behind enemy lines in South Carolina to lay the groundwork for a daring plantation raid. She goes inland into South Carolina and establishes relationships with local people. On the night of June 2nd, she planned a covert operation on the Kahi River. As dawn broke, they took three plantations by surprise. Tubman gave a signal and the enslaved people rushed to freedom. They burned storehouses and destroyed crops, crippling supply lines. One Confederate captain fumed, their success was complete. [Music]