Harriet Tubman is the best known “conductor“ on the Underground Railroad, a network of secret routes, winding through woods and along snake-filled waterways from Southern slave states to Northern free states and Canada. Along these undisclosed trails and routes were privately-held “safe houses“ - abolitionist homes and churches - where run-away slaves could find food, shelter and protection on their journey. Between 1849 and 1860, Tubman made 13 trips to the South, encouraging and cajoling more than 70 enslaved people to follow her north to freedom.

To carry out clandestine rescues of her siblings and elderly parents and numerous other enslaved people, Harriet devised clever strategies that helped her forays be successful. Risky endeavors included leaving on a Saturday night, since runaway notices couldn’t be posted in newspapers until Monday morning; appropriating a horse and buggy from the master for the first leg of the journey; using the night sky as a compass, particularly the North star, as she had no maps; turning abruptly south if she heard slave-hunters’ dogs in the distance; and carrying a potion to quiet a crying child who might put the runaways in jeopardy.

During the Civil War, Harriet was undaunted in leading a Union Army expedition at the Combahee River in South Carolina where she guided Union soldiers in a raid that liberated more than 700 enslaved people. She is widely credited as being the first woman to lead an armed military operation for the United States Army. Harriet valiantly worked for the Union behind Confederate lines as a nurse and spy during the war.

Harriet’s incredible backstory reveals that she was born into Maryland slavery about 1822. Working in the fields as a teenager, she suffered a traumatic head injury while attempting to protect another enslaved person from a violent punishment. The painful symptoms remained the rest of her life. In her late twenties, she heard rumors that she and other slaves were going to be sold further down south. She resolved to run away, setting out alone on foot one night in 1849. On her second escape attempt, she made it to Philadelphia, found work, saved her wages, and plotted her clandestine returns to slave country to lead others to freedom.

Harriet was tough and fiercely determined. She carried a gun for protection and to ’buck-up’ her fugitives if they became tired or scared on the long journey, telling them: “Be free or die.“ She proudly told her friend Frederick Douglas that she “never lost a single passenger in all my journeys.“ He, in turn, called her the “bravest person on this continent.“ Harriet became known as “Moses“ to her people.