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changed their minds and went back. With the help of the Underground Railroad, Harriet persevered and traveled 90 miles north to Pennsylvania and freedom. Tubman found work as a housekeeper in Philadelphia, but she was not satisfied living free on her own, she wanted freedom for her loved ones and friends too. She soon returned to the South to lead her niece and her niece’s children to Philadelphia via the Underground Railroad. At one point, she tried to bring her husband John up north, but he had remarried and chose to stay in Maryland with his new wife.
The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act allowed fugitive and freed workers in the North to be captured and enslaved. This made Harriet’s role as an Underground Railroad conductor much harder and forced her to lead enslaved people further north to Canada, traveling at night, usually in the spring or fall when the days were shorter. She carried a gun for both her protection and to encourage others who might be having second thoughts. She often drugged babies and young children to prevent slave catchers from hearing their cries.
Now, over the next 10 years, Harriet befriended other abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, Thomas Garrett, and Martha Coffin Wright, and established her own Underground Railroad network. It is widely reported she emancipated 300 enslaved people; however, those numbers may have been estimated and exaggerated by her biographer Sarah Bradford, since Harriet herself claimed the numbers were much lower.
Nevertheless, it is believed Harriet personally led at least 70 enslaved people to freedom, including her elderly parents, and instructed dozens of others on how to escape on their own. She claimed, “I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”
Abolitionists however celebrated her courage. John Brown, who consulted her about his plans to organize an antislavery raid of a federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), referred to her as “General” Tubman. About 1858 she bought a small farm near Auburn, New York, where she placed her aged parents (she had brought them out of Maryland in June 1857) and she lived thereafter.
Now, when the Civil War broke out in 1861, Harriet found new ways to fight slavery. She was recruited to assist fugitive enslaved people at Fort Monroe and worked as a nurse, cook, and laundress. Harriet used her knowledge of herbal medicines to help treat sick soldiers and fugitive enslaved people.
In 1863, Harriet became head of an espionage and scout network for the Union Army. She provided crucial intelligence to Union commanders about Confederate Army supply routes and troops and helped liberate enslaved people to form Black Union regiments. Though just over five feet tall, she was a force to be reckoned with. Although it took over three decades for the