Women of distinction/Chapter 12

CHAPTER XII.

HARRIET, THE MODERN MOSES.

In those dark days of our history when the negro for the most part was only so much property in the hands of his owner rather than a human being or an American citizen, God condescended to use some of that despised and oppressed people as His agencies of love and mercy. Among these agencies was one "Harriet" who was born a slave in the eastern part of Maryland. Finally deciding that she would no longer be the chattel of a slave owner, she, with her brothers, resolved to escape to the North. When the journey was a little more than begun her brothers turned back, leaving Harriet to pursue the journey alone. This she did bravely, sometimes without food, without shelter or without friends. Still determined she went on, and after many days traveling alone she found herself beyond the bounds of slavery. But not satisfied with freedom for herself only, she returned as best she could as many as nineteen times and carried other slaves to the then land of the free, until, besides herself, she had been the guiding star of the east to as many as four hundred human beings from the then land of oppression to the then land of freedom. Was not this remarkable for an uneducated slave to outgeneral all the intelligence of the South in her locality? One very friendly and seemingly truthful lady, "Emma P. Telford," in the October number of the Household (I think of 1891 or '92), speaks of the deeds of tins wonderful woman Moses as follows:

Just outside of the limits of the city of Auburn, N. Y., stands an unpretentious little house surrounded by a motley yet picturesque collection of tiny cabins, sheds, pens and kennels. This modest home shelters a varying crowd of lame and halt and blind widows, orphans and wayfarers, all dependent for care and support upon an old black woman, whose heroic deeds in plague-stricken camps and on bloody battle-fields as scout and spy, as deliverer of her people, and defender of the oppressed, have made for her a name as worthy of being handed down to posterity as Grace Darling's, Florence Nightingale's or Jean D'Arc's.

This woman, a full-blooded African, thick-lipped and heavy-eyed, with the signs of her seventy years set fast in deep wrinkles and stooping shoulders, has, perhaps, done more than any single individual to free her nation and hasten the "crash of slavery’s broken locks." After making her own escape by almost superhuman efforts from slavery, taking her life in her own hands, she returned to the South nineteen times, bringing back with her nearly four hundred slaves to the land of liberty. At the beginning of the war she was sent to the South by Governor Andrew of Massachusetts to act as scout and spy for our own armies. She was a trusted friend and confidante of John Brown, who drew up his constitution at her house, and who used to refer to her as General Tubman.

This woman was a personal friend of Thomas Garrett, Garrett Smith, Wendell Phillips, Fred. Douglass, and William Lloyd Garrison, who delighted to introduce her to a cultured Boston audience as his foster-sister, Moses. When in Concord she resided with the Emersons, Alcotts, Whitneys, Manns, and other well-known families, who respected and admired her as one of the most extraordinary persons of her race. "Harriet" encountered great trial and vexation while guiding fugitives to the land of freedom. Once she went into the town where she had lived a slave and bought some fowls. While carrying these along the street in her native town she saw coming just ahead of her her former master, who, with others, had offered a liberal reward for her head. What to do now was the question of the moment. She disturbed her fowls so as to make them flutter, and with her sun-bonnet pulled over her face and she half bent as if trying to control her fowls, the master passed by, not once thinking he had come into touch with the one he desired to punish for stealing away so many of his slaves. At another time, while going North with a band of fleeing, trembling followers, she came at early morning to the residence of a colored man whose doors had ever been open to "underground railroad" passengers. The rain was falling heavily and thickly. Leaving her crowd, Harriet stepped to the door and knocked. Behold! a white man's face was seen, who informed her that the colored man had been forced to abandon the house because of "harboring runaway niggers." The rain still falling, yet Harriet was equal to the emergency. Daylight had come; she must not travel longer. After a prayer she thought of a thick swamp just out of town. To this she and her crowd went in great haste, having two babes in a basket well drenched with an opiate. While they thus lay all day in the swamp, wet and cold and hungry, a strange figure at evening appeared, dressed as a Quaker, and drawing near, talking as if to himself, saying, "My wagon stands in the barn-yard of the next farm across the way. The horse is in the stable; the harness hangs on a nail." After this he disappeared. In obedience to this message Harriet moved after dark and found it just as she supposed, wagon, horse and food for her use. Again she was off on a safe journey for the night with these helps.

We might gather much more of interest from the writings of Emma P. Telford, to whom we are very thankful for much of the above, but space being limited we must stop here, after giving one of Harriet's songs. When leaving for the North the first time she sang as follows:

I am gwine away to leab you,
⁠We'll sing and shout ag'in;
Dere's a better day a comin',
⁠We'll sing and shout ag'in.

When we git ober Jordan,
⁠We'll sing and shout again;
Makes me sorry for to leab you.
⁠We'll sing and shout ag'in.

A partin' time is comin',
⁠We'll sing and shout ag'in;
I'll meet you in de mawnin'.
⁠We'll sing and shout ag'in.