Short Essay On Harriet Tubman

For hundreds of years, slavery had been the foundational economic institution in the southern states of the USA. Slavery was an integral factor of the state's agricultural economy in the 17th through to the 19th century. The conditions in which the slaves lived, slept and worked were inhumane. The slaves needed an escape route, and people they could trust to help deliver them. Harriet Tubman was a devout Christian, a nurse, a rebellious Union spy during the civil war, an African-American abolitionist, a humanitarian, and most importantly, the conductor of the underground railway. Tubman, a caring yet rebellious woman, was born into slavery in approximately 1820, in Dorchester County, Maryland where she acquired her tenacious soul from her

Tubman grew up in a large, Christian family in the Antebellum south, under a very oppressive master. Between working long hours without rest or pay, and often being maltreated by her masters, Harriet developed sustained injuries that would follow her for the rest of her days. As Harriet began to grow older, her siblings were being sold off into slavery, and every day she lived in fear that she too would be ripped from her family to be taken to another master for only a few dollars. One feverish, August day, their master came to the ‘slave quarters’ to try to sell their son Moses, but Tubman’s mother, who was also named Harriet, threatened to kill the first man to touch her son. It is believed that this is where Tubman attained her rebellious soul. Nevertheless, the Tubman family was in constant fear of their family being torn apart, but through it all they kept their faith close and each other closer. After Harriet sustained a life changing injury, now known as temporal lobe epilepsy as a result of her owner throwing a rock at her head, her value as a slave went down and the beatings intensified. Tubman realized this wasn't an acceptable life style, she decided she needed a change. At the young age of 29, in the midst of the night, Harriet packed her few belongings and ran away, running by night all the way to Philadelphia,