Who Is Harriet Tubman's Greatest Accomplishments

Harriet Tubman's famous last words as a slave saying, "...I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one I would have the other," led to the saving of numerous African-American slaves on many perilous missions. Minty Ross was born in 1822 in the border state of Maryland. She was born as a slave, although she did have the privilege of growing up with a mother. She was an exceptionally tough child, and did the work men usually do nowadays. She married John Tubman, a free black man, which changed her name to Harriet Tubman, taking after her mother's first name. After she escaped slavery, she was moved to help more of the enslaved Americans. Her work as a nurse, caregiver, and spy were important but her greatest achievement was the

saving of African-American slaves through the Underground Railroad.
One of Harriet Tubman's achievements was her work as a nurse. Harriet Tubman nursed the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers which was an all black company. When starting the cleaning process of the wounded soldiers, she first had to shoo a black cloud of flies covering the exposed flesh. The process she cleaned the soldiers was putting them in an ice bath until the heat coming off their body melted it. After this routine the bath would be a pool of blood. She must have helped hundreds of men on a daily basis. With the limited supplies the Union army provided for the treatment of Black soldiers it is amazing what she accomplished. Document D
Another important accomplishment was her work as a spy for the Union Army.

After her work in the Underground Railroad the governor of Massachusetts took notice of her and asked her to join the Union. She helped with providing intell on a raid to free slaves. This is known as the Combahee River raid. With the fog starting to rise they put the raid into action. Slaves came running to the shore carrying all types of livestock. When the time came for the slaves to board the gunboats they started getting nervous about their departure, thinking while in the rowboats paddling to the gunboats, they would leave without them. So Captain told Harriet to “speak a word of consultation to your people.” She did this by singing to them and convincing them to board. Without her there that day they probably would have saved half the amount of people. Document

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Another important work she did was her caregiving. She was a caregiver for about forty-eight years after the civil war and to her death in 1913. She helped with “the aged…the babe deserted, the epileptic, the blind, the paralyzed,… all found shelter and welcome.” Emma Telford Memoir, 1911. Tubman was helping here with her second husband Nelson Davis. She had six to eight people in her care at a time. The amount of people helped in a span of forty-eight years would add up to a very large number. She was so loyal and caring for her people that in the years close to her death she never stopped caring. Document E
Harriet Tubman's greatest achievement was her work in the Underground Railroad.

Harriet Tubman was one of the most famous conductors of the Underground Railroad (conductors were the fugitive escorts). The long, cautious trips Tubman took to save slaves was about 530 miles. The Fugitive Slave Act, which took action in 1850, made it unsafe in the South and the North, so she took all the escaped slaves to Canada. In the ten years following the Fugitive Slave Act, Tubman saved more than 38 slaves in a total of eight trips. She normally started the journey near the end of the year, where the nights were longer, and less people were out. The times Harriet went towards the beginning of the year it is suspected that they were more urgent times. For example in the Summer of 1857, she saved her parents who were in danger because of sheltering fugitive slaves. She made sure to take the safer routes rather than the more efficient routes to avoid capture, that's why she was so successful. Background Essay and Document A and

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The Underground Railroad was Harriet Tubman's greatest achievement for the following reasons. First, she risked her life to save fellow Americans who were in danger. The only other achievement where she did this was a spy.
Second, she saved a lot of lives from the hardships being enslaved has to offer. She didn't just save one group but built the courage and the fight to return almost every year if not twice a year. Third, she served the Underground Railroad for two decades saving and restoring countless amounts of lives. Her life is important to study today because without the sparks she lit so many years ago, who knows if America would be the flaming, melting pot we know today.