Harriet Tubman, the spy: uncovering her secret Civil War missions

Any student of American history is no stranger to Harriet Tubman. Called the Moses of Her People, Tubman famously escaped slavery herself in 1849 and then returned to guide family and friends to freedom along the Underground Railroad. She freed dozens of people through her work in the 1850s. Perhaps her most significant, but less celebrated, contributions came during the Civil War, when she worked for the Union as a nurse, soldier, and spy.

Tubman’s skills and abilities, honed in the backwoods of Maryland as she spirited people north, were crucial to penetrating slave-holding power in South Carolina and delivering a devastating blow to the Confederacy. In one night, she led a mission that freed hundreds.

(Why Harriet Tubman risked it all for enslaved Americans.)

Growing up

The middle child of nine siblings, Tubman was born in Dorchester County, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, around 1822. Her parents, Harriet “Rit” Green and Ben Ross, named their daughter Araminta. Both Rit and Ben were enslaved, as were all their children. Tubman later recalled how Rit often told her children Bible stories, which led to Tubman’s deep, lifelong Christian faith.

As early as age five, Araminta began being “hired out” for work in other households. In her own telling, it was a brutal experience, full of violence and physical abuse at the hands of her enslavers. She later remembered how one mistress would whip her almost every morning before work. Another incident, in which she was hit in the head with a lead weight, left her with a serious injury; she would be plagued for the rest of her life by painful headaches and debilitating seizures.

As a child, Araminta often worked in domestic settings, caring for children, cooking, and cleaning. After she turned 12, Araminta moved outside to work in the fields. She was not tall, but she was very strong, able to lift heavy barrels, chop wood, and till the soil.

When Araminta was in her early 20s, she married John Tubman, a free Black man, and changed her name to Harriet. Even though her husband was free, Harriet Tubman was not. Like most enslaved people, she and her family were in constant risk of being split up if their owners decided to sell.

(This woman escaped slavery by hiding in plain sight—disguised as a white man.)

Spreading freedom

Harriet Tubman’s successful escape in 1849 was fueled by such fears; her enslaver, Edward Brodess, died suddenly, and there were rumors that his widow was going to sell Tubman and her siblings. Rather than let the widow decide her fate, Tubman struck out on her own and found her way north to Philadelphia.

For the next 11 years, Tubman did her best known work in the causes of freedom and human rights. She became an important figure in abolitionist circles (although she was not fond of public speaking) and became allies with prominent antislavery figures, including noted speaker Frederick Douglass and the radical John Brown (who so admired her bravery and tactics that he called her General Tubman).

(America’s last slave ship stole them from home. It couldn’t steal their identities.)

Through her leadership on the Underground Railroad, Tubman returned south to Maryland many times and rescued more than 70 enslaved people, including members of her own family. She helped them relocate to free states like Pennsylvania and New York and even farther north to Canada.

Known as Moses, Tubman relied on careful planning and information networks. Tubman was familiar with the Maryland landscape, rivers, and night sky, which helped her navigate north. She shrewdly began journeys on Saturday nights, since runaway notices could not appear in local newspapers until Monday. She carried a pistol, both for protection from slave catchers and to urge her passengers forward if they decided to turn back. “You’ll be free or die,” she said. Later in her life, Tubman proudly recalled, “I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say: I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”

(Explore the Underground Railroad’s ‘great central depot’.)

War efforts

After the Civil War broke out in April 1861, Tubman volunteered her services to the Union. As a volunteer, she initially joined Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler and his Massachusetts troops, who were stationed at Fort Monroe, Virginia. Tubman’s duties there were largely domestic. She worked as a nurse, cook, and laundress.

That May, a group of Black Americans fled their Virginia enslavers and took refuge at Fort Monroe. Early in the war, there was no universal approach about what to do with refugees like them, but General Butler took an aggressive stance. The Union was at war with the Confederacy, which meant that he could seize the property, including enslaved people, of enemies of the state.

Butler referred to the escapees as “contraband of war” and refused to turn over anybody who had fled from slavery and come to Fort Monroe. The contrabands, as they became known, would stay at the garrison. Four months into the war, there were more than a thousand of them living and working alongside Tubman.

In late 1861 Tubman returned to New England and Auburn, New York, to spend the winter and visit with her parents. (They had escaped Maryland in the 1850s and settled in New York with Tubman and other family members.) She looked forward to returning to the work at Fort Monroe and helping build the free Black community there in the spring, but Massachusetts Governor John Andrew had different plans.

The Union had captured Port Royal, South Carolina, in early November 1861. The barrier island was an important strategic gain, giving the Union naval control of Port Royal Sound and the Sea Islands. Like Fort Monroe, Port Royal and the surrounding Beaufort area had become a haven for enslaved people fleeing the coastal plantations of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

Governor Andrew asked Tubman to travel to Port Royal to aid the growing refugee community there in the Sea Islands. Tubman welcomed the new assignment, and, after getting her affairs in order at home, she departed in May 1862.

Freedom fighters

When the war began in April 1861, free Black people had limited opportunities to contribute to the war effort, especially on the battlefield. Despite having fought for independence in 1776 and in the War of 1812, Black Americans were excluded from fighting for the Union. This perplexing stand was largely because of politics. Many Republican leaders wanted abolition, but President Lincoln feared that the so-called border states, where slavery remained legal, would secede if the issue took center stage.

(How slavery flourished in the United States.)

Critics, including Tubman, loudly pointed out the obvious contradiction with this position. Frederick Douglass noted in May 1861, just a month into the war: “There is but one easy, short and effectual way to suppress and put down the desolating war... Fire must be met with water, darkness with light, and war for the destruction of liberty must be met with war for the destruction of slavery.”

Following the precedent set by General Butler at Fort Monroe, Congress took a step forward by passing the First Confiscation Act in August 1861. The act made it the Union’s policy to seize property, including enslaved people, supporting the Confederate military. A few short months later, Secretary of War Simon Cameron was publicly advocating that all contrabands should be unconditionally freed and allowed to enlist in the armed forces.

Lincoln still resisted this position, despite critics loudly proclaiming the practicality and necessity of allowing Black people to fight. Douglass knew that this investment would be key to future citizenship battles: “Once let the [B]lack man get upon his person the brass letters, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the United States.”

As the war dragged on, abolitionist voices grew louder and louder. Tubman’s was among them. Her support of Lincoln had been lukewarm at best because of his cautious approach to slavery. Tubman wanted a quick, complete end to slavery and felt that the war was unwinnable until abolition was the law of the land. She told a friend, “God won’t let Mr. Lincoln beat the South till he does the right thing.”

Union casualties mounted, and the U.S. government’s attitude began to shift in 1862, when Republican senators observed that it was time for the military “to use all the physical force of this country to put down the rebellion.” Two acts passed in July 1862 loosened regulations. “Persons of African descent” could now be employed “for any war service for which they may befound competent,” although permission had to be secured for combat. The legislation also declared the enslaved people of anyone serving in the Confederacy “forever free.”

Both acts laid the groundwork for the Emancipation Proclamation. It would be issued on September 22, 1862, and go into effect on January 1, 1863. All enslaved people in the Confederate states “are, and hence forward shall be free.” The proclamation also settled the question of who could fight for the Union. Black American men could enlist in the Army and Navy.

(It took more than 200 years to end slavery. Juneteenth honors that fight.)

Joining the fight

When the U.S. Army decided to let Black Americans fight, volunteer Black regiments arose in Tennessee, Massachusetts, Kansas, and South Carolina. Two Union colonels, Thomas Wentworth Higginson and James Montgomery, would command two of these regiments. They arrived in South Carolina, where Tubman was stationed. Both men were staunch abolitionists before the war and familiar with Tubman’s work. Higginson knew her well, for he had met her in Massachusetts, and Montgomery knew her by reputation through their colleague John Brown. Both men quickly saw what an asset they had in her as a teammate.

During her first 10 months in South Carolina, Tubman had been mostly nursing the sick. Now the colonels wanted her to be more actively involved. Because of her experience guiding people on the Underground Railroad, the officers asked Tubman to form and lead a spy network in the region.

Tubman was willing, and her experience made her the perfect person to launch the network. Her biographer Catherine Clinton wrote, “Tubman had established such clandestine networks in the upper South during her Underground Railroad days and felt confident she might make similar headway in wartime Carolina.” Tubman built a team of spies with many recruits from the local area around Beaufort. Her crew included Solomon Gregory, Mott Blake, Peter Burns, Gabriel Cahern, George Chisholm, Isaac Hayward, Walter Plowden, Charles Simmons, and Sandy Suffus.

This group collected intelligence from not only South Carolina but also farther south in Georgia and Florida. These spies would gather information from local enslaved people about Confederate plans, like where Confederate troops placed gun powder-filled barrels in waterways to damage Union crafts. Information gained from these spies became known as Black dispatches.

(These 5 female spies helped win another war—World War II.)

Raiding the rebels

This early work led to Tubman’s most daring mission. Working with her commander, Colonel Montgomery, the two planned an operation to raid Confederate supplies and homes along the Combahee River. Three ships and 300 Union soldiers left late in the evening of June 1, 1863, to sail up the river under the cover of darkness into the Low Country. Tubman’s careful planning and intelligence gathering allowed the boats to avoid Confederate mines and slip by undetected.

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In the early morning hours of June 2, the Union forces attacked, wreaking havoc on the rice plantations along the river. Tubman led her own raiding party of eight men, helping to liberate enslaved people and seize whatever resources they could. Tubman later recalled how people seemed to drop what they were doing when they realized the Yankees were there:

I nebber see such a sight ... Here you’d see a woman wid a pail on her head, rice a smokin’ in it jus’ as she’d taken it from de fire ... One woman brought two pigs, a white one an’ a black one; we took ‘em all on board; named de white pig Beauregard, and de black pig Jeff Davis.

The raid was an unqualified success, striking a strong blow to one of the South’s most important economic engines. Tubman estimated that she recruited around 100 soldiers from the refugees. Newspapers buzzed with accounts of the raid and its leaders, including Tubman. A Boston newspaper, the Commonwealth, trumpeted:

Col. Montgomery and his gallant band of 300 [B]lack soldiers, under the guidance of a Black woman, dashed into the enemy’s country, struck a bold and effective blow, destroying millions of dollars worth of commissary stores, cotton and lordly dwellings, and striking terror into the heart of rebeldom, brought off near 800 slaves and thousands of dollars worth of property, without losing a man or receiving a scratch.

Tubman also described her triumph in a letter she dictated to a friend:

We weakened the Rebels somewhat on the Combahee River by taking and bringing away some 756 head of their most valuable livestock, known up in your region as “contrabands,” and this too without a single loss of life on our part, though we had good reasons to believe that a number of Rebels bit the dust.

It was a moment of triumph for Tubman, who many historians believe is the first American woman to lead troops in an armed attack. She would spend the summer helping the newly freed Americans begin their lives in Port Royal.

By the fall, Tubman’s health had begun to wane, and she was granted leave to return to Auburn in spring 1864. She went back in March 1865, treating the wounded and sick in Virginia hospitals near Fort Monroe. Even after General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9, Tubman continued her work in the region, treating the sick and wounded through July before going back to New York for good.

(This dish towel ended the Civil War.)

Life after the war

Tubman’s devotion to civil rights and humanitarian issues continued for decades after the war. On the national front, she worked for woman suffrage, while in Auburn she opened her home to those in need, especially formerly enslaved people.

Tubman's first husband died in 1851, leaving her free to remarry in 1869. Her second husband was a war veteran, 25-year-old Nelson Davis. In 1874 they adopted a daughter named Gertie. Tubman and her husband ran a seven-acre farm and a brickmaking business together until his death in 1888.

Despite her generosity, Tubman often lacked money. Her community in Auburn rallied around her. A white friend, Sarah H. Bradford, worked with Tubman on her biography in 1869, which earned roughly $1,200. In the 1880s, Tubman and Bradford published a new edition entitled Harriet: The Moses of Her People.

(Jim Crow laws created ‘slavery by another name’.)

During Reconstruction, Tubman began a decades-long battle to obtain a military pension for her service during the Civil War. It would be a slow process, taking tremendous determination, before the government granted one in 1899. It was both a sign of the times and of the long struggle that would follow Reconstruction into the 20th century, as the nation backslid into another era of racial discrimination.

Tubman continued to fight for equality and fairness until her death in 1913. Hundreds attended her funeral in Auburn. She was buried with military honors in Fort Hill Cemetery, where her husband, brother, and father also rested. On the back of her headstone read a simple list of her accomplishments: “Heroine of the Underground Railroad,” “Nurse and Scout in the Civil War,” and “Servant of God, Well Done.”

(Secrets of Harriet Tubman’s life are being revealed 100 years later.)