Harriet Tubman: The Life and the Life Stories

Notes

Introduction 1. This woodcut image may have been based on an actual photograph taken during the Civil War. Tubman’s grandnephew Harkless Bowley told biographer Earl Conrad , “I did however let a [man?] have one of her photographs, the one she had taken when she was with the Union Army. I have never gotten it back” (Bowley, 1940a). 2. Although Tubman’s earliest nineteenth-century biographers were white, many of her African American contemporaries (especially abolitionists and activist writers) left important documentary evidence about her impact, including William Still, Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, Charlotte Forten, and Frances Watkins Harper. Dozens of brief biographical articles were produced by black writers in the later years of her life, and since her death hundreds of African American writers, intellectuals, and artists have created influential retellings or visual representations of key stories, in pamphlets, magazine articles, and books aimed both at adults and at children. 3. For example another fugitive slave heroine successfully protected a grandson from being sold south by fleeing with him to Canada and then returned to rescue other children and grandchildren. We get a glimpse of her in a letter dated October 24, 1856, in which Thomas Garrett explained to Eliza Wigham that this heroine was not Harriet Tubman. Garrett mentions a newspaper story in the Trenton (N.J.) Gazette as the source of the story (McGowan, 1977, 129–131). Also see Jacqueline Jones (1985), for an instance of a seventy-year-old former slave woman rescuing herself and twentytwo children and grandchildren during the war (47). Deborah Gray White (1985) discusses the reasons “why women were underrepresented in the fugitive population ,” with particular emphasis on the restrictions entailed by their motherhood roles (70–90). 4. Sanborn and Cheney were closely associated with Tubman in antislavery work in the late 1850s and freedmen’s aid work in the 1860s. They continued to respond to her appeals for help with fund-raising projects throughout their long lives. (Sanborn outlived her by just a few years, dying in 1917; Cheney died in 1904; and Bradford died in 1912, one year before Tubman herself.) These biographers’ relationships with Tubman are discussed in more detail in part 2, “The Life Stories.” 353 notes 5. I have located four dictated letters from Tubman as well as many references to others. It is very likely that more Tubman letters await discovery in the papers of her antislavery associates at dozens of archives. 6. For an extended discussion of the similar case of Sojourner Truth, another public antislavery ex-slave heroine who did not acquire literacy as a free adult, see Carleton Mabee (1993), 60–66. 7. I have made this argument in more detail in relation to Tubman’s impact on the Bradford biography in Humez (1993), 162–182. 8. See part 2, “The Life Stories,” for a more extended discussion of how Tubman’s storytelling practices affected the mediated autobiographical texts that have come down to us. 9. For a fuller discussion of the language issues raised by oral-historical interview texts, see part 2, “The Life Stories.” 10. I have selected those portions of the surviving interview-based biographies that seem likely to have undergone the least transmutation by the collaborator with the pen. For more detail on my editing procedures, see “A Note on the Selection and Editing of Story Texts,” in part 3, “Stories and Sayings.” 11. Earl Conrad was the pen name chosen by Earl Cohen (1912–1986). Conrad described his political perspectives as a white progressive in a letter to Harkless Bowley (Conrad, 1940c). Also see McHenry (1943). 12. No full-length scholarly biography of Tubman based on new primary research has yet appeared in the nearly sixty years since Earl Conrad’s General Harriet Tubman (1943a)—though several scholars are currently working on new books. I was initially guided by Conrad’s careful research to many important primary texts used in this book. 13. James McGowan, Kate Larson, Milton Sernett and I plan to put a comprehensive collection of unedited primary source material on a website to facilitate future research. The Sl avery Years 1. The historical literature on slavery is vast. For an overview, I recommend Eugene Genovesee (1974), Ira Berlin (1998), and Deborah Gray White (1985). 2. See further discussion in part 2, “The Life Stories.” 3. Anthony C. Thompson, who hired Tubman and her brothers to work on his farm, estimated the age of “Minty” at thirty-two in 1853, which would suggest...