Harriet Tubman: The Life and the Life Stories

Coping with Poverty

W hen Congress finally passed a bill making widows of Civil War soldiers eligible for pensions, in June 1890, Harriet Tubman immediately applied, and after several years and much paper work, she received a tiny award of $8 a month.1 This amount was inadequate for her needs. Moreover, a widow’s pension was an unsatisfactory substitute for the veteran’s pension to which her own war service entitled her. In 1898, she submitted an affidavit to the Committee on Invalid Pensions , testifying to the accuracy of the account of her war services that had been written in 1868 by Charles P. Wood and stating simply, “My claim against the U.S. is for three years’ service as nurse and cook in hospitals, and as commander of several men (eight or nine) as scouts during the late War of the Rebellion, under direction and orders of Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, and of several Generals. I claim for my services above named the sum of eighteen hundred dollars” (Tubman, 1898). Auburn’s congressman recommended the approval of her claim, and there was actually a brief committee debate on a bill that would have granted her a pension for her work as a nurse. Taking the bureaucratically easier path, however, the committee decided simply to increase her monthly widow’s pension allocation from $8 to $20 (Conrad, 1943a, 218–220).2 The final failure of the U.S. government to acknowledge her war services in her own right after so many years of petitions was a bitter pill. A comment captured by a friendly interviewer ten years later expressed her disgust: “It was not plaintively, but rather with a flash of scorn in her dulling eyes, that she remarked to the writer last week: ‘You wouldn’t think that after I served the flag so faithfully I should come to want under its folds’” (F. C. Drake, 1907). 109 coping with poverty Various friends expressed concerns about her health and welfare as she aged in poverty.3 Robert Taylor’s Heroine in Ebony (1901) spoke of her inability to care for the “two friendless old women and two homeless orphans” in her household “because the hand of affliction has rested heavily upon her for more than a year. There was a time when she traveled a great deal, and whatever requests she made of her white friends were granted. Many of her old friends have ‘crossed the bar,’ while others, I am sure, know not of her present condition. Just now her lot is a hard one—dependent entirely on what may be handed her by occasional callers and the scant earnings of her brother, several years her senior” (Taylor, 1901, 15–16). Around the first years of the new century, Tubman, now just turned eighty, requested head surgery from a doctor in a Boston hospital in an effort to relieve the symptoms associated with the old head injury of childhood. She later described undergoing the operation as lying down “like a lamb for the slaughter, and he sawed open my skull, and raised it up, and now it feels more comfortable” (Bradford, 1901, 151–152).4 Bradford became increasingly concerned about Tubman’s health and vulnerability to what she saw as exploitation by her dependents. In an undated letter probably written during this time, Bradford reported to Franklin Sanborn on a disturbing recent visit to Tubman, with whom she was apparently collaborating in plans for distributing the biography: “I have been to see Harriet & found her in a deplorable condition, a pure wreck, [mind?] & body—& surrounded by a set of beggars who I fear fleece her of every thing sent her—She drew all the money I had sent for her, & I fear had little good of it—I am keeping the money I get for her now—& will pay her bills—& I send her a little at a time as she needs it— If I could only get her into a home where she would be well cared for I should be so glad, but she will not leave her beloved darkies.”5 In 1901 Bradford brought out the last version of the biography, enhanced with a few additional stories about Tubman in old age. Emily Howland, now well launched in her career as a philanthropist—she was known particularly for her support of black educational institutions, including Tuskegee6 — pitched in to help distribute copies as gifts to friends at Christmas time in 1901. She also visited Tubman in January...