Tubman: Moses of Her People

Tubman: Moses of Her People

Bradford, Sarah. Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People. E-text Retrieved 28 Apr 2008 at http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/8htub10h.htm

Sarah Bradford's account of the life of Harriet Tubman was first published not long after Tubman's death, with the stated desire to set into posterity the great life and good deeds of the Moses of Her People, as reads the subtitle of Bradford's laudatory biography. Bradford's account, based upon her interviews with the aging and ailing Tubman, is often phrased, quite justifiably, in heroic terms -- Bradford notes that Tubman made "superhuman efforts" not only in escaping from slavery but by returning to the South no less nineteen times to guide over three hundred other escaped slaves to freedom in Canada, as well as acting as a Union spy and a nurse during the Civil War.

Bradford narrates Tubman's story from when Tubman was a child, including the blow Tubman received as a young woman at the hands of a cruel overseer, some of Tubman's adventures grappling with the bitter environmental conditions of her escape, narrowly evading capture at every turn, and Tubman's religious faith. But Bradford was a white woman very much of 'her time' in terms of her attitudes towards race, and occasionally in her zeal to stress Tubman's unique capabilities, she seems to unintentionally fall into the trap of stereotyping Tubman's fellow slaves. This is bitterly ironic, given that Tubman still strove to uplift her people. Consider this comment about the young Tubman, recovering after the blow she sustained to her head: "The sun shone on, and Harriet still slept seated on the fence rail. They, those others, had no anxious dreams of the future, and even the occasional sufferings of the present time caused them but a temporary grief. Plenty to eat, and warm sunshine to bask in, were enough to constitute their happiness; Harriet, however, was not one of these. God had a great work for her to do in the world, and the discipline and hardship through which she passed in her early years, were only preparing her for her after life of adventure and trial; and through these to come out as the Savior and Deliverer of her people, when she came to years of womanhood." However, Bradford does detail the physical horrors of slavery, the unremitting toil, and the toll it takes upon the body and mind for all slaves, not just Tubman, as well as Tubman's fortitude in resisting them.

Tubman's religiosity and great strength come to the forefront of the narrative. The story is a triumph of personal faith, in Bradford's telling, more than one of cleverness, deceit, and guile -- which it certainly had to be as well, given the difficulty most slaves experienced striving to escape bondage once, never mind the multiple times Tubman navigated the Underground Railroad. Tubman escaped for the first time, to win her own freedom after the death of her master. She was evidently motivated out of fear, in part because the fates of the master's remaining slaves were uncertain. (Her brothers were sold to a chain gang). The account of the master's death, as Tubman relates her experiences, seems like a blend of honesty and Bradford's determination to show that Tubman, despite the effects of slavery, was a conventionally pious Christian woman. Tubman said: "Lord, if you ain't never going to change dat man's heart, kill him, Lord, and take him out of de way, so he won't do no more mischief.' Next ting I heard ole master was dead; and he died just as he had lived, a wicked, bad man. Oh, den it 'peared like I would give de world full of silver and gold, if I had it, to bring dat pore soul back, I would give myself; I would give eberyting! But he was gone, I couldn't pray for him no more.'"

Time and time again, Bradford's language about other "Negros" such as a man named Joe, whom Bradford describes as "gentle" and a "valuable piece of property," as well as the friendship she evidences for other abolitionists and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, reveals her ideological bias as a well-meaning Northerner not without racial prejudices. The time the book was authored, around that of Reconstruction, is one reason that Bradford, with an eye upon her reader's sensibilities, may make such statements that she is: "quite willing to acknowledge that she [Harriet Tubman] was almost an anomaly among her people, but I have known many of her family, and so far as I can judge they all seem to be peculiarly intelligent, upright and religious people, and to have a strong feeling of family affection. There may be many among the colored race like them; certainly all should not be judged by the idle, miserable darkies who have swarmed about Washington and other cities since the War."